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[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

you may be rotten, but that does not mean that you are unwanted. Fungi cling to your sides like a kit to its mother and adoring trails of insects caress your bark like a lover. Birds rest inside your hollow trunk during the storm, and you provide the nest of two foxes intertwined like an ouroboros, lost in the haze of spring. to them you are still wanted; to them you are still needed; rotting or no, to them you make a home.

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

“No one ever tells you that bravery feels like fear.”

— Mary Kate Teske

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

who were you when you cut that rose? who were you when it dried? hanging in the window gap, it witnesses your lives. It watches how you slip and shift and grow into elides; the shriveled rose has known a hundred people since it died.

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

“You don’t need another human being to make your life complete, but let’s be honest. Having you wounds kissed by someone who doesn’t see them as disasters in your soul but cracks to put their love into is the most calming thing in this world.”

— Emery Allen

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

Villain: Tell me, hero, which is worse? To die by my hand or your lover's?

(Love your writing smmmm. Always inspiring reading your blog!)

“Tell me, hero, which is worse.” The villain crouched down in front of them. “To die by my hand, or your lover’s?”

“Doesn’t matter,” the hero replied. “I’ll still be dead.”

“How stoic.” The villain reached out a hand, tracing the edge of a bruise on the hero’s cheek. “If you were like this with your lover too, I can see why they want to take their time.” The villain bit down their lip, looking like they were imagining it. “Do it slowly. Intimately. Take you apart and break you bit by bit so you die screaming.” They pressed the bruise. 

The hero refused to wince, to flinch, from the touch or the wounds. 

“It does make a difference, you know,” the villain said. “Dying quick and relatively painless, or dying slow.” 

“Killing me slowly is just a good way to make sure I escape. I’ve done it before.” 

The villain smiled.  “Which is why I would kill you quickly.”

“And yet here we are talking with me still alive.” The hero turned their head away, as if bored. “So I suppose it doesn’t matter what either of us want, does it? When you’re not calling the shots in this situation?” 

The villain dropped their hand, fingers curling into a fist.  “This is my operation.” 

“I wasn’t sure, seeing as you needed my opinion and all.” 

“I wasn’t - I was taunting you!” 

“Maybe you should try stoicism. It might mean you make a less embarrassing last impression of yourself.” 

The villain smacked them, then, hard. 

The hero blinked away stars, and felt a laugh rising in their throat. They choked it down just as they’d swallowed the tears, and the pleas, and the questions. 

Because their lover wanted them dead. Of course, that would be worse. The only thing even worse was living with the knowledge that everything had been a lie, that the person they adored wanted to hurt them. 

Maybe they were somehow being controlled? Maybe they were there, inside, screaming. That thought didn’t feel much better. 

“You know what,” the villain’s voice was venom. “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. You’re still going to die, and no one will remember you.”

“Not a very impressive victory if no one remembers.” 

The villain drew in a steadying, calming sort of breath. They pushed themselves to their feet once more. 

“So,” the hero said. “What’s it going to be? Your hand - or the hand that holds your leash?” 

“Nice try, but you don’t get to die yet. Just wanted to know for when we’re done with you.”

The hero raised a brow.  “Ah, so you do still need me alive. Good to know. Thanks.” 

“You-” The villain stopped again. Their eyes narrowed.

The hero allowed themselves to smile, then, like smiling was a weapon. 

Their lover’s laughter echoed in the comm in the hero’s ear as the villain walked away. 

“Baby,” their lover crooned, sweet as poison. “You know I don’t even have to ask.”

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

dip your head and feel your antlers, worn, moss-dripping, gouge the earth below. you are stirring things forgotten. They are dark. They are lovely.

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

thinking about that ilya kaminsky poem that’s like i was / in my bed, around my bed america / was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

I have always had a honey heart, sweet seeping into each word that I leave behind. Perhaps you can taste in it the flowers I have seen– how I have flown to as many as my wings might reach, and asked them, if they could, for a little bit of nectar– how I nestled in their petals just to remember how it feels to be held, If you see them, would you ask, do they remember me? 

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

“The flesh is a bandage where being is wound.”

— Hinge & Sign: Poems, 1968-1993 by Heather McHugh

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

We are not without fault but we are also not without hunger.

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

Writing Prompt #1209

The knight was noticeably intoxicated by this point in the dinner. She gripped onto her cup of ale like a child does its favorite toy, shoulders hunched further forward with every word that came out of that pompous lord’s mouth.

It was always victory with those elites, and never a thought to the lives lost. He was drinking to celebrate, but she was drinking to forget.

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

“But you see, there is a graveyard in my mouth filled with words that have died on my lips.”

— Emily Palermo, excerpt of I DON’T WANT TO BE QUIET ANYMORE

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

tonight, i sleep under the moon and cannot breathe for loneliness. i cough up forget-me-nots, divine in their bloody imperfections, catch them in my hands and exhale. they take root in my lungs, choke off my breath, vines bind my ribcage and thorns tear out through the soft skin of my thighs, dripping blood from my core. black and red roses bloom from my wounds. my words taste of iron/i am dying in the moonlight/drowning alone in my own blood, softly. persephone reclaims me. i belong to the lonely earth.

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

“I am tired of burying the gods, let them die gently, with a touch of love, with a touch of softness.”

— thoughts #464 | r.m

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

The fae smiled, sharply: “Give me your name, child.”

“Uhhhhh. Stick.”

“What.”

“Does Leaf work better? I’m just kinda looking around this clearing. Look, I’m trans, I haven’t decided on one yet, I’m throwing some spaghetti at the wall, you know how it is.”

[wandering-thoughts-and-dreams]

Prompt #791

Could anything be as sweet as a stranger in the moonlight in the midst of a windstorm? Or is it their fangs piercing your throat as you realize, blessedly, that you can never go back home?