autumnish

Somewhat defunct tumblr that gets a theme change every once in a great while?

[autumnishleaves]

I kind of hate your choices in literature for me? Because I just read into everything. And I have thoughts about being in bed reading and you putting your book down, or waking up, and starting to kiss and touch and nibble. Me putting my book down—"No. Keep reading. Read it to me." Just so you can enjoy the sound of the words catching in my throat, my breathing hitching, and the little moans that come tumbling out of my mouth when your tongue touches a particularly tender spot.

[sbeans112]

“Sometimes you meet someone, and it’s so clear that the two of you, on some level belong together. As lovers, or as friends, or as family, or as something entirely different. You just work, whether you understand one another or you’re in love or you’re partners in crime. You meet these people throughout your life, out of nowhere, under the strangest circumstances, and they help you feel alive. I don’t know if that makes me believe in coincidence, or fate, or sheer blind luck, but it definitely makes me believe in something.”

— Unknown (via memereve)

[autumnishleaves]

I want.

This is not as edited as my other notes...I looked at all the scribblings and had no idea how to edit it into anything cohesive. Maybe this can answer for you what it means when I say you're on my mind.

xxx

I want to wear a sheer blouse and a bandeau that matches my espadrilles. I want to hold your hand on a street in Cuba, Marseilles, Miami, Greece, Barbados...I want you to put sunscreen on parts of me that will never see the sun—sightseeing can wait.

I want you shirtless in my passenger seat. I love the feeling of your arms tight around my shoulders, my bare breasts flattened against your chest as you hold me. I want to trail tiny kisses from your shoulder to your ear...and then all the way back to that tender spot inside your wrist.

I want to leave the window wide open at night and pile under all the blankets with you. I want to tuck myself into you, even if you snore and your chest hair tickles the inside of my nose.

I want you to tell me what to wear, and forbid me from wearing underwear—your hands wandering up my skirt while we're out to dinner.

I want you to drag me shopping and pick out clothes for me to try on, just so you can imagine all the places you would take them off me.

I want you to mark me as spoken for with a dark love bite just below my collarbone. Out of sight at work but visible with a low-cut top so you can admire your handiwork and the swell of my breasts all at once.

I want rainy autumn days with hot cider spiked with bourbon. Wearing your t-shirt and no pants, playing cribbage. Getting food delivered so we don't have to leave the house.

[autumnishleaves]

I think of you after I've been dancing. When I've gotten so sweaty that I can feel the salt grit when I touch my skin. I think of all the times I've warned you not to and you still lick my forehead.

I think of you when I shower on those nights, too. How much I want your warm hands, your attention to detail. Your commitment to every curve.

[autumnishleaves]

I'd like to spend the night with you. I'd like to (try to) wear your shirt to bed. I'd pick it up off the floor where it had been discarded and slip it on. You'd come up behind me... "What's this." You would find and worry the hem in your fingers, your knuckles ever so slightly brushing my thighs. "Last I checked it was your t-shirt, babe." "I see." And you would take your time to veto it. Your hands would find the skin of my hips and linger there--always distracted by my hips. Slowly slide up to my waist. I wouldn't have to see your face to know you would be transfixed by the mirrored closet door, savoring every inch of skin as it came into view. I would squirm as your touch tickled my ribcage and armpits. Your hands would nudge my arms up, and you would smile as you considered the ways to blindfold and immobilize me with the fabric now up around my face and arms. But you would continue until I was once again naked in front of you, and your shirt would fall back to the floor.

[autumnishleaves]

Come take a walk by the creek with me. I promise not to mind if your hand bumps mine too many times to be accidental, and I find my hand folded into yours with our fingers intertwined. I’ll lean on the fence and wrap your arms around my shoulders, and use you like an oversized coat to fend off the chill of the fog. You can kiss the place behind my ear, then settle your chin on the top of my head. I know you love to watch the wading birds—the snowy egrets with the black legs and yellow feet, and the way they run after their prey; the tuxedo jackets of the black-necked stilts, needling their bills into the mud; the graceful craning necks and motionless watching of the great blue herons. The salty smell is stronger when the tide is out, and I can feel the tang in my nose and on my tongue. Your chest rises and falls steadily against my back, and I feel each exhalation in my hair. Come take a walk by the creek with me. I want to watch the wading birds with you.

[autumnishleaves]

To Dan

I think you were the only one who was content to let me be a bulldozer. Maybe I'm rose-colored-glasses-ing the thing, but I don't remember you having any particular objection to my getting tattooed, to my desire to get sterilized, to my sarcasm, my snark, my philosophies on sex–no objection to me as a person, or the way I choose to pass through this world.

I think all the ones since you have thought I needed an attitude adjustment, or that surgery was too drastic a step for birth control, or took issue with the fact that I was smarter than him, or wasn't fond of my sexual history.

I'm not sure I know what conclusion to draw from it.

[autumnishleaves]

I watched our old Duo messages. I'm sure you haven't. I'm sure you've been so much stronger than me. You blocked me on instagram...I'm sure you don't check in on me the way I do on you. I don't know why I do it. I can't put it into words. You don't put enough of your life on there for me to learn anything from it anyway.

I don't know what I hope to accomplish here. I think I just need confirmation that you've moved on. I need to know that so my heart will be smashed all over again and this time can start mending my way, and not with you in mind.

[autumnishleaves]

I put you in this box in my head, this pretty museum box because you're too good to tarnish with my hands. You were always out of my league. I should have known. You said you were always so distracted by my being around to take a step back and be able to leave me. You must be so glad to be rid of me now. All the space and time in the world. We were never supposed to be together anyway. You told me you weren't supposed to fall for me.

You thought I wouldn't be lonely long. You were wrong. I hope you're happy. I haven't been getting over you in someone else's arms, I've been cooped up in my little toaster unable to stop thinking about you.

I feel like such a fool. What did I think was going to happen. You told me who you were from the very beginning. You never hid your theism. I just didn't know you were so militant about it.

When we went to Montana you said I was different. I didn't feel different necessarily? I asked you what you meant and I'm not sure I ever really got a straight answer on what you meant or how I was different. We stood in the middle of the cabin and I cried and told you I thought I was depressed. You stood there holding me while I cried.

Now I know I'm not the same. THe sadness comes in waves, and some days I drown.

What if I never get that part of me back.

[autumnishleaves]

This morning I remembered the way you always walked me to my car when I went to work in the mornings. Even when I tried to make you stay in bed and sleep, you would still come with me with your coffee. We always lingered with the kisses, and you always told me to drive safe.

[autumnishleaves]

This morning I found myself thinking of the way you made me moan. And how much that turned you on, too. The time that Terry came up to the cabin and we wondered if he had seen or heard anything. And then I remember that you're probably still mad at me, and don't miss me, and are glad to be rid of me, and it feels wrong to think about how good we were in bed.

You make me feel so weak. I tell myself to leave you alone and here I still am plotting the letter I'll almost certainly write you. This is what you've done to me. Here I am. This is where I find myself. That rings so differently now than it used to. Not totally sure how I feel about it. [Author's note: that's a lie. I knew how I felt about it. Sad.]

I'm planning to get sterilized but I can't bring myself to get tattooed. I couldn't stay in your cage but now I can't bring myself to leave, either.

You said you were too enthralled and distracted when I was around to leave me. You must be so relieved now.

[autumnishleaves]

You feel like a stranger. I've been without you now longer than I had you...December 16th to May 31st. And then without you now June 1st to November 9th. So not quite. And we snuck two weeks in there for visits. But I've forgotten your touch, and the sound of your voice. The way you feel when you're sleepy and curl all 6'3'' of you around all 5'3'' of me. I know that I was happy with you, which I think is why I miss it. Without really remembering what it was like to be with you.

I need more time. I would need to heal and we would have to start over. I do feel like some of my spark is gone. You said I wasn't the same...I still don't think I am. Swiss cheese. Missing bits here and there.

[autumnishleaves]

You've begun haunting my dreams. The last two mornings I woke up from dreams of you.

I feel like I'm missing closure, but I don't know how I would go about getting it. A lot of me feels like I don't get to have that, since I still had–have?–feelings for you. How do you find closure when that's the opposite of what you wanted.

Snow wheeling was fun today but I also thought of you for most of the day. You still give me vertigo.

[autumnishleaves]

Leftovers

When I see Colorado elopement photos on my instagram feed I think of you. I think about the fact that not being with you means that I could get married the way that I want–the elopement in the woods with just a photographer. But it's a bittersweet thought for now, not something that brings me any joy.

I was so adamant about not changing my name with marriage, and then I crossed my own line in the sand because it was so important to you. It was a towel I was prepared to throw in to keep you. I warmed up to the idea...in fact it was something I latched on to, clung to, the way I held on to you. Because the thought of my future without you wasn’t something I could bear to contemplate.

Our big sticking point was that I don’t subscribe to any kind of deity—science is my mistress. I’m not going to heaven so you couldn’t have me with you for eternity in the afterlife. One day I told you about my plan to be cremated and have my ashes put into one of those urns that will grow a tree. I thought about both of our ashes feeding a tree together, our atoms continuing to be together in a new organism. Continuing on together in a literal way.

I suggested a willow tree, so the long weeping boughs could make a secret place for new lovers. You loved the idea—of course you did, it was the kind of sentimental thing you would have come up with. I (foolishly) hoped that would change something for you, make me enough for you after all. The thought made me misty, overwhelmed. Me, a woman of science, being so sentimental about death and love and my final resting place. With you. I’d never even contemplated such a thing before, and the depth of the feeling scared me. I took it to mean I loved you in a way I’d never loved anyone else before.

[autumnishleaves]

I’ve not wanted to change my name when I get married. (when, lol. If.) Anyway. Years…I think it was listening to Kristen Loupassakis—US Navy, badass, a woman to look up to. A woman with a pixie cut whose license plate frame says, ‘Give blood. Play rugby.’

Me, Dad, Kristen, and Dave were moving stuff out of Theresa’s apartment and into Dave’s house prior to their wedding. (Which dates this story to 2010 or 2011, me aged 17 or 18.)

I don’t remember where Theresa was, but not there. Somehow the subject of name change came up. Kristen became very put-out and…not dismissive? Annoyed is a better word, probably.

She—I don’t remember if there were more facets to her viewpoint, but I just remember her saying how it’s like that old person never existed. Poof, gone. To think about it, it scares me. Something that’s been mine, and only mine, since the day I was born…suddenly gone.

And yet lately—often—I find myself wanting nothing more than to take your name. A deep longing, pining. Yearning. I think just because of what it would mean, that we were still together…

[autumnishleaves]

me: you're old as butts.

him: je ne comprends pas.

me: you'll understand when you're older.

[autumnishleaves]

I went to Home Depot today and realized it was the first time I’d done something on my own in a long time. “Because you take such good care of your things.” ❤️️

He bought me smart lightbulbs so that I don’t have to get out of bed to turn my lights off at night anymore. “I know you’ve become accustomed to a certain standard of living, and I want to make sure you still have that.” 😭