content warning: this poem contains mentions intrusive thoughts of self-harm. please be careful and stay safe <3
my fingers are traitorous. they're itching,
trembling to spill crimson onto the page.
sanguine, my words desire to be let out of their
cages. i don't want what's inside to
escape my ribcage. it's too loud for me.
i'm scared to let her out, but the syllables spill
regardless. i am unable to keep her contained.
i wonder if it would be
easier if i were underwater. what if i
came up to breathe once in a while? but i
didn't talk. what if i just stayed silent and
let the blood dissipate? what if instead of forming
words the letters just floated off, found
places to be lodged into the sand, perhaps
found by visitors unlucky enough to be
stung by the tentacles of a jellyfish made of
a fallen vernacular?
did you know that jellyfish don't have brains?
they know what is danger / they seek to
survive. i wonder, am i surviving or living?
are they synonymous?
i wonder what it would be like
to decay. to let fungus claim me. i wonder
how it would feel if the mushrooms made me
one with this earth, where i feel
so very out of place.
would they remember me? i don't think the
decayed are victims. it is simply a cycle.
i'm scared that my interior will
fade. that i'll just be an empty outline. that
maybe that's all that's left.
maybe i'm too tired to
have a beating heart, and it's just
cold broken things inside.
just pieces of shattered clockwork.
i don't know if my
machines ever truly worked.
and i'm not sure if they'd notice.
what if they just let me shatter?
what if i'm made of glass, and i am
a menagerie of thoughts, all visible through my
delicate exterior? would i break if i
fell off the precipice? would my
shards glitter? would
that be more beautiful than
this incomplete form?
i want my words to spill out into
the earth. i want them to be
soil. i want leaves to grow from me, for
mycelium to sprout within. the hyphae
are more beautiful than i could ever be.
one moment in the mirror and i
shift from beauty to the reverse.
i don't understand
my own being. i don't know what
it is that i can define myself as.
did my hands want me to
release the verse that's
drumming inside, that's threatening
to escape the bars, that's trying
to break me from within?
did they really
care? or did they
just want me to bleed
for the sake of seeing carmine?
would it be
easier if i
just
didn't
breathe
oxygen?
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Look whom we have heeere:
Oedemera flavipes
I thiiink
!!! lovely little guy you have there :)
yknow that bug that reminded me of you? this one is very closely related to that one! the males also have big legs, so thats how you can tell that this is a female :)
they eat pollen & nectar, so youll often find them on flowers :) theyre also pollinators :)) here are some pictures of various oedemera species on flowers, bc i feel like i need to add pictures :)
larvae usually grow up inside the stems of herbs :)
just like blister beetles, most oedemera species contain cantharidin, which can cause blisters. it also works as an aphrodisiac, although the dose you need for any effects is very close to the one that will kill you, so maybe dont
they wont secrete it unless you hurt them though, they might coat their eggs with it, but an individual bug cant ever give you a dangerous amount of this stuff
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