#it’s not a poem but is it? I dunno

[foldingfittedsheets]

One sunny day when I was in high school I was walking home alone. The sun was shining, gentle wind rustled the treetops. I was just starting to be able to see that beauty again. I had been depressed for a long time, but that mundane walk home felt magical to me.

On the sidewalk I saw something unusual. I was in love with life in that moment and fascinated to know more. I crouched down to observe and saw the most enchanting bug. I’d never seen anything like it. To this day I can’t remember what it looked like, only that it was as beautiful as the sun shining on the green world below.

My attention was rapt on this tiny magical creature living in such a massive and wondrous world, wondering what it was and marveling that I’d never seen anything like it.

I didn’t hear the girls come up behind me on the sidewalk. But suddenly there was a leg beside me. I wasn’t embarrassed to be caught looking at a bug. I was glad someone else might come observe this tiny wonder with me.

Her foot shot up and stomped down abruptly, crushing the object of my interest. I looked up at her.

I didn’t know either of the girls standing above me. They had seen a stranger and decided to punish her for behaving in a way they considered unacceptable. I looked up at the face of the girl who had killed my bug, trying to understand her thoughtless malice.

I think she had expected me to be upset or visibly shaken by her destruction. When I stared unblinkingly up at her she seemed to feel a brief moment of shame, shifting uneasily.

Then she and her friend turned and walked away without a word spoken.

[trickstersaint]

an aromantic person is someone who (fill in the blank here) // april 10 2024

[wizardsimper]

Honestly there was a real missed opportunity for a scene involving Gale reading the player some of his poetry

[tooquirkytolose]

This Is Not My Story

[chidoroki]

"Unstoppable" by Donna Ashworth

[marionete-de-carne]

風と木の詩

[crepuscular-coyote]

I wonder if my trauma took away my humanity. I wonder if my autism took away my humanity.

Being so alienated and rejected, belittled, broken down, shouted at, hit, hurt.

I was human once. I remember it; the way my life was before. The warmth of the sun's rays on my skin. The way others interacted with me. I was one of them. I was not "other".

Things changed. I changed, and with it humanity slipped from my fingers and vanished before I could even blink. I was wrong. Everything about me was wrong. I tried to fit myself into a human mold but I couldn't.

So I embraced it. I've shed my humanity and I wear my canine nature with pride.

But I still wonder what life would be like if I was still human.

[a-j-s-the-only]

yet if you knew of love,

would you still spill the blood?

[sluttygallavich]

Galladrabbles: in this space

This week's @galladrabbles is based on the poem prompt by @ardent-fox:

In this space right here that we have made for each other, you can say anything and I will not abandon you. Unwrap the worst things you have done. Watch me hold them up to the light and not even flinch. — Trista Mateer

_________________________

Finally, we have time. What we don’t have is space. Just four cement walls measuring six by eight.

At first I sleep better than I have in years, but now long after you’ve drifted off the guilt eats at me. I listen to your steady breaths and watch the walls closing in.

You’re trapped in here with all the worst things I’ve ever done, unable to abandon me now, even if you wanted to.

I watch for the moment you wake, waiting for the flinch as you remember where you are, what you’ve given up, but somehow it never comes.

[redwinterroses]

Red, you’re an adult, how do you force yourself to grow up without driving yourself mad? Or is it just something you have to do, go mad?

h'ooof that is quite a question.

a) Yeah. Go mad. Just a little. Because part of being an adult is realizing that it's okay to be weird, and it's okay to not have all the answers, and it's okay to fail, and it's okay to not be able to change the world on your own. We're all mad here... which means none of us are. ;)

b) Don't force yourself to "grow up." It's more that you don't keep yourself from maturing -- you don't hold back from learning, and expanding, and becoming more empathetic, and more willing to listen to viewpoints you don't understand or agree with, and taking responsibility for yourself, and turning into the sort of person you want to be... But don't focus on it in terms of "growing up." None of us know what that means -- my grandmother is 72 and she told me the other day that she still doesn't feel "grown up." It's a myth. Focus on growing into the things you want to see in the world, not growing up into some imagined Final Form.

c) Growing up is a thing that happens to you. You won't notice it happening, most times. Sure, some days there are big growth spurts -- learning to cope with the loss of a loved one. Getting fired for the first time. Figuring out rent payments or opening a credit card. Taxes. Moving cross country to a place where you don't know anyone. Those are all big "growing up" things that happen to you, and you see them happen. You have to just take them, the same way you have to eat vegetables: it's part of life. But most "growing up" is... realizing it's been six months since the last time you panicked about someone not liking you. Noticing you can't remember the last time you thought about that one negative thing that seemed like it filled your world a year ago. Checking the calendar and seeing that you've been friends with someone for a decade. Not even noticing how you don't have to struggle to figure out taxes anymore. Doing the dishes because you like to have a clean kitchen, not because someone made you do them. Choosing to eat healthy, and enjoying it. Arguing with someone and being okay with being wrong. Or staying friends with someone you disagree with about something important, because people are more important than positions. Growing up is looking at the tree you planted when you were nine and realizing that, without you noticing it changing, it's now taller than your parents' house.

d) Growing up means building a support system. People who care about you, and what happens to you. People who can call you out when you're about to do something stupid. People who will show up for you when you're going through something. It doesn't have to be many, and they don't even necessarily have to be people you see in person. They can be family, or friends, romantic partners, online friends, pen pals, a religious group, a quilting circle, a stamp collecting club. You invest in their lives, you care about them, you show up for them... and it comes back when you need it. Our current moment in history is hallmarked with loneliness, and it can literally kill -- but part of growing up is realizing that real friendships don't just appear when two people happen to be on the playground together... At least, not past the age of twelve. Support systems take work, and they take effort, and it sucks, but you need it and other people need you. Humans need each other -- even the most introverted amongst us.

e) Care less. But also care more. Care less about what people think of your clothes or your voice or the way you snort-laugh at puns. And the hard one: care less about people being cruel. Care more about counteracting the cruelty. Care less about the person saying hateful things, and more about the people they're saying it to. Care more about picking other people up, and about delighting in the world around you. Look out your window at a traffic stop and care about the clover flower growing in the median -- you might be the only human who ever actually sees it. Isn't that magical? Care more about being kind. Care about justice. Care about rest. Care about the soft things of the world that need protecting. Care about yourself. Care about the people around you. Care about surrounding yourself with people who care back. I guess: learn to budget how you care, and don't spend too much care on things that will harm you.

d) Don't sweat it. ;) Really. People have been figuring this out for hundreds of hundreds of generations. None of it's new. The fear, the uncertainty, the passion, the love, the hope, the confusion... Your great, great, great grandparents felt those things to. Maybe about different specifics, but the emotions are the same. And you're not the only one figuring it out now. We're all on this big stupid blue rock together. Drink some water, breathe deep, and take just the next step forward.

(There's nothing new under the sun: If, by Rudyard Kipling is one of my favorite poems that says all of this but better.)

[aru-loves-krishnaxarjuna]

I paint and write.

I might not paint

with brushes on a canvas

But I do paint.

I paint on myself

The brushes, a knife

The canvas, my skin

I hide my painting with fabric

Covering up the scars

The knife kisses my skin

Pushing the red paint

out of the tube

Clenching my jaw

I drag the paintbrush across

The canvas screaming

As I slash it along

I paint on my skin,

A masterpiece

Each brushstroke a reminder

A horrid sight.

Each slice a pause

Some shout of power,

A victor's claim

While others whisper

of hidden shame

My ink has been spilled.

It drips

drips

drips to the ground.

This is the most

I've seen at once.

The beautiful red

shining as it stains

the white of my sheets.

The lines on the paper

Pouring out ink in a

beautiful continuous stream.

My arm begins to weaken,

but I must finish my pieces.

P. S.: half of this is mine and the other half is not. I have written the lower half. The first half belongs to ayesha zara on ig. I just decided to pour my feelings here because of the invasion of my privacy in rl by my parents.

Thank you

[watcherwingedcat]

And you'll have claws so you won't feel them And you'll feel fangs so you won't have them And you'll be human, not to be human Because you will never be like them

[the-lights-are-loud]

Take My Hand

Take my hand

Take a breath

Take a moment

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Are you here with me yet?

Take my hand

It's going to be okay

I know that sounds like a soothing lie

But trust me

Are you here with me yet?

Take my hand

I'll wrap you in my arms

And rock you until you sleep

I'll wait until you breathe

Are you here with me yet?

Take my hand

I'll hold on tight

I won't let go

Please don't leave

I need you here with me

I'll take your hand

Take a breath

Take a moment

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Don't leave me yet.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

the light of love — for @brown-little-robin's clone Eight OC

Anne Carson // Helen Oyeyemi // Edvard Munch // Mary Oliver // via Pinterest // Andrew Osenga // via Pinterest // Mary Oliver // James Carroll Beckwith × The Mountain Goats (via @mountainqoats) // Andrew Peterson

[krsnaradhika]

I really want to celebrate Kanha's birthday but I have no ideas yet. Any suggestions?

[robin-5-technically]

Sing, O Muse, of the son of those Bat-winged Minyades Who kept the company of nymphs in many furred and scaled and winged forms And broke the curse of his forefathers To step in the path of the golden-horned Artemis And save virtue and lives in equal measure

-🪽

Exquisite. Your words move gracefully like a butterfly through a meadow of flowers, yet, like a sword wielded by a trained hand.

Who’s bard has just stumbled into my asks?