foragingstamps

[foragingstamps]

untitled#36

the months flicker in and out with the same ferocity of a racing train, accompanied with the doldroms of traffic-packed highway lanes. the landscape blurs past, memories distorted like a canvas decorated in oil paint. fingers smear sharp edges, breath picks up for another sentence. nothing changes and nothing stays the same. hole yourself up inside and claim to avoid the rain; like the walls aren't weary with mildew and your eyes perpetually lame. dont be clever. dont hope to be thawed out by the summer. wrangle with that old, pitiful feeling too evasive to bear a name. the one that reared its head at the first startle in your brain; that held your hand when you were alone so you would not know it is a chain. argue with the world, argue with yourself, complain. look death in the eye and call its immersion fate, though it only knows of love, and maybe that's why it inevitably takes.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#35

body submerged, head afloat. the waves are picking up again, thrashing over my skull. i filter in and out of reality like dust into light; invisible until stark. always one or the other. i am tired of this cycle of frenzied dance and slumber. spirits spilled on lips, whispering with me dread, a sick pit in my stomach like the core of fruit. take my flesh and eat of it, but is it me you devour, or merely meat? is the chicken every chicken, the herd one body and my mind the rebellion?

crisp, fresh air curls into my lungs, stings against my nostrils. spit out the seed, the kernel of my being. so bitter, not yet ready to join the whole. let it wither. i am awake, and then awake but not awake, but not conscious; not subconscious but distracted. i hold onto the rope and it lets me go. the tethers fray and fall. do it again: let smoke find home in my chest and echo in my breath. i do not know what i do this for. my head is above the depths again. the air is filled with a thick smog; we can no longer find the stars.

sight has been taken, my vision warped; i look into the distance to observe more wars. pain, bloodshed, lust, power-thirst: i close my eyes. i do not have to look at the sorrows of this world. i swim in daydreams and blurs; ignore the fresh wounds and scars of horrors and the cries of desperate mothers. i let death dip its claws into all of my neighbour’s bones. they stare it dead in the eye. i forgot how to see, and when it comes for me, i will look the other way. for all the time i have spent here, it has been in the arms of numbness. i forgot how freeing it is to face and survive brutality; to strengthen my mentality; to embrace abnormality; to greet my own demise. we will all perish, even the worst of us. too many will die never wielding their mortality; born a stain and easily wiped away.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#34

ignorance is more decaying than it is defensive. it would pain me more to neglect the state of our collective existence; the vast injustices that plague our civilizations. i am tired of this ritual of consumerism; bleak flourescent lighting dragged across aisles of excess. our souls bound by an identity of material consumption—clothes, decorations, objects—made empty and mass-produced. we draw our fingers in the sand and create borders; we thieve from the land and create hoarders. we are faced with iniquity and shrug our shoulders. the earth is warming and our hearts are only growing colder. i do not know what words to say; what words you need to hear. as passionate as i am, no matter how much i believe in change, there are truths that cannot be passed by ear. you are bound by fear, and you believe these troubles have always lied near. you avoid it. you look the other way; you keep your head down for fear of drowning in despair and rage; unaware that you are suffocating in your own disengagement; dying in your complacence. you will wake up in your bed tomorrow all the same, with a roof unharmed and comforts safe and skin unscathed. you will find refuge in a dull life; afraid of the sharp edges that your privileges dig into others. you don't know how to feel shame for the fires you've kept aflame. you won't recognise your humanity is severed, and that you have lost yourself in the blaze, because you never chose to look through the haze.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#33

sometimes, art feels like a guttral scream into a ravenous void. eating every word, and burping every hope; dizzied and drowsy from every voice. we are attempting to express the obvious, or the hidden, or the smitten, in a palatable, tangible fashion. viewers chew, they do, but they regurgitate and spit the food. know only the flavour, but not the nutrition; make room for more automatic, ceaseless, and doped, decisions. it as though you have forgotten every syllable and stutter of the paintbrush and the pen. so pretty; so superficial. you hear me, but are you paying attention? you have read the cries, and you have memorised the lines, but do you understand the symbols and my signs? do you see through my riddle; can you recognise the repeating and the screaming sigils? we are all yelling and i cannot hear anything but the buzz, and the buzz of a bee, and i duck my head because im so afraid of being stung. i have never looked at the flowers. take one thing, and understand it for the other; put it down and pick it up if you're ever feeling better. to what logic are we tethered other than the closing of our shutters; taking peeks of truth and blinded by the light, and taking little pain as one great might, and shutting it all out of our sight. numb it. scroll. scroll again. put it down, pick it up, scroll again. move from mindless distraction to mindless distraction; so much movement with very little action. but are you listening? is the apathy not sickening? how long will i last, withering, always bent towards the ground; to technology im lingering and escape from reality we are conditioning. no seedling sprout has survived looking anywhere but the sun; growing trust in the chance of more confident tomorrows; nurturing resistance from dooming, fatal sorrows.

if a meteor came to take our fates, we wouldn't see it with the crane of our necks towards the sky, but in a crane towards our screens and our feet and the dirt—the place of our demise. our body's dialect speaks for our crimes, and for the sand in the hourglass that is always losing time. і can spout every language from my tongue like stars from nebulae but you will only see vanity that dulls the mind. a tomb is comfortable because it is the last place you'll ever lie; an uninterrupted slumber that erupts into new life—every existence only but the former's dream, and every destiny is truly but absurdity. this tomb is comfortable because you mustn't move; mustn't do. we have made ourselves into our beds, wound our heads into the sheets and the pillows and watched the mirage of a world without ever truly witnessing it. a dream within a dream; an escape within a hallucination. i will be here waiting; not quite sure what for, but endlessly discovering novel ways our world's been scorned. the foundation is being torn, and we are so preoccupied with inspecting every little crack that we will never suspect its widening attack. down, down, down; into a chasm full of frowns. victims and undoings and consequences ensuing; angry, irritated, fuming. point a finger, avoid the news, find something else to consume. maybe i'll see you again, one scroll away, soon.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#32

i guess i have changed, but i did not change easily. i changed gruesomely, and i begged and bit and screamed every inch of the way. each passing night is a part of myself that і have laid to waste, and there are ceasless graves i have left in my wake. there have been few constants in the tumultuous earthquakes of each day; that rip apart any sense of stability i have built for myself. that devours concrete in its maw, and lifts and scrapes and relentlessly shakes. when it stills, i catch my breath, and i continue like nothing of yesterday has bled into this moment; like i am invincible against every stressor if i do not pay attention.

some things have stayed the same admist all that has changed. people flicker in and out, and the seasons devour its forefather; and fathers become grandfathers; and fathers never know what to say. strangers glance, or dip their heads to their feet, meek and aloof and nervous. there is a gap between between me and you that i have yet to learn to fill. im trying to feel connection and affection in the skin and flesh of another; in the embrace of naked bodies and naked hearts and vulnerable phrases. trying to trust in something other than nature; in late nights that sweep into dawn, sounded by the coo of morning birds; in stars suffocated in cities and urban sprawl, and set free in rural territory; in the lap of waves against the sandy shore, sea foam bubbling by the sandpipers, minnows whisked in by the tide. im trying to find trust in places other than where truths are not spoken; where i can feel them in the brush of the breeze, the slick of seaweed, the rattle of the trees. i am trying to look into your eyes and articulate this knot of repressed desire in my chest: what we should be doing; what we are addicted to doing; what we will become if we remain complacent to our own undoing. i am trying to learn a language that you will understand; that will resonate and kindle a flame in your ribcage; that will strike your compassion and add colour to your sadness. we are all so detached. we are all so mindless, numbed to even the bitter, relentless cold of the northern winter, where even the snow cries prematurely in march for its fate. i have not known the earth for long, yet so quickly it has been rendered unrecognisable; where within every little thing that has affected me has been lodged into me. i wonder how much more of my perception will be warped; what honesty i can know in the depths of suspicion, and lack of contemplation. i look at you and fear you, like we are wild animals of different lands who have just met. what happened to the ease of familiarity; what happened to neighborly conversations in the mornings on the street? we pass the same bodies and ignore them for weeks, for years. in such a world i must wonder what is real: what haven exists that can ground me without turning surreal; that can appear so impossibly safe on an earth ravenously stripped for its content, for any monetary standing or appeal. what lies in your mind; what lies in your heart; what lies in mine? why do these questions have answers that im afraid to find?

[foragingstamps]

untitled#31

does the sun ache in its loneliness; does it know the depths its light reaches? can it recognise the specks of planets that orbit it, encircling like sharks, but never nearing its flesh; never knowing its taste? what does it think, in the gallows of space, where all is tightly wound, yet so far away? for what does it meditate? does it know we call it 'sun;' does it know it has a name? does it know how it warms my skin, and thaws bitterness, and melts sorrowful chains?

how can any celestial body, any object that roams the universe, feel—knowing how desperately alone it is? an observer that cannot touch lest it is destroyed; that loves but can never embrace? to touch is to ruin; to let unfold an irrevocable devastation of change. two comets colliding may become something beautiful, or something strange, or ugly; but it will never be the same. though every body that has ever existed has remained in uniform solitude, it knows one day it will become something else. the sun will collapse into its own weight, the earth will become a hellscape, a nebula will take shape. something magnificent will come out of a brutal end, but i wonder if it will grieve its fate. if love is a worthy sacrifice for the soul; to let it be warped and bent and manipulated; to recognise itself in another's frame, and to be brutally torn from its shape. to look at all the yesterdays and see a stranger where they used to be—both themself and a lover, both perception and face. how dangerous it is to submit yourself to the calloused, cruel hands of affection; to assume safety in its soft cradle, only to be hollowed in its absence. it takes, and you take, and you love, and you have fun, and you are grateful, and you are ashamed, and full of hate. the joy means nothing without the pain. maybe that is the point; to know the catharsis and the torture and the fleeting bliss of a mortal love. to look at the stars and know that this is the only time we'll know this place; to recognise how rare and fragile our world is. to risk transformation, and to grow terrified yet unafraid; to search for love again even while facing dismay, because there is a burning passion in our hearts that must be shared and conveyed. we will all be betrayed by endless tomorrow, yet through it, eternally saved.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#30

death was once savoured on the tongue; life was a daunting risk. then the pendulum swung towards a new future to embrace. now to be deceased is to be forever gone rather than eternally free. we mourn what we have lost despite the fact that we are fated to reunite. we are afraid to lose ourselves in the dark when it's just as possible to in the light. we're all destined to reconvene, with half-closed lids and gaunt, exposed ribs. patience is the key to guarantee. somewhere along the line the thought was thrown in the bin.

now, I'm parading through a life i barely know how to live. i'm a grotesque puzzle piece that never learned to fit in—it shows. it highlights my fantasies, my outlook, my dreams. and despite my insecurities, everyone appears just as lost as me. in elders i see infants; in old age i see inexperience and the havoc that it brings. every past is muddied with mistakes we are not free from 'till the end. death is frenetic; a dire strait beyond margins. it is an epoch of chimera, of mystery, of myth. it encapsulates all things humans have failed to understood, have failed in lack of faith. a grave is not meant just for our body; a eulogy not considered for plainly for its truth. praise promulgates our decay until no lips carry further acclaim. we resort to bones and dust and teeth; to the words we never uttered. we become just the same as any animal who has ever breathed; any plant that's ever known rain; any dog that's ever been tamed. we all come to similar ends. our memory is fossilised and our stories locked away, but we all end up the same. this universe is a graveyard, fanatic and ever-reaping. there's not a single object within it deemed fit for keeping. in the art of death we lose the shy permanence of this world; we lose the intimacy of our reality; we realise our ephemerality. we are introduced to something far more magisterial, far more grand. we become rulers of distant lands; a void of our own command. we become nothing and welcome nothing; we come to understand.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#29

body submerged, head afloat. the waves are picking up again, thrashing over my skull. i filter in and out of reality like dust into light; invisible until stark. always one or the other. i am tired of this cycle of frenzied dance and slumber. spirits spilled on lips, whispering with me dread, a sick pit in my stomach like the core of fruit. take my flesh and eat of it, but is it me you devour, or merely meat? is the chicken every chicken, the herd one body and my mind the rebellion?

crisp, fresh air curls into my lungs, stings against my nostrils. spit out the seed, the kernel of my being. so bitter, not yet ready to join the whole. let it wither. i am awake, and then awake but not awake, but not conscious; not subconscious but distracted. i hold onto the rope and it lets me go. the tethers fray and fall. do it again: let smoke find home in my chest and echo in my breath. i do not know what i do this for. my head is above the depths again. the air is filled with a thick smog; we can no longer find the stars.

sight has been taken, my vision warped; i look into the distance to observe more wars. pain, bloodshed, lust, power-thirst: i close my eyes. i do not have to look at the sorrows of this world. i swim in daydreams and blurs; ignore the fresh wounds and scars of horrors and the cries of desperate mothers. i let death dip its claws into all of my neighbor's bones. they stare it dead in the eye. i forgot how to see, and when it comes for me, i will look the other way. for all the time i have spent here, it has been in the arms of numbness. i forgot how freeing it is to face and survive brutality; to strengthen my mentality; to embrace abnormality; to greet my own demise. we will all perish, even the worst of us. too many will die never wielding their mortality; born a stain and easily wiped away.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#28

stories reside in my face that no one else can see. i see an ugly, marred thing with jagged canines and chains and braces. i see the quiet, shy echo of a child destroyed by time. i see dramatic ravines of lines that drag down my cheeks; i can see every scream and snarl i have ever beckoned. i see the same face i saw a month ago; irrevocably different. i see fleeting beauty, fleeting youth. a puckered frown drawn downward, teeth gnawing on gums, scarlet red from a ruptured lip. i will feel differently tomorrow; i'll feel foolish for today. acne, pores, fallibility, makeup that cannot conceal within. rain pouring down my cheeks, tears rolling off my skin.

gravity weighs my flesh down and i ache for the earth; yearn for my distant grave. piercings, embellishments, identities my mum says i'll look prettier without. pretty. do you think i'm pretty? will i get married; will i have babies; where will i be buried? pass down the heirloom of insecurity. don't wear it out. don't think too confident; don't beg for compliments. my appearance has never been relevant to me. i flutter on the stage, and the audience watches. did you like the performance? what are you behind the curtains? who am i without the mold of your words; the pleasure of your perception? what else do you see; what else can you see? are any of us free?

[foragingstamps]

untitled#27

carry me, caress me,

relinquish me in its depths,

i needn't be saved.

i'll despise an audience

when i submit to my own fate.

do not help me,

i will run away

from you, or my own shame.

i do not know how to love.

i do not know how to properly hurt.

fabricated by my fingertips;

melancholy running its course

through every nerve, every vein.

i cannot escape this pain.

i do not want to run from it anymore.

i do not want to drown in this force.

there is a locked door

and i had the key, but it is gone,

or,

i had the key, but refuse to use it,

or,

there is no key, and there is no door.

maybe it is all made up,

imaginary, self-devised torture.

come closer, but do not touch, it burns.

i risk myself

in melting into you;

risk this cage of safety

that has cradled my view,

blurred the edges,

muddied the truth.

i do not know who i am,

what i come from,

what horrors and luxuries

you can trudge out of my past.

how i replicate you

with poetry and metaphors

that muffle violent imagery,

that lingers in dusted corners of my mind;

rabbit's foot clutched in palm

distrust lodged in a puttering heart.

like oil to water

i cannot feel you, cannot touch you.

oh, intimacy,

how i grieve you

though i have never felt you.

how i serenade you

though you suffocate me;

though you scare me

and badger me with sweet kisses

and lullabies of compassion

that i was never taught to accept.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#26

i feel change settle on my skin like layers of grime. suddenly, nothing is as it was before. the rain coats my clothes with a feverish fervor, striking me from the sky. it batters me; flushed and rosey like i have weeped and the clouds have grieved into me. it is cold, and it feels like i have finally touched tomorrow— uncertain, unkind. the emotions bubble and boil in my body with no refuge. there is no place for this deluge to flood but my mind. the rain has not stopped falling. the sidewalks are drowned in the dust of january, and this month feeds on my anxieties. time will pass, and i will never be here again, describing the same monotonous qualities of life. the world has shifted, but i have yet to transform. there is no normal anymore. і am flocked by familiar faces and fears and fate, but it is all too different and an immeasurable way. how do you cope with the sudden untrustworthiness of today? it is not promised, but, as i breathe now, it whispers unnerving compromise.

passion has rejected me in the dawn of this new day. phrases have lost their meaning in their monotonous display. i do not know what i am searching for; what i'm looking for. i do not know what to say. i cease my calls to the unknown, and without my echo i am aimless. there is no response from the silence that has hushed even the crunch of my footsteps; the only marker of my presence the footprints in the snow — far too ambiguous; a path made by any soul. the rain still falls thickly outside. i am covered; made indistinguishable and insignificant.

the plants on my windowsill have wilted and withered. it has not embraced a wintery sleep. recklessly abandoned and irrevocably perished. i pour my love into its battered and yellowed leaves, but a feast for the famished speaks only of my greed. i suffocate the starved with a deluge of nutrition they have forgotten how to eat. i do not know how to love you delicately, in small portions. i am too extreme; too brazen in my apologies; too needy to please. did you mourn me as i do you; how i have forsaken you like a god to its devotees? i will move on, but your drooping branches and dried roots will remember me. i am sorry. neither of us exist anymore to the other. there is no longer any life to see.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#25

i will restrain my anger for one more day; think about the faultlines and what the fractures say. will try not to get caught up in the paranoia, even if it is in vain; even if it is aflame in my veins and soaked in my marrow's taste.

trust is such a fickle thing. love is organic and it is meant to rot; decaying into a pervesion of the bond we made. you will hold me close, and you will eventually fade. dissolved from physicality and reduced to a figment of my brain. in nostalgia you wait, where you scrub clean the stains and pretend this was a perfect place. i do not know how to take it, this persisting fakeness; how you cherish and adore until you find yourself bored. why do we waste our breath on love if we know it is so frail? when it is too often built with little care? pain is its consequence; mulled wine turned stale. reap my garden like you sowed it, like you know every seed and every dream. i dont know why it is that i always give and you always take. my words, my hopes, the colors of my world gathered into your arms. i am on display at the market to you. my actions in your palms; my every thought for you to farm.

i am not a reclusive person, so why do i want to disappear? why do i want to lose myself in the fog, where no one else is near? i cannot tell if i am machine or human; if my purpose is to generate fashions and phrases for you to claim. if i am meant to watch myself perpetually eaten away; my flesh devoured and skeleton scoured and flavor soured. no inch of me saved as i watch my soul get shaved. spit me out, and from dust i will make clay, and from clay a brand new name. fate will have you recognise me again, and i will try not to lose myself in bitter hate.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#24

my skin will turn to dust, and my personhood will conflate with humanity's cemetery. my voice may echo in the chamber hall of poetry; recorded in stolen verses, borrowed phrases, and recovered prose. this is where you will find me after all these years; the girl you left behind and the notes of you she wrote in the margins of her mind. build your empires of concrete and steel so they may be erected in the fragile pages of a history book. carve your imprint into the earth though it will erode by morn. nothing here has survived; nothing here is eternal.

i am beginning to seek refuge in grains of sand forged by brutality and blown by the wind. this one place of likeness where mountain summits and ravines meet to find quiet. where the stars gather in reflection of their abundance and the ocean does not rest, lapping at their feet, but above in deep blue depths of the sky. lose me in the number of insurmountable tomorrows. find me in your blood and the void that rests behind your eyes. i will live and i will expand. i will burst into flames in search of love and growth. my spine will bend and my shoulders will hunch, body aching to be absorbed by the earth. like a dying star, i will collapse into myself, yet create innumerable births from this demise. i am not immortal, yet i will never die.

i will whisper throughout the mirage of time, dance in distant voids, and discover uncovered shrines. i will see mystery and reality and everything in between. we are not meant to understand each other in our entirety. we are meant to collect pieces of souls to fragment our own; collect moments and build our worlds. we are meant to let the glass shatter and be picked up at the shore, dulled and made blunt until unrecognisable in a sea of similarity. a hand reaching towards the heavens, yearning to know its sight, joining its collective design, and desiring its former individuality.

the person you want is reinvented by sundown, and swims in dreams and secrets and ephemeral blisses. my name will be foreign to your tongue, but i will flicker in your memory. the dirt will remember i once stood on it; petrified forests will remember i frolicked in their woods. i will be here and not here. nothing but everything. i will find peace and i will be free. i will learn this life is not the simplicity that it has always seemed.

[foragingstamps]

a letter to old friends

i forget how old wounds can fester when you're distracted. you're healed but the scar tissue is still raised and inflammed. it doesn't seem it will ever go away when you crash into the past and it sends your mind astray. i am trying to be okay with every trip and tumble, the dirt that gathers on my clothes and the bruises that mark my knees. they will fade with time, but i will fall again. i will fall again, and my fists will clench, and i will rise overwhelmed by the kicked aside emotions of a child. every shard of pain a piece to a broken mirror, and the fragments reflect every me that has ever cried. i am five again and sixteen and i am reunited with that neglected grief; the resentment and sadness that has been fermenting in me for ages. it may turn to be sweet as wine or it may turn ever more bitter in its anger.

i have hungered for love so badly that even now i forget i am not starving. i forget that i am no longer first encroaching my teenage years, alone and scared but buffered by a desperation to please; to be seen; to be called lovely. drowning in naïveté and too stubborn to accept that it's not doing me any favours, ignoring how it turned me cold and mean. i haven't unravelled this bandage in a long time. scarlet does not stain cloth but i still feel like i'm bleeding. there's so many people i want to talk to, so many curses i have reserved and words left unheard. it wouldn't do me any good, except permanently closing rusted doors. i have so many questions to ask, but i wont get any answers. it’s not worthwhile to harm myself in that way, to ponder incessantly of rejection; if they’re aware of how deep the cracks of abandonment go. if they know how humiliated i felt. i can't fix this. i can't travel to the past; to an empty stage that's no longer known. we've all moved on, but sometimes, in the blue walls of my bedroom, i feel like i'm still there. i am alone and it feels just like all those years ago because there was no one there, either. i can't change this; i can't remedy it. i can only sit with it.

i cannot run from the clutches of this cycle, how it draws me in and pulls me close. the waves keep resurfacing, keep crashing on the shore. it always hurts. it dangles all my forlorn desires in front of me, and i must remember how peace feels in my bones; how to look that burning discontentment in the eye and accept that it still itches underneath my skin. i must remember that this is temporary, and there are lessons within. that i am never truly finished. i might never get closure, i might never get to see those old friends one last time. we'll both look the other way on the street. the thought of wanting them will only make me feel shame. i want to release these regrets and Iamentations in the river, and let these aches wash away. desert my pains and blames and bring myself to a better place, where i am happy that you all have forgotten my name.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#23

it often feels like i am futilely attempting to express something that cannot be explained. a chimera that morphs its form by the time i sketch its outline. an emotion that deserts any sense, plaguing defiantly, but inexplicably, in every cell of my mind. i spend hours trying to name this thing, to define it in a way that pleases my brain. i want to take the unexplainable and weave words into its core, to make the infinite that much more comprehendible.

many dedicate their lives to that work, to studying the impossible and showing its cracks; showing where we can force ourselves into its maw so we may analyse every canine and tooth and snapping jaw. is it a waste to pour so much into something that will inevitably change? we climb the mountain and mount its summit, but that too will erode into dust. continents will clash and ranges will rise, and it will all meet demise by time. we can inspect intricacies that will unravel into mystery and we will chase them until we trip on our headstones and fall into our graves. it may be fruitless, but this barren tree is still sweet to the tongue. it still coaxes me closer, tracing every limb and leaf and root that ripples through the ground. the hope for fruit inspired by its offspring. a temptation that wont be dangled but devoured in my palms. there is beauty in that ceaselessness, in this limitlessness that flows everywhere around me, inside me. i cannot know its entirety; i cannot know it all, and that's why i was made small. but, maybe, the universe will bestow a clear, short glimpse of that everlasting obscurity, of its ethereality and longevity. maybe it will breathe into me its name.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#22

i want to carve my existence into the earth, stabbing into its flesh an arching, spiraling tattoo. i want to thread my spirit into the sky amongst the stars; a constellation that lives long after its destined death. i want to brand my soul into the dirt; for i am apart of it as much as it is apart of me.

disappointment arrives in purple and blue hues. it is an aching pain; it lingers and ebbs and disappears. i do not know who i will be; what i am meant to do; how i am fated to live. it's often overwhelming, suffocating. my lungs are addicts of inhales and exhales; they do not easily surrender to ill alternatives. you get used to the sway of the ups and downs. you are a pendulum, swinging into every emotion, every turmoil, every blessing. it can all be survived. melancholy ferments in my heart, and in a few years time it will mull into a sweet, smooth wine. there is something to be made of everything; consequence born in each breath. how you deal with it is up to you; if you bend to surprises or surpass them.

sometimes, the decision is easier than the outcome. you can adopt a wiser strategy and still feel a little blue. it's not about becoming devoid of feeling, but learning to live with it, not within it. the path turns treacherous at the cliffs, but the ocean and its waves are a worthwhile view. trust in that; trust in kinder days, kinder souls. you'll find it if you make the space for it; if you commit to the dreams that swirl inside the depths of your mind. you'll be okay, until you don't feel so certain once again, and you strengthen your faith once more. listen to the voice inside. it will tell you all you need to know.

[foragingstamps]

untitled#21

through dust i build you again and kiss a memory while cotton floods my mouth. cotton tastes my tongue when i speak, when nostalgia pours from my eyes into my tears. but you are not there. there is nothing alive for me to speak of. nothing is coming out. dust coats my teeth and i am a fool to believe we dont need to be grieved.