#nosebleedclub prompts

[aielylois]

what you can do about it:

Be a more open person, they said. Reclaim yourself, they said. It'll be fun, they said.

cry. put it in the calendar. pencil it in. never mind how it somehow turned into a group invite. you’re already overdue one anyways. might as well be in good company if not good spirits.

question everything. remember that stupid meme you made in year 11 when you did your Socrates presentation that your teacher tried to turn you off of doing? turns out you spent your whole life living it. Socrates would be proud. or as Rainer Maria Rilke more eloquently put it: Live the questions now. you may never know the answer, but I’m proud of you for asking. so please keep asking. even if your voice shakes. there is no way to live but in the questions.

panic. it’ll happen and it’s ok. it’s ok to be scared. I get it. you’ve been backed into every corner except your own. but look at where you are now. your past self would never have dreamed you’d be here. your childhood self never dreamed this was an option. so make it worth their while. make it worth their questioning and nerves and discomfort and fear. you’re gonna make it.

regress. well, that’s what other people might say. call it freedom. call it reclamation. call it letting your inner child laugh and play and sing and be silly. call it a realisation that you are still that child. that you have always been that child. so ingat, anak. take care of yourself.

breath it in. breathe it out. you’ve been good. you’ve settled down. and that’s the thing that scares you. but diyos how long has it been since you felt comfortable like this? (the fact that you have to think about it is all the answer you need) so sit with the comfort. be gentle with it. be glad that it stays when you wake up tomorrow. and tomorrow. and tomorrow. and if this is as good as it gets? then how good’s living?

-ylm

Prompts: ___, they said. It'll be fun, they said. - #promptsbyshibs on ig // Write a poem that answers the question, 'What can you do about it?' but don't explicitly explain what 'it' is - #AmyKayPoemADay24 on ig // as good as you'll get - @nosebleedclub // accidentally after Northern Attitude - Noah Kahan

[nosebleedclub]

Poetry Month Prompts

1. as good as you'll get 2. girl names 3. lacrosse 4. swan 5. house with a name 6. one year after the accident 7. profiteroles 8. potholes 9. vivisection 10. adult revenge 11. "safe" place 12. road sign 13. glam 14. oyster mushroom 15. mother's footsteps 16. what life was like 17. almond milk 18. lagomorph 19. physical therapy 20. birthday flowers 21. book of miracles 22. ferment 23. brick 24. routine 25. days spent waiting 26. infirmary 27. hallucinogen 28. supper club 29. deviant 30. age

[hersurvival]

they told me to eat a lemon peel and wait 45 minutes, for euphoria, and what did i have to lose by biting through that bitter rind other than a lingering acrid taste on the back of my tongue, like bile in the back of my throat. low risk for the reward of activating the pineal gland, of being washed over by euphoria, opening that elusive third eye of perception.

but nothing happened.

now i am high as hell in a bed not mine, alone, after my baby brother's wedding.

still waiting for the valve to open, for the flow of that ancient greek pneuma, that breath, to tap that unassuming pinecone of an organ of excess and delirium open, calling to the goddess of strife and discord through the taste of zest, to channel this incessant rage, turn chaos into coping.

the stars are so far away, unable to be caressed as they're dying, already dead, light taking ages to fade, to blink out of existence. so far away from here, in a black sea of nothing, abysmal and freezing. poke holes in me, pinpricks, i wonder if i too can shine from within, if my void holds any light that won't be noticed when it fades.

@nosebleedclub June 29th - Lemon Rind

[jonaswpoetry]

Hedgehog

Victim to — first: rushed

lives. Next: a winged scavenger

of dignity in

—

death. Third: my ambivalence

regarding fates undeserved.

@nosebleedclub July Prompts 31. Hedgehog

[lorienfae]

Typewriter, aged, its peeling sighs fall semi corporeal upon a daze of paper and time

half printed, half phantom

not unlike our being in this dominion of longing and feeling, senses

that ripple, faces and that soporific taste of lilting summer sun.

© Anna S. 2024 // @nosebleedclub prompt#9

[nangua]

@nosebleedclub march prompts: viscera !

[six-white-venus]

there’s a scar that extends over my body- long, lithe, endless.

it starts its journey from the back of my neck, right where my hairline ends and branches into two lines; one creeps up my face and cracks my skull in two and one slithers down my collarbone. my head still hurts, sometimes. i shake a bottle with no label and pills fall into my hand: white, pink, grey, blue. i swallow them dry.

the one down my collarbone has tapering ends- a ghostly white weed that has taken root in my chest, one that can never be plucked out. i smooth my hand over it and linger over a particularly nasty bump right where my heart beats. the clumsy stitches holding my wound together left a phantom pain behind. time has healed the wound to a mere scar but the pain, ever the loving old friend, drops by to say hi now and then.

i don’t like bitter things. it doesn’t sit well with the metal on my tongue and yet, that’s all i taste in the delicacies i’m being served by my beloved. maybe it’s yet another thing i’ve started to make up. or maybe, it’s the sight of the bleeding wound of yours that’s poisoning everything that touches my tongue.

the wound, it’s fresh and a horror to look at. you are white as a sheet, shaking, shaking and oh, i remember that. i remember that. i remember the only colour i used to see back then: an endless, cruel, grey.

i can see colours now. food on my tongue tastes like something. but i look at your blood and feel something akin to longing, to hunger. jealousy feels sour at first- like a candy made wrong- and then simmers down to a slow, unbearable bitterness. i assess the sight, committing every fold of the disfigured skin to memory, and ask, “how does it feel?”

“painful.”

the sudden image of my viscera spilling out of my gaping stomach fills my head. i blink and press my palm on my torso. it’s intact. i raise a glass of water to my lips and wash away the bitterness.

sometimes, when i’m laughing and giddy with happiness, it hits me. i am suddenly five and in a crowd full of strangers who are pushing and pulling and happy and feel that awful, disgusting desperation well up in me as i beg, “i wanna go home.” but i am not five and there is no crowd and i am wearing pajamas in my house and you are here and lord, i still want to go home.

“let me tend to it.”

you smile and extend your hurt with trusting eyes. shame tastes like stale milk and yet, i drink the barrel dry.

this scar of mine, it travels down my thighs and winds itself around my ankles, shackling them. i touch the raised skin, contemplative. it feels like seconds and ages ago at the same time, that fateful day i picked my skin apart, pushed my bones back all wrong and stitched it back together. i don’t bleed, not anymore. wrong has become my right and there’s nothing wrong with that.

this body of mine, it has never known what it meant to rest, what it meant to not bleed. i stand in front of the mirror and stare. the scar is long, lithe, endless. i can never finish mapping all the crevices of my body it hides in. home, for so long, was walls painted grey and endless nights and the embrace of my empty bed. it was brittle bones and trembling fingers and the anvil on my chest. and i think that’s what you call home too, now.

after stuffing my organs back in my body and stitching myself up for years filled solely with nights, holding myself together feels more natural than breathing. i see blues and purples and pinks now. my ribs are cracked open and filled with a garden of dandelions. i sleep and i wake up and my smile doesn’t waver. it’s new. it’s terrifying.

maybe, i’ve never known what a home is. today, my bones are strong and my heart is light and i find that it’s okay, it’s wonderful, it’s stellar to be alright. “i wanna go home” i think and with a start realise i can build one now. i think i would paint its walls a hundred different colours. it will be horrible. it will be mine.

“that looks painful,” i say, and mean it, “let me take care of it.”

you do. i wash your wounds with cold water and dry them with care. i press my lips over the patched-up skin and tell you it’ll heal, that it always does. you don’t believe me but that’s okay. i wouldn’t have, either. for now, i’ll cut some apple slices and try not to nick myself. the only way i know how to peel an apple is the way my father did: careful and slow, in an awfully clumsy way that ended up scraping more flesh than peel off the fruit.

we eat apples and you count my scars. they look like lightning, you say, and ask me how the thunder sounded. loud, i say and you hold my face like you could have shielded me from it. you didn’t, but it’s okay. we’re here now.

wounds scar. they heal. we will paint our walls yellow first- yellow like the sun, my garden of dandelions, your smile. in the warmth of our home with our bodies pressed together, the thunder won’t be so loud.

(for @nosebleedclub's january #18 prompt)

[echo-delta]

Mantis on a Chapel Doorstep

Standing still on concrete,

arms locked together, dutiful,

eyes open, watchful.

Afraid to open your weathered, stained

glass wings and fly to safety.

Leave them tucked away,

pristine in their sheath,

and keep praying

the mirrored shoes miss you.

(Prompt @nosebleedclub September 22: stained glass)

[coffeexxcigarettes]

Purge

-

I wake up,

Filled with the rage

That could only belong to

My father's daughter.

Overflowing from my lips,

Curling the edges of my existence.

Flowers wilt at my arrival,

And birds silence themselves.

They silence themselves.

I dig through my shelves;

Dig through cupboards desperately,

Trying to find the antidote.

A solution to the blood

With which I was created.

My touch burns things

I know I love outside of anger.

This isn't me,

I plead with the universe.

Grabbing a notebook in panic.

I begin scribbling nonsense,

Letting the words sear into the pages.

The birds begin chirping again,

Quietly.

The flowers quiver,

But bring their color back to me.

A temporary solution

To a lifelong ailment,

My grandmother had taught me.

When the darkness overtakes her light,

I reach for that little notebook.

Full of burns,

Bleeding with sins,

A hand to hold the damned.

My little book of miracles.

x

..

..

..@nosebleedclub April 21st- Book of Miracles

[aielylois]

dust motes enraptured by sun in an empty room- movement in still life

Prompt: sun in an empty room - @nosebleedclub

[nosebleedclub]

September Prompts

1. Back to life

2. Strange kid next door

3. Final weeks of summer

4. Garage

5. New frat boys

6. Grand exit

7. Laboratory

8. Labrador

9. Typewriter

10. Distance between us

11. Stuffed animals

12. Maneuver

13. Back pain

14. Porcine

15. Commitment to darkness

16. Marsh Hawk

17. Business class (train)

18. London fog

19. The last of the flower garden

20. French

21. Healing lamb

22. Stained glass

23. Jealousy

24. Poisoned water source

25. Pleading

26. Belief in ______

27. Expensive furniture

28. Silver pitcher

29. I couldn’t say it

30. Everything you’re worth

[hersurvival]

he tells me his birthday is just another day but he doesn't realize that it's the passcode combination i've been using for my entire life and this moment was destined.

so i cut cold butter into flour and delicately slice variations of apples for a pie, steal a gold candle from my mother's junk drawer so he may make a wish, deliver it all still steaming, and we eat the entire thing silently, sweetly across the table from one another.

when i tell him i'm shy after he asks me to read to him a poem, nervous and embarrassed, he closes the curtains and learns i snort when i laugh.

and i learn that he's so much more than just a boy.

@nosebleedclub September 14th - Porcine

[jonaswpoetry]

Masterpiece

Fingertips scraped raw, throat left

unbearably sore from defeated sighs

& wholly helpless, guttural roars, still

—

I am incomprehensibly incapable of

fitting these scattered fragments found

all around me together — where is my

—

completed masterpiece, worth every

moment spent bleeding, screaming, or

hopelessly weeping? What could be

—

this failure’s meaning?

@nosebleedclub July Prompts 1. Piecing it together

[imbadatparking]

The wind brushes against the baby cherry blossoms in the trees, featherlight teasing causing them to shiver. It carries with it the scent of camellia and daffodil, a sign of blossoming hope and the beginning of spring. 

The air is painted with pastel colors, hues of green and yellow and blue. The weather, once biting and cold, is now something inviting. It wraps around her playfully, its ministrations barely felt under the soft fabric of her jacket.

She’s not one to put meaning into the seasons changing, but even she cannot deny the beauty of the world opening up around itself; like the hidden, unrivaled wings of a butterfly, colors staining its delicate form, emerging from its cocoon. The way the animals stir, the way the plants turn towards the sun, which seems to brighten under the attention, the way everything seems to wake up, livening under spring’s life after winter’s long drag. 

March is here, with its undeniable optimism and renewed possibility. Without it will come, undoubtedly, the trials and tribulations of starting from the beginning, the hardships and challenges that will threaten to tear her down. 

But for now she is new and enlightened. She will gracefully embrace this change and all that comes with it, and she will survive, only to come back stronger again, as she does every year. 

| k. - @nosebleedclub march i. blossoming hope

[yellow-salamander]

#15. Dream I Had

you were in my dream last night.

it was a dream about worlds ending, and escaping destruction, and death

but somehow the most important thing to me

was finding you.

i found you in the center of chaos

when most of humanity was gone, save a few just my dearest loved ones and a cacophony of strangers-

old schoolmates, a few from church,

my sisters and parents, my pets,

all in one human sanctuary.

I grabbed your hand and dragged you away,

to kiss me in dark corridors again

and as we passed a youth group leader, in silent prayer

(to whom I have not spoken in years)

i found that I still could not shake the eyes

of them who judged us once.

and if there’s anything to learn,

as humanity falls

it’s that

even at the end of the universe,

you are still

my most beautiful sin.

@nosebleedclub

[heulwenflower]

7. little brown bat

Little brown bat

Your not like the old one

You have a lighter colour

Which reminds me of 50p Costa hot chocolates

And laughter with friends

But beyond cosmetics

Your tamer

More humble

But that dosent stop my awe

Seeing you fly so gracefully

My last one was a black bat

A vampire bat

Feeding off me daily

Leaving only drops of me left

Always telling me

That because I wasn't a vampire

I was less than

I like this bat

Because we can acknowledge eachovers beauty

Without taking joy

Prompt from @nosebleedclub