tenderness.

cassie | twenty three | she/her

[manwholovescabins]

space cowboys stay friends through all planets and lifetimes 🪐

[manwholovescabins]

fairy princess nathan fillion 🧚🏻‍♀️✨

[cassieona-cloud]

words fail

but pieces of your hair fall to the floor of a shower we cleaned together, laughing,

and it doesn’t matter that some of the strands are uneven

you throw salt into boiling water,

and tiny pine needles scatter the floor,

and the walls are still bare

but don’t they feel painted with love,

when you spin me around in the reflection of dark garden windows?

there are oranges and soft cheese,

glass painted with sage green leaves,

sweaters piled atop one another,

skin on skin and trust,

etched into every breath like it was never any other way

there are suns that rise relentlessly,

music that plays endlessly,

coffee cups in a constant rotation of use,

window ledges, winter winds,

rumbling trains, half-unpacked boxes,

and you.

at the center of it all.

[cassieona-cloud]

i am on a ship,

and i think i’ve spent my entire life leaning against its rails,

draping myself over the metal,

face toward the sun, saltwater in my face.

i am on a ship,

whose voyage began in

early december , a wednesday,

and whose destination was never swayed,

not by storm nor sea.

tumult, dark waters,

the looming threat of imminent pain,

and the steady chopping of dangerous sounds,

i passed through each of them on an odyssey

whose end was written, in stone and in stars,

long before i ever set sail.

the atlantic was mine to conquer,

before i knew its name,

or yours.

i set my home in the wandering heart of a transient ship, on a sea of uncertainty and change,

but now i see solid land.

it grows clearer through the haze,

a four days journey on the horizon,

and i, who longed once to never be still,

ache to reach it with my feet and touch the soil.

for i am on a ship,

and you are on the shore.

[cassieona-cloud]

the walls of my chest tremble with the aching, desperate clawing of pain against my ribs

it swims in my lungs and the fabric of my body, the cells themselves, scream in protest of the agony i’m putting them through,

like they know they were never meant to be separated from you.

and they weren’t

they aren’t

around me the world seems to still be turning.

voices swirl into an endless cacophony and where there was once meaning i now find static.

how can the world still be turning just the same as it did, before i met you, before i knew what it was to be tangled with you?

my eyes burn like they know they should be looking at you and i think of the pain that has resided in my chest for a month now-

i miss you.

come back and soothe the ache in my bones and the walls of my heart, take away the strain on my lungs with your presence;

i am on my knees before the altar of your voice, pleading for stolen moments, wrenching myself through each agonizing step and-

i blink.

my eyes are still burning and the altar is gone,

and nothing has changed at all.

[cassieona-cloud]

when i was four or five years old,

i sank my baby teeth into the unwashed, lightly fuzzy skin of a peach.

eager, as children of four are.

it’s the first time i recall feeling alive, i think,

the memory clear as sticky fruit juice flowed over my fingers and

i thought, at that tender age of early childhood, that

i should eat peaches every day.

i spent the winters of my life chasing the feeling of

summer peaches,

of the raw life that touched my lips on that day,

when the ripe fruit first taunted my tastebuds.

it wasn’t until eighteen years later,

that i ever felt that alive again,

when i saw your hair tumbling to your shoulders,

the image held still in my mind, as you stood in the center of a labyrinthine art gallery,

against the backdrop of a painting-

auguste renoir, pêches.

and the colors matched perfectly and i said to you,

your hair is like peaches,

and you smiled like i might’ve revealed a secret but what you didn’t know,

was that late that evening,

the august breeze passing through an open window against the bare skin of my thighs against yours,

i pressed the same lips to your shoulder, as had once found wonder in fresh fruits,

brushing your peach-colored hair away from the freckles there,

and felt far more alive.

[pourmoname-deactivated20221118]

do you think anyone's ever loved each other as much as we do?

do you think any other two hearts have ever been so connected, beating in perfect unison, any other souls so beautifully intertwined, any other hands made to so perfectly fit together?

do you think everyone loves like that?

no—no, because if they did, everything would be different.

if everyone looked at the one they love the way you look at me, the world would be joyful and tranquil and kind.

if everyone loved the way we do, love would be the most important thing in the world, not money or power or anything else.

no, this is not how everyone loves.

this love is more than a human heart could handle, this love is fateful and life-changing and so perfectly unique.

this love, my darling—this love is what poets write about, romanticising what they feel, making it more than what it truly is. and yet, even then, that's not enough to express what we feel.

this love is spoken of in books and songs and fairytales, but it doesn't fit in reality, no—it doesn't work like that in real life, everyone likes to say.

well, just once and just for us, it does.

this is that life-altering, soulful and transcendental love—not a story or a verse, but what you and i feel.

for real.

[cassieona-cloud]

lay me down on soft sheets,

printed with tiny blue flowers

and forget me not;

i think if you did, i would shrivel like winter,

lose my sense of where to turn toward the sun,

and slip away into the darkness.

but you won’t. i know you won’t-

because i press my lips to your shoulder and trace your freckles and my palm presses into yours and you breathe in against my lips and-

i think,

i want to worship you. i want to build an altar to this love and put all of my hopes on it, take up my life and pack it away so as to follow you instead and be led astray, wherever you are walking.

instead the words on my lips are i love you

and you echo them back to me like a prayer,

while the window shifts from old and clear in my mind to vibrant stained glass

and the bed -

the blue flowers, the white duvet, the discarded skirts, and your heart beating in the center of it all

is my church.

[cassieona-cloud]

the light in your room is fading, wilting from the brightness of cerulean day

into the lavender reaches of evening.

your features, now familiar to my touch,

grow shadowed against a backdrop familiar and foreign.

but in the reflection of the afternoon on my miserable side of the world,

a glimpse of silver, bright against your skin, against your pillow.

silver leaves of olive branch,

peace.

peace that i slipped onto your finger, in the warmth of an august that has slipped into september now.

it shines, still, like it did-

a week? a lifetime?- ago,

in the light of a paris window and the brightness of a glowing memory.

your features fade before me now in the pull of evening,

but i remember.

in the 10pm shadow of my childhood dream,

when i wrapped my fingers around worn denim,

and asked you never to leave me, and your voice didn’t shake when you said yes

like you knew it was the only answer

and i breathed in,

and knew home.

[pourmoname-deactivated20221118]

i wrap myself in these sheets, the sheets where i first had you all to myself. i find a spot that still holds your scent—flowers, sweetness, a hint of apple. i breathe it in, bask in it. i want that scent to submerge me for all my days.

i see the place we kissed goodbye—temporary, just for now, i remind myself. my eyes still well up with tears. this is where you let go of my hand.

i board the plane—a window seat, just what you like. everything reminds me of you, and i love it, even if it hurts.

i whisper a thank you to this city, the city where i first saw you, held you, touched you. the city where we felt so safe and happy and warm in each other's embrace.

paris, the city of love—it really it, now that we've painted it so, with bright lights and soft laughs, long hugs and endless kisses.

a ring, a necklace, a jacket borrowed.

a hand in mine, where it was always meant to be.

a kiss that tastes like apple juice.

your eyes, your smile, your voice.

you.

home.

[cassieona-cloud]

magic

lives in the space between when i tell you you’re beautiful and when you drop your head to your pillow,

shy joy creeping through in the glimpse of your smile.

and magic glitters- like stardust, transient and floating across the space between you and me, over this vast ocean and space,

to settle into my chest like it was forged from ancient planets just for me,

feeling like it brings with it a piece of your happiness and it rests, glowing, in the warmth of my lungs,

life-giving magic, made of your joy and the fabric of what makes us us.

it makes it easier to breathe.

this magic,

my love.

it feels a lot like hope, doesn’t it?

[cassieona-cloud]

strawberry chapstick, smooth, even on my lips-

the scent of candle smoke in the air, oatmilk and cream colored wax

and heavy august rain against the glass like it might never end , until it does quite suddenly

and you

your eyes soft and familiar

looking at me through glass and wires and air

and you and you-

the way your hair falls over your face and the way my fingers itch and ache to touch-

and i think will this ever end? this utter separation that rakes its claws across the muscle of my heart.

but then you laugh and my heart soars and i think-

i never, ever want this to end.

you. and you and you and you .

[cassieona-cloud]

what is love?

the kind of thing which lives mostly in summer mornings, damp and warm with the promise of day.

the kind of thing which makes its way into my sun-soaked afternoons and heals the wounds of last autumn and the year i turned nineteen.

the thing that feels like sixteen years ago, in my grandmother’s backyard;

i climbed trees there, and collected caterpillars which i shared with the boy who lived on the other side of the hedges.

i forget his name.

loving you feels like the discovery of being seven years old, and what is love if not the way the sun darkens your skin over melting peach ice cream and august and the sweet scene of crepe myrtle blossoms?

what is love?

the healing of the scrapes i got on my knees from the pavement in the summer of 2005, and the way that your voice carries like the wind in my hair.

(love is you, and childhood.)

[cassieona-cloud]

i went out on a saturday morning to buy poetry books which i could read to you while you fall asleep.

i sat on the floor of the bookshop in the town where i was born, skirt in a puddle on the wood, and dreamt of you in a place far away.

and if handing over the dollars folded up in my pocket in exchange for words that might soothe you isn’t love, then what?

opening the book, finding it new and the pages untouched, i crossed my legs underneath me and started to read

the cadence was just right- it never is when i read new poems and yet-

maybe it was your presence, the sound of your pillow rustling and the quiet way that you mumble

i love you

when i ask, are you okay?

are you okay?

i love you.

the answer is sufficient and you, more than.

you fell asleep and i whispered i love you’s into the darkness and found- is this the first time? maybe-

that i didn’t mind the quiet, in exchange for your rest.

i suppose, the love was never in buying the books after all,

but in the listening to you sleep.

[cassieona-cloud]

fragile,

like the way the clouds break when you fly through, shattering and shifting, dissolving into nothingness.

i imagine myself a cloud, without you.

shattered and empty and dissolving as if you were gravity holding me together, keeping me whole.

loving you, opening the cage of my ribs to bare my heart to your hands- it made me fragile.

but to trade my strength for your tenderness? never;

you are far too elegantly written into my life that i could ever extricate my own heart from yours, so-

i will be fragile.

[cassieona-cloud]

the sun shines on you like it was always meant to meet your skin,

golden light on delicate freckles and the line of your jaw.

you are a full-sun kind of beautiful, bones carved of light and joy, so bright that it fills me from a distance when it lights up your face.

early in the morning, i stand and make coffee and dwell on what the sunrise might look against your limbs;

and at night, when things go dark and evening pulls you away with the turn of the earth, i sit in my own pool of sunshine and the warmth is reminiscent of coffee in my mouth.

i watched you as the sun was setting outside your window one evening, the way that the golden light played in your hair and cast a symphony of shadows against your never still fingers.

and as the light faded i thought, you look like you belong to the sun, a child of light and warmth

- i am aching to give you a life in the sunshine

[cassieona-cloud]

i’ve stood on the western shore of the atlantic.

i was eleven, and i felt untouchable.

the ocean called to me then and in childlike wonder i was unaware that it would divide me from my dreams.

im no longer eleven.

the atlantic no longer speaks to me like a lover. the waves divide me from a life on an eastern cliff, a place that i could almost taste if not for the choking salt in my mouth.

my lips are in constant longing for sweet relief in the form of your kiss and the ocean stands firm between.

suddenly it feels too vast and your shore, too distant. the dreams that i had of a connected world, an ocean that could never stand in my way, faded with the italian sun outside your window while you wrote my name and i sighed like an echo in the place where i once felt belonging.

now, i think i belong with you, on another shore.