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[21silverlinings]

So bold and burdensomely clinical affection slips through my fingers and burns the floor, instead of you. It trickles, like lava, red and down to the core of the Earth, again; away from you. Both of our bodies remain stagnant but our eyes drift toward the spill. My fingertips, once warm enough to revive you now see frostbite and purple hues. a risk of paralysis persists; wasted purely in vain. And in return your jaw welds shut. Words form into cubes of steel too large and weighty to ever leave those lips. it does not occur to you that I may have spared you from something too cataclysmic. It does not occur to me that you crave a version of me that may never exist.

[paper-wounds]

via

[definegodliness]

Wisps

Astral projection, Detected (perhaps dreamt); that face, and…

Maybe I am filling in the blanks with these Ecoline ink clouds.

Vivifying emptinesses. Twirling all colours Ever more till something sticks for a while, Not instantly obliterated by the adjudicator. I recall

Animosity? Mist wisps; Omissible details, still Reestablishing (you) my unforgiving nature.

--- 14-7-2026

[drearydaffodil]

I cannot explain

My willful resistance

How roots won't remain

An erased existence

I long to be sand

I dream of the sea

To lose sight of land

To lose all of me

[luciblackanima]

the shape of an echo.

Summer distils its weather report of loneliness,

ensconcing love’s shadow figures in borrowed ink of shame— scribbles of scandal, answers delayed

like a story racing to keep pace, to force you to touch base,

while false censures lay sweetly, the wrackful music retained artistically.

But the breeze of blackest night does not itself express gently against the blushing light.

It bellows. It swarms. It shudders.

And you, my muse,

your lips grow stale, your voice repressed, your echoes rising, your soul strangled.

The colourful complexity of your artistry

d r i b b l e s

and

I

pine.

[crmsnmth]

If We Had Never Met

I wish we had stayed strangers two passing shadows in a room full of noise never learning the shape of each other's silence

I wish your name didn't feel like a bruise I keep pressing just to check if it still hurts

Because it does God, it still does

We built something out of late nights and almosts out of broken pieces we pretended were enough and I called it love because I didn't know what else to call a fire that warm could burn that badly

If we had never met I wouldn't measure time in before you and after you I wouldn't hear your laugh in songs that used to be mine I wouldn't look for you in people who were never meant to carry your ghost

Maybe you'd be happier untouched by my chaos unmarked by my storms Maybe I'd be lighter without the weight of knowing exactly how I ruined something that once felt like everything

I don't wish you back I don't wish us healed

I just wish we had never happened at all so I could walk through this world without stepping over the wreckage of a live we almost lived

[21silverlinings]

i'm new to tumblr and less new to writing -- i don't really have a question, i wanted to say i just like your work. it's good shit.

have a good day <3

Thank you! Very sweet of you :)

[21silverlinings]

back hunched. palms upright- meekly offering a serving platter. Take your blame, And put it in my hands. I will eat it and digest it for both of us. When you scream, and the words we once uttered to one another come back up your throat like acid and bile, I will clean it up. When the venom in you splatters on my arms and burns my skin off I will wear the scars to honor you. In time, you will see that even at our end I chose to protect you.

[21silverlinings]

You dwell within my mind, though you may loathe me in presence. I unseal my own spirit, and yield myself into heaven. You dwell within my mind, and there is naught you can do. Does this render me a mad, or make me a fool? 

I dress you in my mind and kiss your scarred clavicle.  I pass my fingers through your hair and begin to lose all that is rational. 

May no soul save me from myself, as you dwell in my mind. Here, I get to savor the moment; and here, alas, you are mine.

- an irregular ode to obsession // nb

[21silverlinings]

Your grasp is emblazoned on the nape of my neck. The moment you touched me my skin burned away your past. Your fingerprints now spell my name in all its whorls and loops and arches. and it is the key to nothing else but me.

nb

[21silverlinings]

My luck feels like

Nothing but a reminder

That I am a small well.

I plead with syllables

To form long enough poems

To wrap myself up

And let it embrace me when

No one else will.

Maybe when I sing

Someone will listen

And they too will

Opt to bask in this luck with me.

[21silverlinings]

It feels like love and lust with no one but myself. I speak to me and hear only my voice; the puzzle exists within me. it resonates and vibrates within my chest and no one else can translate. - what it feels like to write [and love. and breathe. and live.] poetry

[21silverlinings]

it's monday night and I'm dancing. my heart is beating 300 miles per hour (i think). I don't know if its because of nerves or fear; but I move to the rhythm straight faced and blank yet whole, all at once. I dance to displace this energy. It helps me process. I am devoted to both my feelings and my body. It becomes my mission to not exist as anything other than what I portray to them - happy. dancing. alive. confidence exudes me as much as I, it. But deep down I am nothing. And worth even less than that to anyone else. Soon, I don't know which part of me will win out. But I know the inside holds the outside hostage and the outside is no more.

nb

[21silverlinings]

Level the surface of something as obscure as “depth”. Impossibly, you hold something that defies gravity, It exists but doesn’t. It holds weight and is weightless all at once. It is what we call “Depth”.

You desperately try to rewrite it in layman’s terms. Level the surface of something so untouchable, So that it may remain flat, palpable, real. We sand down our conversations and our interests buff away the personality so that we can remain digestible. Surface level, even. Level the surface of something so complex and tedious out of fear and nothing will remain.

Depth. The presence of layers, complexities, nuances: Illuminate the length of time, The width of desire, The height of our emotions. Spatially conjoined at each edge Are two points of contention then we search for exploited three-dimensional illusions As a way to level the surface.

In theory we understand reflection And refraction with something tangible And struggle to make it Transferrable to the abstract. In practice the tip of this vertex is the point of no change when spliced apart and dissected each barrier produces a diffraction too substantial to reconcile.

Depth. Cohesive on the surface. Leveled, to pieces.

nb

[vbkpoetry]

My youngest has started writing. She’s on the spectrum and has always grabbed at arts door. Her drawings are unique and steeped with her own style. Her mom, who I met here like sixteen or seventeen years ago, sent me some of her poems last week.

I was blown away.

Then, this weekend, while she was sitting right next to me, she wrote this poem. I was blown away. In someways it feels like something I would write. She’s nine.

I’ll die knowing that my kids will take a piece of me with them, but also, they’ve given my life definition.

[luna-azzurra]

Writers have two modes and they are "i haven't written in three weeks and i am rotting from the inside and everything feels wrong and i don't know who i am anymore" and "i wrote for four hours straight and forgot to eat and it's dark outside and when did that happen and i feel like a god" and there is nothing in between. no chill. no medium setting. just famine or feast and a very confused nervous system.

[21silverlinings]

How can I explain to you that the version of you that exists within me is shedding itself, like an exoskeleton, making room for something more sinister. This version of you peels its skin, moving slowly amidst the foliage, sinking your claws into the topsoil and ripping apart the moss.

Steathily, you move.

I extend my hands to feed you and offer you the water I collect. You tell me you must shed, and I pray you do so, with ease. It must hurt to be so contained.

Thoughtlessly, I aid you. I make room for you to grow, and I keep myself small. I feel my own skin shed in the process but I refuse to pick my scabs until you are clear and free. When my time comes, I intend to heal and be birthed, anew. Was it wrong to believe that you would, too?

I find secret pieces of you around me. A limb I did not know existed, and a fingernail you’ve keep hidden. The pieces do not match what I see. I begin to wonder if there’s someone else hiding amongst us, and fear dwells in the recesses of my gut. I have to bring you into my shelter, even if you are too big to fit in my arms, now.

So I place myself between a rock and a tree, and I stretch and stretch and stretch until I am happy I can hold you, and I take you away. But when we sleep at night, I hear sounds that feel familiar but with distorted pitch; almost like a crunching, or the smack of lips too intentional to be incidental. I stay hidden, afraid that we have been followed; under attack. I wonder where you are. I worry and I beg God to spare you and when God doesn’t aid me, I seek you myself only to find you eating your own body - the only version of you I knew.

Mourning you feels incomplete, because here you are crouched in front of me - licking your lips and watching nothing else, but me.

nb