piaoza

[piaoza]

Something about feeling that Phoebe Bridgers song (5:09, ‘I know the end’, a woman screaming) to the very core. Something about lying upside down on my bed so the tears have nowhere to go but to roll back past my ears and trace down my neck like a lover’s kiss. Something about crying, sitting up, and shaking as I do it; it’s too close to looking like laughter to be scary. The shivers, the chest heaving, the head hurting, the sad sips of wine and the hastily written poem. Something about the desperation of joining your hands in prayer to a god you’ve never fully believed in, something about being on your knees, something about begging. Something about not being held through the breaking but making it out of bed, even with puffy eyes, the next morning. Something about John Mayer singing, “And what about this feeling that I’m never good enough - will it wash out in the water or is it always in the blood?”. Something about hugging yourself through it, wrapping the old Christmas-colors themed blanket around you, putting on a sad song to make it worse. Something about being filled to the brim with emotion, something about the sheer feeling of being human almost spilling out of you. Something about the tears pouring, tumbling, rushing out of you like a glass full of bone-cold water teetering at the edge of the table. Something about teetering at the edge of the table, something about being a grenade about to tick off at any instant. Something about that sheer ability in you to break over and over and still go on living; about being filled with sadness and still feeling some little seed of hope take root in your chest and push out through the surface - almost like it was always there.

[piaoza]

this september came and went/ and all I did/ was everything

lord, I hope/ that october is sweet/ and filled with nothing

[piaoza]

God, if I am only a doormat,

Let me be a gentle one. I will not prick

At the soles of your feet as you

Walk all over me, love. I promise you.

[piaoza]

bubbles in the air:

how does something last for long

when destined to break?

[piaoza]

so the next time you cry,

remember that the sunset sky

was also once blue.

[piaoza]

the truth is that we are all broken. sometimes we prick and sometimes we bleed, but sometimes we complete each other. 

[piaoza]

how do I tell you, love/ that sometimes I have this impulse to cling to your hand/ and beg you to whisper in my ear/ or scream off the rooftops of the world/ that you would never leave me/ I’ve been left so often I don’t know if I am still myself/ or simply an abandoned museum/ of hollow spaces where friendship once rested/ I am less a home and more like/ that haunted house on the turn of our street/ we’ve loved it longer, at least, always planning to go in/ but ghosts can’t beg, so I don’t tell you to call/ though it’s the only thing that can save me now/ I’ve only known sunsets for so long/ that I’ve started to hate anything with colors in it/ ever-changing and beautiful and fucking treacherous/ they look like heaven but reveal the blues beneath/ so give me your shadows, please/ at least I know they won’t leave/ do you get what I’m saying, love?/ do you understand that I need you to tattoo the word ‘permanent’ into my bones/ inscribe a forever in them and/ promise me you’ll stay there/ promise me/ promise me

[piaoza]

i love you. i love you i love you i love you. 

this isn’t a confession. this is a prayer. 

i’d say it in church just as much as i’d whisper it in your ears. i love you.

don’t ask me what that means. like most believers, i don’t know. i just say it over and over till it makes sense. 

hoping to engrave it into your heart and mine, into the air we breathe and the skins we touch. into the world that will forget us. 

so i think about oblivion. and then i think about loving you. and nothing seems worthless anymore. 

suddenly, i’m okay with being temporary, if only you’d remember. because being human was the best thing you made me. merely human. that’s all i wanted to be. a person. for a moment, not poetry, or books, or history or all the other things i love. 

i wanted to be yours and i wanted it to be enough. and it was. 

being yours was enough. 

I love you. this is not a confession, this is a prayer.

[piaoza]

I’ve always been someone who loves winter fashion. Long coats and turtlenecks and jackets and oversized sweaters and everything that covers your skin in all the ways possible. But it’s summer now, summer in Paris. I wore a gorgeous brown cropped top, tight and small. It’s something so pretty I never thought I’d see myself in it. But I did, and you know what? I thought I looked stunning. I looked at pictures of myself from that day, me in the midst of charming little Parisian streets, me before the Louvre. Me showing a sliver of skin, only a sliver, of my stomach. 

I think back to the times I’ve broken down before the mirror because I couldn’t bear to face my scars. I think back to the start of the trip, one of those mornings when I had to tell myself things like, “Today I will not feel bad about my body.” And then I did, anyway. 

But today, I saw myself in a gorgeous brown cropped top. One of those pretty little things that always lie in the back of my closet. I finally dusted it off and wore it. In the picture, I’m smiling. I’m smiling as wide as ever. I remember feeling confident that day, walking with my chin up and hair flying in the Paris wind, in something I never thought I’d wear. 

I look closely at the picture, focusing on that thin sliver of skin. I notice a dark patch. It’s one of my scars. One of those things that sometimes made me hate my body. One of those things that made me feel like they destroyed me. But this time, my first thought isn’t disgust or repulsion. Isn’t that crazy? In fact, they’ve started to grow on me, to adorn me instead of spoil me, like the craters on the moon. I’ve started to feel beautiful. Not despite, but perhaps because of them. It’s a wonder, isn’t it? Who knew I only needed something so trivial to feel beautiful again. 

So you know what? Wear your little brown cropped top. Wear that small dress you never thought you would. All those pretty clothes you stuff in the back of your drawer, everything that’s been gathering dust, all this long. Take it out. Look at yourself in the mirror, and tell yourself you’ll be beautiful anyway. Show that sliver of skin you’ve never been proud of. Take that jacket off and walk with your head held high. Take pictures in the sun and smile wide and goofy, one of those smiles you’d rarely give. Because maybe the same scars that made you break down will make you feel beautiful this time. Maybe it will only take a picture for you to love yourself again. 

[piaoza]

conversations with friends

sally rooney has this way of writing about humans that makes everything about us seem so heard and seen. I’ve noticed this in her other 2 books as well, and I’ll say it over and over. the way she writes about little human mannerisms and body languages, not to mention the things they say and the way they perceive the world, their flaws and their strengths. and, of course, as is the dominant theme in all of her works, the relationships they form with each other. complex individuals forming complicated relationships and struggling and healing, somehow in the same process. 

her female protagonists are always shown as cold, emotionless, and also really tough women. or at least that’s how they’re perceived. it’s, again, a dominant theme that presides over the other characters. anyway they’re all sort of pretentious, too, which is something I’ve heard before about her work. I don’t disagree but I think that instead of making the book unappealing it just adds to the genius of it, at least sometimes if not always. 

the way the book progresses always has things falling apart and over and over until you reach the end and you’re filled with this satisfied, if not warm, feeling. bwway left me with tear-stained and filled my heart up ineffably. normal people had me rooting for the characters despite everything. and conversations with friends had me feeling like I’d been enlightened about this whole new side of human relationships, with not just one person but more, that I never considered before. I think that’s a major thing sally rooney does. she brings things about ourselves and our own mind to light through these messy characters and their messy lives and she, in some ways, changes or broadens your thinking. this is something she’s done for me in every book I’ve read by her. 

I think the charm of sally rooney is really subtle. either you get it or you don’t. when I was reading this book, I didn’t know if I was gonna love it a lot. anyway, the second half and the climaxes proved me wrong. her writing, though amazing throughout, got even more beautiful ahead. she has this way of making me love her work. it’s brilliant, which is something I can’t deny, even though I think I’d place her other works above this one. 

I love the way she can make me view life and humans and their relationships with each other in a completely different light. she doesn’t try to persuade or educate, simply emphasize that there are people who lead lives like this, too. that everyone lives differently and everything is messy, and that’s okay, that’s valid, and that doesn’t make you less of a person, certainly not less of a good person. you can love someone without being their ‘girlfriend’, you can love two people at once, you can love someone who’s in love with someone else. such is the nature of human hearts and minds.

these are the people sally rooney writes about. the messy ones who feel unheard anywhere else. 

[piaoza]

slip of tongue. a whispered “i love you”, almost inaudible. you say it was a mistake, but do you know what it sounded like to me? it sounded like the answer a god would give when i am praying to him.

pia

[piaoza]

have you ever been to church

have you ever been to church?/ if not, meet me/ at our favorite spot/ that darkened stairway/ a ‘nothing’ we made ours/ is that not religion in itself? wrenching meaning/ out of a life that has none?/ that’s us/ except we love to sin/ so kiss me when you’re not supposed to/ god doesn’t give a shit/ let’s skip church today/ meet me in that darkened stairway/ I can teach you better ways to pray

[piaoza]

cleopatra & Frankenstein

coco mellors’ writing is like sally rooney but less intense and more funny. that says a lot already. both of them have these ways of bringing absolutely unique and different characters to the table, to describe complex relationships between complicated individuals, to show how they hurt and heal one another. 

I’ll admit, it took me some time to get into the book. the first chapter was witty and interesting and hooked me to cleo and frank’s dynamic almost instantly, but further on, the book got slower and slower. that’s when I realized this is a ‘no plot just vibes’ kinda novel. nevertheless, the writing was good enough to keep me going. most of it was simple and easygoing but it had these moments where it took your breath away, and that’s what I loved about it. it wasn’t too intense, nor too ambitious to be extremely poetic or deep. it was just. just enough. 

it described the fundamental flaws of human beings and their relationships with each other super well. for more than half of the book, I thought cleo and frank were gonna be forever. but the book highlighted the importance of circumstance, how every little thing in your life makes you and breaks you. from their childhoods to their parents to their careers to all their other friends. anything can go right and anything can go wrong at any time, and the novel showed the fragility of that truth. 

but it also reassured us, seemed to tell us that everything, in the end, will be okay. and that that isn’t a cliché. ‘okay’, in the way the book seems to say it, means that you’ll always be broken, but you’ll find people who’ll be broken with you. or you’ll find people less broken than you, who’ll hold you through it all anyway. 

‘cause this was a book filled with shattered personalities, a mosaic of beautiful ruins. they made mistakes. they made some more. they didn’t stop. but they still loved. they laughed. they lived on. 

the side characters were well-written too. I loved Zoe, and Santiago and Eleanor especially. Quentin, I feel, wasn’t given enough depth. overall, the multiple POVs thing worked fine. although I found myself always leaning towards cleo and frank. the only other character I enjoyed just as much, if not more, was Eleanor. her POV was always so raw, funny, and overall well-written and believable and relatable. she was probably one of my favourite characters. 

I think the book carries an appeal because it seems to constantly remind us how flawed and complicated we are, also telling us we aren’t alone in being that way. and that it’s okay. it opens up this vulnerable way of being human and brings out the beauty in that. 

you will hate and love the characters, just as you hate and love yourself. 

[piaoza]

the best thing you make me feel is human

[piaoza]

my favorite part of my body/ is what it becomes when you’re close to me/ how you make it feel heavenly/ in a run-down stairway or a darkened alley/ how you hold on to the littlest parts of my fingers/ because no one ever taught us when to let go/ so don’t/ my favorite part of my body/ is what it becomes when you’re close to me/ what is poetry/ before the way you write me anew/ when you touch me?/ what are words/ if not the little things you whisper in my ear?/ what is a world/ if not the one we make for ourselves/ my hand in your hair, foreheads pressed together/ just two broken hearts/ learning to be whole/ teach me how to be yours/ lead me home/ my favorite part of my body/ is the one you hold

[piaoza]

my favorite part of my body/ is what it becomes when you’re close to me 

[piaoza]

I love the way your curly hair/ falls in tangles on your face/ I love your mind/ the one that reads Dostoyevsky/ creates gorgeous original sketches/ on everything from textbooks to benches/ and also writes that rare, classic, short-lined, indecipherable (but also beautiful) Nistha-poetry/ I love your always-sleepy voice, from the first time I heard it/ I love your underground-indie music taste/ and the song you made me listen to in the train/ I love the way your head feels on my shoulder/ and I love punching your rock-hard abs/ I love the unnecessary details of your day/ and the way we eye each other when they’re gossip to be shared later/ I love how each time we laugh together, everything feels okay/ I love that you love tea as much as I do/ I love dancing with you/ but most of all, I love us/ being uncool/ together