L.R.B. Spilled Ink

I write not-quite-poetry about my life, my thoughts and feelings. I figured I should post it somewhere. Always the original work of BloomingBabe (L.R.B.) unless stated otherwise

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink, 2-7-2024

Hands

Hands and mornings

new meaning for the word “gentle”, or maybe the same meaning, but really meant as intended.

Hands that are gentle, that hold me gently.

kisses, delicate and constant

there is no love withheld

it’s not a test.

the question of us is answered,

freely and often,

yes. Always yes.

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink 6/11/23

I don’t regret my departures— not any of them, not even the ones I didn’t want to take. I don’t miss the dial tones that cut to an apathetic voice, the nights spent next to a sleeping form neutral to my comings and goings, the ache of always reaching but never being reached for. I no longer search for trellises when I grow.

But there is a specific way that a body sighs in pleasure— a comfortable pleasure, a pleasurable comfort— and that is what I miss. The kind of sigh that escapes only when body and soul feel cohesive for once, a softer version of the click of two magnets; that feeling when I was here with you, and you saw me, and any shame or shyness fell away.

Oh, the strength in turning to solitary stone;

Oh, to be worn away by rain or time or hands.

[bloomingbabe]

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink 8-11-2020

           A part of me still lays on __’s back, not weighing him down but securing him in this world, at that point in time. A corner of our hearts, an echo of our souls, is still half-asleep on the swing in the garage that summer afternoon years ago.

           In the same way, ****** and I never left any of my college dorm rooms, or my living room couches, or his bedroom, or even that spot on the sidewalk in front of my house.

           And, although we only went there once, somehow +++ and I sit on a bench in the mossy courtyard behind Greenstone Church.

           Can you see an echo of yourself? The ghost of who you used to be? How is my soul both wholly mine, and fractured across time and space?

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink 8-10-2020

I did not leave you a note.

All of our distant memories crowd and sway, laden with my handwriting. Letters, or reminders, or just-because scraps slipped into pockets or envelopes, one even taped to your bedpost at one time. Every goodbye or see-you-later was immortalized, paper and ink wrapped into a jacket or on top of a cardboard box.

           But this last tie, this borrowed t-shirt, I left in your mailbox with no explanation.

           You did not need a note.

           You know my words are precious to me.

           You do not need any more of them.

           I did not need to remind you of the day I borrowed it. I did not need to explain how, when everything between us hurt too much for me to hold on to, I had a brief moment of satisfaction knowing that I had a favorite band shirt of yours. And how I forgot I had it, the way that you forgot you had me until I was tired of sitting folded in the corner of your periphery. I did not explain that I realized the band links you to your father, that the anniversary of his passing blew the dust off of that shirt and I remembered both that I had it and that it was unkind to keep it from you. I had only kept it to have a piece of you, and maybe, for you, it’s a piece of him. Maybe you need that piece of your dad, and so I cannot keep it from you. I need no more pieces of you anyway.

           I wonder what you keep to have a piece of me? Probably nothing. An umbrella, but you dropped that off in my front yard, unwilling to be spotted on my porch. Maybe the letters in a box like mine somewhere? Past gifts, old trinkets. A bracelet or two. Technically I gave you the necklace you wear, but I’m not arrogant enough to assume that has anything to do with me. It was rare that anything did when it came to the two of us.

So then, do you find the lack of things appropriate, empty because there was only emptiness? Or do you live in a curiosity shop, an eccentric antique store of remnants? Like a memorabilia museum on the side of a highway, displaying artifacts that mean very little to anyone but the owner? Or maybe you, like me, have no need for more pieces—not because you lack them, but because fingerprints of us coat the walls, because things are unnecessary when memory is so loud.

History reverberates so violently that to leave a note would just add to the noise. The past is already deafening enough.

Hopefully, with time, we can tune it all out.

[butterflypeaflowertea]

when you wear a sundress and one of the straps is loose so it slips off your shoulder and u feel… how shall i put this… harlotrous

[bloomingbabespilledink]

We used to design houses, me and lost loves of the past.

We’d plan futures with each other, but none of those futures last.

One dreamt of armchairs to read in side-by-side.

One made me want ice skates, so hand-in-hand we’d glide.

One thought of a pool table, or games we could combine.

But I still want all of those things;

The future planned is mine.

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink 5-23-2020

Breathe it out.

I am trying to tell myself to breathe it out.

But my breath is coming out as smoke, as volcanic ash, my core ablaze.

I am fire now. I am the sun. I spent so long muting myself into a match-head when I am sparks and lightning and comet-flash.

I tried so hard to be comforting fireplace, to be guiding streetlamp, to be gentle candle-flame. And that is a noble pursuit, and well-intended, but you cannot melt someone who enjoys being frozen. Who likes the frostbite. Who prefers familiar hypothermia and convinces themselves that, in spite of the bonfire before them-- in spite of the fact that there was an entire inferno at their fingertips, crackling as loud as it can, burning itself out just for him-- there was nothing there to warm them. 

So I am declaring war on lukewarm, on halfway, on feeble flickering. I am more. 

And I thought I was liberating us both. But perhaps I just grew tired of extinguishers.

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink 9-18-19

My heart’s the loudest thing about me.

When I was a teenager, I felt everything so deeply all the time. My aches were bone-deep, my joy lit a new sun, I could breathe out a new life, a new heart every minute. Happiness was a golden sunburst, nothing soft or candle-flame about it. Despair was slate gray-blue and so cold, ice-in-hand burning cold, and I could feel the echoes of what I’d lost in the hollow caverns that were my veins.

I don’t think I’m muted now, my body a pastel shock-absorber, but I keep my gilded frame safely draped under a sheet so that the dust can’t collect on my intricacies. Maybe it’s unfair that the painting isn’t as easily viewed for the public eye, but it’s for the safety of my fragile glass heart that I wait to unveil a masterpiece until I’m certain of the shapes and colors. A teenager with abstract emotions and a splatter-paint soul found herself bleeding too often to remain so open. Her vulnerabilities are only a mirage; she doesn’t let you see what actually hurts. The only ones who see it for what it truly is (see her for who she truly is) dissipate like mist in sunlight, throwing prisms before they evaporate into nothing, the signs of the times turned to isoprene, only visible at a distance.

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Raindrops + Embers 4-18-18

Outside my window, I can hear the rain gently shushing. The wind makes the raindrops skitter past the screen, leaving little streaks on the other side of the glass.

You always hated the rain.

I remember your complaints of gloomy skies and stormy weather. You claimed it worsened your mood, but given the chance, I would’ve taught you to dance in it.

Listen, I tried to tell you. The Rain is a woman. She will kiss you and tousle your hair, trailing her fingers down the side of your face. On warm summer days, she brings cooling. You can hear the earth sigh in relief. In winter, her drops turn to crystallized patterns, a moment of perfection if you’d just hold your breath.

You’d rather exhale and melt her into something more familiar. But when she melted for you, you complained about the rain.

“Too much rain, too often,” you’d say. You hid from her inside.

Look, I tried to tell you. The Rain is cleansing. She is washing us anew. Every storm will lead to new growth. You can feel the whole world in your lungs, warm wet pavement and grass and fresh beginnings. Let her soak you to the bone so that you can start tomorrow with a clean shirt.

You’d rather wear the same old jacket and complain about the mud. 

“The rain has ruined our plans,” you’d lament. “We can’t go anywhere now.”

Feel my hand, I tried to tell you. The fire in my soul heats all the way through my skin. My footsteps will evaporate the pavement. I can light the way as your candle and cling to you like steam. Let’s build a bonfire together. We can do it in spite of the rain.

That was our greatest difference, I think. I was devoted to fanning sparks until they blossomed into flames. You preferred to watch the embers as they smoldered and gave out.

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink 1-9-2020

I think you love me.

And I think it might just be in a pressed-flowers kind of way, a faded-portrait kind of way, a Jane Austen slow-burn way.

I’ve been trying not to romanticize the things that are actually all besotted yearning, the things that actually betray your heart— the glass of water, the soft gray handbag, the pickles on your burger. It’s the least romantic-sounding image, pickles on your burger, that somehow has me glowing, because we both know you don’t like them, but I do, and they’re what you ordered. So I could have them.

I truly thought our chapter was over— our chapter and its sequel and all the in-betweens. I thought we were done. But suddenly, Our Something reappeared, better and brighter and healthier than ever before.

I have learned how to appreciate. I am learning acceptance and imperfection. You are learning outward affection and how to step into your light.

And I can see something on the horizon, Something glowing in the distance, and I don’t have to look at it to feel its warmth on my back.

I think you love me.

So we’ll give timing a minute.

And for the first time, I really think that, in or out, we’ll get it right.

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink 1-27-19

To allow oneself to breathe, to escape the mayhem of the morning and relax into the absence of color. Shades of gray, of slate, of fresh lint from the dryer to wrap itself around my hurried shoulders and give in to a rare rough start. If I were to look through the mirror and into my eyes today, I think they’d be the gray sky reflected on the Potomac, walking the trail but all is mud and cold wind and rippled ice. There can be beauty in such winter, but also numbness, also frustration, the desire to be in silence but not alone, smooth sunflower-seed gravel under the fingertips of the earth. A frozen metal fence, a broken radiator, puffs of air from exhausted lungs that forget how they’re supposed to expand. A balloon forced into liquid nitrogen, the crackling all the same. Wait for the warmth for expansion. Wait for the sun for new days. Give in and heave a sigh and return to your apartment, where there’s comfort or invasion, depending on the day.

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink 8-24-19 (Time)

Maybe my issue is that I don’t know how to simultaneously exist in the real world and the ones I create.

           I mean, it sounds kind of ridiculous, I know. But I think there’s something ridiculous about how I exist in general. For me, time isn’t nearly as linear as it seems to be for everyone else. The past and the present overlap, and I can always feel the presence of a third layer draped thinly over top, the pressure of a future that I don’t see so much as feel. It’s there, resting, a shimmering veil of things to come that I’m not allowed to see yet. I don’t know if I’d call it destiny or fate; such things seem too permanent for something as malleable as the future. Possibility settles like dust in the crevice of my every decision. What Could Be pools like water, weighing on the surface of What Is and What Was, and I can feel myself bending beneath it. I live every day as Atlas, the things I could become heavy on my shoulders. This is the price of potential; these are the roots from which my perfectionism has grown. And that’s why every mistake I make is internalized, why I collect responsibilities like seashells from the beach. Dragons hoard treasures; I hoard opportunities, unwilling to sacrifice one out of fear that I’ll need it later. My Imposter Syndrome catches up to me and I’m Lady Liberty with scales tipping dangerously to one side. There’s no balance in indecision.  

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink (Puzzle Pieces), 5-20-19

I used to think of myself as a piece of a larger puzzle; that there was a place where I’d fit perfectly. There were aspects of myself that I considered obtrusive, jutting out from all angles. Other aspects were gaping spaces. I wanted all of my edges to align perfectly to those around me, interlocking personality traits and careers and locations that synchronize into one larger picture, all of myself laying flat on a smooth surface, glossy under the sun. I strained my neck to get a better look at the photograph we were working to create.

In middle school, I began to see the picture on the box: I caught a glimpse of my future self in the mirror. She was tall, long legs and short caramel-colored hair. Her hazel eyes were lined with purple and gold, her shoes and bag were green. She glowed. If I squinted, I could see the shine of her melon-pink lips. Everything about her was long lines and smooth curves; even the jutting aspects were rounded. I realized that my younger self hadn’t envisioned a puzzle; what I was picturing in front of the mirror now was a puzzle. The past ideas had been LEGO creations, the big, blocky kind; simplistic, brightly colored, uniform. My new puzzle was more complicated, and the picture was more detailed. I decided that my piece would have to create its own puzzle. The people around me would accept that which was convex, fill that which was concave. They would even me out.

I grew older, the puzzle ever-expanding. I thought I was balancing my shape, and each new person brought a new color that I hadn’t realized was lacking. Love came and went, leaving sections of table glaring at me from the space between missing pieces, but I healed, I adjusted, I rearranged. I still felt myself, rigid in nature, trying to accommodate each new addition and fill each subtraction, college turning my puzzle into a thousand-piece jigsaw. In my last semester, I had finally created an arrangement that I thought looked the prettiest. I felt fulfilled, completed, balanced. I patiently waited for time to shellack us together. But time is not adhesive; it’s paint thinner.

And now here I am, pieces strewn across the tabletop, the picture on the box nothing but a memory. I used to be so sure of what I was building toward; I had a vision. Time and circumstance carelessly kicked the table legs. A glass of water tipped and saturated the cardboard. The ink is staining my fingers as I try to collect all of the pieces, frantically trying to rescue and treasure each one, to give it is due, to show that it is valued. But the pieces were never mine to arrange, or to conform to, or even to save. I spent so much time pounding my fist against the edges to force myself into place. Plan after plan disintegrated into pulp. I am not a puzzle piece and time is not the picture on the box. It’s a tapestry, interwoven strands becoming something larger than itself, yielding but strong, intricate but smooth. Time is amorphous and it is not something to be solved, but to be embroidered. I need to release the puzzle as I imagined it. It’s time to wrap myself in the fabric and rest.

[bloomingbabe]

Memory as Gossamer

(original, uploaded as two photos)

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink 5-5-19

I want so much more than what the movies have shown me.

I am regaled with tales of a boy with dark hair and large hands, a boy with a winning smile. He sweeps me off my feet and away from the life I’ve known, transforming me forever. We are promised a life together, one that begins with a perfect, heart-stopping kiss and extends beyond a white dress into parenthood and then settles into wrinkled smiles. These are beautiful things, and certainly things that I dream of.

But I want more.

It is not enough for me to have the outline of a perfect life. I know what it looks like from the outside, but I want more from within than we are ever shown. We are given only snapshots of perfection; I want something real. I want excitement for my successes and comfort when I am down—and I know there will be moments when I’m down. I want inside jokes, laughter that makes my sides aches, I want to forget how to breathe from the joy of it. I want a supportive man, an excited man, a man who simply cannot wait to build this life.

And I want to build it. I really, truly do. I want the quiet moments of in-between, the louder, difficult choices about careers and family and location. I want to be there for the hardships. I want to support and be supported. I want to choose and be chosen. I want to treasure a man so much that he glows; I want a man to treasure me.

And I promise I’m not so blind as to want him for free. I know it will take work. I know that I will have to swallow my pride and let down my walls, and I know that those two things are among my greatest fears. I will have to risk embarrassment and pain. I will have to risk building a life only to have it incinerate from within. I will have to risk all that which I have already experienced, all the collective echoing aches of love lost—by choosing this life, I risk their repetition. And I will have to remove my armor, to expose my tissue paper heart, to let him see all that I dare not expose.

But I have a dream of a love that will be worth it. A love that warms like sunshine, a love that glows like gold. A love that isn’t only there when it’s convenient. I want dependability, I want commitment. I want a love that is so proud to exist that it condemns all temptation and selfishness. I want a love that celebrates our independence, one that delights in our reunions. I will wait for a man with a heart so enthralled that the hardships seem a small price to pay.

I’m learning to believe that he’s out there. I’m trying to trust that he exists.

I want him to prove me wrong.

[bloomingbabespilledink]

Spilled Ink 4-2-19

I want to be further along than I am, always. I want to be making more progress, for that progress to be impressive (to myself more than to others.) I know growth isn’t linear and healing doesn’t happen easily, but I’m upset that I’m still upset after a year, after four, after six. These men are such a large part of my story, exciting and painful and gorgeous and tragic, and I both love and hate that parts of me are tied to them forever. I want to be ready to fall in love again, but I don’t know if I am. I don’t know if I could be and I’m just hiding. I don’t know if my standards are too high or if the actions of others are too low. Have I lost my ability to trust, or have I grown a backbone? Will anyone celebrate my recovery from dependency when it fails to work in their favor? I won’t mistake drama for happiness, but I’ll admit that the drama made me feel more interesting. But I’m forever proud of myself for choosing peace over the pull.

I have to trust that someone will love this about me. Someone will enjoy that I don’t involve myself in messy situations, someone will love that I stand up for myself and for those I love, someone will be so proud to watch me be strong in the face of adversity, so proud to see me subverting the tropes of my genre. There are intricacies of my personality that they will love to explore. They will find me exciting, find me interesting, ask question after question and care about the answers. Someone will be thrilled to adventure with me, and my laugh will be a delight to them, and they’ll know I’m sunshine and hurricanes and lupines on the mountainside. Someone will want to grow to match me, and I will twist my vines along their arms-- not suffocating like grapevine, but gently like clematis. I will be their Morning’s Glory. And oh, how they’ll love how I bloom.