dontyoudare-please

[dontyoudare-please]

the first time i watched the moon scene from joe vs the volcano i thought it was the creepiest thing. strange and disconcerting. i asked my parents, "what's wrong with him? why is he doing that?"

they told me, "when you're out in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight, the moon looks bigger than ever. he's realizing he survived. the moon is so overwhelmingly large and he's realizing he's alive"

i didn't get it then. i continued to watch the movie and hate it. there was something dully horrifying about the whole thing.

then, out of nowhere, years later, when death was lapping at my heels and begging me to welcome her, i went to the lake in a storm. i stared out at the waves that were terrifying and louder than life. i closed my eyes against the frozen wind and felt my cheeks go numb. i looked up and i saw her, the moon. an earthquake tore through my heart. wonder, awe, fear, fury. because it was true. i had survived. i was alive and the moon was so beautiful. death would have to be patient, i was alive.

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oh this made me miserable

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herakles - euripides (tr. anne carson) //  aaron o’hanlon

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Savannah Brown, from Closer Baby Closer; “Retroactive jealousy”

[Text ID: “Someday I’ll care for something / without wanting to close a door behind it.”]

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the energy for 2024

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Gavin Yuan Gao, from "Lullaby"

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the drive was long. i had no idea when we would get there. i wasn't allowed to ask.

we passed a field of horses. i wondered what the wind would feel like on my face. we passed a lake glittering in the afternoon sun. i wondered what the water would feel like lapping at my ankles.

the night came and the moon rose, full, blinding. we kept driving. i kept my mouth shut.

by the time the moon had left and the sun had returned, i couldn't hold the tears in any longer. i opened my mouth to speak. a sharp pain lanced through my chest and i clamped my mouth shut again.

we passed a field of cows. i wondered how much time they had left. we passed a house cracking apart at every corner. i wondered how long it had stood empty.

another night came. another night passed. my mouth wouldn't open when i tried. some muffled sound leaked out. the pain was enough to black out and awake to another night.

we passed a field of trees. i wondered if it was a forest if it was destined to die. we passed a church standing stark against the bleak horizon. i wondered if they would save me if i could scream.

we kept driving.

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Natalie Wee, from "Asami Writes to Korra for Three Years"

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Elsa la rose (Agnès Varda, 1966)

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i was broken from too young an age

there is no time to miss

when touch was something to rejoice in

i wonder which thing to blame

the church that was obsessively sex repulsed?

the boys that set their crosshairs upon me?

the brain that was never understood, never cared for?

i wonder if i was like this even as an infant

they say i was violent even as a child

screaming and hitting and biting

so maybe it is truly in my blood

and there is nothing else to blame but me

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“Blueberries” from Devotions by Mary Oliver.

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Gonna start making reels like "a day in the life of a girl who's afraid of everything"

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selected recent and new errors, dean young

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Kanashii approached the cliff's edge with the bird clutched closely to his chest. He could feel it's rapid heartbeat racing along his own. When he reached the part where rock dropped off into sea and into Nothing, he sat down and held the bird on one finger. They looked out together to see more birds dancing through the sky.

The choice is yours, young one. You begged for hope and here it is, the thing with feathers. Will you devour it and claim that hope for your own? Will you cage it and keep it locked away in your home? Will you clip its wings and let it ride your shoulder, trained to never stray far? It will not blame you, no matter what you choose. It accepted its fate the moment it was born.

The words echoed inside his mind and through the air. Kanashii knew the ancestors were not lying about the bird accepting its fate. He also knew that despite his desperation and the gnawing, gaping hunger he could feel eroding at him, there really was no choice to be made. He had always felt like a creature whose wings had been stolen; he couldn't bear to create another. So he raised his hand, ignoring the pang that shattered through his soul.

"Go join the others, little birdy. Go fly and dance, I'll sit here and watch. That'll be enough."

The small thing with an ancient wisdom in its eyes looked at Kanashii. He could see in its expression the doubt at his words, but it accepted his choice with no blame and, with a final nod, took off into the sky. Suddenly, it was as if the flood gates had opened, birds of all colors and sizes poured out of The Nothing in hundreds and thousands. They danced through the sky as one massive being. At first it seemed like they followed no pattern, just a flowing motion with no direction, until slowly a figure appeared from the masses.

Made up of the birds themselves, but packed so tightly one would never know had they not watched it come into creation, stood a giant. Kanashii felt that if he were to somehow clamber onto the giant's arm, he would be no larger than a single hair. This creature stood tall and proud, and it wore a wide flat-brimmed hat with streams of dark ribbons cascading down the back. It shook its whole body as it adjusted to existence and made a sound that could almost be called a laugh if one was deranged enough to call it that.

It took notice of Kanashii sitting on the cliff with his wide eyes and gaping mouth and approached with a smile. As it grew near, it shrunk until Kanashii felt that if he embraced its littlest finger, his hands just might meet one another. He couldn't find a way to wipe the shock and awe off his face, and so he sat still and frozen as it came within speaking distance. When it spoke, its voice was much like it's laugh, a cacophony of every bird call in existence tumbling over one another.

"So you want hope, dear one? But you let it go. Hope for what?" Kanashii had no idea how he was able to make out the words, let alone understand them. Maybe he really was losing his mind.

"I- I am frightened. I think I might be dying," he repeated the words he had said to the ancestors.

The laugh came again. "So what do you want from me? What can I give you?"

Kanashii felt lost for a moment as he pondered it. But then the answer came to him as easy as breathing, "I want to write my story before I die, but I can't find it."

The giant looked pleased. "Today I will give you a dance. Come back again tomorrow and I will give you a piece of the story."

And with that, the giant stepped back away from the cliff, back out the sea. It raised its arms, Kanashii watched, feeling he should be horrified but not finding anything except awe, as birds burst and tore from the giant's stomach. They flew together and soared up and around the outstretched arms. They looked like the wind itself. It was almost music as that shrieking, tweeting, cawing laugh returned. The giant spun and twirled through the air, the flurry of free birds diving and spiralling up and down to follow the motions.

As the dance went on, the energy grew more fervent, the noise grew louder, an echoing, deafening sound in the expansive space. The Giant reached up for its hat and began to incorporate it into the dance, the streams of darkness fluttering in the wind and adding even more movement to the display. More birds separated from the body to join in, the dance simplifying into one extended spin, the hat leading the swarm.

The sun caught and shined on every color ever known to him as the giant seemed to disintegrate into the spin itself. The speed increased, everything followed the hat as it spun up and up, until all that remained of the giant was the hat and the hand holding it. Finally, when Kanashii began to wonder if it would ever end, the hat reached its peak and then began crashing into the sea, flurry of birds following. Kanashii panicked and reached out as if he could stop it, but right before hitting the water, the hand, the hat, and the birds all disappeared back into The Nothing one by one.

Kanashii wasn't sure how long he sat there, ears ringing, stunned into stillness. He only knew, as he stumbled shakily to his feet, that he would return tomorrow.

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Somewhere inside of me there is a five year old

Sewing a felt frog on their grandparents carpet

Being silent for the first time that day

And falling in love with the simple act of creation

And their tiny fingertips

Plastic needle in hand

Somewhere deep inside of me there is a nine year old

With a felt sewing machine at my Lala’s table

Sewing impractical bags and pillows

Falling in love with the seams under their guide

Fabric pressed harshly against painted fingertips

Somewhere deep inside of me there is a 12 year old

Finding solstice in sewing a satchel during the depths of Covid

Adding hundreds of buttons and embroidery

Falling in love with repurposing unwanted to magical items

Indented fingertips pushing the sharp metal needle

Somewhere inside of me there is a fifteen year old

Hunched over their cluttered desk for a whole day

Taking their design off the paper to real life

Falling in love with the rhythm of their sewing machine

Pushing pleated fabric through with aching fingers

Somewhere inside of me there is a 16 year old

Draping their design over their mannequin at 2 am

Adjusting the way it falls as a shawl

Falling in love with the beauty of my design

Soothing painful fingertips and knuckles

Somewhere inside my there is aching and pain

Laid in bed taking paracetamol in the hopes

That my creaking joints would quiet down

Falling in love with dreams and possibilities

Wishing the throbbing cracks would go away

Somewhere inside my there is the unknowing fear

That one day in a few years

Everything I have fallen in love with at my fingertips

Won’t be possible with my agonising groans

Joints like a old wooden house in the wind

Realising slowly,

That despite my adoration for my creation

One day I might come home

And realise

I cannot pick up the needle

It hurts to push the thread

Pinning cracks at my fingers

My love become my enemy

My home a prison

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"Poems are not written...", Andrey Voznesensky (translated by metamorphesque)

[dontyoudare-please]

by starparkdesigns