love her, be in her orbit, feel her like she paints the whole narrative. you joke - no gender. gender of wacky best friend with ultra-specific plot-relevant interests. love her, can’t have her. love her, forgive her when she forgets your birthday so she can be on a date that doesn’t even end well. love her, try to tear her hair out over a boy. cry on her floor and agree she should have him, you’re just there. love her, know you are temporary. she was looking for him. the whole journey, all along. love her, try to coax her out of it, know her mother is saying the exact opposite, know you are a blue haired pronouns epigraph, know she is tuning you out.

love her, watch her get taught to refine herself into flint for his fire. no friends belong in her future. her whole path, beginning to end - seeking, mindless, the one. watch her scald herself raw trying to be perfect and shaved and skinny and smart and patient and motherly. she will hold your hair in her hands and bring you up to her mouth, drink you like a wishing well. she will close the door every time you are over at her house. in the morning she will make the same jokes he makes to her. copycat the wedding dress of her mother and every mother she’s known before.

love her, kiss her on a tuesday, half by accident, feel the way she sighs into your mouth. love her, both of you singing at the top of your lungs to 90’s punk rock. love her, fight by the side of the road, make up in a motel 6. love her, have her keep you as an experiment on the side of her college bed, little peach. your secrets in the air in pink satin. love her, tell her you want her, get told she-wants-you-too, somehow hear the apology before she even says it. it’s not me it’s you. love her, be not enough for her. be in the back corner again. be a funny remark again. be who she calls at 2 and 3 and 4 AM, be who she kisses while drunk again, be hers, because - you hear her laughing to him - she just likes the attention. love her, tell yourself you’re too smart for this. love her, bite your own skin raw. love her, come back to her bed because you were always the weaker one, in the end.

love her, watch her get picked off, rabbit body into his hyena jaw. love her, love her, love her. she posts a picture of the engagement ring. love her, love her, love -

we had like, she says, looping her arms around your neck. a super long kind of … a fling. and the way she says it, in front of all of the others, with this joy and mocking - you hadn’t even known this was a game she was playing, and here is the punchline. this isn’t the book. you weren’t even a character. not a footnote.

you really meant nothing.

nosebleedclub:

Devour

hey can i tell you a secret? i was really bad at chess. and the person who was teaching me would let me get pretty far into the game, because it helped me see how long a mistake could echo into the little frames of a space.

i was kissing you then. you had your head tilted up against my wall because i hadn’t gotten a bedframe yet and i was sleeping on the mattress on the floor and it was hurting my back like how my back still-hurts now. i told you i’d kiss him but i can’t because it’d ruin our friendship but you and i were friends that kissed. i just liked the size of his hands and how he’d let me fuck up so badly at chess.

can i tell you a secret? i haven’t been writing, ever since you turned around and walked out. i was holding a paint can when i found out. i wish i had dropped it and it had splashed dramatically all over the floor and swished green onto the walls and over my hands and over everything but. i set it down as gently as you’re supposed to set down paint and i marveled for a second at the indented parabola it left in my palm and how gosh isn’t it funny that things always get heavier closer to the floor?

hey can i tell you a secret - this one is a really big secret so watch out. okay. so. i forgot where we buried our dogs. i know they’re in the back yard. i don’t remember because i didn’t help the burial process and i need to feel something physically in order to remember it.

you said once your hair was a color they never put into poetry. fucked up that at one point i heard something inside of me say she’ll play you like a bow string. ha! that felt ominous! you and i were friends-that-kissed. fucked up that we all have pictures together of us dancing, and in them, we are all laughing, and the secret that was between us wasn’t wrapped up in the pixels of the thing. fucked up the secret was just a question neither of us addressed - are you sure you’re really just-friends?

how odd, to be kept. there are many things i’ve written about wanting to devour, about being devoured, about hunger, about the insatiable.

it was worse, to be your secret. it was worse, you know, to be kept in the palm of your hand, and only ever sampled, have what-i-want lapping at my throat. there is an anticlimax when you do not drown in the public pool. you just come up, shivering, and the world continues around you. it is worse when they know who you are and their heart is open and raw and you are just simply not-food-enough. they’re so empty, but you’re too full of sinew and bone.

i’m here, you want to say. i’m here. god, please. make me your home.

i know it’s a day, and the day is long, and tomorrow could be better. it’s not bad yet. isn’t that a blessing.

but now, in the light i do not feel; it is december. i have started to fade around my edges. i am uncoupled. scuffed. i am teething on the rim of the worst drink; the particle board of my wrists too heavy for humor.

where has the time gone? how the fuck am i awake right now? why am i so tired, no matter how much i sleep?

yesterday; a delicious new england pleasure. my next door neighbor moved in at the same time i did. he’s from california. i see him shivering in a non-lined (!) zip-up. “holy shit it’s cold,” he says.

it’s a warm 35F. i feel myself wolfish. grew up around here. am only wearing one pair of gloves. “oh, this isn’t cold,” i say. “just you wait.” in boston, there’s a running joke. you’ll know a bostonian not from harvard yard but from the pronunciation of fucking cold. i tell my neighbor - the trick is a good coat.

this isn’t cold. i could be worse. i also know it will be worse. that, come februrary, i will be so melted at the seams that no one will be able to restitch me. i have done this in so many cataclysmic winters. not even sad; just … slow. tired. unmoving. nothing serves to wake me up anymore. it passes over my hands in little sheets. i’d rather be asleep.

i buy myself a thick coat. i do my laundry. i force myself from room to room like a dream; through each aggravated self-care monotony. apply myself to trying. my personality is sick and diluted with anxiety. in stores, the holiday music is suddenly jarring. what the fuck do you mean it’s december? it feels like…

like nothing. like i am just here, without meaning to be. i tell my therapist - i keep feeling like i missed the save point. like i was supposed to restart something, and i kept playing, and now the game is spinning out into nothing.

it’ll get worse! what a good joke. it’s not even that bad yet.

but fuck. isn’t it tiring.

oh this? it’s just an incredibly niche load-bearing hyperfixation i have. yeah, lol, i completely cease to function when it is taken from me <3

it would have been okay, if it weren’t for the loneliness. i liked to be alone - i liked the summer sun peeking her head over the lily-thin wings of dragonflies. i liked the shifting of a quiet woods, and the stirring matter of wildlife. the thin little bodies of crocus flowers; the silent knowledge of trees. i could spend hours in silence, listening. stirring my tea. knowing myself and the language of the world, in that way that being alone allows - as if nature says i’m showing only you this, are you watching?

but i was lonely. not in the places i expected, but in private, horrible moments. a snatched in-between state that would scream up inside of me, bristling - unannounced, the lonely just simply arrived, full and hungry. it saw me come out of the shower and said no one would know if you hit your head, my love. it saw the browning tops of perfect cupcakes and said you can never eat enough to fill this. it scooped me up in one giant arm and hung me over otherwise-peaceful moments and said see? where are you going? will anyone notice if you’re gone?

a shifting, horrible thing - loneliness without escape. loneliness without shape. loneliness, swallowing me in a yawn.

sad like unwriteable, all sounds cheesy. sad like november is the erasing month. sad like. i write poetry that slips into everyone’s teeth and i stare out of the windows and my personality is a whirling, horrible mess. i’ll star in a one act play like this. i will be the nightmare queen like this.

sad like don’t know if i like you because you hurt me and i like being hurt or - if i hurt because i like you, and that means i have something to lose for once. sad like please don’t leave, i can’t provide for myself. sad like will hold my hand on the razorwire of your body because at least the burning is a solid boundary. sad like i can be thrown across the room and the sensation will be mistaken for an abrupt flying. sad like would marry the sawblade because it serves its function and isn’t better the devil you know. sad like i don’t know how sick im being right now.

sad like googling am i codependent because i picture better futures with you. sad like googling how much sleep is too much sleep. sad like confetti; a burst heart in an open room. sad like will get under your fingernails. sad like it’s painting the walls, can you clean up a little in here? sad like. it’s 630 and i’m undefining myself. it’s not even a poetic time and im wondering if i can get out of the way of my own life. sad like yesterday i thought i want to go home and had no idea where the fuck i would want to be going.

sad like :) hi!! lol. yeah!!!!! sorry i haven’t been responding.

raeiyyn:

when kaveh akbar said “i don’t remember how to say home in my first language” and when fatimah asghar said “home is the first grave” and when katie maria said “my head spins and I am back in my childhood home where love doesn’t exist” and when @inkskinned wrote “my hands hurt all of the time but in this family you don’t show weakness” and when clementine von radics said “what is home if not the first place you learn to run from” and when

i hated - hated - my 7th grade english teacher, but he did say something that has stuck with me this whole time: the actual mark of maturity in someone is whether they take responsibility.

over time, this has become something i find to apply to too-many things. this weighty, complicated thing - responsible. almost direct from the latin respondere - the verb for “to answer to”.

taking responsibility is not just “being in control of”. it also means being gentle. being able to apologize. being able to accept fault. to notice your own actions and change them to be better. it is not just saying “ah fuck i dropped the plate,” it is saying “okay, i’ll go get the broom.”

at 16, when her parents tell her i put a roof over your head, she spends that night curled in my lap, sobbing, trying to articulate something too-heavy-for-words - that they think responsibility is just about obligation; that she is bound to them because they are responsible for her. that she feels, over and over, responsible for their emotions. that she spends hours cartwheeling over eggshells, feeling the drip of their expectations slowly sushing down her body.

according to my mom, responsibility and privilege are partners. this is probably true. a car (privilege) is a weapon if used (responsibility) incorrectly. my dog is my responsibility, and he brings me the privilege of hours spent in sunshine. there are, though, a lot of times people are given one without the other - the privilege, and no responsibility for their actions. the responsibility, and nothing but hours of obligation, over-and-over. i have also learned: there is a difference between fault and responsibility. this will be important for you at some point, if you are watching.

at 21, when i am begging him again to just listen, i am asking him to take responsibility for the span of our relationship. for the ways he has shoved thorns into every part of my body. i come across as needy, because it is my job to be responsible for the relationship - somehow, he has escaped that. it is always my job to ask for help. to beg for him to just put in any-ounce-of-more.

how easily responsibility becomes assumed. it is the responsibility of the [ ] to take care of dinner. it is the responsibility of the [ ] to get groceries, to clean the house, to mealplan, to do laundry. it is the responsibility of the [ ] to wear smart clothing. it is the responsibility of the [ ] to blend in with the rest of society.

at 25, it is happening again. this is a different man in a different city, and the responsibility is one that is demanded of me. he tells me he will skip off the world and into the darkness if i break his heart, no matter how much he breaks mine. i am back to begging - get help, get better, i cannot lift you if you do not try to stand with me. i am also responsible for myself - and then, suddenly, responsible for the entire life of somebody. i remember sitting there asking him - when will it be your turn to do the carrying? and the way he wrinkled his nose at me. i would laugh-cry: i feel like i’m your mother and he would start gagging. nothing would change. still running after him, making sure he washed his clothes and took care of himself and made those appointments and did anything. my own health was suffering.

a lot of discussion about consequence is really a discussion of responsibility. i am an internet poet. i made a little hellsite my unfortunately-unpaid home. i believe, in my heart of hearts - make what you want, but be responsible for it. whenever we make things, we are bound to them, end of story. this is a real-life thing. watch who in your life hates having responsibility. watch the way they expect other people to have responsibility. this sense they have: that responsibility is punishment, is unfair to unload on them. that someone else should do the carrying.

i am 26 at the start of 2020. we all know what happens then. the average person is asked to take responsibility. for many, this is second-nature. simple. occasionally annoying, but eventually habitual. for many others, though, this is their great and honest reckoning. they misunderstand civil liberty to mean - a land where everything, always, is just-about-me. on a personal level, when i am not absolutely livid about this population, i am sort-of sad for them. one of the good things about responsibility is that it builds community. each of these people, one at a time, has been making the same statement: i am alone in this world. i am blisteringly, horribly lonely.

i have noticed, over time - the way that responsibility is borne. how careful i have to be as a queer cuban writer. how careful some asshole on twitter is-not-careful-at-all. knowing that if i am too-loud. abrasive, unflattering: i could make my whole community responsible for my behavior. that people would read my work and say - see! this is why there aren’t that many of these types of writers. that others can make bigger, bolder mistakes - but it will just be their mistake to make; their-singular-responsibility. that what i am “careful” about is making my posts well-researched, thought-out, accessible, funny. that what others are rabidly angry about being careful about - that they would suddenly become responsible for bigotry. this horrible sense: you have no idea what it means to be forced to bear this weight, and you find it terrifying.

i have been responsible for a long time. laughing, i tell my therapist eldest daughter, middle child syndrome. i was a latchkey kid. i was the first one home and had to be sure i got the fire lit or there wasn’t heat. written like that, it sounds like something from charles dickens: alone, shivering in a house that isn’t home, feeding tinder to the back of the wood stove. i have been a delight to have in class. i was always charmingly responsible. i have had-to-be. there was no other option.

burnout is high, i’m told. over and over, the media paints people like me as being responsible for how we are treated. they will say it’s not your fault, but we all know they think it is my responsibility. people are violent to me; it is my responsibility to be a more properly-trained minority. my boss is cruel; it’s my responsibility to find a new job or just go hungry. it is not the responsibility of others to help me figure out my medical debt, i should try asking more questions at the pharmacy. it is not the responsibility of public schools to help students get an education - it is the responsibility of 17-year-olds to sign into a lifetime of debt. it is not the responsibility of the government to protect my right to choose; it’s my responsibility to simply not get into any situation that might require me having an opinion. it’s satisfying to watch the general, quiet strike of minimum-wage workers: the way others, confused, are demanding the same question - why aren’t other people taking responsibility for the things i don’t want to do myself?

the other day, i saw a post from someone who hurt me. it was sort of embarrassingly on-the-nose. he’s kissing someone new now (god protect her). under the two of them smiling, the caption reads: thank you to this responsible, beautiful queen for constantly taking care of me.

now be honest. answer the following. fill in the blanks. bring your truth to your throat and keep her.

1. in general, it is normal for a [ ] to have more responsibility than a [ ].
2. you are responsible for [ ].
3. when you tell [ ] to take responsibility, they will say [ ].
4. in your life, it is normal for [ ] to take responsibility.
5. when did that start?
6. and how is it going?

i don’t want to talk about the violence i don’t want to talk about the shape of the bruise i don’t want to talk about how it sounded or what it felt like or how afterward, for hours, i had three sharp words banging around in my head in a cartwheeling spike - i just want to say it was something that hurt and to hear back i’m sorry it hurt you, do you need help feeling better? i just want to lie down without being asked to lie open and show where the hurt came from and to give birth again to the shadow memory, watch it ooze again across the floor to dance in the wake of my feet.

i do not want to argue with strangers on the internet who have no stake in the matter, telling me that kind of violence is often overstated. i do not want to argue. i do not want to keep getting older with this painted under my chubby bicep and splashed down my side. i do not want to hear i am playing the victim when i am the victim. i do not want to be a survivor, i just want a life in a green patch without having to endlessly sublimate the glass i have chewed, over and over, pouring sand out of my mouth into the wrong hands - i just want to be happy on sunday.

i do not want to talk about the violence and why the bell of my body is always hollow! i know it is hollow. please stop asking about it. i have spent so many hours trying to explain how it fell apart. i need to rest now. i need to take my meds now. i need to wake up and be someone who can have the quiet back without flinching in response. i know you don’t believe it happened that way, why would you? you are someone looking for the clever ending; where you somehow win my narrative by showing me i am not allowed to be hurt by what happened. and i am just a person. i have already lost everything.

inkskinned:

i’ve never experienced discord i think it’s like an open zoom call situation but i’m gonna start one just so i can have a book club which is the antithesis of book club vibes. we all just read really good-bad books, complete brain candy trash; and then we spend the whole hour talking about how annoying the book was. r.i.p to other book clubs which <3 elevate the mind <3 but this book club is about bringing literature down with me

okay here’s the deal.

you don’t need to finish the book, but keep a note how far you got.

we’re reading serpent & dove, which is a book tiktok recommended to me and makes me mad about every 3 paragraphs because frankly i’m too straight for it, and i’m gay. (also it’s the first book someone suggested).

i haven’t finished it, so i recommend googling it for cw & tw to be sure it’s a safe book for you. also i’m pretty sure it’s got a sex scene in it that i haven’t gotten to yet because i keep angrily putting it down when she forgets she has [an item] every 23 seconds. (you’ll know very quickly which item).

people who haven’t read the book but just wanna pop in to see people roast a book also welcome. i only ask all participants to remain cordial and like, Be Cool.

the vibe is dressing up in a silk robe and drinking wine/sparkling water/whatever makes you feel fancy. give me dracula. give me luxury while we disdain of literature. i’ll be in fangs as your moderator, because, like, i’m gay.

grand and ardent apologies to those who like the book. you are also welcome to come In Defense of The Prose and will be given love, affection, and much showering of personal compliments in between Firm Rebuttals.

discord and details to follow.

i’ve never experienced discord i think it’s like an open zoom call situation but i’m gonna start one just so i can have a book club which is the antithesis of book club vibes. we all just read really good-bad books, complete brain candy trash; and then we spend the whole hour talking about how annoying the book was. r.i.p to other book clubs which <3 elevate the mind <3 but this book club is about bringing literature down with me

fuck hating my body!!! i’ve hated this thing for so long!!! we’re doing something new now!! we’re faking it until we make it, we’re talking about ourselves like we’re the main character, we’re looking with rose colored glasses baby!!! i’m sick of feeling selfish if i feel good!! i’m sick of finding my flaws instead of finding things that are good!!

tag this with the things about you that would be romanticized in poem!!! write a little poem if you want!! write like you’re a lovesick dude who just saw you out-of-context in starbucks!! write about your loved ones and friends and family and all their little romantic things you love about them!! whatever gives you feral middle-school horse-girl i am the chosen one energy!!! whatever it was that convinced you that you could control the weather or read minds or talk to trees! that little scrap of magic!! that something special about you energy!!

give yourself 12 seconds of cheesy, bright, no-apologies “i’m the mary sue here’s what they see” LOVE. and fuck it - i’ll start!!! because maybe i am the quirky manic pixie dream girl!! i have a velociraptor tattoo!! my teeth are pretty long and sharp!! babe, i have a fucking birthmark that looks like a shooting star that’s positioned only a handspan underneath my fucking heart!!!!

i’m too old, can you remind me why we stopped talking? the days are getting shorter again - i wake up before the sun, i finish work after she has already hidden again.

i saw you got a dog - i think. i saw you dyed your hair - maybe. i saw that you like the same television series i do - well, it seems. anything could be happening, i guess. it’s hard to tell just looking at a screen.

i’m too old - why did we fight? i can’t remember what exactly happened. i can’t remember what came up. i’ve been getting better. i’m sorry, if it’s my fault. i’m sorry even if it’s not. i’m sorry even if neither of us did anything wrong.

someone mentioned you the other day, and asked me - do you know her? as if we’d never even been friends. i had to think about it. no, i guess not. i once cried on your shoulder for half an hour about a boy who wasn’t even, like, hot.

for old time’s sake, wanna come over? it’s halloween. it used to be our season. we used to clomp through the leaves together. wanna come over? i just moved, i want to show you my tiny skein of a yard. wanna come over? my dog can meet your maybe-dog and we can drink mulled cider and get over the hard part.

i dont remember who drew the line. i don’t remember if there was even a line ever drawn, or we just grew apart, the way adults sometimes do. i think to text you sometimes - but what if you’re angry?

you used to come to my birthday parties. i used to throw parties for you. it’s kind of hard to picture, these days, as if through a fogged windowpane. a lot has happened since then. a lot has changed for me. probably for you too.

i can’t write today. i wasn’t ever really good at writing for you, specifically, anyway. i felt something too mottled. something that scalded if it wasn’t handled properly.

anyway. i’m too old. i hope you reach out. i am glad you look happy. i am glad that i’m happy too. i am glad we are both busy adults with our lives sparkling like glitter glue. i am glad like ice cream dinners and theme park tickets and closing a book. i am glad to my roots.

but i kind of wish you were here so i could share it with you.