New to Brittle Views? This space spans grief and mischief, punk nostalgia and quiet reckonings—essays, fiction, satire, and stories that don’t sit still. If you like writing that lingers as much as it lands, you’re in the right place.
This has been a hard week to write through. Charlie Kirk’s murder—and the speed with which his death was turned into a political weapon—left me unsettled, not because I agreed with him, but because of how quickly empathy died. Watching grief stripped of humanity and spun into spectacle felt like a mirror held up to the times we’re living in.
In Who Owns Grief and The Weaponization of Grief, I tried to slow that noise down, to name what’s stolen when mourning becomes theater, and to honor the quiet courage of a father who chose truth over denial. These essays carry weight, but they’re balanced by gentler stories: Maggie B.’s Set for Two, a tender meditation on love remembered but not rekindled, and Holding On, where Emma finds her voice in a letter to her Grandad. Together, these pieces mark a week where silence itself became defiance—and where, even amid the noise, care and honesty still mattered.
Here’s everything from the last seven days—each with its own resonance:
Essays
On the murder of Charlie Kirk and the speed with which tragedy is politicized. A call to reclaim empathy in a culture that treats death as entertainment and grief as a weapon.
A meditation on grief turned into theater. Against the noise of headlines and hashtags, this piece spotlights the private defiance of a father who chose truth over denial, and grief that refuses to be turned into spectacle.
Holding On
![Chapter Seventeen – Holding On [Narrated]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!wMMv!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb135546b-13e6-4518-b6c0-fea3d7428e96_1536x1024.png)
Emma’s voice emerges in ink and memory as she writes a letter to her Grandad. A quiet chapter about guilt giving way to connection, and silence shifting from weight to openness.
The Maggie B. Casefiles
![Set for Two [Narrated]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!PLUo!,w_140,h_140,c_fill,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep,g_auto/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7d78762b-ac18-4533-8167-f0960f9a33c6_1456x816.png)
A tender, understated Maggie B. story of old love remembered, a profile quietly deleted, and respect quietly offered. Some stories don’t ask for answers—they just ask to be held.
Together, these works form a week of sharp contrasts: public noise against private courage, politics against humanity, and silence as its own form of defiance.