shattermoon

[shattermoon]

Missed Time, Ha Jin

[shattermoon]

palindrome - 06.05.25 howling at the moon like hungry ghosts took a scoop out of my chest lonesome, threadbare patches cracked and dry at the collar boots cracking black ice warning shots for the blank lake below the collar through worn bone dust threadbare, lonesome

the wind calls through the home of ravenous spirits: my empty ribcage I howl at the moon, but damn all howls back

[shattermoon]

some people are meant to be happy they can sluice off the specter of loss long enough to repeatedly throw themselves into the fray of life -- delusional, an increasingly fragile coping mechanism, but still happy. I can not. happiness fits unnaturally on me like ragged lamb's skin. I've had to claw my way to it, had it given to me by benevolent others but it will never stick to me, never come easy, especially now. when I've seen all life has to offer me and know I've already gotten the best I will get. the rest is just a countdown. I think my thoughts used to matter, this mad dash of character development I didn't want that drove me insane but brought me forward but now I've lost interest, they've lost interest, no one really gives a shit about the broken record the broken clock that's right twice a day

at least I have something to live for - the tie that binds my other ties feel severed from the other side defeated by their ghosts and the world marches on and maybe I got better. but maybe things still get worse. fate curls her wicked lip against my neck. "you thought you could be happy?"

[shattermoon]

witness - 06.20.22

when they’ve been wrapped inside  the folds of your cerebellum,  cradling your amygdala and hooking a limb  around the spiral staircase of your brainstem, 

you feel more than naked. skin and viscera and bone flayed down  to the pitted and bleeding  core of you

you haven't ever peeled these raw pieces of yourself back  with a witness, had someone holding the shake of your shoulders  between their cupped hands 

salt offering, your breath like water over river stone gripping the memories like blocks of ice, frostbite of longing in your fingertips.

how to withstand the ache of trust and safety? how to commit the memories to stone as they burn you with grief? scraping fleeting seconds of connection from late night conversations, following the tail of love’s comet into the black

you haven’t ever given the raw pieces of yourself in unholy communion with a new soul until now.

[shattermoon]

I think you're right, good things are temporary and suffering is eternal, and some of us aren't meant for happiness, and sometimes we're fundamentally broken and can't be fixed

[shattermoon]

— T. James (via letsbelonelytogetherr)

[shattermoon]

I think learning to hope was a fucking mistake

[shattermoon]

Joy Sullivan, from Instructions for Traveling West: Poems; “Howl”

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[shattermoon]

Joy Sullivan, from “On Days I Hate My Body, I Remember Redwoods”, Instructions for Traveling West

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trail cam footage paintings

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countdown to geography of wounds

from W-A-N-T by k.c cramm

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dreaming in rainy graveyards

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calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.

[shattermoon]

it's sweeter, tonight: honey and sunlight that doesn't burn

"A soft joy," he says. hunger to sate a craving rather than to meet a need and tender fluttering wings.

"and the pleasure?" (yes. you hold gems between my ribs.) "That's all over you. Your skin sings with it."

[shattermoon]

the night we first fucked I did not sleep.

it was a Saturday, early March, our gin and rum stained lips catching flesh well into the devil's hours, and then a shower in which I dissolved into incongruous tears

(you told me later you thought "oh fuck, what have I done?" when after our pleasure ended our intimacy gave way to my panic.)

(when in truth, I was just drunk) (by choice, on purpose) (your concern about that later a balm but unwarranted. I meet fate deliberately, rum or not)

I was not too drunk to revel in the revelation that was your touch on my skin but I may have been too drunk for the gravity of emotions spurred on much more by us just talking, laughing against the sheets, stumbling stupid down the road.

feeling touched, and seen, equally and deliberately, understood and respected, for maybe the first time in our respective pathetic histories of love.

you slept, and the sun rose, and I didn't. I reeled. I wrote to someone I no longer speak to at 4am, 5am, 6 slowly confronting the gravity of what I'd begun to know.

(this was no experiment this was not shallow this would not be temporary this would change me profoundly and wholly.)

I could not sleep because I knew I would not wake up in a world that had not changed, and because the pilot light in my chest, long dormant, now burned a hole through my ribs.

the future yawning before me, paths unfurling like leaves, so many of them suddenly leading to you.

[shattermoon]

2.23.25 - marine layer a saltwater mirror collected in a searock's basin reveals me the modest sky: coral and slate brushstrokes astride an indifferent marine layer that locks the final verse of sunlight away from my pursuit and robs the sea of her usual decadent repast of fuschia and goldleaf fluttering the curves of her waves (the ocean breathes her longing with me.)

even if the overcast were to suddenly draw back its dark curtain to free his dying burst of light and pigment just for me, it still wouldn't compare to the first encore of the year right on these rocks with your hand in mine (or any sunset, for that matter - held captive by clouds, or melodic and vibrant and free that I witness, in quiet yearning, without you.)