#excerpt from a book i might write

[lamentationsofasunflower]

once upon a time

there was a girl

made of dreams;

a butterfly,

in a forest full of trees.

the wind would twirl her

as she danced among the flowers,

the trees would sway in enmity,

for in freedom, laid her power.

until one day,

they sought it for their own,

poking holes in her flight,

ensuring never more to be flown.

now every night when the wind blows,

you can hear them all sing,

“come see the girl

with earthbound wings.”

[inksplashgirl]

Please Know

Please know that I think of you more often than a cat thinks of snacks or a snail thinks of leaves or a the sky thinks of clouds.

Please know that I want happiness for you like a diamond wants a ring or a rhyme wants a melody or a book wants readers.

Please know that I dream of laying forever in your arms as nothing ever can describe, for I love you more than the tide loves the moon.

[itwaspouring]

Now I'm used to wearing my heart on sleeve around u

[kaleb-is-definitely-sane]

Maybe, in some other universe, where we are older and wiser and closer…. maybe we could’ve been happy. Maybe you would love me. Maybe I wouldn’t have hurt you. Maybe… our love would amaze and shock the world and they would know that surely, there is something more powerful than all else.

[thesewordsaremymusings]

“There was no wool I could have adorned to escape feeling the mourning of this October.”

-m.n. | excerpt from a book I’ll never write (31)

[stardustmuseum]

am i that forgettable?

[lusie-king]

"Is loving me really the worst thing in the world?" He asked, knowing I'd never say the three words.

"No--God no," I breathed, touching the side of his face. "It's my favorite."

[ofalterspace]

fragments

When your heart has been broken as many times as mine has, I think that you don't even feel it anymore. Not like before. It hurts, sure, but it is more of a pinch than a punch.

Part of the reason why is that I don't even let it get to that point anymore. My heart was never whole to begin with, so it's easier to notice when the fragments are slowly drifting away.

It is fine. I will pull myself together. Buy new Band-Aids. Maybe some tequila. And then we are ready to fall again. And break again. Until there isn't a single part of me that isn't cracked.

[systemofstars]

A Love that felt like Sap Green

I met him on a warm humid day under the tree. There was someone else on my mind, he always is. I’ve now made him a little home in the back of it, a cottage with a fireplace to keep him warm (incase of stormy days) and ivies clinging on the mud walls. He built his home in the back of my head — and oh he’s a traveler, sometimes I don’t see him in months; but he always returns when its too cold outside and I keep him warm and entertained. My mind is a theatrical show, and he understands my tragedies so he never gets tired of watching these plays. So, when he does disappear for months, I work on new scripts, new storylines for when he’ll arrive, new tunes and paintings as I stroke my brush in the walls of my brain.

While conspiring a new storyline I wondered, what would happen if I fall for someone new? Would I evict him from the woods of my head? And so, I opened my mind to new possibilities, to see how this storyline could change. Anything for the script seemed to excite me and I don’t know how many lovers I tried on before I found one that if felt like could fit best.

His eyes were sap green. Like the leaves of the tree house I stood under. I make him my first muse, for even a handwritten letter and hugs that lasted forever didn’t ring a bell in his ears. I think I have a thing for lovers that run away. Lovers that come with expiration dates — because I’ve always been too scared, they’ll walk up into my mind and I’ll have to evict him out of the house up on the hill. But I wasn’t scared this time. I wanted to know how it felt like, to love again. He bit his lip a tad and lit a lousily rolled cigarette. I’ve smelled this before, off the resident’s sweatshirt, off my best friend’s hair and off my lips before I’ve kissed men. I wanted to touch his face, but he touched my hand — tracing along the fingers and guiding me to lift myself up and sit on the table where he sat. I do not remember the conversations, the colour of his eyes became a film gradient. I’m trying to explain to him life has its mysterious ways of getting you to learn things and every experience is happening for a reason and he looks at me in a way that if weren’t in a workshop covered in sawdust, we’d only be an inch away. And love that feels like sap green is often as fragile as the leaves it colours with it. And so he was. Breaking every night and holding himself in the morning.

“I can get some food for you” I barely just learned how to cook. I tell him if he’s homesick, I can get him some home cooked food. I am not a natural romantic, I had dialed my mom a few minutes earlier and she cooked up that thought. But he said that’s very kind of me, but he’d rather be alone and hung up the call. I want to say, “I can make it better” but a leaf is easiest to tear when you don’t apply too much pressure and with something so delicate, it takes one blow and so I sit and stew — vegetables in the pan for a single person to serve.

But I meet him the next morning and I try pretend fall has arrived on the coast, when it never truly is winter in this place. Hoping the leaves shrivel and change their colour, and the ground welcomes hues of passion and forgetfulness. I walk up to the inventory; it smells of the usual sawdust and just the right amount of varnish. I pick up a power angle grinder and I’m ready to start my day by smoothening hard surfaces. You tread your way from across the cabin and shadow right behind me. Its either spring or fall, not an in between could’ve hads and should’ve beens. I turn around and you smile, and ask if I’ve been looking for something. I said I was, not anymore and meekly smile and walk out of the room. My head feels light — perhaps there was more varnish than I had anticipated. And you’ll find new logs for me to sand just to be around me, but no matter how much you smoothen out a surface — the cracks remain rusty until you seal them with polish. Therefore, I never wrote about him when I was falling for him, I couldn’t decorate a love and make it more when under its seal its still cracked. And we looked at each other for long, enough to know the relationship’s beginning and end. He held me under the stars yet chose to only have a letter I wrote to him as a remanent of his memories with me. He brushed my heart like a new leaf, and that was the fastest way to crack it open.

And so, I let him in my mind, and the stories he enticed were marvelous to not decode and script — with every colour I discovered something new I learnt about love with it. Oh, but the house, its resident is still travelling. But the more I learn about love, the more I understand why he is. And with each lover that brought a colour, I learnt something new about the way he set up the house in my head. The ivy creeps on the mud walls, and so did sap green into my heart. Many more hues you left as décor for me to dance around to, and ink similar stories to what you brought home whilst travelling.

A warm humid day under the tree, his skin flushes pink when I say something funny, his fingers inked blue when he touched me so he pulled them away.

- mehr

[lamentationsofasunflower]

love cannot come

from a fountain

that never had it

to give.

[hotchocolatestumble]

I saw the moon and nothing bothered me anymore

[itwaspouring]

My heart is an ocean of unarticulated emotions.

[likedoves]

a little something about my new d&d pc to bring this blog back to life

When Tethys came to, it was with a stinging cheek.

“Up!” hissed Matron Mila, roughly hauling them upright. “What in the hells were you thinking, performing a blood rite alone?”

As Tethys had sawed off their own arm, as they hit bone and gritted their teeth, they had imagined she’d be proud of them when they finished. Impressed—pleased, even—by their mettle, their devotion, their skill in performing such a painfully advanced ritual.

Instead, she glared at them, seething. Worse still, Selune had not answered them. They’d learned nothing at all to make Mila’s wrath worthwhile. Their head was fuzzy, their mouth felt like it’d been stuffed with cotton. Funny, it still felt like they had both arms. Looking down, though, they saw they’d successfully removed it. All that was left was a stump haphazardly wrapped in pieces of Mila’s tabard and an itch in an elbow that wasn’t there anymore. The appendage lay in a large puddle of blood—suddenly embarrassingly queasy, they turned to face their mentor.

“Tethys Vela, you are lucky to be breathing,” she said, lip curling. “Answer me.”

“Wanted to ask Her,” they rasped, tongue uncomfortably thick, “about the tides.”

Mila scoffed. “As if Our Lady of Silver would answer a hatchling’s call. As if I haven’t asked her myself.”

“I had to try—”

“Not another word.” Mila hooked Tethys’s arm around her shoulders, and stood them up. She had to hunch to meet their height. “You are to see Oona at once. I will clean your mess and figure out what to tell your poor father.”

Tethys knew better than to test Mila’s patience, so they instead focused on keeping their feet beneath them as she walked them out of the altar room and through the dark corridors of the undercroft. Luckily, there was a separate infirmary down here amidst the winding hallways and secret passes. The walk felt much longer in the bloodless quiet. It very well could have been longer, for Tethys stumbled over themself every few paces, but at long last, they arrived at the unadorned oak door of the infirmary.

Mila fiddled with the knob, then shouldered her way past the door shouting, “Oona! A bed, quickly!”

The elderly triton shuffled out of her sleeping quarters, swept her silvery hair into a low bun, and sighed at the sight of Tethys. Her small, wide-eyed apprentice, Carzas, scurried at her heels. Fortunately, neither of them said anything as Oona led them down the corridor to an empty bed, but Tethys knew they would scarcely hear the end of this particular blunder. Nearly half a century in this temple, and they’d hardly anything to show for it. They’d drawn vials of their own blood. Removed a finger. Knelt at their altar, sliced their palms, and bled freely onto it, begging. Sythia Velorian had already proven herself a thousand times over and was the darling of the matrons. What was Tethys, aside from a boatful of trouble? And when would that trouble outweigh their use?

Mila eased them onto the stiff cot. As Oona began her work, Mila said, “The next time you think of doing something so laughably beyond your capabilities, perhaps keep Oona nearby.”

It was customary to keep a healer near for such advanced blood rites, but there had been a method to Tethys’s madness. “She would’ve stopped me.”

“Rightly so, I think,” Oona chimed in.

Tethys frowned. “I had to.”

“This isn’t about the tides, not really.” Mila stated.

“They’re getting much worse—” Tethys started.

“You knew damn well this wouldn’t give you an answer.”

Tethys fell silent.

Mila looked hard at them, uncomfortably so. They averted their eyes; they hated when she looked at them like that, as if she could see the very contents of their soul. She was, after all, the only person in this world Tethys could never trick. She studied their face until it told her the whole story without them saying a single word.

“This cannot honestly be about Sythia Velorian,” said Mila at last, her lip curling in distaste.

“It’s not.”

“Oh, but it is. You have put yourself in competition with her, and you got it in your head that if you performed a powerful enough rite you’d surpass her.” She sighed deeply, sinking into the bedside chair and massaging her temples. “I thought you were finished with this, ni nikyam.”

Tethys said nothing else, only wincing as Oona gently pulled a stitch tight.

“Carzas, be a dear and fetch a blood bag, they’ve lost quite a bit,” said the healer lightly.

Carzas couldn’t seem to get out of the room quickly enough.

Blessedly, Mila stayed quiet as Oona finished her stitching and began the transfusion when Carzas returned. Tethys, for their part, did their best to not look at a single soul as an all too familiar shame rose in their chest. They wished they’d just pass out from blood loss again, but the fuzzy feeling in their head had been ebbing since Oona had hooked them up to the blood bag. She had Carzas fetch a second soon after. When that was finished, Oona bade them both goodnight.

“You snuck back to the Underdark,” said Mila after some time, “and were attacked by a gnoll. And luckily for you, I was nearby conducting research in the caves. We’ll move you from the undercroft into the other infirmary in the morning.”

For a moment, Tethys expected her to stand and leave, but she merely crossed her arms and sunk back into the chair.

“Now rest,” she ordered, and closed her own eyes.

[stardustmuseum]

my mom: “why would you let yourself suffer?”

i didn’t know i had any other choice

[naavybluee]

My father has a routine of filling up the bathroom bucket(s) with water. He believes that doing so secures prosperity in a household, that leaving it empty is bad luck and ominous. He continues to stick to this despite me and my mother's effort to disable his superstitious routine. I've grown and now I stay away in a temporary apartment near my university. He came for a visit yesterday for the first time, and he fixed some things before he left (apparently, he goes around carrying his silly little handy tool everywhere?). It's been somewhat around nine and half an hour since he left, and when I went to the bathroom, funnily, I found my bucket filled with water. I did notice it before this moment too, but this time it captured my attention, and my heart got a moment to turn to a smile. It did not mean anything back at home, but suddenly, when I am far away from the place I grew up in, surrounded by a life which will forever be foreign from my childhood, this odd little mark of his belief manifested into a routine was what was gathering the chaos of everyday life to a still. It made me imagine where he must have picked this strange belief, and how it must have been for him when he picked it up before he knew it. It made me imagine that my grandmother must have passed this story to him somewhere along the way and how she picked this belief from somewhere else too. This odd omen-free guarantee of a sign bore a life between generations, connecting one lifeform with the other while distinguishing it from the other life, such as of the city. This odd little thing was a sweet signature of my home and my people, the life that I will always try to recreate for the immemorial as I will continue to live on till I do not.

— will you please read my newsletter? (I have not created a site yet) (it’s my ongoing venture?)

[ofalterspace]

balance

they say going through bad things

makes you a better person

but how much better do I have to be

to deserve good things?