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Alex LaRose

@lekso.bsky.social
300 followers 222 following 454 posts

writer, data cruncher, fiddler, apple enthusiast

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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Lower stakes are more honest. I much prefer a story where the stakes are everyday, and it’s the characters who make them seem high, than a story where the stakes are SUPER HIGH and DRAMATIC and IMPORTANT. The latter often feels so disconnected from reality that it’s cartoonish and unoriginal.
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
Shoot for the moon. Shoot shoot shoot. Shoot again. Kill the moon.
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
To him being #prompt meant communicating. If he called ahead to say he’s late, he’s not late. She planned her entire day around timings. Dinner at 7pm affected her wake up time. It was serious. He thought he was thoughtful. She thought he was thoughtless. Sometimes, that’s relationships. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
They broke up. They did therapy, they talked, they tried. Their visions of a good life simply didn’t match. No #schism, no matter how necessary, is clean. Always, there are ragged edges. Always strands stretched between the separating halves. They broke up. Each, in turn, was broken. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 28/12/2024
I’ll find the sour note in the symphony, the dead vole in the meadow, the disagreement in the relationship. It’s how I’m built. I need some bad before I take the good seriously. Nothing makes me unhappier than an #idyllic setting. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
My dog romps into the water and a thousand geese take air. Their honking deafens. I came to this pond when my mom got sick, when my girlfriend left me. I’m back again, hungover from my dad’s wake. The pond’s story changes each time. Discarded #feathers drizzle. It’s a white rain. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 23/12/2024
Lord, when I’m beset, when I want to shout or run or cut people off, when it feels like the floor is rushing away and the ceiling is coming down, grant me #tranquility. Let me remember: I’ll get through this. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 22/12/2024
Cricket with dad: never an easy time. He brings the gear, sets the #wickets, and for a moment, life is how it’s supposed to be. Just a guy and his dad playing in the park. He runs up, plants his feet, and— “I’m moving out of the country. You won’t see me for a while.” —bowls me over. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
Dent the car. Rip the leather. Mar the skin. Get it over with. A life spent maintaining the original finish is a life spent looking backwards with narrowed eyes. #Purity is a sucker’s game. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Now she’s gone, I see her in #silhouettes. Flat, indistinct. Alluring but unwelcoming. She exists in the corners of my eyes, behind curtains, on the street at night. The urge is there to go to her. But I know I’ll find her the same as ever: merely my impression of something else. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
His life is a steady six, and he likes it. That’s why his job is simple and he’s single. Why deal with highs when they bring lows. Here’s the lie: His life is a six, but only if we ignore the loneliness, the dreams. #Drama is good, actually. It means you’re trying to get what you need. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
She decorated the place #monochrome, all beige, tan, and taupe. She said he inspired the look. He didn’t know what to make of that. Is he so bland? After seeing her delight over the space, he realized it doesn’t matter. If she loves the space, she loves him. No further questions. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
Sometimes the #challenge is not being mean. You dig around in the bad poem until, among the tortured adjectives and broken rhymes, you find a little something worthy. You offer this bit of praise. The bad poet takes it. The moment is nice. That’s all it needed to be. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
He arrived at the #threshold of his new job. He’d worked years for this. Title, pay, benefits—it was the best he could hope for. From here, the only direction was… well, not up. Not down either. From here, there wasn’t much of a direction at all. He remained a while at the threshold. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 15/12/2024
The #axolotl reaches adulthood without metamorphosis. It’s the same creature, all the way through. People can be like that. Child to grownup, they don’t change. They’re out there, grownup with beards or tits, full-time jobs and families, and all they care about is getting what they want. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
Life is #overfitting. We learn lessons and misapply them at scale. We expect strangers to have the values of our friends, friends to react emotionally like our family, and family to think like we do. Sometimes, when we’re wrong, it’s delightful. Other times, it’s heartbreaking. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Why bother. Why write, lift, or learn the violin. What’s the point. Maybe I’ll break a hand. Then what. And I remember: there is no point. Pray, garden, watch tv—the end result is the same. Life is how we spend our days. Spend them well, and you’ve done all you can. #vss365 #propagate
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
In 1955 they developed an antivenom for the #taipan. They needed a snake for that, and the guy who caught it died. That’s how it goes. Two steps forward, one step back. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 30/11/2024
Huh. I haven't checked bsky in a while and I see I have many many new followers. How/why are people finding me? I'm guessing this is solidarity among writing newcomers to the platform?
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 16/07/2024
I know #aloha means hello and goodbye. For this #vss365, I wanted to know more. I looked it up. Aloha means love, mercy, and a force binding nature. That’s a lot, too much to define. I need to hear it used in context. Until then, if I say aloha, I’m just a tourist in a lei.
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 15/07/2024
After a day picking cauliflower, I passed the evening sorting potatoes. At 10pm I got home. My body was roadkill. My mind was worse. I wanted to sit, cry, die—any of those. But there she was. My girl. My lady. #Boon to my heart, balm to my soul. Life was good. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 13/07/2024
She #atones for being blunt, for calling in sick, for not finishing her meal. She atones for telling her employee to do his job. She atones when she forgets to atone. Her whole life is taken up with making amends. She knows that’s not right. She atones for that too. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 10/07/2024
You’ll never know the #quintessence of another person. All images are crafted, even the honest ones. The trick is, you’ll never know yourself, either. If you knew yourself, it would mean you’d stopped changing. What a sad life that would be. Rejoice in discovery. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 09/07/2024
Mother wanted to be kept #apprised. That’s all. Of my work and dating life. I told her of my career change. She said how nice, and I knew she hated it. When I told her about Felicia, her silence said everything. Mother wanted to be kept in the loop. That was too much. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 07/07/2024
I had one goal: get away from people. No parties. No sports. No bars. The less time around others, the happier I was. Then COVID happened. Turns out, when work isn’t forcing me to be social, being alone makes me unhappy. I’m an #introvert, but I do need people. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 07/07/2024
The Lovers: a flower named for its paired blooms. Their stems spiral together, and they face the sun like a couple facing the future. Because of climate change and habitat loss, they’ve been #extirpated. Nature is less than it was, now it no longer has Lovers. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 06/07/2024
In place of money, the rich old man #bequeathed to his children gifts far more personal. To his eldest, a sense that love is anger at rest. To the middle one, a fear of raised hands. To the youngest, a want for love like the day’s for the sun. The old man was bastard. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 05/07/2024
Within the lake, strange forms move. Coiled flesh unspools. A scattering of claws takes the faded moonlight. There is a sound. It shakes the earth, vibrates your lungs. Your skull aches with it. You’ve #awoken that which ought not wake. There will be consequences. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 04/07/2024
#Embox yourself, you dumbass. Retreat from the noise and indignity of daily life and figure yourself out. Don’t embox yourself, idiot. You have to get out there, in the vibrant realness of it all, to figure yourself out. It’s so simple, you prick. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 02/07/2024
Eric doesn’t think or plan. He #excogitates. Picture him pacing the hills of Arpinum like Cicero. This is why his unfulfilled purpose is to advise rulers of nations. It’s why he’ll drift through life, out of time and place, until, like Cicero, his misery is ended. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 02/07/2024
In the #gallivant a man flat under. A great house, pungent like lines. The man flat about coordinates between. That’s the energy. The sound change shaped measure. Too loud a measure by far. No surprise, because of houses. Hindsight yields pounce. Pumice leads to graft. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 01/07/2024
I didn’t mean to #vanish. I thought I’d explain to the kids that I was destined for fame, not parenthood. But through the living room window I saw them at dinner. Their smiles, their chatter. I couldn’t bear to make them sad. That’s why I ran out. I’m weak. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 29/06/2024
Never a more perfect #duet—her on bass, him on violin. They anticipated one another, gave and took, responded intuitively. They were so in sync. He figured their relationship would be the same. How could it be otherwise? I don’t have to tell you why that’s rhetorical. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 28/06/2024
The truth came out: Richard had kept up not one, not three, not nine, but seventeen affairs across the city. He had secret phones, agreements with restaurant staff, and all manner of #furtive concealment. My biggest question, though, is how did he find the time?! #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 28/06/2024
I bit the #serrated knife. My tooth cracked. My gums bled. Mother ran over. She fussed. Her attention soothed like novocaine. The baby, jealous of me, cried. He looked so weak. Needy. Desperate. I had his number now. Mother would never leave my side again. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 27/06/2024
He weighed her every time they met. If she came in above 110lb, he wouldn’t go out with her. This, and other #draconian rules, she accepted as part of their relationship. After all, relationship is compromise. He wouldn’t act this way if he didn’t care. She was young. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 25/06/2024
#Taxes like a collar on my neck slowing me down, restricting bloodflow, hauling me off my feet because the taxman’s got the lead in both hands and he’s heaving away. Except this is a dumb fantasy. Taxes are good, actually. I like schools, roads, and healthcare. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 23/06/2024
My cat is #hardwired to destroy. It knocks glasses off tables, chews undefended shoelaces, and makes tassels of upholstery. It’s its nature to mess order, dirty cleanliness, break what’s whole. Regrettably, it’s my nature to love that cat. I accept the consequences. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 21/06/2024
When she rose from bouts of depression, she #bleached her whites—no dinginess on her sunlit days. She emerged all brightness, looking made that way, like she’d never been otherwise, like she’d never dim again. The effect was so striking, she nearly believed it. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 21/06/2024
He #hearkened to the styles of times gone by. He affected a frock coat, preferred harpsichord music, and spoke in Dickensian vernacular. People didn’t like him. He struggled to like himself. But he’d made his choices, and he lived with them. That’s all anyone can do. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 20/06/2024
I cut my teeth in a writing forum where all #critique was fair game. People got mean, yes, but they were honest. That approach is flawed. The point of feedback isn’t to correct. It’s to build up. A critique that leaves a writer feeling like a failure has itself failed. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 19/06/2024
Wake up, write, eat healthy breakfast, work, focus, eat healthy lunch, work, focus, get home, practice fiddle, eat healthy dinner, hit the gym, get home, shower, write a poem, ignore fear, sleep. The fear: when his routine breaks, it won’t #fracture. It’ll shatter. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 17/06/2024
The day before they signed the papers, they called a one-meal #truce. He got milk for her coffee. She swapped her over-easy eggs for his over-hard. It wasn’t an end to hostilities, just a reminder that things weren’t always bad. Maybe one day they’d be good again. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 17/06/2024
It made him sad, angry even, to see lovers holding hands, walking together, #canoodling in the park. He deserved love too! Where was his person?! When would he get affection?! Who was to blame?! It was only once he relaxed this attitude that he found someone to love. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 15/06/2024
My instinct is to say #soulmates don’t exist. Romantic partners go on a compatibility spectrum. A soulmate is just someone on the compatible end. But why “just”? Why diminish that? Life is missed connections. Finding someone is precious. Give them a name. Soulmate. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 15/06/2024
At dinner he laid out a #whopping $400. She saw the gesture for what it was: a flex, a need to impress. At the end of the date they passed a field, and he plucked a daisy and tied the stem into a ring round her finger. The flower, not the money, led to a second date. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 13/06/2024
Derek felt #yodeling’s low and high notes as the beating of wings. Freeing. He had to learn. Where he lived, there were no yodelers. For years he made his own study. Finally he flew to a convention in Austria. Among the yodeling greats he found his flock. He soared. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 12/06/2024
#Tacky trash—Mom’s words for my clothes, style, taste. Me. Even when she didn’t say the words, I heard them. She left me with two options. Give in or resist. I was young. No fight in me. It’s only now I’m grown that I’m relearning my taste. Turns out? I like trash. #vss365
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Alex LaRose @lekso.bsky.social · 11/06/2024
Attendance, grades, behaviour—Jenny’s record at school was #sterling. Then her mom died. She couldn’t study, focus, or even care. Her record, and self-impression, became tarnished. It was only years later that she realized silver under a dark light remains sterling. #vss365
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