Words are Weapons

I'm just a small town poet, trying to make it. However, in addition to that, I'm also a typical college student, stuck in the middle of nowhere, who is actively involved in everything. I do debate, theatre, and journalism, while also marching with my band as a percussionist and twirling on the auxiliary line as well. I'm obsessed with writing, one of my dreams is to be able to make it in the Tumblr writing circle, and to be finished with my book before I graduate. I also watch Doctor Who in my free-time, and support various other fandoms(I LIKE BOOKS). I'm incredibly social, so feel free to talk to me anytime!

[nosebleedclub]

Discussion 12/17/21

1. coming winter 2. bite marks 3. owl 4. gingerbread 5. the last

[ada-slyvia-rose]

1. You feel the howl beginning and you know soon you’ll be begging for it to stop. Scared straight skinny, scared of your refrigerator, scared of the pantry, the microwave, the coffeemaker. Is that a noise you hear in the dark? The sun sets too early now, the dark is starting to crawl inside your mind, twisting and taunting. You write too much, too little, hang up “poet in residence” on the door of your apartment. No one but you gets the joke. You’re the joke, get it?

2. It scares you how much you want to claw into your skin “he’s mine”. You might scream if someone else were to touch him, were to turn his nouns possessive without you in the picture. It’s a different kind of fear than you’re used to, the kind that makes you want to fight, wants to make you bite. When you see him in the dark you want to make him yours and yours alone. Bite marks mauled onto his skin.

3. When you were younger you wanted to be wise and now sometimes you want to dead. You can’t remember what’s right anymore, only that you must write and must right the wrongs turning the world lopsided. Big bold eyes marked matte with black eyeliner, you watch the world and wait, ready to swoop down and straighten up the mess cluttering the earth.

4. Tis the season and everyone is screaming. Karens clutter the supermarket while Christmas songs screech overhead. After the fifth repeat of the same series of songs, you think that you must be dead and this is hell, fluorescent lights buzzing bright overhead. Who else could have devised such a mockery of a time you worshipped as a child? It must be the work of the devil himself. How dearly you must have sinned.

5. You can’t take the last cookie or you’ll wish that you were dead, body crawling with maggots and no more needs and no more wants. It’s the holiday season and you shouldn’t care but you do and you always care and you can’t stop caring. Don’t take the last cookie, or you’ll show everyone how selfish you are in a season of selflessness. You tell yourself you won’t do it and you don’t want to do it and surely you won’t do it but then it’s two am again and there’s crumbs on the kitchen floor. In the morning they will fight over who did it, and you will stay silent long after the arguing stops.

[inkskinned]

there’s this little rumble brewing. we are all stepping around the same date, less than a week.

i have been getting texts. one of them reads is it okay if i don’t want to even fucking look at the results i just want to sleep through it all. i don’t know how to respond. i have this habit of wanting to cut my hair and then keeping it long. i like to snip split ends any time i have scissors in my hand. i’ve been walking around with sharp things a lot lately.  

i have been getting emails. on account of the fact we don’t know what the world looks like in a week, we will not be holding classes on wednesday. i want to ask my classmate - do you think she’s just planning on being hungover but it doesn’t even feel funny. i stare at it for a long time and then make an annotation to my calendar about due dates. the story i was going to turn is about being bisexual and young and having good friends.

i have been getting resume requests. jobs all come with mission statements and addendums. it feels silly to plan for something in 2021. that doesn’t even sound like a real year, my sister says. on my cover letter, i consider typing - there are many who would liken me to a cockroach.

i have been getting little worries. we are in the skype together, and he says - i love you all so much. i want to watch the world change with you. how terrifying a thought. we make a joke about it. about penning each other letters across the rest of the end of our lives. they say - oh! you’ll be armed with a hot glue gun. 

more and more people reach out. do you want to meet up? they pass little hopes and keep little loves. will you be here? do you need me to come? are you safe? i’ll get in my car and drive. do you need to just get drunk?

what else is there. these tiny little proofs of love. of wanting to hold hands, of wanting to be together, of not being done.  

seriously, i’ll get in my car this moment. seriously, i’ll buy the plane ticket. seriously, i’ve been meaning to run. say the word and i’ll come. say the word and i’ll come. say the word and i’ll come.

[inkskinned]

executive dysfunction is legitimately physically uncomfortable. i’ll be trapped between two things, weirdly caught on how-much-time-it-might-take-me. i take hours worried im going to take hours doing things. i’ll sit on the floor for the entire day, caught up in the middle of not-doing the chores i actually do want to be doing.

& the amount of mental energy that goes into it. & the legitimate amount of anger and discomfort and self-hate. is not “being lazy”.  it’d be a lot less work if i didn’t have to fight myself to just get up and do it. 

i just need you to understand it’s not effortless. it’s never effortless. it’s not “okay let me just get up and finally start doing this.” it’s more like. i am slamming my foot on the pedal but the car is in neutral and nothing is moving. it’s more like shouting instructions into a dying telephone. it’s more like being trapped in a small electric box, and someone who hates me is administering shocks. 

im trying. im trying. please help me get up.

[inkskinned]

also just like. its pretty fucked how many people with mental illness or chronic conditions are worried they’re “faking” it because. like someone looked at you. and said. that you were ruining your own life and your own body and your own future and your own happiness - that there was nothing actually wrong with you, you were doing this on purpose.

you battle these incredibly difficult intrusions, these symptoms which constantly assail you – and you’d fake that?? in what world do i gain anything by faking this? in what world is it winning the lottery for me to not be a functioning fucking human being??

but like i still wonder if i am faking it because it’s been suggested so much i just… have completely internalized it. and like. that’s pretty disgusting.

[inkskinned]

i know we’re both just messing around pretending to be whole but look at me. if the train was coming would you move. if the ground was falling from under your feet would you even notice or would it just be another tuesday for you. if somebody stabbed you could it hurt worse than you already do. what i’m saying is that i love you but i think we both drive over the speed limit when it’s raining. what i’m saying is that i want to hold your hand and i understand about how you sometimes have to sit down in the shower. what i’m saying is that i’m here for you and if the train comes please move.

[inkskinned]

i tap my pinky finger against a hot glue gun and i burn. this is divine retribution for arts and crafts and for being what an ex called “a joanne fabrics kind of bitch.” 

i have been thinking a lot about angry. i have been thinking about what angry gives me. i have been thinking about how rage can be precious. how rage can be justice. i have been thinking about the thin slices of my sister’s apple pie, each overlapping in roses. i have been thinking about knives. i have been thinking about kitchens.

you know what i’ve been thinking about? a man three days ago reached over me while getting something down from a shelf in a walmart. i’ve been thinking about that. how do you have that much confidence. he showed me his entire armpit and i came in unfortunate contact with his hip. how do you touch something without being a part of it? how do you take up space without being aware of it? how do you reach for things without worrying what will stop you from getting it?

once i got concentrated floor cleaner in my eye and burned it completely down to the iris. i didn’t want to be an inconvenience, so i washed it out and waited twelve hours before trying to do something about it. i thought i was being overdramatic.  

a doctor didn’t see me for five hours. the emergency room nurse had written “soap in the eye” as my symptom. i was completely blinded. “you must be in a lot of pain,” the optometrist said when he finally got around to it, “that’s your whole cornea gone.” he tells me this is probably one of the worst things i will ever hopefully ever experience; a concentration of nerve endings all melted into nothing. then i said, for no reason either of us understood, “sorry i did this.”

i have been thinking about angry. i have been thinking about fires. i have been thinking about being hungry. i think about the anklet i wear with a little silver cross; i think about hell and who is going. when she kisses me, something splits so loudly that i hear damnation resonating. the priests in my old church all get full pardons and retirement funds. i drop her hand before we get on the bus.

i have been thinking about the color of my lipstick. i have been thinking about the shape of my clothing. i have been thinking about what calm looks like; how peace is commodified. i have been thinking about candles, and witches, and burning.

“bitch!” he leans out of a truck. “don’t fucking walk away when im talking to you! what the fuck are you doing?”

[inkskinned]

shh, i am still in love with the mundane beauties of this world. while painting my cabinets, a perfect star splattered onto the back of my hand. there is a flower at the top of the hill that always seems too colorful to be real. under the table, someone has scratched be well in tiny handwriting. the peanut butter spreads perfectly on my toast. we all stare up at the moon. the streetlights in fog, all fall leaves around us, the pattern on little parking lot birdwings. little life, little joy, little falling. little bit lovely, always.

[inkskinned]

we roll up the rug together. underneath are little bits of construction paper from art projects i never finished cleaning up or i never finished at all. my life is full of these scraps; untidy leavings.

“what would i tell her, even?” i discover in the grooves of the hardwood a single bent ring, try to pick it up with my toes for the added challenge.

you go get a broom. “you tell her the truth. they thought it was something harmless, but it’s looking like it might be serious, and you wanted to reach out because it has given you some clarity.”

“the insurance isn’t cooperating. do you think she could get the insurance to cooperate?” i hold down the metal dust pan on the floor in front of you, gently scooping lint into the pile with my bare hands.

“nobody can get the insurance to cooperate.” you have a trick to getting dirt perfectly into the pan - you somehow never leave one of those little lines behind.

“so i go up and i’m like - hi! we lost touch. i have a heart condition that might kill me and they don’t know what it is. it’s scary! anyway, wanna grab lunch?”

“you could like, offer a specific lunch place.” you gesture for me to open the trash bag, i struggle with finding the correct orientation. 

i have to shake it open. “this sound gives me the heebie jeebies and like, i don’t know why. you ever have, like, sound-heebies?”

“like, specifically for metal on teeth. you could start the conversation like that, maybe?” you pour the dust in. i spot a penny in the dinge too late to rescue it. “like - hi, i am afraid of trash bags.”

“not afraid! they’re just too loud and shouty.” i shimmy it gently so it rests at the bottom. i stare at it, penny winking through dust. “what if she hates me? what if she thinks i’m like, super ugly? am i ugly, patrick? what if she hates me and she thinks i’m super ugly?”

you stack your hands at the top of the broom. take a deep breath. “you know, i don’t wanna be that guy to someone with a weak heart, but.” you rest your cheek on the back of your knuckles, grinning. “but maybe you care too much about what people might think about you.”

“i don’t know how to stop caring!”

“yeah, that’s fair.” you close your eyes. “but you chase catastrophe, kind of.”

i stare at my hands. “not on purpose.”

you put the broom against the wall. you take a deep breath. ghost your palms under mine, almost-touching, not-quite-there-yet. like you’ll catch me if i start going, but you trust me enough to keep standing. “you are living in the catastrophe,” you say. “you are already experiencing a worst-case. late-stage capitalism. pandemic. global warming. all of it. there’s no need for you to imagine worst-case situations. you are trying, and you are caring, and you are alive in despite of all of it.” 

“yeah, but. i just….” i never stop thinking. the skin of me is full of beetles. i can never rest and i haven’t been sleeping and no matter how much planning i do i never seem to be able to get my life up and running. “… i just. get nervous.”

“it’s okay,” you say. “i’ll be your friend anyway. even if she finds you ugly.”

[inkskinned]

my hands shake too hard, so you help me hang the new painting. the music from the phone in your back pocket is singing about hating winters in california. 

i’m wine drunk. “no,” i’m saying, “you don’t get it. crows, like, have a sense of their own thought process.” a little bit of the paint chips off under my fingernail.

you ask me if i think crows can fall in love. i say they are only made from love. you ask me if i think crows love like how people love. i say: i don’t know anything about love enough to answer that.

we stand back to see if it’s hanging even. it isn’t but it’s heavy so we just stand there for a second, looking at the skewed frame. “do you really think that?” you ask. look at me just out of the corner of your eye. like if you look too closely i’ll cry. the way things have been lately, i don’t know either.

“skewed isn’t used enough,” i say. “skewed is a good word.”

“because i think a lot of people love you.” you reach out and shift the thing a little to the left. now it’s off-center in the other way.

i don’t think that’s true, i almost say. “yeah, i know.”

you take my hand. “a lot of people,” you say again. “like. maybe it isn’t what you were expecting. maybe they don’t know how to do it loudly or they don’t know how to do it where you can see or that you don’t know how to look for it. but.” you turn me so i have to look into your eyes, so big and bright and caring - “a lot of people love you if you just… start noticing.”

i can’t look at you like that too long. all beautiful and soft and vulnerable. i break away and straighten the painting. “i just want the romance!” i say, trying to make my tone joking, knowing i sound like i’m choking.

“you don’t need it.” you get the other side angled correctly. now it is perfect. we are so close i can feel the heat of your skin and see the reflection of the art in your iris. your hand holds my cheek; cool and soothing. “you are a romantic already. romanticize existing. go on a date with joy. go on a picnic with surviving. you are so lovely, and loving you feels effortless and easy.”

i wish that were true. i try to make a joke. “oh, did a crow tell you that? how do you know?”

“i know,” you say. i can’t help the feeling in the back of my throat, an ache so wide it’s no longer wanting, it’s dissolving. the color of your eyes takes up all of my mind until it’s just a swathe of you. 

“you’re so easily loved,” you repeat. you run your cold thumb over my cheek. “i know. i know. i know. you gotta just trust me.”

[inkskinned]

in my dreams, i am dust-covered and sneezing. we are unpacking blue-grey plates and talking about plato. i say i’m sort of a pliny-the-elder kinda monster, you have to take a lap around our new apartment, mournfully questioning corner ghosts - can you believe this girl?

in my dreams, i am wearing the velvet green dress from the movie. we are dancing in sweeping moons across uneven floorboards. your hands are cold, but you glide so easily. the whole time you’re talking about good vampire movies.

in my dreams, we are sitting at the top of a hill and overlooking an apple orchard and you’re gently picking leaves out of my hair. you are humming tunelessly and i’m chattering about all the pie i want to eat. 

my mother, in the real life, asks me why i look like i haven’t gotten any sleep. she says the shadows under my eyes are getting concerning. she asks if i’m low in iron or if the nightmares are returning.

it’s okay. i say. it’s okay. i’ve just been lying awake, thinking.

[inkskinned]

kitchens become so essential to the heart of a house. the space you and your siblings tried to shove too-hot cookies into your mouth; the space you made whipped cream into a waterfall and tried to catch it in the air; the space you burnt your first batch of cupcakes.

the space she stands, shoulders curled, and asks you, coldly, if you’ll give her the room. the dog skittering away from any scooted chair. a silence, thick and eerie. a set of burns, and broken plates, and fearfully stealing what you need to eat. the knife, clean and agile, his hands angrily slicing meat. 

i juggle three grapes effortlessly. he bounces an apple off the back of a knife, she jumps to catch it in her teeth. we dance with our hands up to the sound of the oven timer beeps, shouting and stomping and howling tunelessly. i bake another set of cookies for no other reason than “it feels like cookie weather,” nobody yells at me. we stack thick tomatoes on top of our heads to practice our balancing, he slides me a sandwich when he’s worried i didn’t have time to eat.

my friend asks me if i feel like i’m home. on the stovetop; ginger tea is boiling over, but we are all laughing. nobody is slamming drawers, nobody is closing cabinets so hard the dishware rattles. nobody is scrubbing dishes violently. nobody is asking what i was doing in the fridge, nobody is shouting. 

it’s different, i say. it’s happy here. we are, you know, friendly.

so home, she says. you feel like what homes are supposed to be.

[inkskinned]

i am always checking other people’s body language. my therapist says this is a normal conditioned response to what i’ve been through, she says - you like to see a problem before it becomes a problem.

i like to see a problem before it is a problem. if i can solve the problem early, then there will never be a problem to exist. if i can’t solve it, i’d like to leave, and if i can’t leave, i don’t know how to handle it. so i watch, and i wait for things that might not happen, and i duck out of parties early, and i don’t let people too close, and i don’t believe you like me, and i say i am happy on my own.

my therapist says - with all this watching, don’t you worry you might misunderstand a signal and end up seeing rejection where there is acceptance? don’t you think you might be giving this a lot of power over your existence? 

with all this watching, she says. when do you get to actually experience?

[inkskinned]

recently i’ve been feeling this thing growing horrible inside of me like a wedge between all of my bones. a violent, cruel energy. the sharpness is unfiltered, the voice is wet and furious. 

energy cannot be created or destroyed, of course. this one feels horrible to carry, the kind of unshaped potential that demands a release. i have tried kinetic responses; have done my running and my planks and my holding on. i have tried meditation and soothing behaviors. i have tried it all.

i still feel that claw, an unspent scream in its most horrid little state. the skin of which is ugly, raw.

once, when i was like this, i cut all my hair off. once, when i was like this, i ate so much i threw up. once, when i was like this, i ran into traffic. once, when i was like this, i did so many bad things to myself to get it out that they had to take my hands away from me. it’s like i have to get it out by pulling, and the pulling is so violent, there’s no way to remove the splinter without also removing me.

i tell my friend. i’m gonna have to go into the woods and yowl for hours on end. then i will turn into a werewolf and run around and get leaves in my hair and you’ll never see me again. or if you do see me, i’ll be running amok in a cvs, holding a dead squirrel in my mouth, looking for vengence.

he covers my hand with his. “when you go into the woods,” he says, “take me with you. we will both scream, and scream, and scream, and then we will go home together. you can be a wolf in your own bed.”

so i will be a wolf in my own bed. we will find a way to get it out without opening my ribs. we will remove it under a full moon, and we will be feral, but we will no longer kill the girl wild on the altar of her own bones. we will raise her instead.

[inkskinned]

i got asked yesterday - does your body know before you do, or do you tell your body?

i know when she is in the room, even if i’m not looking. i know when she’s upset just by the way the air feels around her. i know her smell like it has made a coat around me.

there is a rabbit-sense we have. where something overhead puts our shoulders up. then there is our open-space fear, where too-wide makes us check over our shoulders. i say - i think she’s a hawk. or i think she’s a shadow. or i think she’s a candle i forgot to blow out. the whole house will burn down around her.

i think, my friend says. you are just worried because you buried your heart in the dirt and she is a landslide and she comes in and leaves you nowhere to hide.

i tell myself i have plenty of other things to worry about right now. i tell myself we are going to write about being human; about the unbridled being-alive. what does your body know? i write at the top of the page in my journal. i tell myself i am going to write about knowing climbing trees and apple picking and baking cookies, cool nights and sharp knives and long fur. what does my body know?

knee-jerk, the the answer. you know her, and her, and her.  

[inkskinned]

i would have learned, you know. i know violence teaches, and it teaches well. but i would have learned without it.

[inkskinned]

i think there is a lot to learn from plants. roses, the staple cliche of poetry - each of these grew thorns to protect themselves. the lesson here is not the trite “beauty is cruel” but instead more apparent in the soil - roses grow better with blood-based fertilizers. to victims of trauma, the sharpness isn’t allegorical. all of the thorns i have split from my skin have made me more dangerous, and i do not have to feel bad about it. when they say roses would be wonderful without thorns, i hear i cannot accept that things can be both strong and delicate. i don’t like things complicated. but i am complicated. and i do not owe anyone my best side without the respect of my boundaries.

i just bought a five dollar rescue-bin phalaenopsis orchid (commonly, “the moth orchid”). I don’t really have the five dollars to spend, but something was too good about how obviously the roots were too trapped in the pot. it outgrew its environment maybe months ago, wrapping roots tighter and tighter around itself into a ball of dehydrated limbs. this again is too apt - how often i have shaped myself to an awful space, over and over, killing myself to be collected. i didn’t want to be a burden, or a bad girl, or bitter. but if my other orchids (i have quite the collection) are any indication; in a few months and a new pot - it will begin to bloom again. the process of repotting just takes time and diligence.

somehow, pothos - sometimes called an “unkillable plant” - never seems to make it when i am the one raising it. maybe i have some kind of pothos-related curse. my sister watched me clean out another dead version of an attempt at a hanging vine and said - i know it makes you sad, but i like that you always try. the cane tree in my corner is six inches taller than when i bought it on clearance. “that’s going to die,” the cashier said, “are you sure you want it?” i buy flowers at a roadstand for my friends. the farmer watches from her porch.

“it’s a good way to show love,” she calls. “flowers make people happy, and we all need to feel just a little bit happier.”

my mother once cut and sprouted mint for me over several months, using one of her favorite wicker baskets to give it a home. i tell her the majority of mint plants have square stems; that i once knew a garden that grew chocolate-flavored mint. she says - well, i hope this one tastes like home, then.

[inkskinned]

i have been thinking, obsessively, about space, and who owns it, and who feels safe in it, and who controls it. covid has this effect on all of us - how close is too close? what is a comfortable distance? who breaks into that space, who gets annoyed when you define it, who assumes you will be the one to move and not them? what is your space.

i have been fainting a lot lately. i am going to a doctor about it, eventually, when i save up enough money. i wake up on the floor of a cvs, next to the weighted blankets. give her space, the pharmacist says. three men stare down at me, one with his nose out of his mask. the carpet is itchy.

my friend is annoyed again. i know he needs his space, she says. he is staying with his ex for the night. we both know it, but she can’t help it. we have an apartment together and we just re-upped the lease. i’ve been to their place. she does all the cleaning. 

i just need space, she tells me. her hands are white around her coffee. he’ll understand, right? i just need some space for me.