inkstained

[inkstained]

dont hold a knife to my throat if you don’t intend to kill me. 

that was what i meant to say, that day, when you told me about your family & your fears & your dreams about the future & you pressed the wrong side of the blade against my neck.

blood on the grass, blood on your cheek. i won’t tell you that you’re pretty. i know the song that you’re singing. i’ll hurt you back, i know it. 

blood on the grass, blood on your teeth. you’ll tear at my heart but you won’t swallow it. im sick of the song that youre singing. i’ll hurt you back, goddamnit.

i keep chasing the crows away but they keep coming back. i’m a twitching body, still, but not quite a dead one yet. (i told you not to hold a knife to my throat if you don’t intend to kill me.) someone’s pressing their hand to my leaking faucet of a neck and im gurgling blood like a baby, im gurgling your name like a fool. i wont leave you my bones to come back to.

- (j)

[inkstained]

the ache of nostalgia

[inkstained]

SOMEONE SOMEWHERE IS THINKING OF ALL THE THINGS HE’S LET SLIP THROUGH HIS FINGERS (WIP), Lev St. Valentine

Full poem will be posted on Patreon

[inkstained]

that i cannot outrun the setting sun,  that tomorrow is waiting outside my front door with a crowbar, that i’ll never know you the way they did back when i was first shepherded into your house in 2016: you should have seen the way i held my bitter tongue when i saw them bouncing on their heels to the music, cramming you into their ribs. sorry that i laughed at you, mouth full of acid, sorry that i could only picture you as an ugly, wretched thing. 

all this to say: i was twelve when i wanted to grow up faster and twenty-three when i wanted to stop. my hands have dug too many graves - i know the gentleness of the soil after rain, so soft it’s sweet, but i still don’t know you the same way. is it too late? i want to see you in the gems of light splashed across the ocean’s skin, in the pyramids of overripe fruit at the grocery store, in the forgiving slope of a lover’s neck. if i dig far enough, will i find you? if i dig long enough, will you come? 

i hold yesterday in my palms and i cannot forgive it. which is to say - imagine a pack of wild dogs, imagine a man with a gun; loving you seems a violent, corrosive thing, but i am too envious of the faithful. I’ll find you, i’ll split you open with my teeth, i’ll empty my stomach out, i’ll shift my bones around, i’ll make room for you. i see you here now: moss in a city puddle, mushrooms in a dormitory bathroom. life for life’s sake, in every possible way, sick rising to my throat. but i’ll try to look past it if you can, i’ll keep my hands soft, i’ll make room for you.

-(j)

[inkstained]

Kelley Beeson

[inkstained]

Joan Tierney

[inkstained]

Najwan Darwish, tr. by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, from Exhausted on the Cross; “Our Defeated Banner”

[Text ID: “If I could come back, / I wouldn’t come under any other banner. / I’d still embrace you / with two severed hands. / I don’t want wings in paradise, / I just want your graves by the river. / I want eternity at the breakfast table / with the bread and oil. / I want you— / earth, / my defeated banner.”]

[inkstained]

started reading emily wilson's iliad im gonna pass out

[inkstained]

“Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position, which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship. For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence. If anything can denature, neutralize, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life it is the internalization of such habits. Personally I have encountered them in one of the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, where fear of speaking out about one of the greatest injustices in modern history has hobbled, blinkered, muzzled many who know the truth and are in a position to serve it. For despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual.”

Edward Said, Representations of an Intellectual

[inkstained]

How Samuel Beckett Sought Salvation in the Midst of Suffering, by Andy Wimbush, pub. Aeon [ID'd]

[inkstained]

Marya Hornbacher, Madness: A Bipolar Life

[inkstained]

Megan Fernandes, “May to December,” in I Do Everything I’m Told

[inkstained]

because the color is half the taste by Paige Lewis

[inkstained]

a scene from a book made me cry today. it was not particularly extraordinary, or earth-shattering, and i was surprised to feel the familiar drop in my stomach, the twinge in my chest, the tingle in my nose.

ive realised as ive gotten older the way the list of things that make me cry grows longer with each passing heartbreak. (the death of a pet. the sacrifices of a parent. the loss of a friend. the betrayal of a lover.) the way my body has collected each and every one, tucked them into the crevices of my being. hidden, but never forgotten. ever-growing.

[inkstained]

you broke me first

the kind of emptiness that echoes

concept playlists

you’ve outgrown a lover

oh, it’s you. it’s always been you.

a tug-of-war kind of relationship

[inkstained]

"This is how colonialism works. It convinces us that the fallout from resistance is entirely our fault, that the immoral choice is resistance itself rather than the circumstances which demanded it."

- R.F Kuang, Babel

[inkstained]

NOPE (Jordan Peele) / Regarding the Pain of Others (Susan Sontag)