parvanehhh

[parvanehhh]

things no longer mean as much to me. 19-year old me would hoard all of these feelings and file them down into sharp toothpicks to gingerly touch sensitive teeth, feeling pricks of pain and writing them off as something meaningful, something good, something worth living for. i am not very careful with memories anymore, things happen to me and i let them. i still tuck away receipts and tickets, flowers and photos. just not anywhere that means anything. i find ticket stubs in the side pocket of my bag, crushed along with loose change, flowers in old files and there are soft flickers of memories, but not a lot of feeling. i feel cautiously now, i am scared of attaching significance to anything, because i am scared it will hurt and i will have to sit with that hurt and nurse it till it heals over old wounds, like a bumpy landscape of regret you can only look at with binoculars because of course they have to be blown out of proportion.

i have grown to realise how little words can mean, so i use them sparingly now. or maybe words carry more weight now and that scares me, because i see what words do in the wrong places. sometimes i wonder if i did this to myself on purpose, because the pain of having lost something hurt me enough to never want to have to experience it again. i look at the rest of my year with dread that manifests as gut-wrenching anxiety every single morning, razor-sharp pain shooting through my chest at 6:30 am, forcing me out of bed and in front of a spotty mirror that shows several days old kajal enhanced crease lines.

i cry whenever i feel like it, but most often across the road from my house, next to an opening on the divider, then blow into my hands and press my palms to my eyes, take deep breaths and tell my mother the sandwiches she made were great. the bus broke down. shivaniya’s mother is in the hospital again. i am surprised i can still take in things, albeit subconsciously and make decisions and watch them have meaning and sometimes, foolish consequences. i pick myself back up far too easily, reverting back to old habits half-heartedly, because i have grown enough to know much better, but i crave familiarity. even if its familiar pain. i sometimes almost open my mouth and say things that would show i care, but i blink slowly and decide its not worth it and bite on my lip and let my mind go paper-white. come to think of it, the most hurt i feel is in the past, they resurface sometimes and i wonder just how differently people look at me, and if i really want to trust them, but then i remember i am exhausted and angry and tired and i can’t even if i feel like the pain would make me feel something. things aren’t special. ah thats what it is. they are just things. today is just a day. they are just people. this is just a place. this is just coffee.

i have been called many unsavoury things of late, and surprisingly, it is only women who have to say these things about me. i am not very sure how i feel about that, but i think that makes me not-a-very-nice-person. and thats okay. everything is okay. everything will be okay. i map out futures like i used to before, but that is it. i map them with no intention of doing anything with that information. i do things that make me feel something, a brief respite, even if its soft and in the background. i think in hours, in days, rarely in weeks and never in years. never. i cannot see past the next three months. and sometimes i want to tell people all of this, but i am tired and so are they, so i tell them little bits and they listen and i listen and we realise neither is equipped to answer it any better. we offer shoulders and hands and coffees because that is all we are capable of doing and that is okay. everything is okay. everything will be okay. it always is. but i also miss being excited about things. i miss doing things with intention and love and the prospect of something good. it makes me sad but it also reminds me that i need some time to myself, that i am incredibly burnt out and i will only make things worse if i make decisions that have shelf-lives of more than two weeks.

i still do things. i make postcards and write birthday texts with several hearts and i draw for people and make them playlists. i do them because i know that if i dont, i risk losing a lot of the things that make me me, and i dont have a lot to look forward to, so id like the satisfaction of knowing i did something for someone, that i was someone to someone. my mother asks for my help a lot more now, i decide travel plans and pick lunches, draft texts and emails and remember things she’s forgotten. i do things i didnt know i would ever be able to do, and i remember those times with posts like this, so i know, faintly, that it will be okay. that’s enough. for now. for today. i would not say no to having someone to come home to, but there is far too much hurt, far too much to unpack, and so much energy spent on the wrong people that the thought of accommodating another person feels like such a task.

i am also tired of being called spoilt because i say lets go to starbucks so i can order drinks that are the only reminders i have of people i no longer know. i am tired of being called difficult when all i am trying to do is catch a break and breathe without feeling my heart drop. i am trying to be less to you and you still have not-so-nice-things to say. anyway. things are rarely worth the effort they require. so why try at all? i am not speaking from a healthy state of mind, but i need to get all of this out, don’t give half a fuck if you care or not, just maybe think you are being unkind and unfair. i feel like telling you more then wonder if its worth the extra two minutes. probably not.

i think it takes a lot of pain to make someone stop loving loudly.

[parvanehhh]

its funny how many songs i remember, i can sing along to so many of them, like this one. sweet caroline. ta ta ta. a horse with no name, which i misheard for several years. cat stevens and neil diamond and the beatles. simon and garfunkel. butterfly kisses. my dad played a lot of music in the houses i grew up in and if he plays anything now, ill hum under my breath, and everytime i do, its like remembering a lovely lost memory. id sit in front of a music player that worked poorly and listen to these songs on repeat. my taste in music isnt very different now, its soft and well written, about women who believe in hope despite everything and have been hurt too often. fuck, the eagles and journey. kansas. i remember telling my mum id love to have butterfly kisses played at my wedding. i dont want to get married anymore because i think id be a terrible partner and a worse mother.

[parvanehhh]

i like dogs. i smile at them and say hello, sometimes forgetting that not a lot of people do this. i hated my ex’s dogs. they were loud and slobbery, always tied up and humping each other. in my dreams, our fingers are pressed into mattresses, the backs of our knuckles have feather cuts from concrete walls, sand slipping into them.

[parvanehhh]

whatever was left, that was ours for a while.

sunrise - louise glück

LizzieOrmian.redbubble.com

[parvanehhh]

Yes, I am an adult. Yes, I watch movies for children. Yes, I sometimes watch tv shows targeted at teenagers. Yes, I read young adult books about 16 year olds. Yes, I obsess over pieces of media and get into fandoms.

No, I'm not ashamed of it.

[parvanehhh]

Lora Mathis

[parvanehhh]

I made a baby blanket for a pregnant woman at work and I went back and forth about it like “is this weird? To like hand make something for someone when we’re like friendly acquaintances not like bffs. God why are you so fucking awkward.” Anyway I gave it to her and she said she loved it and in the back of my head I’m like yea she’s nice and probably just humoring the weirdo. Well she texted me a picture this weekend of a scrunchy faced newborn at the hospital wrapped in the blanket I made her. And I’m like. Wow. She loved it so much she took it with her! To the hospital! To give birth! She wrapped her newborn it! I am just so filled with love and joy right now.

People will love the things you make them. Because you thought of them and you cared.

[parvanehhh]

i think everyone needs a god of some kind. and by that i don’t strictly mean religion. you need something that’s bigger than yourself, that you can anchor yourself to whenever you feel lost—whether it be nature, the moon, the sea…

[parvanehhh]

[tearing at my hair] no love however brief is wasted no love however brief is wasted no love however brief is wasted

[parvanehhh]

you realise you’ve become a hoarder. you hide feelings in pressed parijat and dissected zinnia, forgetting and remembering them when you see an army of ghost ants occupying your drawer. you throw the flowers out and pick new ones from the sickly-sweet overabundance nestled between pink lily tongues. this time you hammer the flowers against paper, watching their orange centers bleed across white. you save bus tickets. a pointillistic drawing of the windows at the senate house. receipts for iced tea. vodka. half-written recipes and overly dramatic proclamations of love buried in margins. there are a lot of dates, a lot of pauses. so much uncertainty. the writing gets hesitant with time, like you’re questioning the truth in singular feelings. you center a lot of your feelings on your favourite things- (hands) pressing into walls, with feather cuts that drip cherry (and fruit) red (and colours). hands breaking fruit into perfect quarters (numbers?). hands that trace the insides of pitted peaches and turn them inside out, pointing fingers at you like an empty promise.

[parvanehhh]

claire schwartz, from poetry rx as featured in the paris review

[parvanehhh]

I want to make people see how much has been taken away from them.

Did you know that there are dozens of species of fireflies, and some of them light up with a blue glow? Did you know about the moths? There are thousands of them, bright pink and raspberry orange and checkerboard and emerald. They are called things like Black-Etched Prominent, Purple Fairy, Pink-Legged Tiger, Small Mossy Glyph and Black-Bordered Lemon.

Did you know that there are moths that feed on lichens? Did you know about the blue and green bees? The rainbow-colored dogbane beetles? Your streams are supposed to teem with newts, salamanders, crawdads, frogs, and fishes. I want to take you by the hand and show you an animal you've never seen before, and say, "This exists! It's real! It's alive!"

There are secret wildflowers that no website will show you and that no list entitled "native species to attract butterflies!" will name. Every day I'm at work I see a new plant I didn't know existed.

The purple coneflowers and prairie blazing star are a tidepool, a puddle, and there is an ocean out there. There are wildflowers that only grow in a few specific counties in a single state in the United States, there are plants that are evolved specifically to live underneath the drip line of a dolomite cliff or on the border of a glade of exposed limestone bedrock. Did you know that different species of moss grow on the sides of a boulder vs. on top of it?

There are obscure trees you might have never seen—Sourwood, Yellowwood, Overcup Oak, Ninebark, Mountain Stewartia, Striped Maple, American Hophornbeam, Rusty Blackhaw, Kentucky Coffeetree. There are edible fruits you've never even heard of.

And it is so scary and sad that so many people live and work in environments where most of these wondrous living things have been locally extirpated.

There are vast tracts of suburb and town and city and barren pasture where a person could plausibly never learn of the existence of the vast majority of their native plants and animals, where a person might never imagine just how many there are, because they've only ever been exposed to the tiny handful of living things that can survive in a suburb and they have no reason to extrapolate that there are ten thousand more that no one is talking about.

It's like being a fish that has lived its whole life in a bucket, with no way of imagining the ocean. The insects in your field guide are a fraction of those that exist, of all the native plants to your area only a handful can be bought in a nursery.

Welcome to the Earth! It's beautiful! It's full of life! More things are real and beautiful and alive than a single person could imagine!!!

[parvanehhh]

Lisel Mueller, “Daughter” [ID in ALT]

[parvanehhh]

when the loneliness of solitary adulthood in winter feels like a physical, scalding pain

[parvanehhh]

and I'm sorry I left, but it was for the best my little dove...

absolute solitude: selected poems, dulce maria loynaz (tr. james o'connor) // the glass essay, anne carson // litany in which certain things are crossed out, richard siken // @uglyfruit // yves olade // hunger, harry styles // a not admitting of the wound, emily dickinson // no surprises, radiohead // fourth of July, sufjan stevens

[parvanehhh]

little forest (2018) dir. yim soon-rye

[parvanehhh]

Little Forest (2018) -  Yim Soon-rye