you are nothing more than a beautiful smile, charming and scripted for those who need to know you can exist with pain even when it's hard to breathe. each word you speak travels to them and they realize they are not in water anymore
revealing your wounds lightens the burden you otherwise cary on your lips, letting the corners float towards the sky like helium balloons; the strings tied to rocks you carry in your mouth, regurgitated but not thrown up because stones are a mess to clean and nobody knows you swallowed them
some hear you trip over the pebbles that slip out from against your cheeks and hold out their hands requesting, like a (kind) parent to a (hurt) child, you spit out your defiance into their hand so they can properly dispose of it some place where you have to go through them to retrieve the lead previously in your stomach. the balloons float away and you are nothing more than a shell with no ballast to sink into the water and no mask to pull yourself up
(they press air into your mouth, filling you with what you should have ingested in the first place) — April 1, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
you hold on too tightly for what you should but your shoulders are about to pop out of their sockets and if you don't keep tension from your chest down to your fingertips you know there will be too much pain from a double dislocation and you will drop into the void with no way to grab back onto what could save your skin and bones from a black hole trying to pull you into its grasp and you can feel your atoms separating from its pull, from how your tendons are straining even in your toes which aren't supporting anything; you are too high up and you have forgotten what your feet touching the ground feels like, the ever present wind a reminder that humans were not meant to fly and you will pay the ultimate price for your survival, each slip of your hands from sweaty palms a token death gambles on a loosely woven cloth, waiting for damp fibres to pull apart with each drop and each chip all resting on your head, putting more weight on your shoulders for the love of god, don't let the bastards be right. don't let your weaknesses get the best of you. not now — April 2, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
i forget what love is like, some days, after too many times alone in my own head where love is nothing more than an abstract concept, cobbled together through books and movies and jealousy, every interaction they receive a stark reminder i am alone in my own house no matter how many people live with me.
stone hearts take on whatever the world throws at them, fortified through wind and rain and war, the battle rams unable to even make a dent in diamond, for you tell yourself you are a gemstone, perfect and unbreakable, every ounce precious (while trying to forget the most beautiful gems in the world are cursed) and every ounce indestructible, forged with carbon in the heart of a mother trying to melt everything it comes into contact with in order to eventually solidify it into the shape she wants: a land mass that takes thousands of years to be inhabitable, sharp stones protruding through skin that is supposed to be smooth and fertile but instead is spit out of a furnace with every imperfection (the heaviest elements, always) last before a soft dusting of gentleness, ash hiding glass that could cut you so cleanly you didn't realize it had split open your skin until you began to bleed
(i am sorry you have so many scars from reaching out to me, but you smile and say every drop of blood helps fertilize the earth and obsidian shines the brightest in the sun; you have picked up pieces of me with gloves and armour and skin, stripping back imperfections while still acknowledging they are there, a farmer realizing no field is ever clear without work; sometimes the richest soil is under sweat and tears. already, shoots have begun to grow) — April 3, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
i try to forget how much i love you, whole personas designed around the idea of i am self sustaining and love is something nice to have but not necessary for life to continue, beliefs forged out of steel, honed against the stones thrown at me from all sides, turning the words i had used as shields into two-edged swords, one end digging into my palm and the other pointed towards you, even if i am keeping it close to my body (cutting up my stomach as i try to hide the blade is even there) because there is never supposed to be anything wrong, not to the point i want to sever what ties i'd made simply because i think you have already let them go in the name of better people; my own tongue is a whetstone of there is nothing i can give besides blood and scars and pain; any love i receive is because sometimes i am useful for other things, words sliding along the space between my palm and metal, sharpening a knife i had become numb to even if i tried to bandage the wounds and hide because even iron masks rust when faced with too many tears.
eventually you see the blood pooled between us pockmarked with stones as i tried to throw them far away but they ended up in your direction, and say, show me the knife, i know it will hurt but you are hurting more. i do not want you to. i love you too much to see you bleed because of me. —April 4, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
i do not want to write poems about her; the plots end up too close to fairy tales, an evil step mother and a handsome prince(ss) to save a girl who didn't know how to escape from an ivory tower where the windows were open and there was a ladder outside but i did not know how to take a step so i stayed hidden away like she told me to, because i had no reason to believe there was even a ladder there, believe there was something else to live for outside of pleasing her and being good, which meant not daring to push my boundaries because if i did not stay within them then i would not be able to survive (or so she told me, and before you say why did you believe that, let me tell you repetition is the greatest teacher)
i needed a saviour and people tell me that is wrong, because girls should learn you aren't helpless and they always seem to forget that some girls never realize it applies to them or they try and the world is more of the same so why bother going outside of what their mother told them. all they can do is survive and hope some day their prince(ss) will come to save them, because they have tried saving themselves and nobody has let them
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
you take me to church and i listen because that's what you told me to and there are no rebels in the suburbs (and if there are, i do not know where to find them), sermons filled of death you tell me that doesn't need to exist because the catholics like the cross too much and their saints are all martyrs; no, you say, that is not what life is about and i believe you because i'd rather think that mother knows best and the world is a sick place. you take me to church to tell me how wrong it is that even easter only exists with death and how it needs to be erased because easter is about a soul that never died. so long as you believed that god could do anything and honestly wanted to return, even we could come back one day, if only as ghosts. humans are lost, you say, and i am their shepherd because you taught me the right ways but you keep shaking your head at everything i do, whispering i did not teach you this way, you are so much more saintly than this, if only you loved god enough to let him do everything through you then you would never be sick and i try, god you know how much i tried but you tell me i was made sick by my father and i need to stop behaving in the ways of sinners or else i will be trapped among bones and blood and all the death you warned me about as a child, a world where everyone wants to be sick because then they do not have to face themselves and i rip my soul apart trying to show you(r god) that there is nothing else in me except a desire to get better but it's not enough, you tell me, because if i truly wanted to it would already be gone, my issues not big enough to warrant permanence (nothing is permanent except divinity, you say, and ask why it is such a holy child with every gift god can grant so evil, so corrupted that i cannot escape the prison that has left me sometimes incapable and emotional in ways you do not approve of) and there must be something else, something i am hiding even though i have told you everything i can think to say about my virtue. but you insist there is evil within me while saying love is the only thing that exists.
(the only part of church i loved was fire in the form of a tipped over candle; endless light to smoke out evil and let the structure burn down to the ground) —April 5, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
you told me i was named after the stars and you were named after sin, a construct that placed you in reality and me in death, for the stars we see here on earth have shorter lifespans than the light we receive, the night a time machine into the past when we were born. stars created us and other names i've held relate to helping, our navigation run by their ever present light (that is only a ghost, for they long burned themselves out to sustain us), sins of our fathers laid out as they prayed to a non existent god somewhere in the sky. if divinity is dead then the only thing alive is sin, for it is what we create by living. —April 6, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
a blessing to the ones i love but am too far away to properly care for; i hope you find:
i someone who makes you feel relaxed even when your awkwardness is out in the open for them to see every single fear you hold close to your chest in the name of trying to appear like them but you trust them enough to reveal your shaking hands, silently begging please like me and their only reaction is don't worry, you're perfect
ii a home that is yours and filled with what you need for life, lights on at two in the morning because you can and what is time when friends are over for conversation, the dinner dishes on the counter, forgotten in the name of more important things
iii a place you feel alive close enough you can revisit it often, whether it be the edge of the ocean with waves crashing against the shore, or your bed with rumpled sheets and perfume that whispers you are safe with every breath
iv an airport close enough to accept travellers without (too much) trouble so that one day i may go down and hug you in person, because even though we both have other people to call our own, not one of them is you —April 7, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
gain is weakness, you tell me, not in any philosophical sense but you are the greatest teacher i have ever encountered. for every step forward there is a landslide of quicksand, sticking to every bone and caking onto my skin, gains erased temporarily with the price of progress; you scream at me demanding to know why i defied you while crying with relief you are different, you are something that has taken a step towards desire and towards the place everyone says you need to reach but you are unsure but you cannot stay where you are, ever, because brambles are not normal and you cannot stand being alone (even though you are not, but everyone in sight is bleeding to death). you cannot stand leaving others alone and the mud is preferable to thorns (eventually after you have realized blood loss is worse) that capture your every movement and freeze you in imperfect suspended animation, one that does not leave a meticulously preserved specimen at the end. The water around your feet is formaldehyde, every breath a reminder this is not normal even though you smell it long after you have left the marsh.
gain is weakness, you tell me, but in your next breath, you say, thank you for being alive —April 8, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
"executive function" sounds like something on a CEO's job description, the most obviously stated part, somewhere along interviews of you will have to make these important choices and you will be allowed to make them, because you are an executive and these are your functions, but the truth is every job application requires it in the overt demand for a cover letter that explains how organized you are (where you pretend that keeping lists is a habit you picked up because of course I like keeping track of everything i ever do when the reality is you forget to wash the dishes if you don't write it down somewhere) and wanting to know you will be able to keep track of ten things at once, words like people person and able to multi task thrown around like buzzwords nobody believes in but you know they are part of company culture, they always are and they always stick out of job postings like knives, waiting for you to slice yourself open in the name of being something you are not in the hopes of surviving for another however long they can tolerate you, because you know eventually people will get tired of you, for these functions are not inherent in your mind; you must force them to come to the surface and you try to stammer apologies when the mask cracks and every lie you ever told seeps through, those around you seeing how there is no soul within a hollow shell, only the hopes of savant skills and enough genius to counteract how you will never remember a deadline
(but you know even those will not save you, eventually, your mother says, they tire of babysitting someone who, like peter pan, never grew up) —April 9, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
there is no sense that you will be alright not since injuries became permanent and bridges burned to an island you didn't know was a peninsula that is perfect but so very different from where you ever thought you would build a home (if you even remember what that word means anymore, because your old one is somewhere in the ashes underwater), the landscape new and you know how to navigate but each step reveals something you did not expect, poisonous plants so similar to the ones you had grown used to are nontoxic, and you stop to marvel that this wold is not trying to kill you like everyone said it would, even though you do not dare venture off the path because the wolves howl for your blood and every night you hear them from across the water (you pray to god they never learn how to swim) while hearing another beast somewhere in your neighbourhood, the memories of torn flesh and festering infections still marring your throat. scar tissue built up over years of harpies tearing your your trachea prevent you from screaming in pain (and nobody is there to listen anyway), only the quiet whimpers of trouble left of the person who cried wolf because that's what she was taught to do when faced with danger but nobody saw the pointed canines of the other person's smile. every snapped branch makes you recoil deep into the caves you have found on the shore still overlooking the bay (but at least they cannot get you there), oil slicks still alight because you touched a powder keg and kerosine before running to a place nobody knows your name and staying by the shore because you have forgotten how to introduce yourself.
(the only defence is becoming a wolf but you know people here will see danger in your smile)
(they have told you so) —April 10, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
acronymes condense an experience, two letters enough to represent washington, the district of columbia, capital of the united states and nobody even questions what you are referring to when part of the alphabet is flipped as a symbolic gesture of this is the centre our home (often called the heart) and every time i say those two syllables (not even letters because letters are not tied to a place on their own) i remember watching you cross the street and wondering how in god's name you got so fearless (even though i know the secret is in those words) and watching me walk to some place safer because that is who i am and while you laugh about how much of a coward i can be you still looked back and made sure i was following somehow, because your philosophy is another shorthand but this one everyone seems to forget, a single word treated as four letters and almost always followed by "but", the universal acknowledgement there is something else left unsaid in a symbol too short to capture nuance that should not even be there, and i kept waiting for your lips to press together in a sound phonetically called a stop (the most appropriate description for the word), instead your tongue flowed along liquids and vowels, the notes always sung so smoothly in hymns that have forgotten there are other symbols besides exclusion, stop signs ripped down in the name of a lion who always protects the lamb even if that lion knows there is nothing on this earth stronger than gentleness, a trait we both share even if sometimes we forget to apply it to ourselves because the world is a briar and even the strongest pelt can be sliced open by thorns.
i only hope i am there (enough) to return the same love you have shown me —April 11, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
i do not get along like a house on fire, for fire is the element of destruction. it is what you reach for when the glass around you threatens to slice open your skin and the only thing that saves you is an inferno to soften glass and make it you can stretch and hopefully not trap yourself while you thin walls built around you; a house on fire is a place of danger and the antithesis of getting along.
water is an element of friendship its constant ebb and flow wearing down what had previously been sharp stones while the minerals add life to an otherwise (too) tranquil stream as it bounces over something constant while becoming the ever present itself, each side taking on something only the other can give it.
and i would much rather have synthesis than destruction —April 12, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
we speak of magic and i laugh because we never used to; it was a taboo topic, one never touched upon because that was for witches and you always had burned your self at the stake, toiling under false accusations when those in power found the very fact you existed a threat, how you demanded an answer to a question nobody had wanted to acknowledge even needed to be asked, so instead of examining themselves they tried to make you believe in guilt that was not yours to carry, but they saddled it with you anyway crafting a pyre in the form of the holy spirit burns when it touches you, do not resist and do not question, but eventually you learned that fire does not have to make you turn to ash, your body is more than firewood and anyone who places you on an altar without your permission should not be trusted with a knife (blood is holy they told you, but they neglect to mention christ's wounds healed)
you bless the trees that had once burned with you, digging your toes into the earth and discovering death is not sacred unless rebirth comes after —April 13, 2015
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
“And how shall I think of you?' He considered a moment and then laughed. 'Think of me with my nose in a book!” — Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
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