eye-stealer - Tumblr blog

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work song by hozier / mahmoud darwish

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“i'm falling back in love with myself.

slowly,

but i am falling nonetheless.”

Isabella Dorta, the letters i will never send

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she loved me, yes, that I'm still loving her.

1. Mahmoud Darwish // 2. The Separation, Edvard Munch // 3. Holding On To Heartache, Louis Tomlinson // 4.+5. The Banshees Of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh // 6. The Voice I Owe to You (#63), Pedro Salinas // 7. Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry // 8. Poem for a Blue Page, Natasha Rao // 9. Feeling Your Absence, Mathilde Roussel-Giraudy // 10. White Ferrari, Frank Ocean // 11.+12. Silueta Series, Ana Mendieta // 13. There Is No Absolution For The Fallen, Only Dying, P.D.

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Get up.

My mind is awake. It is the middle of the night, and all I hear is my own breathing, timed to the rhythm of the whirring fan, the cicadas croaking.

The night is warm, and my thighs stick together underneath my thin sheets. My entire face is warm, buried into the pillow that is never cold.

I can’t fall asleep. I don’t know when I slept last. My mind begs for the sweet release of nothingness but won’t shut up. I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this.

And then it’s suddenly morning. The fan is still sitting above me, but the cicadas are all gone. Dead now. They have been replaced by birds and cars and the sounds of life.

I turn over in my bed, but light finds me whichever way I go. I’m not tired but I don’t want to be awake and it’s hot and my legs are stuck together again and I can feel beads of sweat on my neck and my cheeks are hot and I hate this I hate this I hate-

Fuck.

It’s mid afternoon, yet the sun is still scorching, taunting me. I am outside and my thighs are stuck together. My head hurts. Did I have something to do today? When did I last leave my house? Why am I outside? God, it’s so hot.

I sit in the shower. I’ve been standing for too long, I need to sit. Wait, how long has it been? The water washes over me, and yet my thighs still stick together and my head is still pounding.

I feel along my arm. A bump. An enemy. I grab the washcloth and scrub and scrub and scrub and

It’s still there.

That fucking bump.

And another.

I scrub until I burn, and yet I am still sticky and uncomfortably warm.

I hate this I hate this I hate this

I lay in bed. It is noon. I don’t care. I am just breathing. My lungs can never get enough air. I am so tired. My head hurts.

Why is the sun so bright?

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Listen I know there's the joke that writers go to coffee shops to hang out and "write" but if I have free time to write in the middle of the dang afternoon and I am AT HOME I will NOT WRITE. I just won't. I'll play with my cats. I'll hang out in front of my fridge. Mostly, I will do housework! I will be beaten into adulthood respnsibilties submission by my overflowing hamper and the furballs gathering in the corners of my stairs and the dried up toothpaste in my sink. I need that ~third space~ to be able to zone out and focus. Yes, libraries are very good for this too… but I like caffeine too much.

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Tales of a Lighthouse

When days always seemed too short and the horrors of night stretched through my restlessness, when the waves were tall and the shores filled with curious creatures unknown to me, my father and I lived at the base of a lighthouse. It was a time when the ships still needed the glowing beacon to keep them from crashing into the rocky shore. Every night, my father manned the lighthouse, hundreds of feet above the crashing sea. And every night, I tossed and turned in my bed, terrified of the creatures and terrors that had the capability to sink an entire ship. 

My grandmother lived inland in a little blue house on a skinny concrete road. I loved her house because it was perched upon concrete legs. My dad told me the legs were for hurricanes and would prevent the house from flooding. Whenever I imagined a hurricane coming, I always thought her house would jump so high on its thick legs that the water would be gone when the house returned to Earth. 

We visited my Baba every Sunday. She would always make Pedaheh and a salad for our lunch, and we would bring a roast that had cooked overnight. My dad told me that Baba was very religious. He said that was why she had statues of angels on her bookshelves. At the time, I thought they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen, the flair of their wings, hair which flowed behind them like gentle waves. Sometimes, when I was left alone, I would stare at the figures and pretend to be a beautiful angel, folding my hands to my heart and tilting my head to the side as they always seemed to do.

Sometimes when Dad had to work extra at the lighthouse for one reason or another, Baba would come to our house to watch me. On those nights, she helped me make box cake. When we had baked and frosted the cake, she would sit me at the table and cut me a slice and tell me one of her many stories. Many of her stories revolved around her Baba, and the many memories her Baba had given her. The stories were like a vast spoken history of all the soft memories, the dolls received as a little girl, the chiding nicknames, the money sent home.

Baba had, of course, never been to the Old Country, and I think she always knew, as she spoke, that she would never make the journey. Yet as a child she had spoken Ukrainian to her Baba, and she would help write letters to her long lost family she would never see in a land she had never visited. I think she wanted me to hold all of those stories she contained within my own heart and mind, ready to pass down when the time came.

When it was time for me to rest, Baba would tuck me into bed and say, “listen to those waves”. I had listened to those waves every night  since arriving at the lighthouse, and I found them quite terrifying. One night I told Baba that.

“Baba, what if I do not want to listen to the waves?”

“And why would you ignore them?” Baba asked. “The crashing waves sound like they are singing a lullaby to you.”

“But why would the sea sing to me and crash all those ships?” I asked, desperate and fearful for some of her grandmotherly wisdom.

“Maybe the ocean does not like ships.”

That was an odd thought. If I were the ocean, would I like ships? Maybe some of them, but not the ships that coughed up black smoke and took lots of fish. I would certainly like company if I were the ocean, but not those people who left cans on the shore. Maybe the ocean enjoyed my company, when I would sit upon the shore and sing songs from school. I bet the ocean liked Dad. He kept boats from mucking up the shore. The ocean also would like Baba, I thought to myself, because her house could jump from hurricanes and her ears could hear the ocean’s lullaby.

Baba stood and left my room. I got up and looked out my window to the waves that stretched beyond. With the tide having come in during the afternoon, the waves stretched far up into the shore. And in their endless cycle of crash and retreat, crash and retreat, they created a melody. It sounded like what I had learned in music class a few days before, like crescendos and decrescendos. The crashing became cymbals, the retreat was the low, rapid pattering on a drum. 

A song emerged with the wind whistling through a flute. I began to sing, yet to this day I cannot remember the words. In that moment, the song was perfect, with the cymbals and the drums and the flute and a dozen other instruments I could not name. I fell back upon my bed and listened to the instruments continue their concert. And I fell asleep.

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A Ghost

I saw your ghost today. 

You were in the fifth pew back, and I only noticed you at the end, when your name was spoken. Your rare name, so often mispronounced, but the reverend said it right today.

My stomach dropped while I sat surrounded, constantly observed, in the choir loft. I wanted to scream, “I see you!” from my perched seat, wanted you to remember me too, but I couldn’t. I just sat, and watched you leave, my mind screaming to say something to make you stay yet my throat choked with memories too long gone to swallow.

But today isn’t the first time you have haunted me. You haunt me always, welling up in me when I pass your neighborhood, when I hear your song.

I remember when we were friends, so many years ago. You had little purple glasses that made your face look stern, oh so serious for second grade. And oh, you were serious. Much more so than me. You loved Mulan because you, too, felt like you could never be yourself. And I thought that was so cheesy, but I let you play “Reflection” on repeat anyway.

You let me stay the night a few times, in that tall, skinny house I can still picture so clearly. You got angry when I beat you at Uno that 1 time - the only time I ever won against you. I so rarely saw you smile.

But I saw you smile today. I suppose you’re happy now, now that I will never see you again, now that a decade has passed since I have called you my friend. You smiled and put your hands into a heart when your name was spoken. It’s the happiest I have ever seen you, and that fact made me grieve someone I will never get to know.

And now I say goodbye forever.