inkskinned

[inkskinned]

i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

something else, then. existing without humanity.

[inkskinned]

it's not a true pet peeve but when certain phrases are divorced from their contexts it does give me a weird little butterfly in my stomach.

like, okay. "hell is other people" is an excellent line from Sartre's play "no exit". it's very short, you could probably read it in an afternoon or two. but the line isn't making a commentary about all people - it's actually specifically about the 3 characters in the play. they're all very bad people who are legitimately being punished in-actual-hell. they are forced into a room together for eternity & have been hand-picked to be as annoying as possible to each other as punishment for the sins they committed while alive.

and that concept is crazy! i don't write fanfiction but imagine what characters would be actual torture for each other! "hell is other people" isn't condemning humanity - it is saying we create hell from other people.

or like - shakespeare's "brevity is the soul of wit"! that is a joke line said by a joke character. polonius constantly talks too much and says fucking nothing of use. while hamlet is having like, the worst year of anyone's life - polonius gives really fucking vague and useless advice, including such popular sayings as: "to thine own self be true" and "neither a borrower or a lender be." when he says brevity is the soul of wit, it is meant ironically for the audience - this is a man who never shuts the fuck up. he himself is not brief, and therefore witless.

stuff like this just makes me wonder like - how many idioms or sayings come from completely different contexts and we just. fogrgot :(

[inkskinned]

the two most horribile people you know deserve each other.

tumblr user @/inkskinned / i want you to know that i'm awake/i hope that you're asleep, car seat headrest / familiarity breeds contempt, google / no children, the mountain goats / tumblr user @/willowcrowned

[inkskinned]

Humouring more colours

[inkskinned]

my brother got covid because he's a college professor and there's not much he can do to mitigate exposure when he has 200+ students per lecture. he's got a baby at home, so he does his best, but.

the governmental website for covid information is now propaganda. not a joke, not hyperbole, not an exaggeration: it's genuinely the definition of propaganda. this is biased misinformation determined to push a political stance. it is being hosted on a government server. it looks like something you'd find in a "top 10 weird internet conspiracy stories (and their origins)" youtube video.

my brother called me when he saw it. he had me type it into google. for a second i legitimately thought that i had typed something wrong. we have both taught college: we have both said "a .gov site is usually a reliable resource." i just stared at my phone for a long, long time.

i thought about how when i was a kid, conspiracy theories were mostly fun and a little spooky. unserious. i remember reading some long, complicated website about how avril lavigne is dead. how bigfoot is real. it used to be funny-and-a-joke.

over seven million people (globally) have died from covid. america has the highest death rate with over 1.2 million people.

the thing is - every time a person dies from something like a mass shooting or poverty or treatable illness - we are told don't make it political. we are told it's just something that can happen. we are told it's sad but what can you do!

the president of the united states is using a government website to try to erase the very-real deaths that he personally caused due to a complete mismanagement of the pandemic. the president of the united states is using a government server to host propaganda, undermine science and medicine, and encourage distrust amongst his followers.

nothing is going to happen. nobody's gonna, like, do anything about it. it's a thursday today, and we are just going to move on from this like we have been moving on from everything else.

yesterday my brother was outside walking his dog, mask included. a guy in a truck pulls up and shouts something about covid and whatever the fuck else. my brother has a good sense of humor, described it to me as enthusiastic! i hadn't ever been catcalled before, this was new and therefore thrilling! i do see why you hate it, though. like. i have actual covid, does he want me to cough on him?

my brother doesn't get extra time off work anymore, because the cdc practically doesn't exist. my brother said i'm not exposing 200 students to covid. his boss shrugged and said: who cares? they're going to get it eventually anyway. like it isn't a pandemic.

like it's just a fucking thursday, and who cares about it.

[inkskinned]

[inkskinned]

"just be yourself!" i never figured out who that is, though. i was supposed to know by now, right? like, other people my age do know. but i keep showing up to life and trying to find whatever "me" exists. that person is always disappearing at the last second, turns into wisp. i wish someone would just give me instructions. point to a horizon. a map. some kind of sign that says: go be this.

[inkskinned]

this is so sweet. oh to be a cat curled up with a book. oh to spend my life loved and pampered!!!!

I preordered this *instantly* and then promptly forgot.

My evening suddenly planned itself out when the mail arrived.

Cat. Couch. Fleece. And @inkskinned 's new book

[inkskinned]

on lurching towards the breaking point

The X-Files (01x17) // tumblr user @/inkskinned // Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

[inkskinned]

it's just that when i love something, i love it loud and i love it long. i've never figured out the halfway of it - when i hold something, i let it scar me.

[inkskinned]

:') ily

Y’all should buy a ticket for the emotional rollercoaster that is “Body’s a Bad Monster” by @inkskinned! Emotions I didn’t know I still had are sore. Feels like there are maggots eating away at the decaying flesh in a wound I didn’t even know I had. 10/10. Owie. 🥲👍

[inkskinned]

i love you vaccines i love you research i love you reading the book instead of having chatgpt summarize it i love you critically thinking rather than reacting to a headline i love you investigating the source material i love you science i love you math even though you are personally my enemy (math/yn slowburn) i love you writing even though you try to stab me a lot i love you Experts in Your Field i love you Using The Brain

[inkskinned]

it is genuinely and truly terrifying to watch trump and his apostles create a crisis and then "resolve" the crisis.

it is terrifying to watch right-wing media first say they love the tariffs, that "america is finally first again," that we don't need to be in a global economy. but then trump changes his mind. the media, in the next day or even hour - suddenly admits that the market was crashing, that we were in serious economic danger. but no worries because trump has saved us all! he's brought us back from the brink and stocks skyrocketed, something biden never did! trump's a hero! he loves us! he saved america!

i hate that the word "fascist" doesn't even seem to alarm them anymore. i hate that they treat it as a joke. i hate that others lift their noses and say triggered, libs? while lives fall apart. this is a man who has a religion behind him. this is a god-king. this is a man who has warped the soul of america, and they treat him as if he's just a goofy genius with a heart of gold.

within one hour of the tarriffs being announced, i already saw a commenter on instagram saying this is how we know he's playing chess, not checkers. but all the libs already sold their stocks, and i'm sat here laughing. i had to close my eyes.

[inkskinned]

these days when you close your eyes, what else do you want but to be loved in a warm and permanent way. the open soft hand, the lowered voice, the blanket around your shoulders. you want to be loved like hot chocolate, like spring flowers, like dawn. you want to go to sleep protected and wake up fully rested. you want the wounds in you to matter, you want someone who is patient around your scars.

how greedy. these days when you look around, how many little ways are you assaulted by the notion that it's wrong to need others. individualism! capitalism! bootstraps! every time you try to language it, you need to cover up your desire into a carefully-worded soundbite: of course no single person can fulfill every need and we must invest in communities and i must be responsible for my own mental health and

but the yawning in you doesn't understand logic or sound or reason. it only sees sundays, only sees what you do-not-have, only sees the look others share and that you so desire. sick with dread at it, sick at how it makes you want, how you yearn in no direction.

no matter how many people you take with you to bed, no matter how many hands touch the tattoo you share with your sibling, no matter how many times you kneel with your knees bleeding. always, the ache that never stops chewing, the desperate sick loneliness that never quite abates. it never stops humming, i need i need i need. you burn your inner child for warmth and scatter the ashes into your morning coffee.

so you shut up and you load your life like shotgun shells and you try to make yourself whole in the way that others are whole. you let your father's words spill out of your mouth. you make a quick joke rather than tear your heart open. you sing into the mic and go home with stars in your eyes. your life is beautiful and you're lucky! you have everything a person can need!

but it would be nice, is the thing. to have a love that feels like peace.

[inkskinned]

but i am sick of climbing / i am sick of crawling on hand and knees and scraping myself along the ground / i am sick of self-help skills and persistence and patience / i am sick of pushing myself and burning out and thrashing about hopelessly / i am sick of being a goldfish in a hot pan / i am sick of reinventing myself every season / i am sick of this feeling / i would claw this out of me if you gave me a sharp enough object / i am sick of feeling unsafe around sharp objects / i am sick of never finding an object sharp enough

i wish you knew the answer and could tell me and pour it down my throat until i gagged on it / i made my therapist cry when i said i had a lacking in me / i told her that a train could drive through the spaces i put into myself / the lacking is what does it, not the wanting, the lack, the dullness / barely-breathing with my teeth clacking in the cold water / it's the same fucking bridge it's the same dream and the same stupid kid / i wish sometimes i had drowned in that pool / i wish i had been different, not even that it was easier but just that i had enough strength to endure it / i wish it went away / i wish i had one good fucking reason

[inkskinned]

you can't talk to me that way actually. listen sir i type up longass, cited replies to internet arguments and then never post it because i'm too exhausted by the idea of conflict & besides nobody knows how to read anymore. and i'll let you know, by the way, i'm always 10000% right in all of those answers and i have an undefeated smackdown rate of one thousandbillion. so really before you say anything just remember im going to write a big paragraph about it and then delete it

[inkskinned]

it killed you to grow up there, in the dark like that, with nothing but the bones of your childhood. they punished every version of you that wasn't a god. forced sainthood into saturdays and now when you're out in the sun, your hands shake. your breathing puffing into cold mornings, alone in your room, wondering how you could be so broken and yet never have anyone notice the break.

in the dream of that house, you sometimes remember meals and silence and long hallways and your hand cramping over your homework. you sometimes remember the yelling or the limegreen falsehood veneer your parents could construct in the presence of guests. mostly you remember the way time seeped through you, dripped onto everything, how the words it'll get better felt like an arrow through your chest.

you would lay in bed and hope for death with the same fantasy air as romance, picturing a glorious coffin. sometimes you'd picture a dramatic end or a tragic illness that would sweep you away. but mostly you pictured some kind of strange miracle; that you'd go to sleep and simply never have to deal with that again.

when you got out, you had to burn the atmosphere to escape. these days you reside on another planet entirely: one bright and full of lights and color and friends and spice and laughter.

and still sometimes when people say summer, you still remember the back deck. you still remember building a castle. you still remember the birds. when you lay yourself down at night - some part of you still whispers about catacombs, and the dark, and the bones.

some version of you is still resting in that tomb, after all. some version of you will always see the outline of that place and say that's where we used to call home.