ragesingoddess

[ragesingoddess]

sharing a wip of something I've been writing for god knows how long now, hoping somehow exposure will convince me to actually finish it

"That night, Todd dreams of Neil.

Dreaming of Neil is something that although he'd never dare to admit, he's rather accustomed to. Having to sleep in the same room as Neil every night is more torturous than one would think. Neil's presence has a charming tendency to fill the corners of every room he is in, impossible to ignore or shake off. And for some reason that he still can't quite explain, that ability seemed to extend to the the subconscious part of Todd's brain because for as long as him and Neil have been sharing a room he can't fucking stop dreaming about him.

The dreams are not always about Neil- most of the time he is just there, his presence as warm and steady as it always is in the real world. He is there in good dreams and in nightmares and he always vanishes just a few seconds before Todd shakes himself awake.

He dreams about Neil drowning. They're in the lake just outside Wellton and Todd is sitting in the pier just like he's done hundreds of times before. They lake is not deep but Neil keeps saying that he can no longer swim and no matter how much Todd screams or tries to help him his hands keep staying glues against his sides, unable to reach out to help his friend from vanishing.

He wakes up with palms clenching the wrinkly bedsheets, and even if his eyes were not already stained with tears, the freshly washed sheets would be enough to break him, so foreign and carrying nothing of Neil's scent that he's tried so hard to etch into his memory.

.

Dear Todd,

I sincerely hope you are all holding up well. Tell the rest of the boys to rest easy; I'm sure no one Hellton manages to hire will torment them more that I did just to pass English.

I'm returning to London the following week, and although goodbyes (to both people and places) are always heavy to bear, the air of possibility hums pleasantly around me. There's always more to see, always new things to experience. No matter how much pain we endure, how hopeless we may find ourselves feeling the birds will sing in the morning and winter will  always gently give way to spring. The thought brings me some shallow comfort; I hope it can lift a weight off of you, too.

I tried writing to Mr. Perry but I've never received a response. I never expected to, in any case. My thought are always with him, and with you.

When you see him tell him I send him my kindest regards and my sincerest apologies.

If you have a bit more time, tell him he needs to cling on life like a starved man. Tell him he needs to cradle his life and all of its miseries and joys in his hands and tuck them painfully back into his chest and try to spill out nothing. Tell him he needs to understand how precious and lonely and incredible it is to be a living thing that exists under the sun and gets to experience the world with all of its pain and all of its glory.

Our lives are poems, chaste and precious. We need to hold the crumbled, messy pages of our hearts and remind ourselves that art will always be better than emptiness.

I hope you are still writing poetry. Keep writing even when it feels hopeless, even when it makes you sad. There's salvation in language. My advice is to try and remember.

Don't think of me too often. I guess I already said I've always struggled with goodbyes,

John Keating.

.

Todd carefully slips the latter back into the envelope and tucks it between the pages of his chemistry book where he knows no one will look for it. His mind keeps on replaying Keatings words over and over until they threaten to lose meaning.

Tell him he needs to cling on life like a starved man.

He thinks back to the Neil he met the first day he arrived in Wellton. The one with the bright smiles that showed all his teeth. He tries to associate that image with Neil's broken face after the play, the face that he only got a glimpse of before his father shoved him into a car but the face that haunts him every time he closes his eyes.

Neil always hated talking about his father. Whenever Todd would try to get him to open up Neil would just laugh dismissively and brush the topic off, bringing the conversation back to Shakespeare and study groups or whatever poet he'd been reading about this month. And selfishly Todd would let him, too drunk on the sweet ring of Neil's voice, too in love with the way his eyes lit up whenever he talked about his passions. He thought he was keeping him happy.

But now can't help thinking about how he should have tried harder, how he should have been able to see through Neil's softest smiles, how he should have never been that fooled by the image Neil liked presenting of himself. How he should have held him tighter instead of flinching away from his touch like it burnt him. How it would have been preferable for him to burn than have Neil lose the childish awe with which he saw the world.

The window on the room is open and he lets the wind run softly against his hair, tries to remind himself to even his breathing out before he's too caught up in his own head again.

He gets up from his bed and grabs a notebook, takes a pencil from his desk and then sits down again. His hand hovers above the page for a while, indecisive but when he pressed against the paper his moments are firm.

Incomplete list of  reasons life is worth clinging into [...]

[ragesingoddess]

NATIONAL HOLIDAY

[ID: Two screencaps from Black Sails ep X showing John SIlver standing alone beneath a skylight in the ship's galley. Captions show him saying "An account of goings-on, volume the first on this 13th day in June". End ID]

[ragesingoddess]

✨ peace and love on planet earth 🫶✨

[ragesingoddess]

this is so fun i need to make more homoerotic twin cinema poems thank you and goodbye

[ragesingoddess]

as a very dedicated adansey enjoyer that hadn't caught up with fandom news recently its safe to say that im going through the entire five stages of grief learning about everything that's been cut off of the raven boys graphic novel

[ragesingoddess]

Pirate show fanart🤺

[ragesingoddess]

Virginia Woolf, from The Waves

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[ragesingoddess]

vox machina memes part 1

[ragesingoddess]

The Legend of Vox Machina is a deeply philosophical show that asks important questions such as: “what if the Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov had a gun?”

[ragesingoddess]

The Waves - Virginia Woolf

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[ragesingoddess]

thinking about how john silver only became the villain of the story because of how much he loved

[ragesingoddess]

Your eyes aren’t rivers there to weep, but a place for crows to rest their feet

[ragesingoddess]

Siblings in crisis

[ragesingoddess]

been watching my friend play hades

[ragesingoddess]

I think Diomedes should be allowed to kill a god. Like. Full on murder an olympian in front of everyone. I think that would be a good enrichment for him