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[imperfectpretences]

:)

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that ending oof

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“I want to weave you into me. Stick your thorns in and grow. Bleed sap and feel this shining light. Grow strange leaves. Bear this fruit. Share this soil. Bury ourselves. Reach for the sun. Strip this bark. Carve a name and a heart into me. Please.”

— Iain S. Thomas, “The New Species”, I Wrote This For You

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IN THE DARK TIMES WILL THERE ALSO BE SINGING? YES, THERE WILL ALSO BE SINGING. ABOUT THE DARK TIMES.

(1. @soracities​ 2. sam sax, prayer for the mutilated world 3. joy harjo, perhaps the world ends here 4. rhiannon mcgavin, poll worker + bonus bertolt brecht)

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I’ve Dreamed of You So Much

by Robert Desnos

I’ve dreamed of you so much that you’re losing your reality. Is it already too late for me to embrace your literal, living and breathing physical body and to kiss that mouth which is the birthplace of that voice which is so dear to me? I’ve dreamed of you so much that my arms–which have become accustomed to lying crossed upon my own chest after attempting to encircle your shadow–might not be able to unfold again to embrace the contours of your literal form, perhaps So that coming face-to-face with the actual incarnation of what has haunted me and ruled me and dominated my life for so many days and years Might very well turn me into a shadow. Oh equilibriums of the emotional scales! I’ve dreamed of you so much that it might be too late for me to ever wake up again. I sleep on my feet, body confronting all the usual phenomena of life and love and yet when it comes to you–you, the only being on the planet who matters to me now– I can no more touch your face and lips than I can those of the next random passerby. I’ve dreamed of you so much, have walked and talked and slept so much with your phantom presence that perhaps the only thing left for me to do now Is to become a phantom among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadowy than that shifting shape which moves and which will go on moving, stepping lightly and happily across the sundial of your life.

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Constellations * Archives. Book: The witness of the stars, by Bullinger, William. Publication: 1893.

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The dream called Laundry.

1. from “Alone for A Week”, Jane Kenyon

2. from “The Mad Scene”, James Merrill

3. from Based on a “Book By the Same Title,” Leigh Stein

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I THINK I AM GOING TO CUT MY HAIR

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The feelings that hurt most, the emotions that sting most, are those that are absurd–The longing for impossible things, precisely because they are impossible; nostalgia for what never was; the desire for what could have been; regret over not being someone else; dissatisfaction with the world’s existence. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create in us a painful landscape, an eternal sunset of what we are.

—Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet (Pantheon, 1991, originally published in 1982)

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richard siken quotes that are too relateable for their own good

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“Who’s the real you? The person who did something awful, or the one who’s horrified by the awful thing you did? Is one part of you allowed to forgive the other?”

— Rebecca Stead, Goodbye Stranger

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not every thing with wings is an angel, she says, and you say, oh? what are you, then? there’s a thin smile, there and gone. the burn of eyelids meeting salt water for the first time. read between the lines because she won’t tell you what you are and you’re too afraid to keep asking.

you have rough hands. you feel bad about touching her. it doesn’t feel like love when she lets you braid her hair. it feels like pity. your fingers shake, and you swallow back the weight of hope you’ve carried since you were too young to understand what you were hoping for. is this alright? you keep asking. is this alright? does it pull? does it hurt? she’s not patient, and she doesn’t know why you hesitate. her sharp yes only makes it harder to keep your hands steady.

there’s no sentimentality for angels; the entire world is sentiment for them. you don’t know why you, of all people, were chosen.

at night she’s cold, and slips under your blankets. you lie still, heart hammering, even as she twines herself around you like you’re a source of warmth and a poor one at that. you should feel used, or dirty. you feel humbled and honored and wonder what she’d have to say about this if she wasn’t asleep, whether she’d make fun of you for being a fool in love.

so this is what it means to be in love with one of god’s own creatures. not every thing with wings is an angel, she says, her face tilted up to the sun. it makes her throat glow. she looks at the birds and you look at the eyes in the hollow of her collarbone. imagine the fragile flutter of eyelids against your skin.

you’re all human fragile sentimentality and she mocks you relentlessly for it, for the old cloak you wear that’s devoid of warmth and the old flat you keep because your mother died here.

but sometimes i think you’re closer to god than i ever will be, she says. it’s nearly dawn, and you’re shoulder to hip against the night sky. god is wanting. we don’t want. you burn with shame and try to imagine what that’s like. all the years of your life you held your love in and looked away women and didn’t dare name what you felt for fear of god. to be told you’re closer to It than someone like her undoes something inside you. the knot falls away and underneath it you’re bitter and hopeless and angry.

it makes you reckless. what if i want you to kiss me? you ask, and revel in the uncomfortable heat of the wrong words clawing their way out of your chest.

she looks at you like you’re magic. hold onto that wanting, she murmurs. it’ll fly you to heaven one day. she slips her hand into yours and you rest your head against your knees. there’s the thin comfort of knowing she won’t hold your desire for her against you but

how long can you want without having? how long can you be all desire and no satiation? if you have to starve to death for ascent you don’t want to ascend. you want her to kiss you. you want someone to want to kiss you.

this is what you get for falling in love with an angel.

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We were talking about screensavers and how they're only for kids who grew up with dial-up. I liked the one with the pipes and found the brick maze creepy.

I like a silence like a bloom. I have a tradition about car washes. The first time I saw the angle of your collarbone I swallowed my tongue. I have a tradition about bedtimes. I have a tradition about birds.

I have been thinking about what it means to find ritual in the sinful places. You and I in a car as two raindrops race to the same pathway. You and I on a bridge where the sun has her fingers in your hair. You and I at all.

There are private prayers, after all. The way a room full of people will watch a single box bump around a frame until it perfectly hits the corner. The way we hold our breath and then sigh "okay" when we're all strung out. The way people put their hands, reverent, on a railing.

There is the mythology of werewolves that one can turn the other by bite. My father's voice on a Friday - Who turned you gay? Who? Who?

The prayer of your knitted socks. The mythology of knowing your hair and saying, with authority - yes. I know God.

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x

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i’ve told you before that i love you. i just never knew in what way.

we used to giggle in class and doodle on our notes and imagine one day sitting knee to knee, in dorms complaining about lectures and meal prep. a fantasy that we knew might never happen. it’s strange how things turn out. 

i turned off my alarm this morning and we slept through our classes. i felt bad for not waking you but your sleeping face was smiling. 

i still love you. i’m still not sure in what way.

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AND THE NIGHT SAID:

I LOVE YOU AS A FIST LOVES THE BROKEN RIB AS THE LUNGS LOVE THE CHASE AS THE FINGER AND NAIL LOVES THE GOUGE AND TEAR

I LOVE YOU AS THE TEETH LOVE THE TENDON AND THE TENDON THE BRUISE I LOVE YOU AS ADRENALINE LOVES THE POUNDING IN YOUR EARS

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this absolutely gutted me. don’t mind me just losing my mind thinking about bird imagery