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INFINITELY

I cannot hold you forever. 

I want to. Gods, I fucking want to. 

I want to watch the sun rise and fall in the wide, expansive sky until it swallows us whole, and even then I want to hold you as we drift through an empty universe. 

But I’m not allowed to keep you. 

I get you as long as I draw breath, not a moment longer. And my lungs have an expiration date coming far too soon. 

When I’m worm food, mushroom fertilizer, the soil bed upon which they will grow cotton in the blistering fields, I will have loved you for but an achingly brief moment. 

My love burns for you. It burned for you yesterday, it will burn for you tomorrow. 

And when the day comes that the bonfire I lit in your name is nothing but ash, it will have been worth it. For it burned all the brighter because I don’t get to burn forever. 

The soil will forget us, as will the sun, but somewhere on the wind we will be remembered. 

In the cicadas’ song, in the gentle current of the bayou, there will be the ghosts of us. 

We are not infinite, but I will love you infinitely, until my very last breath. 

When my lungs dry up, and my heart stands still, I may forget how to love you, but I’ll remember that I did. 

I did, I did, I did. 

I loved you, and that is worth dying for. 

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Juansen Dizon, i am the architect of my own destruction

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Entry #019: How to Haunt Before You’re Dead

There are those who have already sunk into the marrow of a place, drifting through walls unseen, yet their hearts are still beating in their chests. I call them “Obsidares”, derived from the French obsédant, meaning obsessive or haunting, and the Latin obsidēre, meaning to besiege or occupy. These beings dwell in thresholds, occupying liminal spaces. They linger. 

These creatures - for surely they cannot be called people any longer - have loosened their grip on the world. Not enough to vanish, but just enough to flicker. They exist in places where common people no longer belong: old school buildings, empty houses, grocery aisles at midnight. To find one, walk through these spaces, speak nothing aloud, and let your footsteps echo. Let the dust rise from where you’ve stepped. You will not be seen, but you will be witnessed, you will be perceived. Something will shiver in your wake.

Their clothes never quite match the time in which they are present. Their bodies will be littered with secrets and memories; a ribbon in their pocket, a pressed flower in their hand, a scent on their skin no one can name. They collect pieces of their pasts to stow away like talismans, guiding them back to who they once were as time forces them to forget, relics of the living person they were before the haunting began.

They spend their days writing letters they don’t send. They sing lullabies no one can hear. They sit in the sunlight and make eye contact with crows. They speak softly to the wind, and it actually answers. 

Their existence blurs the line between presence and echo. They become the space between breaths, the moment just before a candle is blown out. They are gentle, and they are strange. They know they are misunderstood, and they exist anyway. 

When you come across one, they will always remind you of someone you used to know. But do not weep, do not wail. Do not mourn for them. They are not dead, not really. They are transformed. 

When you leave, hold your breath, lest you inhale a bit of them that you cannot return. Keep your eyes forward and don’t look back. You may be tempted to join them in their obsessive, devoted ritual of life and death in tandem, a constant ritual of waking and dying, but I warn you. They require a reverence few people are capable of. The depths of their emotions could capsize great ships, bring the fiercest warriors to their knees. 

Tread carefully, dear traveler.

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⋆˖⁺‧₊☽🔮☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

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John Muir, from a letter to his sister (1873)

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SINNER

For the sun I loved, though it scorched me.

Inspired by Sinners (2025).

Written, voiced, and edited by me, Sacrificial Deer.

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Why does this feel so real?

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SINNER

And lo, when they drinketh of my blood, I hope they taste thee–thy spicy sweetness, thy touch that rendeth seams from my soul.

When they sink their teeth into my veins, I hope they hear thee–thy humming in the morning sun, the meadow breeze of thy lullabies.

When they suckle upon my still-beating heart, I hope they love thee–the glittering sun of thy smile, thine eyes like endless rivers.

When they pulleth me from my bed to join them ‘neath the shroud of night, I hope they miss thee–may they know the hollow where thou once lay, the empty cavern thou hast carved in my chest.

And when, at last, they sit beside me to greet the dawn, I hope they burn for thee too. For in the sun, I will always see thee. In the yonder moon and stars, I hear thy music still strumming for me.

The night cometh for me, as ever it shall, yet still I fell in love with the dawn.

Rise for me, beloved. One last time.

[Written in the aftermath of watching “Sinners” (2025), a film that cracked me open and hollowed me out.]

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— moonqueen (via pagestohearts)

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gone with the sin

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— via @juneacademia

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The Forgotten Letters #2

[February 3, 1892–Found behind a cracked mirror in the master bedroom. It is heavily crinkled and shows signs of water staining, most likely from tears.]

My Darling, 

I cannot wait to join you at the estate. I grow more and more frustrated with every day my journey is delayed. If I did not know better, I would think there was something conspiring against us. But our love will prevail, I am sure of it.

I hope the house is not too lonely. I hate to think about you there all by yourself. Is it terribly cold? Remember to keep the fires going at all hours, lest you freeze before I can reach you. They keep giving me more tasks to complete before I’m permitted to leave. I am moments from simply quitting but I always hear your voice in my head, reassuring and comforting me. I know you want me to see this through so we can start our lives together.

My heart beats for you, as always. If I could pull it out of my chest and mail it to you with this letter, I would. It is always best kept with you. Keep our bed warm for me.

Eternally Yours, 

A.

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Entry #011: Perks of Dying Before You're Dead

[from The Haunted Field Guide to Rotting Beautifully]

Classification: Pre-Departure Transfiguration

Category: Post-Vital Adaptation

Field Notes: Most often observed in haunted women, revenant girls, the emotionally taxidermied, and soft things that survive being gutted.

Observational Markers: A chronic absence of pulsing beneath the skin; eyes that never quite follow when the rest of you enters a room; sudden preference for decay over bloom; emotional responses slowed to a glacial drift.

Those displaying two or more of these markers may be in a state of Pre-Departure Transfiguration. This condition is not fatal. In fact, it is the origin of a curious new ecology in which the self is no longer tethered to the material plane, lacking vital signs of normalcy, niceness, or nervous smiles.

Field researchers are advised to approach with reverence and worship.

Known Benefits of Premature Death:

Camouflage Among the Living - The partially departed pass through crowds with spectral ease. Invisibility becomes a gift. You may haunt the grocery store, the bank, the dmv with peace.

Release from Social Contracts - Those who die before they are dead are no longer expected to pretend. No one will ask you to smile if your lips are sewn shut. No one expects grace when you’re dragging your limbs behind you. You can limp. You can hiss. You can grieve out loud. You can let the hunger show.

Temporal Elasticity - You are no longer beholden to clocks or calendars. Time dilates around your sorrow. You get to haunt the places that killed you, before they’ve killed you. You may rest. You may weep. You may rot beautifully. 

Reflective Skin - You become a mirror to the unexamined. They call you intense, unsettling, eerie, too much. Those are simply the sounds of their own souls knocking. They see the parts of themselves that were never allowed to draw breath, lived and died in you. 

Protection Against Predators - Sweetness stripped from your flesh leaves only bone. You are already spoiled, picked clean. You don’t have to be good, or soft, or palatable. The fruit of your tree is rife with worms. Those who came to consume will find no entry point. They will choke on your teeth.

Expanded Range of Motion - You may now wander freely between memory and myth. You may dress in mourning and moss. You may sleep beside lovers and corpses in the same bed. You may unhinge your jaw to swallow your yearning whole. You may bend back your own fingers to keep from reaching out. You may peel back your skin to feel the sun.

Cautionary Notes: Do not attempt to resurrect the early-dead. While intentions may seem pure–dipped in sugar and salvation–the living cannot understand their shape. Those who die before they are dead are not meant to return. Their purpose is to evolve. They are not failed, they are feral. 

Do not fear the flies. They know what is worth finding. They will guide you home. Do not brush them away. Do not flatten them. Do not trap them in jars. Let them crown you. Let them sing.

The already-rotted will always tell the truth because they are no longer trying to survive. They may come back meaner. Sharper. Hungrier. But they are not performing. They simply are. 

To my darling explorer, isn’t that what freedom really is?