[baptismbyblood]

"the rhythm of my footsteps crossing flatlands to your door have been silenced forevermore the distance is quite simply much too far for me to row it seems much farther than ever before I need you so much closer"

[dreamofmourning]

I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord.

[paunchjournal]

saw you in a dream

[baptismbyblood]

My Father Photographed With Friends

This is my father photographed with friends, when he was young. Unsettled on the steps of a wooden porch, and the one who lived there elegant beside him. They and the others hopefully casual in the face of the deciding camera, the judgments of which are unfeeling but can be swayed. And I, as in some later picture of myself, look for a person identified beyond doubt, and knowing that he is none of the ones that he is not,  yet still unsure, under the features composed and trusting, who is there. As if the decision were long and legal when handed down, hard to be read and truly rendered in such a case. And hard, in the face, to find our usual pitiful ends. God sweeten the bitter judgments of our lives. We wish so much.

- William Bronk

[baptismbyblood]

[baptismbyblood]

Never

Though, love, you are not any more with me, Nor with the sun — nor ever more may be. Though Summer picked you with his other flowers. And the young grass lies nearer to the showers, Yet we two stole, before you went away. One gold hour from the grey. But that hour, too, is dead : above it all The weight of Time lies close — a shrouding pall. All the dead years of all eternity Can draw your outstretched hands no nearer me : None of the sterile Summers that will flower Can give us back our hour ! And if in other worlds, in other guise. We yet may meet, we may not recognise. Ah, nevermore in all the width of Space To catch one glimpse of your forgotten face! Ah, never, in a thousand lives of pain To find that hour again!

[baptismbyblood]

The Pleiades

Last night I saw the Pleiades again,   Faint as a drift of steam     From some tall chimney-stack;   And I remembered you as you were then:   Awoke dead worlds of dream,             And Time turned slowly back.   I saw the Pleiades through branches bare,   And close to mine your face     Soft glowing in the dark;   For Youth and Hope and Love and You were there           At our dear trysting-place     In that bleak London park.   And as we kissed the Pleiades looked down   From their immeasurable     Aloofness in cold Space.           Do you remember how a last leaf brown   Between us flickering fell     Soft on your upturned face?   Last night I saw the Pleiades again,   Here in the alien South,             Where no leaves fade at all;   And I remembered you as you were then,   And felt upon my mouth     Your leaf-light kisses fall!   The Pleiades remember and look down           On me made old with grief,     Who then a young god stood,   When you—now lost and trampled by the Town,   A lone wind-driven leaf,—     Were young and sweet and good!

[dreamofmourning]

[thewintersister]

The Dream Thieves - Ch. 12 & Ch. 37

[gaewaren-deactivated20250521]

the bell jar slash the dream thieves

[dreamofmourning]

[baptismbyblood]

“Kavinsky stopped. He looked at Ronan. ‘I know what you are.’”

So tell me why it’s been like four years and this still <////3

[dreamofmourning]

“I came to the center of the maze following him. Now I must find my way back out alone. It will be longer and slower in the living, but not so long, I think, to tell.”

[baptismbyblood]

Leather Jacket, Drazen Romic (2016)

[dreamofmourning]

W.S. Merwin

[baptismbyblood]

A Single Man, Chen Han (2019)

[222mirrorballs]

The Waves, Virginia Woolf