stars of eve

No. 6: ACACIUS & KEZIAH in genocide and maps, i trail origins to a distant future from whence we all will end. there are no mere pictures, unless they have been drawn with ink-stained fingertips across words, meshed with blood and confusion; your feelings may be sincere, but your attention is faltering. control is at a breath's length, but as you exhale longingly, it gives you up in abandon to seek a new adventure on your closed eyelids, and words in retort, limbs in contortion cannot save you now. at last, across meadows we join figures and visions, for our meeting will always fate destruction and chaos until that fateful day when creation begins anew. finifugal redamancy, the balance between appetence and velletie, gökottaer and smultronställer, i balter and obsess about noias, both pali- and meta-, nefelibata am i, nemophilist by trade, gibigianna by design, quaintrelle by imagination, and mal by many pseudonyms. i want sobremesa, hiraeth, l'appel du vide, my time dawdled away with atermoiements, in my pocket, a thousand ésprits escaliers.

[caecili]

I love a darkness So black and so blue It swallows me whole Like black holes do His back is a mesh A treasure untold And there in the centre Is his heart to hold He carries the mark Of an extraordinary mind And pays back his dues In blood and in kind I love a darkness His kiss is so sweet He is the worst thing I'll ever meet His teeth like razors His body like bone He is the most beautiful thing I ever left alone I love a darkness So black and so blue Her smile is raging Against the light too She doesn't go gentle But far on ahead Into the night To make sure we're not dead Her skin leaves me blind Her voice is so soft She speaks to me roughly And holds me aloft I love a darkness I'll lay down my head Her breaths be my death As I sleep by her bed She breathes with my lungs I'll lay down my life And anyone else's If they give her strife

I Love A Darkness, by Mallory M.

[caecili]

you build your home like coffins; impenetrable and cold to the touch

[caecili]

his name was not given by her a rising star, flying colours from yellow dwarf to red giant life-giving and bright, defiant he carved his own name into the void with groups of friends found it in his history books matched it to his paltry looks her name was drawn from a hat electronically, magically called and lost to anyone but her she walked close to the fir light house, eyes like a search light but hard-earned wisdom: the myths are right if you come close to the sun

Icarus was a woman and the sun is a man, by Mallory M.

[caecili]

sacrosanct papers prayers in the form of a croissant silver crescent 'round your neck your heartbeat up your throat steady steady beating drum against the noise of your prayer your own voice lost at sea no land ahoy

Sacrosanct, by Mallory M.

[caecili]

But perhaps you'll only read me in passing juxtaposed with favourite writers and unknown alike my words desaturated by their brilliance like a scorching December sun whitewashing your street and even when there was no snow it all seemed white in the blinding light Or you'll read me only in parts a line or four singled out by someone else not your first choice because you rely on others' I'll represent an inspirational quote and if you dare pursue the rest of the poem I'll be the spitting image of disappointment There was a reason they only chose four lines ate me raw and moved on burying me deep under that snow-covered ground the cold skin that hosts your beating heart inked it with just a piece of me like a quilted blanket to cut up and sow together with their own One day I'll walk with you on empty grounds and tell you something you might find poetic but I'll also ask you to stop reading my poetry because I ink my pen with my soul I scribble out the flaws with my shame the thesaurus I use is written in tears

Excerpt from something I don’t know, by Mallory M.

[caecili]

I'm sorry you were a coward and I'll never be sorry for being honest with you because I was always It was myself I was lying to myself I scooted out of the way into the closet the skeleton I'd told myself to wrap into a thinly disguised ghost of my exuberance because I thought you might like me thin and vulnerable and ultimately exotic like your drawings my imagined blueprint of your perfect woman so I painted myself as a poet a lyricist, a girl who shared her words (my first and last defense) without asking you to take a look who let them hang in unremarked voids A girl who was all dainty fingertips and pink noses, rosy cheeks a small, fragile thing who only knew 'this way up' the kind who wouldn't frighten you away I let you come to me for so long I heard our friends joke with two-cented smiles (and they will always have been your friends first) and an underhand comment as if they were paid in cash per snark But more importantly I waited for you in that body, that package signed, sealed, delivered too small to breathe the corset breaking at the seams With waterwork pallets scratching words in the surface of used cars as if hoping to find something underneath like covering coloured paper in oil crayons and running a nail in the pattern of secrets I saw my worth in your eyes and you never had to say a word it was your silence that got me hooked that gave me a hint that made me think I didn't even deserve the respect of your 'No' I thought I wasn't small enough that you could only see in microcosms one pencil line at a time so I never spoke of you I matched you for emptiness and without my words I suddenly stood defenseless in everyone's eyes so that when love came around again I didn't recognise it because I didn't recognise myself Dreaming of your lips before bed your smile at breaking dawn Knowing I would see you and when I did hiding, turning around because your silence still stabbed at my scars like double-edged swords heads, I'd go to war with my words tails, I'd already lost the two-scented battle I could never win and as a poet I have to imagine I wrote my own justice

Poetic Justice, by Mallory M.

[caecili]

December wakes up and looks back at what you've done shaking its old head

[caecili]

The question lurks like people in the dark like representations of lives unlived what could have been big, looming shadows underneath while you're flapping your fins in the deep, blue sea watching all the colourful fish as you allow them to float by without a second glance What if fishermen only caught one fish and stopped looking

What If, by Mallory M.

[caecili]

"There's a skinny girl inside of me." How does that work? Is she my skeletal core nothing more than skin and bones the spine that keeps me upright and the sensitive part of my hands or did I eat her a full-fledged person I drowned with a glass of milk to go with my feelings I know she's not my heart big and sick and still beating because that part of me is fat those stretchmarks that look like veins is growth from when it broke she is not the scars that stretch and wither every time someone comments on the way I look She looks just like a little girl because that's what I was when I last saw her teacup eyes wide in wonder that someone sees the way she looks and thinks it means the way she acts but I still have to ask which part of me is her and which parts of her is past?

The Skinny Girl Inside of Me, by Mallory M.

[caecili]

I am Monica Geller my poetry is a recipe a list of all the things I do Ingredients: seven cups of rainy days 4oz of broken past one book a pinch of gumption several exes the right tools i. You take the rainy days and stir them into a stiff mass. They are a token of the exercise you never had, the times you beat your brother sullen with failure and all the times you sat in a chair beside the window (because the sill was too small), looking out at your own street and reading happiness in other people's faces. ii. You pour the broken past in gently, a good base of eating your own feelings and meeting the man of your dreams before you recognised him. Mirror the woman you are today in the girl you used to be and understand that the only difference is that what you once took for flaws, you now accept as part of your way to success. iii. One book, it's the only one that's real; you wrote it yourself, and all your recipes (for strings of words and pallet tones, for skipping rope without falling and easy pinching points on your brother, for saying sorry and sounding sincere and for standing your ground when no one else stands up for you) are contained within. iv. A pinch of gumption, because it's all it takes. All you do is win, matches in sports you've never played before, hearts of people who don't clean the way you do (and you do, not tirelessly, but ruthlessly, a clean home is a clean mind), arguments you wouldn't mind losing. v. Finally, you mix it with the exes, shelled and peeled and holy from the battle that you both left in the end. When no one was ready to fight for you anymore, you realised that love was a war you didn't want to enter; they've taught you to treat people kindly and sow your distance. The right tools are important, because the secret ingredient is exactly that, (said lovingly) a tool: a funny man, his goofy smile so ridiculous, his jokes a little forced, because he speaks only stale words and sarcasm, his voice hinting the scent of sacrifice and he's just as broken as you. He's not the core of your being, he's the icing on the cake; he can't be added until you are hole, baked good and through in the oven, the residual heat of your last breakup cooled by your rainy days, the ones you still save an extra pack of in the cupboard, just in case.

I Am Monica Geller, by Mallory M.

[caecili]

I’ll gladly agree with your view on hierarchy just never expect I’ll likewise accept both modern hypocrisy and (self-claimed) authority

[caecili]

It’s you I write for you I write about, brother You broke my heart most What you don’t know is I’m fascinated because I’m not quite sure how

[caecili]

vi. Courage is watching the arguments against your life build up in your head and still stand by them in your heart. vii. Don't let your life be a trailer for a film that never starts. viii. You and autumn have unfinished business, but then again, you always have. ix. Never forget yourself when you forgive others. Forgiveness is strength and beauty and cruelly underestimated. x. When you imagine your perfect self, you look happy. Remember, it's a choice. xi. If you drown your own voice when you swallow your prayers, perhaps it's because praying to dead gods wasn't meant to be an aesthetic.

Reminders 6-11, by Mallory M.

[caecili]

I don't want to be your crush The insincere attractions of a yet immature acquaintance Can't be comfortable in a skin made from the stars in your eyes For I'm not your universe And you don't know mine I don't want to be your flirt The hooded eyes you cast across the room as I do something cute You have no idea the acid I spew when in the mood And I'm not cute And you can't handle me I don't want you to fall in love For I don't trust you to see me for who I am and all my mistakes I have scars that I love more dearly than any of my friends And I'll let you go in the heat of the moment You can't trust me to fight for you I'm just not that interested Not in the politics of controlling my fickle flame Give me a curtain and I will burn down your house To watch the roses of disappointment blossom on your cheeks You're either water, or you're dead I want to be your love The slow, easy way with which you find me annoying but can't help loving my guts Not because I'm unlike every other woman you've ever met Because I'm not I'm simply human I want to be your life With every breath you breathe into my chest I want to know that I need you, because I'm strong enough to want to Never to doubt that you could hurt me But allow you anyway I want to meet you halfway Not in a dance or in a kiss or in a galaxy far, far away But in a tainted alley, with tears for company To grow into you there Because we never saw it coming

I wrote this a while ago and I don’t know why I needed to

[caecili]

Alexander, you're a four-syllable title, not a four-letter word When I was only three our parents asked me to choose between who you are now and Oliver Oliver, the name of your cat to spite my choice because you've always aspired for something you could have been before you understood what you already were Alexander, because our parents wanted you to be recognised internationally because you'd conquered my heart before you were even born Alexander, like someone who's loved  by his epithet The Great; a king; a leader someone who reached for the end of the map and the frame of the world, just like you, wandering off with courage enough to leave a part of yourself behind and still conquer hearts in foreign fields someone who was taught by a philosopher and you with your philosopher's head and your king's heart noble and righteous and for the good of the people Alexander, like a founding father someone who understood the edge of the map and chose to dub it democracy you, with your big, round eyes and what our parents mistook for weakness you, the one they asked the rest of us to aspire to But you, who always aspired to us Our brother's charm and my wit And sometimes even my acknowledgement You, who thought my silence meant condescension Who, when I took my distance to our parents, crept inside it like a cosy duvet cover and still took it personally Who thought I fled from all of you like monsters under the bed Shining a bright light in your face and asking you questions you didn't want to answer You, who thought that my taste in music was my stamp of approval And my books were the only thing I could love You, who failed to recognise that your name meant less than you think, and more than I did who was marked for greatness but not for imitation who was already flying but still clung the white feather close to you for lack of faith in yourself You, who wanted to be an Oliver less conspicuous, more yourself who felt the strain of our expectations heavily upon your shoulders who sought for my parents, because I wasn't there But what you don't understand is that I call you by nothing but you and love and darling and babe because your name was a token of affection which you turned into failed appreciation and I don't want to tie you down to great men's namesake when all you hear in my voice is disappointment because if I don't call you by name perhaps, one day you can create and live up to your own expectations

Alexander, by Mallory M.

[caecili]

Fantasize about rejecting apologies you'll never receive

[caecili]

i. People say you don't have to be strong all the time. Bullshit. If you want to get better, you have to be strong enough to stop hurting yourself. ii. Transformation is scary. Your heart is a muscle and as with any muscle, you have to break it for it to grow stronger. iii. Anything grown back together leaves scars, one sedimentary patchwork of skin after another, for people to better tell your strength and the cycles of your life. They should be trophies, age lines, like the maturity you so desperately seek. iv. Love is stronger than fear, but only if you give it room. Let it breathe. Don't strangle it by fearing it. v. If you think the world is running away from you, you're in the wrong race.

Reminders 1-5, by Mallory M.