#pining poetry

[ramblingsofaporcelainheart]

My heart pouring out

Through my eyes

Weeping for another “he loves me not”

Sisyphus pushing his stone

Up the unyielding mountain

Hoping for anything but the inevitable

[tithonusramble]

do you even care to know me?

I don’t think you do.

Otherwise, you would be trying and I have to squint just to see you.

never bother to ask about my day

Never asking about all the things that have happened.

Starting to feel like a backhand.

i would gladly tell you—please

But why should I? It would be wasted breath—wasted energy—wasted time.

You don’t deserve that. Probably don’t even deserve to be mine.

why do i even care if you stay?

Maybe this is all a waste.

All these poems that I’ve written, I’ve wasted them all on you.

[a-certain-type-of-frog]

This chair doesn’t let me sit right

with its strange desk arm

and position yards too far away

I’d sit under the piano if i had to, if i could. 

Its keys sing gently to guide us 

through a field of song

chords ring out i am not looking

at those platform boots at hair

that lays in different angles from

moment to moment hands gusts of

wind pushing it any direction

hands that move so distinctly i could

recognize their rise and fall in my sleep

I have seen them in my dreams

they live in my thoughts

my monday wednesday classes with 

screens that reflect my own silhouette 

instead of the one behind me

my emails as i aspire to what they

so easily encompass i am trying

not to stare.

[yvixtraedoesartthingsxd]

Untitled #2

One, two, three heartbeats’ worth of time is how long it takes for me to finally decide to get up and leave my mess of a bed-- or really, just a nest on the floor of my walk-in closet, a barely cohesive pile of blankets pillows and plushies.

I haven’t taken the time to swing by his studio for a few weeks now, and I feel guilty for letting my awkward anxiety tell me that it’s best to stay away and waste the stupid amount of effort that went into outright asking him to be friends, how I almost was visibly shaking as I fumbled over trying to explain being so late to ask even though I’d seen him around a fair amount last academic year.

There’s a sense of pressure to try and look a little more put together before going outside under the excuse of getting my usual order of boba tea when really, I’m mainly hoping to see that he’s there today.

The walk there is both over too fast and too long simultaneously, my body on autopilot as I speedwalk music probably too loud through my singular earbud phone and wallet clutched in a claw grip in one hand whilst the other is on the strap of my bag knuckles white as my legs start to ache and my breathing grows slightly ragged.

I barely spare a glance at any of the people I pass or the park on my way there, making sure to check and double check my mental rehearsal of my order though I’ve gotten the exact same boba for years now: Matcha milk tea, traditional boba, fifty-percent sweetness.

When the destination is within my line of sight essentially just a really solid stick throw away, I take a moment to give a second reminder to myself to ask if it’s okay with him if I make a simple kandi single for him and if he wants anything specific for it but I can’t help the thought that it’s an odd question.

Gingerly stepping through the door I rake my gaze across the restaurant, quickly assessing that he’s not here currently if he’s to be here at all today but still wish to not waste the trip and simply order anyways, unsure on if it helps my anxiety for the moment resigning myself to trying to see him again at least one more time before winter break to talk and ask about the bracelet.

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, from coffin heart? bury me.

[text id: how did you get so close that i have to dissect you out from under my skin? / memory is a deathbed. remembrance is a grave. the memory of you is a scab that i keep picking so that it scars. a burn, a souvenir, something to claw at that claws back at me. / i refuse to be haunted by something less. / there's a sun-sized ache where your hands used to be. / and now that your place is empty, the blood in my heart pumps around nothing. / nothing. / nothing at all. / senseless circulation. / what am i to live for when i have made my body my casket? / where am i to go from here? / and i always knew longing had another name she wouldn't let me call her by — it's hunger. / my heart grew up to be far more starved than my stomach. / it's the things you learn in your childhood, from the words of your mother, from the hands of your father. / if your teeth do not graze my bones, i do not wish for you to kiss me. / how have i turned gentle love into such devastation? / such greediness? / i carry a coffin for a heart; everything i love must be buried. / plant your garden in the cracks of my skin—mud, gravel, everything. let my blood be water to cater to your needs. / terrible, terrible human, thinks barbarity and love are words of the same meaning. / a mad dog would be a far more gentle lover to the rocks being thrown at him. / and, my dear, i wouldn't ask you to fold me in the pages of your favorite book, just the embedment of fingers between my ribs. / how did you get so close that i have to dissect you out from under my skin? / GET CLOSER.]

[wordscanbeenough]

I'm not too gone to be healed, am I? / I'm not too gone am I?

Alice Notley, from In the Pines

[mournfulroses]

Mary Oliver, from a poem titled "The Garden," featured in White Pine: Poems & Prose Poems

[gale-force-storm]

He refuses to fall for the first person to show him kindness. He may be feeling sorry for himself, but that's a bridge too far.

Even if they are beautiful. And kind to everyone, not just him. And brave. And clever. And strong. And they love animals, and reading. And they have a wry sense of humour that he adores.

He won't. He can't. Besides all else, this is decidedly not the time. A bomb in his chest and a worm in his head and a weight on his shoulders and a shame in his stomach and a shattered heart he's still trying to gather the pieces of. Desperately clinging to the cloak of his past, wrapping himself in his former confidence, pretending it hasn't been worn threadbare with time in isolation and eaten ragged by the moths of doubt and fear and past mistakes.

He fell from grace so far so fast, but he cannot beg affection off the first hand to offer him help up, even if it is the first time he's touched another person in months. Even if that hand did send a sudden warmth through him and feel so right in his own he could almost cry from it.

...This is getting out of hand.

He can just be friendly with them, surely. How does one make friends, again? Shared interests? He mostly just has the one, so he'll share what he can. They pick it up quickly, and the warm magic that surrounds them is a balm on his soul. Right up until they imagine kissing him, and his heart skips a beat. It can't be. It can't be. They can't want him back. It's not possible. And how, after it all, after everything, is he meant to resist the overwhelming temptation of being wanted?

They don't let up, either. Lingering glances. Warm smiles. All but propositioning him at the tiefling party. If there is a single positive thing to be said about his year of orb-imposed abstinence, it's that the willpower he had to build up and the practice denying himself were the only things that enabled him to decline their advances.

Well, that and the risk of blowing up the both of them, along with everyone else in or near the camp.

The warm smiles and lingering gazes and casual touches still continue, though.

This is fine. He's fine. He can't remember the last time he felt like this, someone cared for him like this, and he can't do a damn thing about it, but he's fine. Everything is fine. As fine as it can be, anyways, given everything else about the situation.

He supposes he should probably be more upset about Mystra's orders. At this point, though, it's hard to feel like it's anything besides a way out. A relief that he can be good for something. One more miserable experience, and then he's done with it, and all their problems are solved. There are worse things.

Except.

They're so angry about it. Everyone is, but them especially. Arguing with both him and Elminster the entire time, insisting there's another option. That they'll find or make one. Whatever they have to do to keep him around.

Gods help him, but he does want to stay with them. Stay for them.

He sleeps that night, and awakens with a jolt, a groan, and a realization. He's glad that prestidigitation exists to clean himself up without leaving his tent and risking the others' notice. His body had, apparently, caught up with certain implications before his brain. Though from what snippets of his dream he remembers, maybe it was only his waking mind that had been lagging behind.

He wants them, and he can finally have them. Can give them as much of himself as he's able, in the time he has left.

He had refused, at first, the idea of falling for the first person to show him kindness. And he hasn't. He's fallen for someone who is so much more that that. And he will not, cannot, die without letting them know. If he has to leave them, and he fears he will, then he will not leave them feeling unappreciated, or uncherished, or unloved. Not when he can finally embrace the full depth and breadth of what he feels for them. Has felt for them for what can't have been more than a tenday or two, but feels like a lifetime and a moment all at once.

He will not leave without showing them the full scope of his admiration and appreciation and sheer joy at their presence. The full scope of how impossibly deeply he already loves them. Not while he has any say in it.

[rosarysgarden]

fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky’s ‘i am an observer, but not by choice.’

[text id: i have the everlasting tendency to ruin everything i love.]

[carolineishere]

i crave attention, but i refuse to humiliate myself by asking for it.

i want to be loved, but i don’t want anyone to truly know me.

i am trying to make myself digestible, i don’t want to leave a sour taste in the mouth of my consumer.

[ramblingsofaporcelainheart]

Few things in my body are the same

as when I loved you

My right knee still aches in the cold

Cold like the first time we were clocked as a couple and I said “just friends”

And forgot to let you answer

God why did I never ask you

My hand still tingles with gentle pain

Phantom pain from the high fives we perfected in place of kisses

A chasm I dug from my fear

Grown too great to bridge

Few things in my heart are the same.

But I loved you.

[tithonusramble]

This love sick gut feeling has been making me nauseous.

I can’t do anything but lay in bed—

high out of my mind to not think of you.

Why are you stuck there so tight?

Can’t seem to shake you loose.

The chocolate on your lips keeps me coming back—

you tasted so pretty.

I can’t go through my day without thoughts of you.

I want to be done. To be over you.

Please, I’m begging.

End this.

[marmarbinx]

being a little in love with ur friends is like. in my chest I’ve carved out a little bedroom full of books and plants, and the sheets are clean, and the walls are your favorite color, and it’s reserved for you to come and stay whenever you please and leave whenever you like knowing you can always come home, because that part of me belongs to you, it has always belonged to you, it will never belong to anyone else, I want you, I don’t want anything to change, I need to know that you’ll always be here, I don’t want to tie you down, I would go to the ends of the earth for you, I’m happy if you’re happy, I have known you forever, we were strangers a year ago, I can’t imagine life without you, I love you I love you I love you

[yvixtraedoesartthingsxd]

Unhinged Laments of a Depraved Craving

I wish it were easier to sit with

both the old and the new

thoughts and feelings that surface over him

but I suppose that's a bit much for me to ask for

and so the brainrot never ends.

I'm either unable to tear my eyes away

or can hardly stand to even look in his direction

because of how fast the guilt

has swept me away this time around.

I wear my heart on my sleeve

for better and for worse

and never before have I so terribly hated

how open my expressions are

on accident,

how you can see the confession written across my face

like some sort of damning sin,

though it honestly might as well be.

I am but a humble and hopeless devotee

to a god that I cannot reach

and therefore cannot receive answers,

cannot find a home for my teeth

in his flesh as it parts beneath the force

of my hungry bite,

cannot lap up and savor

the crimson essence that consequentially

beads up from the wound after,

cannot plead for him to do the same

in kind and tear me asunder,

my blood smeared across his teeth

and dripping down his lips and chin

mirroring just how I crave to wear his red,

cannot beg for him to devour my heart whole

as it beats

served on a silver platter--served just for him.

Only for him.

In a desperate offering to be known,

to be loved at where I'm most surrounded by ruin,

to be able to have even a hope at tasting

the salvation I just know his kisses would grant me.

[ivynightshade]

i want you close like skin, but i don't say that. // your name is so perfectly sewn onto my tongue; / no matter how hard i try, the stitches won't come undone.

fatima aamer bilal, from moony moonless sky’s ‘when god pottered hands, i. your dishwasher is empty.’

[mournfulroses]

Mary Oliver, from a poem titled "In Pobbity, Georgia," featured in White Pine: Poems & Prose Poems