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Life is short and people come & go It makes me feel better knowing I have left someone feeling better off than they did before I met them I think the most inspiring part about making friends is that it helps me feel like I am doing my best to fight back against a world that sometimes feels increasingly darker & colder All we really have is each other & our communities

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makan sarden diam-diam sepulang kerja

aku kehilanganmu di tengah-tengah kerumunan orang pulang dan orang berangkat dan orang macet dan stasiun duri dan tanah abang. pas aku menoleh, mukamu terlanjur menyublim dengan tangan yang mengulur cuma-cuma berjerih memimpin massa. sama aja, kita. aku yang gagal menggengammu dan mereka yang matanya buru-buru nelan sebelum kelilipan debu.

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Sebenernya, aku belum bisa se-ikhlas itu. Aku masih berharap suatu saat akan ada yang hargai perjuanganku dan paham betul-betul —sedalam apa pengorbananku.

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x - x / x - x

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some pictures i’ve taken under the microscope lately <3

(these are my photos, please don’t use without credit)

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hors d'oeuvre 

Syaiton beats within us, it says in a plume of smoke. The air sprawls in tonnage. Standing, the diagnostician muses of phantommage and wishes looking to adjourn.

It leaves without revealing how to keep safe the language to fold treacled ordure under cheek to play and wager just as it lies

A Neuptunian upset, its magnitude under cut lines up for a knife whose blade never manages to make impact just waves and hangs, half-lifed in inert and placid places.

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heatseeking

in other words, we love other people. in other universes, you and I, as in this one, love other people before we make it to the end. we are one another's end. you are where I begin, and neither one of us can mend when we're cut off. we love people in so many words, ineffably and recklessly. dedicating songs, ruining them, fragmenting our hearts into little pieces. that's what makes it all so stirring. against my chest I clutch an effigy of you. a homing beacon, though even without it I'd find you anyways, given enough time. we love other people in other worlds. I want to hate it but that's what brings us together. that's the only way we become ourselves enough to recognize one another instantly every iteration we first meet.

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After so many years, the things I wanted to say shuck their dormancy the same way my kitten, at twenty weeks old, trips over her own paws a thousand times before standing tall in her wet fur. Felicitous days. She came to the door and I let her in thinking she might bring me happiness in your stead. Sitting together under the tree, we lean into a moment which only came because you despise everything small and weak.

When her claws dig in I can forgive her. Actually, I find bizarre joy in the stinging. She is small and weak and the tree we sit below is preparing to shed its life for the season. I was mistaken. The hours pass until, nearly eight, she stretches out her limbs and  coaxes me back inside.

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That final day, we all watched the mottled seablob making its way into the waters. The turtle’s most hideous kin. We held our breaths as all manner of alismatales, green and dappled with sealight,  shrivelled, at once, at contact.

Staring, unnameable emotions overcame us. I wished upon its thick movements for someone else’s hunger to force stark claim upon me. I know it’s a sin of projection, a rank greed and miserable egoism to hope that the world could be better because of creatures which reside only in hulking oceans and the dark corners of our preoccupied minds.  At once, at contact. Though I stand at the edge of the sea and sigh and sigh, no blob emerges to bear witness to all you dealt. Like they, I have naught in the way of defense.  You said you wished we could drink happily in the future. A toast, then, to this blob and its trembling, spiteful edges.

May there come a day when we can drink happily. May there come a day when we can live happily, and bloom, O, vast sublimate,  happily.

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"An important story all this while.”  A tendril of unexpected delight caresses a wind-weathered cheek.  Had, flipped, the cards spitted promise of erudition, I would wager my cheek remained rosy against yours. Through the window a pantomime of longing flumes, and I know the bassoons are set to hum.  At the end of each long hour  less the waiting, less the lambs. An aubade, wrinkling & compact movement bends your ear. Trickster of hearth and ichored home: you are there where you were once.  Story me this, vexèd jester. The  apples, pestilence by all furious accounts could not have gained their own such knowledge from the boughs lingering above

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i didn’t realize i had lost so much in the process of arriving.

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we were great once we were gods once minor ones, tied to the  line of best fit that encircled the world imagined ouroboros with its brined tail firm in the jaw but now—what is here? but now—nothing is here

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my heart is still half in love with the way you wrapped your arm around me on that wet-sticky night

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a large mess of seasons, converging in the center of a heart what a mess, you think,                              who will clean it up? the edges cold and touched with snow, the veins the leaf-filled rivers       springtime, slowly passing you by as the sun wraps your body in butterlight

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i. a castle full of blue fire, so warm the skin falls off. you knock, the knuckles peel. you walk into the devil's living room and on the coffee table is the latest edition of "heaven and hell", showing signs of use—some dog-eared pages, a small stain on page 59. volume 3021 number 3. no one welcomes you home.

ii. edgar presses his fingers against the countertop. he hasn't touched his cup of coffee but it smells sweet with a tinge of dirt. he is pushing words out of his throat without saying anything, rolling a little ball of dung around and hiding it in his pocket.

iii. sometimes on walks home, the sun shines a certain way through the branches of the trees. sometimes, but not this time. all the leaves are swaying. the air is chilly and out on Mr. Joe's lawn are toys that his grandchildren, aged 2 and 4, forgot to pick up from yesterday.

iv. Shelby and her younger brother planted two tomato plants side by side. they filled two pots with potting soil from Home Depot and shook the packet of seeds gently. their smooth little fingers poked the wet earth, rolled it around, patted it back down. no tomatoes came for Shelby. "that's okay," he said, "i'll give you mine."

v. Mami slips onto the porch when everyone is asleep. she opens up the miniature wooden house and has a late night snack with the fireflies. in the morning, Abigail believes in magic.

06/30/17 prompt: stars

i. cold ii. breathless iii. nostalgia iv. intertwined v. quiet