are you sick yet?

[cosmicgf]

you never get over your first love, not if its your best friend.

[222mirrorballs]

Fleabag (2016-2019) / Hard Feelings/Loveless, Lorde / Normal People (2020) / The Moon Is Always Female, Marge Piercy / The Worst Person In The World (2021) / Gale Song, The Lumineers

[inkskinned]

your phone is still saved in my car's bluetooth memory and my phone still has nick's speakers system saved and every time i switch my pillowcases i do it the way regina taught dominic who taught me how to do it too.

i still flinch because of how [ ] hurt me yeah but a few weeks ago alex and i sat on their floor and talked about how i am able to touch the people i love now, when four years ago i couldn't stand any human contact at all, horrified by the way it made my skin crawl

i didn't remember about the trip we took once up into the rivers and mountains, how you'd been there too, wading deep in the water, how i gave you a rock after. i was scrolling in my instagram history trying to find something else completely and then all the sun of the day came back, how you and me and crisco and maddie all howled songs in the car the whole ride home, my foot to the floorboards, absolutely speeding. i take a lot of pictures because my brain barely holds my own name (it's like the scene in spongebob all the time up there, i tell ziara, because i talk on the phone now, a lot, the way you taught me to enjoy) and the pictures are really good because they're filled with my friends and my activities and the light in my life and the pictures are also really bad because sometimes i am reminded that i used to be horribly in love with you, the kind of love that blots out the sun and moon, no matter how many times other people said she's not good for you

so i go through my memories carefully like stepping through a blackberry bush because i don't know if im embarrassed or hurt but it doesn't feel good and my spotify still has the playlist saved from your birthday party like four years ago and google maps still remembers alison's old address on melrose street even though she moved like forever ago and in my notes app i have like 106 non sequiturs i can no longer parse but they must have been important enough to write down so i don't delete them just-in-case their meanings reveal themselves like fog parting over the bluegreen hills

the birds are singing and i know how to identify a robin because of edie and i know how to make a souffle set properly because molly showed me, her hair untangling from her high bun, gentle and pretty; and i know how to bake because my mama taught me and i had forgotten i wrote you a love poem but then onedrive says today in your memories

[luthienne]

Juhea Kim, from Beasts of a Little Land

[Text ID: Love happens all at once, and also in stages.]

[alivedean]

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER that lives in my head → 31/?

[televisiongifs]

[hungryfictions]

adrienne rich, of women born: motherhood as experience and institution / alexandra levasseur - body of land collection, 2015 / ana teresa barboza - bordados collection, 2004 / margaret atwood, “europe on $5 a day” / tracey emin - it was all too much, 2018 / clarice lispector, a breath of life / gérard lartigue- femme bougie, 2018 / jenefer schute, life-size / louise bourgeois - i DISTANCE myself from myself, 2010 / wayne koestenbaum, “figure” / henrik uldalen - caries and surge, 2017 / andrés cerpa, “the vault” / jennifer’s body (2009) / enrico robusti- food, sex, & irony collection, 2014 / sylvia plath, the bell jar

i distance myself from myself

[deadshrike-deactivated20220125]

mothers are insane they'll come into your bedroom exhibit mental illness then just leave

[alivedean]

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER that lives in my head → 28/?

[different-landscapes]

[fandoms-or-life]

Soulmates

Wuthering heights, Emily Brontë// Radio Silence, Alice Oseman// The song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

[archiveofyearning]

Ijeoma Umebinyuo, your love poems need politics to survive //  June Jordan, Directed by Desire // Warsan Shire, Conversations About Home // bell hooks, Salvation: Black People and Love // Mahmoud Darwish // Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light // Rod Smith // Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

[herdirtylittleheart]

I head straight to her place from the train station, it’s familiar now. The cats are cuddling together on the armchair like a yin-yang, a circle of purring sweetness. She’s making tea, I’m admiring some of the framed pieces she’d put up since I’d visited last. This big beautiful brain catches my eye, it’s an anatomical drawing with a plant and flower across it. It looks like an antique. Cerebellum and botanical, a beautiful blend, brain-stem and flower stem. My life’s work is dedicated to brains and growth, I’m captivated. I love this piece. I ask about it. 

“Oh I drew that,” she says, like it’s nothing. This happens all the time, her talent brings me to my knees. Her hands and her eyes and her beautiful mind make beautiful things and I’m in awe of them. 

She starts telling an endearing story about the drawing and the day she finished it, but my heart is pounding in my ears and I’m staring at the details. I love it. I love the brain that put these things together on paper. I love the idea and the energy and the gentle beauty of it. I love the woman who drew it. I know it in this moment. I love her, and I get to touch her and pull her close and kiss her temples while she curls against me. 

If I think back, I started loving her last fall when she sent me a picture from her cottage. She’s surrounded by trees and smiling serenely in the sunshine, her 800 year old cat is zipped inside her coat, nestled cozily against her chest, peeking out at the world, scowling. 

I started loving her a few weeks later when we were out with friends, she wiggled against my lap and I asked her if I could kiss her. I could feel my cheeks turning pink when she said yes. 

I started loving her when she let me braid her hair and I noticed all of the scattered greys, like highlights, adorning her crown. I started loving her seaweed coloured hair. And then her ocean jewel coloured hair. And then her orchid coloured hair. 

I started loving her when she painted a portrait of my dog after he died, my best friend immortalized in a sea of roses. Immediately one of my most prized possessions. 

I started loving her when we were in her bed, cradled together and talking about our childhood. She described her compulsion to save the flavour packs from instant ramen noodles. Hoarding the little foil packs in a drawer, perfect squares of seasoning, for no good reason. I have trouble articulating just how god damned charming that is. 

I started loving her watching someone else make her laugh. The way her nose scrunched up, the way she leaned forward and grinned, I couldn’t get enough of it. I loved to see her happy. 

I started loving her when I noticed the bruise on the top of her foot and she said it was from her muay thai class. I imagined her kicking anything that hard and felt my heart thump. (Okay maybe that was lust but there’s love in there too, I’m sure of it.)

I started loving her when we got home at 2am and she was drunk on my couch snuggling my pet rabbit, asking me to pass her the McDonald’s hash brown we ordered, so she wouldn’t have to get up and disturb the bunny (who was curled up like a prince in her lap). I of course obliged, and giggled at how silly this little scene was, and she looked up at me mid-bite and said so sincerely “Can you take a picture? I want to remember this moment.” 

I started loving her in my bed the next morning, when she nuzzled her sweet mouth against my neck and wrapped her arms around me and said “I think I might love you,” a moment so vulnerable I had a hard time believing it was real. Sunlight filtered through the room just like it does in the movies. 

I started loving her a few weeks ago in my kitchen on a really shitty day when I heard my phone ding. She’d sent me a string of messages that said she’d spent the whole day painting me. She said painting my body made her feel close to me. She called me her muse. I could feel myself glowing with the power of a thousand sapphic suns. How do you even handle that kind of romance? 

It’s impossible to know when love starts, in my memories these moments shine brightly, they’re the beats my heart skipped along the way. I haven’t really said it properly, with my mouth and my words and her ears close by. But today when she sent me a text message from Spain that said “So many paintings at the gallery today reminded me of you”, I thought it again. And I smiled while she sent me photo after photo of languid beautiful bodies, long drifting hair, girls draped in pink silk. Girls who look like they’re in love. 

Art by Elly Smallwood   Words by Heart

[boykeats]

Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (2014) // Dacia Maraini, “Dreams of Clytemnestra,” tr. Tim Vode (1994)

[sonofthegold]

"Who am I to make you do anything? I’m not, I’m nothing. But you – oh, you – why, I’d listen to you for hours."

Alice Oseman, Radio Silence (2016)

“If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince (1943)

[nargles2numpties]

Song of Achillies ~ Madeline Miller // The White Company ~ Arthur Conan Doyle // Heartstopper {Volume 2} ~ Alice Oseman // Les Miserables ~ Victor Hugo // Carry On ~ Rainbow Rowell // One Last Stop ~ Casey McQuiston // History Is All You Left Me ~ Adam Silvera // The Song of Achilles ~ Madeline Miller // Les Miserables ~ Victor Hugo // Les Miserables ~ Victor Hugo //

[forestgreenlesbian]

obsessed with how often women describe falling in love with other women as a quieting, a moment of stillness and calm where before there was noise.

[forestgreenlesbian]

Kathee Muzin on the first time she fell in love with a woman, from The Montreal Gazette, 1991

Poetry published in Come Out, 1972

First Love Poem in Recent Memory, Julien Baker