#raw prose

[fall-0f-ic4rus]

pb&j

my brother and i used to use a spoon to spread our grape jelly on our sandwiches because we couldnt figure out how to use a knife. i grew out of that, learned how to use a knife (i didn't want to dirty more dishes. that would be too many variables for things to go wrong.), but he didn't.

im leaving for college soon. i cant tell if he doesnt realize or doesnt care.

i hope he doesnt care.

i used to sit at the top of the stairs every morning.

every morning, my brother would join me moments later, and wed sit there giggling and talking with excitement about the days adventures ahead, waiting for our parents to wake up so we could get on with it.

i used to sit at the top of the stairs every afternoon.

every afternoon, just after nap time, id wait for my brother to wake up so we could go play, remnants of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we had for lunch still on our faces.

i used to sit at the top of the stairs every night.

every night, id sit at the top of those damn stairs and listen to my parents screaming at each other. it didnt matter how scared i was. i wanted to go listen to music or read or do something else so bad so i didnt have to hear them but as my anxiety built my mind cleared and the one cohesive thought i had was to protect my baby brother and baby sister at all fucking costs and if that meant being able to monitor the situation to get out as fast as possible if things got ugly than goddamnit i would sit at the top of those fucking stairs every night.

i don't like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches anymore. i used to love them, me and my brother had them every day. before naps, packed up in our brandy-new school lunchboxes, in plastic baggies for picnics, and we devoured those sandwiches.

i don't like them anymore, probably from eating them too much, but maybe, just maybe because they taste like sticky fingers and warm snuggles and sibling love. maybe because they taste like innocence.

[peachcitt]

we're sitting under the stars on my best friend's balcony,

and everyone but us have gone in for the night. I've just told you, hazy and drunk, that my astrology app feeds me bullshit every day, and sometimes I'm weak enough to believe it. But most of the time it's bullshit.

I don't know why I told you - to you, the stars are lifeblood, or at least a personality gauge based on spinning planets and hair size. "Leos are known for their big hair," you'd said, maybe only a few hours prior. I can't remember why I chose that bone to pick - I think I've reached a barrel-scraping desperation where I feel the need to assert, over and over again, that 'I defy you, stars!' even though it would be much easier to say that mercury in retrograde may be causing my acute depression.

You pull up your astrology app. We're friends on there, and I think I remember checking our compatibility and feeling drawn to the sex & love section, but that would be ridiculous. There's something in the bullshit my astrology app fed to me that I read out loud in drunken amusement that resonated with who I am in your eyes, sitting in front of you under the stars. Your app tells you that you might experience a big change when the sun comes up, that you'll have to reach for it with both hands, and I see your eyes flick over to me.

There's a defense mechanism that locks in, underneath my skin, that acts as a human deterrent. I look at my best friend and there is something primal and soft that begs to lean my body against her and touch her with a casual intimate care. But when she laced her fingers with mine, pushing up against my stiff palm like digging through stone, I had to look away. She knelt down by her puppy and took my hand in hers, pressing my knuckles to her forehead to show her puppy that I am safe, that I can be trusted, but the little creature watched me like a sentinel behind my best friend's back, wary and right.

I think I told you it might be bullshit; I can only remember myself contrary in the string lights. You insisted that it could be true. "What if everything changes," you said, "what if it's right and today" - we were far past midnight - "and today the-"

"The world ends?" I finished for you.

I don't think that's what you wanted to hear, the careless laughing way I said it. I stared at the back of my best friend's house today, hours after you left, and I thought about fate. I bent over backwards and stared up at the stars, framed by the staircase up to the porch we sat. The world didn't end, nor did it change substantially, and I'll admit I didn't want either. I want to stay the same forever, but the goddamn stars keep moving.

I've played this game before, and I've been the one to lose every time. I'd like to say I'm a good sport, but there's only so many hits you can take before it starts getting personal, and I'm afraid my jagged edges are sharpening in preparation. I can't let you be another meteorite I strain every muscle to push to the top of the hill only to fall back in the same bloody crater. You have to understand; where you see fate in the stars, glinting just for you, all I can see is apocalypse.

(28 August 2023, 3:26 am)

[coffeexxcigarettes]

Almond Milk

-

Sometimes I don't know what's actually me.

I'm sure that's confusing,

So hear me out, if you have the time.

I believe we are made of wires

And memories.

Pathways to which we learn lessons.

For example,

If you speak too loudly and are shushed,

The wire bends within you.

You learn to speak softer.

I'm not sure, I suppose,

If I really like almond milk,

Or if you taught me that there were good foods

And that there were bad.

I'm not sure if blending almonds with water really does taste better,

Or if the wire within me tangled into a ball

To fill my stomach instead.

I trusted you to teach me young,

Yet I have memories of us,

Counting every damn almond in the house.

Strange how I have no memories of us

Actually eating one.

x

..

..

..@nosebleedclub April 17th- Almond Milk

[darkcottoncandy]

The thing is people are so busy trying to find their 'perfect love' that they end up losing their 'true love'. Love doesn't come with the most beautiful eyes or the most attractive nose or body. It comes sometimes in the most normal eyes, a crooked nose and not so perfect teeth.

Love doesn't come only if someone looks appealing to you,it comes when someone feels like home to you. When their absence drives you crazy and their presence brings you peace. Love comes in the most unexpected way but we sometimes ignore it because it doesn't seem the way we thought it would be. We question it, we try to talk us out of it, we try to shut it out but still from somewhere it peeks right inside our heart and gently takes it place. And then suddenly that slightly crooked nose feels perfect and those normal eyes become the only pair of eyes that can light up your whole life.

Looks are temporary but how a person makes you feel is something that is permanent. If they love you for your craziness, for your smiles, for your passion, for your dreams, for your demons and for everything that holds you together. That's perfect love.

[obi-wkenobi]

why am I thinking about naked omega Anakin sat scorching on a mound of ash with unbearable heat smearing streaks of desperation within him as he waits for his alpha (Obi-Wan obvs) to come and claim him. something primal and vivid and gut wrenchingly raw waiting to be unleashed

[firedragon1321]

Me writing a novel: He went to the store. His shirt was blue. The sun was setting.

Me writing a tag on Tumblr dot hell:

[memories-beneath-the-skin]

I didn't want to be torn apart and discarded

I needed to be disassembled and lovingly put back together

[unironicallycringe]

Idk if I mentioned it before, but one of the Hashtag Themes™️ I want to embed into TMM is the spirit of the saying "the only way out is through", and uhhhh BIG EMOTIONAL EXHALE CAUSE DAMN I'M GETTING A REMINDER THAT IT SURE IS TRUE

For real though, been thinking of that quote for the past few days again. Grief makes you want to squirm out of your skin and escape to a place where your reality isn't true. But that is impossible, and you have to walk with your grief and feel all the heartache instead in order to fully heal from it.

[suffering-is-cute]

I don't understand or remember you sometimes, and your soul is unfamiliar to mine, but we've shared the soup. Minestrone stains. Crumbs from that time I broke bread in bed. Tomato under a corner. We've shared the soup. Imprints of you in me.

why else would I write poems?

I forgive myself for wanting to love you so badly i lied about it. I forgive you for pretending to believe it. Distance will blur everything. You can fly now. Still, come back to see me sometime. I think you'll still miss me, so I'll meet you by the gate where the cornflowers, long grass, and thistles grow.

You can pick some of the miniature violets. You planted them, afterall.

I'll play you couplets and you'll read me cello. Maybe one day we can write a beautifully messy, entirely distracted script together and the notations will be written in soft black ink the colour of berries. I'll hum the tune under my breath when I'm alone at home and you'll play it on guitar on a bench at a bar on your holiday and when pressed for more information we'll tell the birds and the drunkards who hear that this is a song we wrote together to sing as a duet,

as a couple,

to an audience.

and when we meet again, when you come home, we'll turn our faces away from each other and pretend to have forgotten ever writing such a song whilst making pointed references to it and refusing to look at each other while trying not to mutter and whisper the lyrics under our breath.

And we'll get drunk on cooking alcohol in the kitchen while our German potato pancakes burn and curse out the local politicians with no lock on our door, the car engine revving outdoors, and the birds chirping at a twilight that seems entirely too rowdy for just the two of us in a house more like a barn with gaps in the wooden steel-banded door. You'll sit on the step and give me a long look and I'll stand in the doorway and fall over immediately, wobbly as a horrid

drunk, and you'll let me fall in the mud without catching me.

the mud will splash on you too and then, then you'll pull me up with one hand and drunk, you'll whine a soft growl into my ear and we'll giggle like kids, again - again, when the sun starts to set and we get inside to shower and sober. Sober, we might do something inexplicable. We might watch TV together with the fuzzy static on the channel and one of your hands on mine, the other holding up the remote as you surf focused through the channels, tilting your chin in concentration. I'll have my leg linked over yours and the other foot on the coffee table and we'll lean over each other to savour the only warmth we've had in a long time and sabotage our relationship.

whatever I have with you, I cherish it, even when I can't name it. Especially because I can't name it. I feel like what I have with you defies naming. And that makes me happy.

happier than I've been in a long time. Being with you helps.

inspired by @viverid 's poetry

[cadd9nce]

i am a piece of meat

TW: mention of sharp objects, injuries, plucking hairs

as a child, i would pick at the hairs in the slab of pork belly meat which sat on my plate. it disgusted me. my grandma assured me it was safe to eat, just pluck the hairs out — one by one. i’d lay them neatly at the side of my porcelain plate.

when i got older and hair started to grow on my legs, i did not know what to do. the first time i wanted to trim my leg hairs, i took a sharp pair of scissors to my calf. that day, i cut of a small chunk of my flesh. i never did that again.

once i hit my teenage years, waxing was a familiar routine. i grew to love the sensation of sticking and stripping wax off my skin. the routinely, stick, peel, rip, rub of the process. afterwards, i’d feel like a porcelain doll.

for troublesome hairs, i find myself tweezing them out with a definitely not sterile pair of tweezers. once, my partner came over and asked what they were, i got so flustered i told them i use it to clean my nails. they laughed and told me “it’s okay i pluck my hairs too when i get bored.”

today, i pluck the hairs on my body, disgusted by each strand of thick black keratin. i am disgusted by myself. by my body. i am a piece of meat.

[ehlnofay]

at work today I watched a little girl, just after being signed out, run back to her friend because her mum had given her a chocolate and she wanted to share it. it had a shiny green wrapper that she unwrapped very solemnly, and after some earnest discussion she took one very small bite, put the rest in her friend's hand, and ran off again. and it made me very emotional for some reason

[moonlights-tears]

The sweetest fruit in that mouth

While my fingers dwindle south

That sweetness is so pure

Hungry wetness that I do adore

Sticky fingers coated with raw honey

Her taste something I find so yummy

[coffeexxcigarettes]

Fit

-

Is there a convenience to love?

If I didn't fit into your life,

Cutting pieces of myself off,

Letting them fall in chunks at my feet-

Would you still look at me in admiration?

Through the pain and the blood,

It's hard to see what I've become.

But you beam at me enthusiastically,

And I take the knife to my side

With urgency and pride,

Again.

Is this enough?

Again.

Aspirations and gore beneath me.

Again.

..Is that what love is?

[acrylicalchemy]

You may have to get creative with your healing process ❤️‍🩹🎨

[jonsaviours]

Cecilia my divine wound.

If you find me, Cecilia,

It won't be because I wished it,

and if you ever did

It would no longer be me,

I'll be a canvas of flesh devoid of truths and absolutes

How was I ever here if I barely recognize reality

[arthur-r]

emily wilson out here translating the iliad and i am once again wishing i knew how to read and translate ancient greek