cervidaewrites

[cervidaewrites]

I Can’t Say the Words Anymore

I Love You

It’s used like a term of possession

She wants you to stay

So you can say it back

It’s used like leverage

“Look at me caring”

Now you must return

But that’s not really love

Holding onto a person so tightly

That they couldn’t breathe

Am I nothing more than a tool

To fight off the fear of being unwanted?

[cervidaewrites]

On of the less intuitive things about love, I've found, of any kind, is the importance of needing things.

I didn't realize it until recently, but I've always seen love as something requiring sacrifice, selflessness, patience, and generosity- to ask for nothing is to be the best person I can be, small and quiet and never in the way, always happy and helpful, self-sufficient and present when desired.

It's only as an adult, now, that I'm beginning to see the selfishness of wanting nothing.

I cut my friend's hair in my kitchen the other day. They wanted a trim and I had the skills, so I offered, and was genuinely excited when they stopped hesitating over "bothering me" and took me up on it. It was a peaceful afternoon, and we had tea and chatted for an hour or more.

My brother and I shared popcorn at the movies a while ago. When I came time to pay, I pulled my card out like a wild western sheriff and slapped it on the machine before he could fight me for it first. The satisfaction was delightful.

Someone called me crying on the phone the other day. Kept apologizing for disturbing me at work, talking about how they were bothering me on my lunch break. I was telling the truth when I told them that really, I was flattered and honored and relieved, knowing that if they were hurting I would know, that I didn't have to worry in silence. It felt good to hear them slowly come down, and to know that they knew it would be better soon, and to hear them laugh wetly on the other end. We're getting together for a visit next week.

It's hard to need things, if you've trained yourself not to. It's hard to want things, when you don't know how to want anymore. Trusting people is difficult, and so is relying on them, but I don't know where I'd be without the people who rely on me.

I've heard a lot of people say, "Nobody will love you unless you love yourself". I've had a lot of thoughts about it. It's not right, but it's not wrong, either, I think.

"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... I've always taken that to mean, "You will not be lovable until you develop a positive view of yourself as a person".

Now, I think it's sort of inside-out.

"Nobody will love you unless you love yourself"... because nobody can show their love to you in a way that you can accept until you treat yourself kindly, and learn what you need, and what you want, and how to ask for it, and then give that vulnerability away.

Love, for me, is someone I ask for a ride to the airport. Whether they end up doing this or not is irrelevant.

It's not needy, or selfish, or taking up energy. It's giving the gift of being wanted, and needed, and thought of. It's giving someone the security of being part of someone's life.

[cervidaewrites]

touch-starvation needs to be written with emphasis on the starving part. you are hungry to be touched. so hungry that even the very taste of it makes you nauseous. it has been long since anything has ever touched you, ever fed you - that your body has grown more used to that gnawing emptiness more than anything else. it's better for you to be held, to eat but it makes you sick to try. you know

[cervidaewrites]

I'm from a family where women are in charge of most things, finances, the house, bills getting paid on time, important administrative and historical documents and papers, family heirlooms (men are so dumb, they can't be trusted with that stuff!), the children. In my subconscious mind, women work harder. Women go to work everyday and men are just lazy slobs. All men are good for is a (smaller, obviously) supplementary income, having kids with, maybe cooking, and only sometimes emotional companionship. (I am serious - this has been said to me in different ways by multiple family members, from my mom to my great grandmother)

I was told I was so lucky to be born a girl, because I get to join this long line of women. That they were so lucky I was born a girl so they had someone to continue a legacy with. That they could dream of never loving a boy the same way. That they could never let a man continue this legacy, he's too dumb! He'd lose everything. He wouldn't care about the legacy, obviously. He'd just ruin it like all men do. They're so glad I'm around, I'll inherit everything and take great care of it.

I wanted to wear a suit to my father's wedding and they were scared. They heard me going by my gender neutral last name instead of my feminine first name (inherited from my greatx5 grandmother no less) and they hated it. "Don't you want to be a girl?" But I know what they really meant was "don't you want to be what I think you should be?" Then my grandmother talks about how she's scared she won't have anyone to inherit her house, her things, the pieces of history she takes care of (a piece of the Berlin wall, an old German family Bible, my family's passports from the 1800s, a handwoven tapestry, etc... "old country" stuff that every European immigrant family has laying around for some reason. But that's for another post.)

I know why it apparently can't go to me anymore. I've been 'tainted'. My beautiful feminine qualities have been pushed out by my desire to be a handsome untrustworthy kind violent man (they can't even call me that) other . They could handle if I was a lesbian, it was only logical to like other women, and my mother dated women as often as she dated men throughout my life. They could handle if I didn't want kids, in fact, I was told explicitly to not have them in the past (thanks grandma), they can betray you and leave you heartbroken (thanks mom). They couldn't handle me being a man.

There is some kind of inherent quality of being a man that makes you bad. And I was choosing to betray them and myself.

Needless to say, I don't feel very comfortable in trans or feminist spaces.

[cervidaewrites]

on Survival and Hope

Grant Howitt, Franz Kafka, Walt Whitman, Bruce Springsteen, Susan Sontag, Melina Marchetta, @seravph , Mary Oliver, Keaton Henson

[cervidaewrites]

sun bleached flies by ethel cain + gerard way as joan of arc

[ID in alt text]

[cervidaewrites]

Jenny Holzer “BY YOUR RESPONSE TO DANGER” Red paint on white enamel

[cervidaewrites]

having so much love in your heart is beautiful and amazing right up until you’re alone in your bedroom clutching at your chest and whimpering like a wounded dog

[cervidaewrites]

this one is about being disabled 👍

i’m quite good at being in pain

it’s really not that hard

all it requires is shutting up about it

i’m told that i’m so strong for dealing with the pain every day

and still doing all the things i do

i want to scream at them

i shoot for the moon

because once you’re in space

it doesn’t matter if your legs are broken

how much strength does pushing it all down even take?

not as much as letting it out

i think

but mostly i hide it because

my mother tells me she doesn’t like to see her son in pain

and i can’t bear to tell her there’s nothing else to look at

[cervidaewrites]

sometimes u wake up and write a poem

[cervidaewrites]

An unnamed wip of mine

[cervidaewrites]

Urban Twilight

Hold me in the urban twilight,

I’ll be your dream city delight

Too busy rebuilding our bones

to call anything else home.

I’d like to know your skin

Marks and scars mapping where you’ve been

Stars shining down on constellations of your own

What if we let curiosity roam?

City lights hit my delicate foggy eyes

but with you I’ve never been so alive.

This city may be ours

But the twilight is all mine

-Elizabeth Rose

(This one is pretty happy so yay)

[cervidaewrites]

Not gay as in "happy" but queer as in "fuck you, the people I love will eat well". Not gay as in "happy" but queer as in "so long as I can cook for others it'll all end up okay". But queer as in "are you hungry?". Queer as in "Did you eat today?". Queer as in "Here's one of my favorite recipes I've made", queer as in "I cook too big for just myself", queer as in "Come on upstairs with a bowl", queer as in "Are you allergic to anything?", queer as in "It's okay, it's gonna be okay, here, eat this chocolate", queer as in "I love you, I hope we both eat well", queer as in "I love you and therefore I must hate what wants you to starve", queer as in "the metronome of sharing orange slices", queer as in "take this, all of you, and eat of it", queer as in food and love and rage at everything and everyone which would see us miserable and unable to have enough to share with others. Not gay as in "happy", but queer as in "I can't let others go hungry".

[cervidaewrites]

🔪 BITE BACK 🔪

The election results are in and they say we live in Hell but we’re still fighting

[cervidaewrites]

Margaret Atwood, The Circle Game; This Is a Photograph of Me

[cervidaewrites]

I hate the way my brain works. I want to be able to turn on the light and find the reality of my fear.

My true hope is that I can look up and all the panic is over a coat draped over a chair. Something simple mistaken for a monster in the dark.

And yet still my heart races when a friend doesn't respond quite right. Their vague form has suddenly transformed into a night terror.

We see patterns so well we forget that it's not always some trick. Somethings are plain and true.

And somethings, almost more frighteningly, mean us well.

[cervidaewrites]

on: eating as a love language

@lesdemonium / - / christopher citro / ron padgett / ashley lyle + bart nickerson / me / garrison keillor / gabrielle calvocoressi