Elisa Gabbert @egabbert Twitter profile

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Elisa Gabbert

5 months

My next book has a cover and this is it! Any Person Is the Only Self = five years of writing about writing and reading and loneliness and happiness. Coming June 11. I hope you'll consider pre-ordering it.

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 month

I want to do IMPORTANT WORK. I also want to FUCK AROUND. The life dialectic

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

I didn't get the Wordle today (look it's been a long week) but then it TOLD ME THE ANSWER where it usually says "Splendid" or "Phew" or whatever so I THOUGHT IT WAS CALLING ME AND MY GAMEPLAY THAT WORD!?!

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

7 years

The three things Twitter has done that I've hated the most are 280 characters, changing favorites to likes & destroying human civilization

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

I find it disturbing how much Twitter has normalized casual cruelty to strangers

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

9 months

There's a genre of poem I think of as "All my little things are very special, in the sunlight. I've had a little drink"

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Maybe if I hold all my feelings inside it will work my core

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

"How to work from home" is not the question, the question is how to work during a catastrophic pandemic

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

5 years

Why pay for an MFA when you can just make a joke on this website and then people will explain poetry to you for free

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Good morning! I wrote a Close Read feature on a poem I've always loved, Auden's "Musee des Beaux Arts." This was an experience to write and I hope it will be an experience for you to read

A Poem (and a Painting) About the Suffering That Hides in Plain Sight (Published 2022)

With war looming, W.H. Auden stood in a museum and was inspired to write. The resulting poem, “Musée des Beaux Arts,” is one of the most famous ever written about art.

www.nytimes.com

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

I have some wild news, I'm going to be a regular poetry columnist for the New York Times. My first column goes up next week!

New Poetry Columnist for Book Review | The New York Times Company

www.nytco.com

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

6 years

Memorial to all the commas my editors delete: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

6 years

You're not a real writher unless you writhe every day

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

God I wish someone would tell me what the word "essay" originally meant, in French!

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

I'm entering my Old Poet stage... I don't have experiences per se anymore, I just go into the backyard and remember I'm going to die

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

5 months

I love this book for many reasons, and one is that it makes absurdly strong yet enigmatic proclamations, almost indefensible statements you are dazzled into believing. Basically when I read a book I want to join a temporary cult

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

I saw this list of tips for writing fiction and one of them was "When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books" ???

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

I think writing gets harder as you get older for the simple reason that you're sick of yourself

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Y'all, NORMAL DISTANCE has a cover, and you can pre-order it! Aaahh!

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

I love a little comma splice, a little casual intellectual comma splice, it says we're all intelligent people and we're just talking here

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

We get it, poems, you're about loss

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

I'm tired of being largely misunderstood, so I'm going back to poetry where I can be completely misunderstood

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Resist hopelessness always but my god, what a sad and stupid time.

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

On this old episode of Jeopardy we just watched, the answer was Pegasus and then Alex said “beautiful animal”

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Semicolons don’t get enough love… em-dashes are beautiful, sure, but it’s such an OBVIOUS beauty… semicolons don’t know they’re beautiful. Em-dashes went to Harvard, semicolons went to state school

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

Kafka, on having a day job: "it is a horrible double life from which there is probably no escape but insanity"

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

I’m now a fan account for my own office. These colors

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

What if we had a little mini Wordle in the afternoon....just to take the edge off

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

I love when paintings exclude me, the viewer. I have nothing to do with them

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

I don't want to join any new social thing though. I think I'd rather just wander the moors

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

Twitter can't suspend you for what's in your heart

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

6 years

I notice none of you told me Brahms was a stone cold fox

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

6 months

I'm fundamentally not OK with the past and present tenses of "read" being spelled the same. I just keep living my life, there is nothing to be done. But it's not OK

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

5 years

Girl, are you on earth briefly, because you're gorgeous

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

I've been reading old memoirs that don't follow typical 21st century memoir conventions, and it's so nice! They are structurally haphazard, arcless, even pointless for long stretches at a time. I love it. Books could be anything!

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

If you can write a good sentence in Calibri you're a genius

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Sommer Browning

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

I keep thinking about how weird it is that you work on a book for years and then people can read it in a few hours. The asymmetry, and how they experience the work in a way you never will

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

I don't know if this is the poet in me, but I often have to defend a sentence from multiple rounds of edits because I sometimes like my writing to be a little wrong

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

I love when a book just starts, without any attempt to justify itself. Books should just start!

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

One of the most phoned in covers of all time. This designer 100% read the first four words and called it a day

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Omg I just opened a regular ass review copy package of the type I get 2-3x per day and it’s an ARC of my own book!!!

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

Does anybody know what to do?

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

It was the best of vibes, it was the worst of vibes

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

I'll never, ever get tired of reading descriptions of Melville's abject career failures. It's my favorite food

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Does drinking coffee on an empty stomach increase anxiety? Of course. Am I going to keep doing it every morning until I vibrate into the grave? Of course

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Here it is — seven of my most loved poetry books published in 2022. I hope you read them and love them too.

The Best Poetry of 2022 (Published 2022)

Our columnist selects the books that have stuck with her this year.

www.nytimes.com

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

I can't believe we used to just do stuff

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

I want poems to show me a profound encounter with the void, OR be a little funny

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

I want a book that will make me feel the way I felt when I read The Secret History, but I think the problem is, I was 24 then, and now I’m 40

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

I bet Rilke's friends got tired of him being profound 24 hours a day

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

Kafka ♥️

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

The best genre of content is "everything alive is like us." Bees throw parties, snails have anxiety, mushrooms go to college, all of it is good

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

When I am deep in research, I am constantly amazed by random books I planned only to mine for facts, which turn out to be brilliant and beautifully written. There are so many good books you've never heard of, by writers you've never heard of

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Has anyone successfully changed their personality in their 40s? I'm tired of mine

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Edits are based on the assumption that a piece could get better. But what if I told you—this piece could also get worse

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

The Unreality of Memory is out today and I feel stunned and very lucky to get this gorgeous review

Disaster May Upend Reality, but What Is ‘Real’ Anyway? (Published 2020)

In “The Unreality of Memory,” the poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert considers our psychological relationship to calamity.

www.nytimes.com

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

I'm delighted to share that my next book of poems will be out from @softskull in 2022. (It was called NORMAL DISTANCE before the pandemic started, I swear!)

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

Sartre called those moments where you realize you're wasting your life "negative ecstasy" (philosophers! they made some points!)

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

At long last, it's here: Every book I read in 2022, with commentary. Happy new year gang

Every book I read in 2022, with commentary

I hesitate to say that it’s been a hard year for the third year in a row; surely after three years, that’s just how your life is? It was a…

elisagabbert.medium.com

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Poems are not to agree with or disagree with, imo. Poems are like clouds or sculptures. They're for having a profound experience with!

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

11 months

I’ve started talking to people like I’ve known them forever, right after I meet them? This just happens, beyond your control! You get old, it just happens. There is no time for preamble— death is nigh

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

6 years

Feel free to admit the classic you like

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

Love this @sarahroseetter

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

7 months

I like to arrange my little words on the page and pretend I'll never die

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

I pretty much just ball the fitted sheet up into a wad and throw it at the closet. It's fine and does not matter

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

We get it poets, there's profundity in the everyday, all we have are minor, fleeting epiphanies that rise like a gasping man between crashing waves of banality

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Feeling like a failure is the first position of writing. You do your little moves and then return to first position.

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Sometimes after writing a good sentence I google it to make sure I'm not accidentally quoting Sontag

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

5 years

I really did not expect the first paragraph of a book about reading to go where this did

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

6 years

This is the first New Yorker cartoon I've laughed at in months

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

19 days

Any Person is out today. Big moment for my little body of work

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

5 months

Sometimes when you’re trying to write a poem you have to go read a poem to remember what poems are like.

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

I welcome rejections because they reinforce my belief that I'm a rebel and an outsider and the establishment can't handle me

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

8 years

I think Trump is reading the Constitution, very slowly, before bed, and crossing things out with a red pen

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

5 years

Your "someone needs to drop out of the race" name is your favorite city in Oklahoma plus your last name. Mine's Tulsa Gabbert

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

Come on wolves. I'm going to need you to eat me

Kyle Clark

@KyleClark

4 years

Colorado, I know y’all are up at 2:45AM wondering about the wolves. The measure to reintroduce them is leading by a slim 8,672 votes of about 2.8M total. #9News #copolitics

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

This letter in Harper’s made me cry

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

I gather from novels that people used to just know what kind of wood furniture was made of. Just look at a table and see a tree in their mind, like gods

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

6 years

Good morning! I have good news about bad news. My book in progress about disasters and human failure got picked up by FSG. I feel lucky and excited (to write about the end of the world)

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

8 months

I'm writing poems again after 2+ years of no poems... it always comes back, like some dormant virus. Like anthrax in the permafrost, poetry returns!

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

Write because you love it, of course—but writing is a kind of performance, like dance. I think it's natural to want someone to *see* it. Even journals we perform for future selves.

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

6 years

Panic! At the Costco

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

Virginia Woolf imagining death: “and then dot dot dot.”

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

Every sentence in a book can be good and it's still not a good book.

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

11 months

I am still in awe of how much integrity and strength Sinead had when she was so young and famous. She was incredible

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

I like how the titles of late Alice Munro stories are just, like, whatever she named the file the first time she saved it

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

Me anticipating books: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! Me reading books: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

6 years

EXCUSE ME Sylvia Plath popped her collar in her passport photo

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

My mom is about as high risk as it gets and I'm not ready for her to die yet. I beg you to take seriously the risk of getting someone else, and then many others, sick, not just yourself. People can be contagious before they are symptomatic

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 years

Nobody cares about my poems, it's amazing. I can hide anything there

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

3 years

Good morning to the first sentence of Studs Terkel’s Working

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

4 months

My galleys arrived 🥹

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

Some of you seem not to realize that you can go back to a book and get more out of it ... a book is not a depletable resource

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

I just have to finish one more of these and then I can rest (ha, ha). Feeling very lucky to work with my dream publisher again on a book about books

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

5 years

Interviewer: What projects are you working on right now? Me: I'm trying to get these two necklaces untangled

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 month

My books are here

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

I despise this

Reading is precious – which is why I’ve been giving away my books | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

I’m donating my books to people who can most benefit from them. Why keep a novel that could delight someone else?

www.theguardian.com

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

1 year

I dreamed that Susan Sontag had a celebrity perfume.

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Elisa Gabbert

@egabbert

2 years

Normal Distance is out today. So grateful to everyone at @softskull for making my weird thought poems into this beautiful object. I hope you will like it!

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