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Do you still have the Please let him be Happy poem up? I want to read the original thing Ive seen bits and pieces of it but i would love to read it fully💕

hello darling! you can find that poem here!

this ask has been a useful lesson in the complete un-searchability of this blog. my more recent works are generally tagged with the title and/or opening line, but that doesn't help for the older pieces. the only tip i have for those is that all my poems are tagged #poetics, and the more popular ones are (admittedly inconsistently) tagged by number of notes.

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— excerpt from the gentle version by sylvie

you know i learned from someone...very special... that no matter what happened in the past, it's never too late to build something new. someone worth building it for.

roh’s favourites: ekko & jinx/powder in arcane

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and bless the daughter but fuck the family

it lingers for your whole life - katie maria/the sun is also a star - nicola yoon/the lost girls: a poetry collection on girlhood, grief, and growing up - lyra wren/crush - richard siken/unknown/on earth we're briefly gorgeous - ocean vuong/ @emmajadepaige/stick season - noah kahan/promises of gold - josé olivarez/matilda - harry styles/susan smith - wych elm/tangerine - nolune/#6 - aroara/right now - gracie abrams/love & a loaded gun - emily rose cole/someday I'll love - ocean vuong/ @parentless-suggestions/unknown/the burning - venetta octavia/you can love him but you can't keep him - @pencap/a poem from the adult daughter to the narcissistic mother: not your fault, not mine, just is - katherine fabrizio/courtney love prays to oregon - clementine von radics

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be gentle, my lover

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every once in a while someone who only knows me & my poetry via tumblr osmosis and/or my more recent works instead of the 2014 stucky days discovers that it is not actually an accident that many of my poems from that era are so stucky coded

and it always brings me a lot of delight

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i am also reminded that part of hwat makes poetry good is the vulnerability of it. the laying bare and naked of it all, the beautiful and the ugly and the bone-deep fear and the heart-leaping joy and everything in between.

it is terrifying and it is difficult but it is also where the most powerful words live

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Nathaniel Orion G. K. / 11.21.24

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hello! do you mind sharing your ao3? i read a fic of yours a few years back that i really want to revisit but cannot for the life of me find it!

hello my love! I am not and have never been on ao3, at least not under this username. I know there's a fair number of fics out there using various bits and pieces of my poetry as titles / end notes / inspiration / etc, so perhaps that is what you remember?

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@usergif’s back to cool event ღ CHALLENGE #5: GROWTH Please, let her be happy. (original.)

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Broken glass, rain, heartache

sometimes a dream shatters like broken glass sharp-edged pieces ready to cut and the future you saw through it vanishes like a mirage leaving behind only darkness.

but darling, we make mosaics and murals of stained glass and rose windows in cathedrals out of broken glass.

the heartache is bitter and sore and bone-deep

but the heart is a strong muscle steady and dependable and unceasing and it will beat on and you will beat on.

so cry with the rain. rage with the thunder. tear the sky with the lightning. let your heart grieve and bleed and scream.

and tomorrow the sun will rise again. the seedlings will rise from new-damp soil

and you will, too. and we will, too.

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bergamot, cherry, clove mayhaps? 💖 your writing is an inspiration, by the way. keep doing what you do because it's amazing <3

thank you for both the prompt and the kind words, darling. they're both very dear to me.

a hint of bergamot in the morning sunny and fresh as a sunrise steaming from a cup of earl grey swirling with milk and a drizzle of honey-- and i breathe spring into my lungs like a baby bird curled between my ribs delicate and singing and hopeful. a burst of cherries in my mouth round and insistent as the afternoon heat stolen from the bowl waiting by the stove gently bubbling with sugar and fruit-- and i taste summer on my tongue like childhood laughter ringing on the street bold and juicy and full of life. a slow rise of pumpkin in the oven easy and lazy as drifting leaves mixed by loving hands into gentle dough laden with cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves-- and i wrap fall around my shoulders like the embrace of a favourite sweater warm and soft and comforting. winter is on the horizon now with ice on the wind ready to freeze over and grey skies weighed down by the year gone by but the hearth is merry with fire to steep earl grey tea and to cook down cherry jam and to bake pumpkin bread and the heart is merry with memories and i hold the seasons in my body.

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Yay! Word prompts 😊 mine words are - girl, fire and wolf

you can call me delicate, bright and pretty as a candleflame safely trapped in the jar breathing perfumed air into the room.

but i know a candleflame can become a wildfire and still holds the same burning, devouring hunger.

you can think me docile, sweet and tame as a pet dog well-trained at the end of the leash rolling over to show you my soft belly.

but i know a dog was once a wolf and still harbours the same sharp teeth and wild instincts.

yes, i am a pretty little thing delicate and docile and hungry like fire wild like a wolf

yes, i am a pretty little thing devouring and sharp-toothed like a girl.

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so happy you're back. Your words are beautifully crafted and a joy to read. Perhaps: reverence, overwhelm, golden

in the golden light of day when the sun is warm and bright and smiling it is easy to smile back at the endless blue sky with gratitude and reverence and hope.

but in the deepest dark of night when the heavens are cold and closed and uncaring it is easy to get lost in the endless black gloom full of fear and rage and despair.

it's alright, darling. it's alright. just because you are lost does not mean you will never find your way again. it's alright. i promise.

the cold dark may overwhelm you but remember that the stars are there even in the dark even in the moonless night even if the clouds hide them away and they are watching over you.

and someday at some forgotten hour even the endless night will end and the sun will rise again.

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wilt, shoulder, promised

you planted yourself a garden row by carefully measured row seed by lovingly buried seed and you nurtured it green day by warmly shining daylight drop by softly falling raindrop and you loved it plentiful fruit by sugar-sweet fruit flower by fresh-fragrant flower

the garden you planted and nurtured and loved is dull and dry and dead now.

but my darling, green-thumbed eve do not yet turn your back on eden and walk away with leaden heart and hunched shoulders and weary feet.

the leaves may wilt into curls today and shatter to brittle pieces under uncaring footsteps.

the fruits may ripen to spoil tomorrow and rot into sweet-stained mush under its own tree's shadow. but still the seasons will turn and spring will come again green and plentiful and promised--

even to you even to your garden.

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I'm so thrilled to hear this blog is sparking joy for you again! I've been moved and inspired by your poetry since the moment I discovered your words over seven years ago. Thank you sincerely for the ways you have fed my soul, and welcome back! Wishing all good things for you & hoping you are well ❤️❤️ (3 words if you want to use them, but no pressure: prophet, circumstance, toll)

thank you for the lovely words! it's always so so heartwarming to hear folks find some kind of meaning in my poetry. wishing all the good things back to you, sweetheart.

so here i stand at the end of days, bare-handed and empty-chested with no more blades left to wield and no more hope left to shield. and there you stand at the end of days cold-lipped and thin-hearted with no more words left to say and no more hearts left to sway. i would make myself prophet, word by knife-edged word if only it would let me speak you back to me. i would pay the toll in my blood, drop by poison-fang drop if only it would let me cross the burnt bridges back to you. my darling apocalypse, my beloved calapmity, my sweetest devastation-- i do not much care if the road we re-trod would lead us right back here to this battlefield at the end of days where all things must end where you and i must end. if only i could stand next to you at the end of days side by side hand in hand heart to heart

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it seems I am a little too rusty and out of the habit of regular writing to spontaneously produce poems very often. so i'm re-opening prompts! three word prompts are traditional around here, but feel free to send me other types of prompts as well if you'd like

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Hey your poetry is so pretty and evoking and I've gotten back into practicing fiction writing in recent years but in my own criticism I don't think my prose is very evocative. It gets the job done and I think my stories are readable and enjoyable, but I don't think my descriptive language is particularly striking and I would like to improve on that! Sometimes I read and the author has used such creative brilliant metaphors and descriptors etc and it comes across as artistic genius. So, if you have any tips and time to share them I would love to hear about how you select your descriptors, if there's any advice you've heard before on this, etc. <3 feel like my brain simply can't come up with creative language after my decade long break lol

Hello, darling! Thank you for the kind words. I don't exactly have a formal process, but I can share some of what works for me.

The simplest, truest, and least fun advice I have is just this: practice. Practice, practice, practice. The more descriptive writing you do, the better you'll become at it. It's much easier said than done, I know--it's been months since I've posted anything here myself--but it's unfortunately true.

But beyond that, in terms of strategies, I have a couple. I think "evocative" can mean a lot of things, but it sounds like you're specifically thinking about description (as opposed to, say, emotionally evocative) so I'll focus on that. I'm gonna reference january 2nd a bunch, just for concrete examples.

Having a clear image to start with always helps. So when I wrote january 2nd, for example, I had a vivid mental image of an empty beach at dawn, practically abandoned 24 hours after thousands of people crowded together to watch the first sunrise of the year. The stretched out horizon, the dark blue twilight overhead and pale hazy dawn on the eastern edge, the shy peek of the topmost edge of the sun, the soothing ceaseless rush of the waves, the clear expanse and white-foam edges of the water, all of it. The loneliness of it, sure, but also the freedom of it. The quiet and the peace.

It also helps ot have a why. What are you trying to achieve with your description? Often in poetry I'm going for a specific emotional or visual effect, so I try to focus as much as I can on the pieces that resonate for that. In january 2nd, it was the horizon in particular. Nothing in the poem actually mentions a beach, even though that's part of my mental image, because the beach wasn't as important or effective. The sky and the horizon is what worked for the emotional tone, for me. Specifically their openness. Not the light, not the darkness, not the water, but being open, so that's what the first stanza revolves around.

If you're going for "fresh" / "interesting" / "unexpected" / etc. I like to play around with one of three things. One is transferring descriptors from one target to another. (In january 2nd, I take crowded from jostling people on the beach and transfer it to the horizon.) I think these are most fun when you take human(-adjacent) descriptors and put it on inanimate objects / the environment, but that's just my taste. Another trick is to try for hyphenates, which didn't come up in january 2nd. But two of my recent favourites are in Precious: sleep-warm and heartbeat-quiet. sleep-warm is about evoking both the cozy comfort of sleep and the warmth of holding a living, breathing animal in your hands. heartbeat-quiet is about both the volume and the intimacy and the repetitive rhythm of it. The thrid trick is simple and boring and exhilarating when it works, and that's playing around with synonyms. I remember sacred weight of the untouched being difficult. Is it sacred or precious or treasured or holy? Is it untouched or new or young or innocent or unsullied or pure? Try them out and pick the one that feels right, or at least feels the best.

Sometimes I'll think about sound, though not in janary 2nd. soothing ceaseless rush a few paragraphs ago was a deliberate sound-based choice, though. That repeated s-sound feels and sounds like waves. Sometimes I'll think about rhythm, although that's a bit more important in poetry than prose. Sometimes I'll think about length--of the overall description, of the specific phrase or sentence, of the words themselves. Rule of three feels good to me and you'll very often see me write things in triplets (young and fresh and new), frankly a bit more often than I wish I did. Short words can bring emphasis, or abruptness, or simplicity. Long descriptions can be more flowing, fluid, relaxed.

Almost every and any element of language can be leveraged for descriptive power. You'll rarely if every use all of them at once, but it's fun to try many of them out. Maybe you'll figure out versions that feel easiest or best for you.

Alright, I think that's long enough! If you had a specific line or poem in mind, I'm happy to break it down further. Caveat that some of the pieces on this blog are quite old and I might not entirely remember what went through my mind years and years ago, of course.