[catholicguilt87]

Hey, ghosts & strangers wandering through this strange cathedral of wires and screens— I just wanted to stop and say thanks. Not the throwaway, surface-level kind of thanks, but the kind that rattles in the ribcage a while. Every like, every follow, every ask that drifts into my inbox—it all lands heavier than you think. It’s not “engagement.” It’s proof that someone out there leaned close enough to feel the static of my words and decided not to turn away. That still messes me up in the best way.

Special thanks to those who send asks and messages—I see you. I’m crawling my way through them, one ghost-note at a time. It takes me a while, because everything I send back, I want it to be real, not filler. I’ve been buried under fake things most of my life, and I refuse to add more plastic to the pile.

Figured it was time to explain a few things about me, about the words, about why the hell I keep throwing them out into the void:

Most of what you see here isn’t typed in the moment. They’re fragments pulled from years of torn-up notebooks and cigarette-burned journals that I’ve been digitizing. Old ghosts getting a second life. Most of my writing grows from scars of real life, or from songs and poems that dug their nails into me so deep they left marks. Sometimes I’m haunted by a lyric, sometimes by a memory, sometimes by the fact that I’m still here when I shouldn’t be.

The words come in waves, violent ones. Whole storms where I can’t stop spilling, can’t stop chasing whatever raw nerve I just hit. That’s the blessing and the curse of being medically retired and permanently disabled—I’ve got endless time, but my body is an anchor that never lets me forget the weight. Pain is my unwelcome roommate, always slamming doors in my chest. There are days I vanish, not because I’m done with this, but because my body just shuts the lights off on me. When I go dark for days, it’s not silence—it’s survival.

I write until my hands scream, until holding a cup of coffee feels like lifting a cinder block. I write until my head isn’t a riot anymore. I write because it’s the only way I know how to bleed without leaving stains on the floor. It’s not a hobby. It’s an exorcism. It’s a kind of prayer, but one where the altar is cracked and the candles flicker out halfway through.

I don’t write to be profound. I don’t write to be liked. I write because the demons won’t leave me alone if I don’t. I write because pain demands an outlet, and silence is just another coffin.

But if the words I spit out into this blue hellsite somehow reach you, touch you, help you breathe a little easier or ache a little cleaner—then maybe there’s something holy in all this wreckage.

So thank you. Not just for being here, but for giving me proof that these words don’t dissolve into nothing. That somewhere, in someone else’s night, they glow for a second before fading.

Always with grit, ~P

[catholicguilt87]

He rolled in with that slow smile, boots caked in red dirt,

said his hands were clean but they smelled like cheap whiskey and hurt.

Kept a silver cross in his pocket next to a rusted pocket knife,

called you darlin’ like a prayer, then cut you with his life.

Tell me his name, love.

Say it slow so the devil hears.

Tell me his name, love,

before the morning disappears.

He talked like a preacher who’d lost the light,

quoted Revelation while he held you tight.

Said the road took half his soul and the other half was yours,

left you bleeding gospel on these Comanche county floors.

Tell me his name, love.

Let it rot inside my mouth.

Tell me his name, love,

while the freight trains head south.

He wore the face of every man who never stayed too long,

left his shadow hanging crooked on your trailer wall like a broken song.

Now the casino lights bleed neon on the windowpane,

and I still taste diesel on the kisses that remain.

Tell me his name, love.

Carve it deep so I don’t forget.

Tell me his name, love,

even if it kills me yet.

Was he the angel or the dog that bit the hand of God?

Did he leave you laughing, or just the echo of a shot?

I ain’t asking for heaven, just the weight of what you lost,

a name to nail up on the cross where it belongs.

So the wind can carry it out past the prairie range,

where all the broken-hearted go to forget their names.

Tell me his name, love…

Tell me his name.

[catholicguilt87]

I remember you not as you were— but as the light bent around you

soft dangerous impossible to hold

you existed in the quiet spaces between what I said and what I meant

like a song I never learned the words to but somehow still felt

we were younger then— or maybe just less aware of how things end

your laugh— god, it lived everywhere in the walls in the sheets in the way the air refused to sit still

and I built a world out of it

fragile thing stitched together with borrowed forever

I thought love was something you could keep

like a photograph like a pressed flower like proof

but time— time has a way of unmaking altars

slow at first then all at once

and suddenly you’re not there

just the outline of where you used to stand

just echoes learning how to fade

I tried to hold onto you in the smallest ways—

your name written in the margins of my thoughts

the shape of your voice replaying in empty rooms

the way your absence felt heavier than your presence ever did

and it broke me quietly

not in some grand collapse— no shattered glass no dramatic ending

just a slow erosion

like waves taking pieces of me I didn’t know I’d given you

until there was less of me left

people say it gets easier

that memory softens that pain dulls

but they don’t tell you how it lingers

how it waits in ordinary moments—

a song you didn’t mean to hear a street you didn’t mean to walk a silence that sounds too much like you

and suddenly you’re right back there

breathing in something that doesn’t exist anymore

I see you sometimes— not really but enough

in strangers in reflections in dreams that don’t ask permission

and for a second everything lines up again

like it used to

like it could still be

but it never is

because you’re gone in the only way that matters

not dead— just… elsewhere

living a life that no longer includes me

and I hate that

not you never you

just the truth of it

that I could love something so completely

and still not be part of its ending

so I sit with it

this version of love that has nowhere to go

no hands to hold no voice to answer back

just memory

just feeling

just this endless unfinished sentence

and maybe that’s what love becomes when it has no place left to land

not gone

just…

everywhere

in everything and nothing

at the same time

and I still see you

in the dark

not as you are

but as you were

and maybe always will be

a silhouette burned into the back of my mind

soft untouchable

and fading

but never completely

gone

[catholicguilt87]

I’ve been living like a ghost in my own skin— haunting the spaces I was supposed to grow into

every reflection feels like a stranger wearing my name like it doesn’t belong to them

and I keep asking— quiet at first then louder

who are you when no one’s watching?

but the silence never answers clean

it stutters it shakes it hands me back a version of myself I don’t want to claim

there’s a war in here— no glory, no victory just teeth and echoes just something clawing at the walls of who I pretend to be

I tried to bury it god, I tried

drowned it in distractions in other people’s expectations in the comfort of staying small because small things don’t get torn apart as easily

but it kept breathing— slow, stubborn refusing to die quiet

and now it’s louder

now it’s standing in the doorway asking me to choose

to kill the lie or keep living it

and I freeze— because becoming something real means losing everything familiar

means watching the mask crack in front of everyone who thought they knew me

means admitting I don’t even know myself

so I bargain— half-measures, soft rebellions just enough truth to feel like I’m changing

but not enough to actually break

and it sees through me

that voice— raw, unrelenting like it’s carved from the part of me that never learned how to pretend

it says:

this is who you are this is what you’ve hidden this is what you’ve buried alive

and it drags it into the light

every fear every fracture every version of me I abandoned to survive

laid out like evidence

and I want to run— back to the quiet lie back to the version of me that didn’t ask so many questions

but I can’t unsee it now

can’t unknow the weight of being split in two

so I stand there— shaking, unraveling holding the pieces that don’t fit together anymore

and maybe that’s the point

maybe you don’t become whole by staying intact

maybe you have to break— loud, ugly, undeniable

maybe you have to kill the person you built just to survive

so something real can finally breathe

and it hurts— like peeling skin from bone like learning to speak with a voice that was buried alive

but there’s something underneath it

something raw something honest

something that doesn’t flinch when I finally look it in the eye

and for the first time

I don’t look away

I let it see me I let it be me

no mask no mirror no borrowed shape

just this—

unfinished uncomfortable real

and breathing like it never has before

[catholicguilt87]

I found god in the crooked way you smiled like sin had finally learned how to feel holy

we made a home in the space between wrong and worse called it love because it sounded softer than what it really was

your hands— all confession, no forgiveness tracing prayers into my skin I never meant to answer

and I stayed

not because it was good but because it was honest because the devil you know still whispers your name like it means something

we burned slow no heaven, no escape just two sinners learning the shape of ruin together

and if there’s a hell I hope it looks like you

waiting with that half-broken smile

telling me I never really left

[catholicguilt87]

I stayed too long in a room that forgot how to breathe

walls closing in— not loud, not violent just slow enough to make it feel like home

your words hung in the air like smoke I kept inhaling telling myself it wasn’t killing me

I shrank to fit every silence you left behind folded parts of myself into corners you wouldn’t notice

and somewhere in the quiet I disappeared— not all at once just piece by piece

until even my own voice felt like a stranger

but tonight— something cracked

a window, maybe or maybe just me

and for the first time the air didn’t hurt

for the first time I filled my lungs without asking permission

and it wasn’t freedom— not yet

but it was space

and sometimes that’s where breathing begins

[catholicguilt87]

we live like loose change rattling in the pocket of a week that never learned our names

days pass—unopened mail, missed calls from better versions of ourselves, cheap coffee going cold on the windowsill

and still— we count bus stops like constellations trace routes with our fingers like we’re charting some kind of escape

like if we get the pattern right we won’t always feel this almost

you laugh— and it cuts through everything like a match in a dark room like proof that something warm still exists

I watch it linger in the space between us this fragile, flickering thing we don’t dare call permanent

we don’t have much— just secondhand hours and dreams we stitched together from other people’s endings

our plans are written in pencil smudged by the weight of reality rent due, time slipping, the quiet panic of becoming

but your hand finds mine like it’s always belonged there like it remembers something I’ve spent my whole life forgetting

and the world softens— not fixed, not healed, just… quieter

we sit on broken steps talk about nothing and everything like it matters like we matter

you tell me you’re scared I say me too and somehow that feels like a promise

because maybe that’s all we get— not forever not certainty just this

this moment stretched thin between who we were and who we’re pretending to become

this breath this borrowed light this fragile kind of flying

we swing through the quiet let gravity have its say and still— we rise a little

call it defiance call it love call it anything that keeps us here

just for tonight

just long enough to believe we’re not alone

just long enough to forget the ending

and exist— in the unfinished middle

together

[catholicguilt87]

your name sits heavy in the back of my throat like a word I never learned how to let go

the night hums low— stripped bare of its noise just a heartbeat and the echo of your voice

we used to burn like we meant it now it’s just smoke clinging to memory

you said forever like it was something we could hold but forever’s a fragile thing when hands start to shake

I don’t cry like I thought I would— no grand collapse, no saving flood just a slow leak through the cracks you left behind

and it aches quieter now like an old song played too soft still there just… distant

if I close my eyes I can almost feel you but almost is a lonely place

so I sit with it this hollow, this hum this version of us that never quite died

and I whisper your name into the silence

just to hear something answer back

[catholicguilt87]

door doesn’t open— it leaks

you seep in through the hinge-joint rot carrying weather in your teeth and a handful of unfinished prayers chewed down to static

there’s a chair—

no, not a chair a shape of waiting splintered wood hallucinating purpose

I kept it breathing fed it cigarettes and second chances told it: he’ll come back as something softer

it laughed in termites

you say: “no saviors in this district”

voice skipping—needle in scar tissue

truth stutters better when it’s wounded

3AM peels back its skin

walls bend inward like eavesdropping vertebrae the room listens to me failing

lightbulb flickers in code: YOU ARE NOT FIXABLE YOU ARE NOT FIXABLE YOU ARE—

(glass pops, message swallowed)

I wasn’t asking for rescue

I was dialing for a witness with dirty hands

someone to catalog the damage without laundering it into meaning

burnt circuits singing psalms in a language made of exit wounds

you stayed—

worse than disappearance

staying is a slow virus rewriting the host narrative

no clean incision no dramatic bleed-out

just cells renegotiating their loyalties in the dark

you touched the mislabeled jars

“fine” spills open— teeth inside still biting

“functional” leaks— a choir of small collapses

“manageable” screams in fluorescent

everything starts speaking at once tongues made of broken wiring

I say: I DON’T KNOW HOW TO HOLD LOVE WITHOUT INVENTING ITS FUNERAL

the sentence unravels mid-air letters crawling off like insects

you don’t correct it

you let it rot properly

no fixing here

fixing is taxidermy

stuff the wound pose it smiling call it healed

you refuse the needle

good

you stay loud

a feedback loop in a culture of mute buttons

while I practice vanishing in smaller and smaller fonts

ghosts line up

clock in clock out

punch cards made of memory fragments

you take attendance without naming them

that’s the trick— no names no cages

salvation isn’t a hand

it’s a frequency

low, persistent chewing through the static

saying—

I register your signal

I will not switch channels

[catholicguilt87]

the phone rang but it wasn’t god just the echo of something that used to answer

you ever notice how silence gets heavier the longer you pretend it’s holy

i walked past a church once doors open lights on nobody home

figured same thing upstairs

today the sky wore a bruise purple and yellowed at the edges like it had been hit too many times and stopped explaining itself

i asked for a sign got static

asked for meaning got a busy tone

asked for you

…you didn’t pick up either

there’s a hymn stuck in my throat but it don’t sound like praise more like a confession no priest would sit still for

i tried to believe in something clean unbroken

but faith tastes like rust when it sits too long in the mouth

and i’ve been chewing for years

so i lit a candle not for god

for the idea that maybe something once cared enough to stay

watched it flicker like it was thinking about leaving too

can’t blame it

if god called in sick today i ain’t surprised

i’ve seen the mess we made the way we hold each other like we’re already halfway gone

and maybe that’s the real prayer

not words not knees on cold floors

just this:

staying one more minute in a world that keeps clocking out

[catholicguilt87]

Unsent Letters #001

I keep circling the same question like a stray dog that won’t leave the street where it got hit—when did it start to come apart? Not the loud moment, not the obvious fracture, but the quiet shift underneath everything. The part neither of us named while it was still small enough to hold.

I still think about us. Not in some polished, sentimental way—but in fragments. The way your voice softened when you were tired. The pauses that meant more than the words. The ordinary moments that didn’t feel important then, but now feel like they were carrying everything.

And I keep coming back to this: losing you didn’t just mean you’re gone. It feels like something in me went with you. Not in a dramatic sense—just… something structural. Like a piece I didn’t realize I was built around until it wasn’t there anymore.

I know I played a part in that collapse. Maybe more than I wanted to admit at the time. I think I got comfortable standing just outside the things that mattered, convincing myself I was still present. I wasn’t. Not in the way you needed. Not in the way you deserved.

There are things I should have said sooner. Things I should have done differently. And I can’t go back and fix any of it, which is the hardest part—knowing clarity only showed up after everything had already broken.

I’m not writing this to pull you back or to reopen anything that’s healed over. Just… to say I’m sorry. Not the quick kind of apology that tries to ease guilt, but the slower one that sits with what actually happened and doesn’t look away.

You mattered to me in a way I didn’t fully understand until I had to feel the absence of it.

I hope wherever you are now, you’re lighter. I hope you’re not carrying the weight of what we couldn’t get right.

[catholicguilt87]

i enter sideways— through the seam in a sentence no one finished

the jacket is breathing me zipper-teeth chattering secrets i never learned but somehow remember

fluorescent saints drip from the ceiling soft electric milk coating the bones of conversation

voices— not voices wet paper mouths folding and unfolding my name into something chewable

i keep my hands somewhere else left them in a pocket of yesterday next to a receipt for a life i didn’t buy

there’s a laugh— it fractures into insects crawls behind my eyes sets up a small government there

i nod in static a flicker pretending to be agreement

undercover under the cover under the cover of another cover

skin misfiled teeth in the wrong drawer pulse skipping like a damaged reel projecting a version of me that almost passes inspection

someone is wearing my face badly

i don’t correct them

the room peels back— wallpaper sweating landscapes that never stabilize

i move through it like a needle through soft refusal

there was a self here once— clean lines fixed address

now it’s a rumor injected directly into the bloodstream of whatever this is

i wait for gravity to remember me it doesn’t

so i dissolve politely

into the gap between being seen and being said

still on

always almost

[catholicguilt87]

I lit the fuse with trembling hands

texts glowing like Judas coins in the dark

my betrayal first, voluntary, cowardly

You answered with the oldest wound

walking out, door slamming like judgment

abandonment for abandonment

Now trust lies gutted on the floor

a corpse between us

both of us pointing, both of us guilty

Transparency?

A spotlight on maggots

You cannot rebuild a cathedral

on ground soaked with mutual deceit

without first kneeling in the rubble

and admitting:

“I made this hell.”

Tell me, then —

will we become the people

who could have deserved better?

Or will we keep feeding the dragon

we both awakened?

[catholicguilt87]

Got tagged by @bluesandbarebones to play shuffle roulette — crack open the jukebox of ghosts, hit play, and let the universe bruise me in order. First 10 that bled through the static:

"Let Me Roll It" – Paul McCartney & Wings

A sloppy confession dressed up as rock. Feels like kissing someone you’re not supposed to.

"December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" – The Four Seasons

Sugar-coated nostalgia, still sticky on the tongue. The night you wish never ended.

"Silver Springs" – Fleetwood Mac

Stevie still dragging me through the wreckage every single time. Some scars don’t fade, they just learn harmony.

"Sister Golden Hair" – America

Golden haze for mornings that ache. A song for the ones who never quite show up.

"Don’t Let Me Down" – Dillard & Clark

A whispered plea we all know too well. Love as a fragile experiment in trust.

"It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue" – Marianne Faithfull

She sings it like a funeral procession in silk. Every goodbye you thought you’d outlived.

"Into the Mystic" – Van Morrison

Wind in your hair, salt in your wounds. The sound of running away but never arriving.

"Me & Magdalena" – The Monkees

Gentle heartbreak with trembling hands. Feels like watching lovers disappear into the dusk.

"Maybe I’m Amazed" – Paul McCartney

Earnestness turned weapon. Every desperate note is a survival prayer.

"The Weight" – The Band

The eternal hymn for the weary. Pass the burden around, sing until it breaks.

Not the wildest shuffle, but a decent cross-section of the weather inside my chest.

If you want to bare your own playlist scars, consider yourself nudged, tagged, or haunted:

@frickfrackentired @starloving-186

@devi-sentire @luciblackanime @darlingdolly444 @whenidieco

@lifeseenbyme

@bansheebees @entropicantagonist @behindstonewalls

[catholicguilt87]

Get to Know Me

(tagged by @kilonovai — never been tagged before, so consider this my awkward bow of gratitude. appreciate you.)

Currently Reading: “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke. It’s like Dickens and Gaiman had a fever dream together. Heavy, labyrinthine, slow in a way that feels like it’s daring you to quit, but the payoff is worth every tangled page. Reading it feels like wandering through fog—you’re not sure what shape the road is taking, but you trust it’ll spit you out somewhere uncanny and beautiful.

Last Song: “When I’m Small” by Phantogram. There’s something cinematic about that track—it’s got that late-night hum, the kind of song you’d put on walking home under broken streetlamps, hands in pockets, breath coming out in ghosts. I’ve played it on repeat enough times that it’s practically etched into my nervous system.

Sweet/Savory/Salty: Savory & salty. I love sweet—god, I love sweet—but type 1 diabetes doesn’t exactly let me dance with it freely. It’s like an old flame I still write letters to but can’t call. These days, give me anything brined, roasted, or simmered slow until it feels like a hymn.

Coffee/Tea: Both. I worship coffee in the mornings like it’s a black-toothed priest pulling me out of the grave. Two cups minimum, otherwise the day never starts. But tea—tea is the constant. A Scottish custom turned into ritual, sipped slow through the hours. Tea is the quiet warmth that keeps the ghosts at bay.

Working On: Healing. Which feels like both the simplest and hardest work I’ve ever done. I wrecked a muscle in my right shoulder bad enough that I can’t move my arm, can’t even type like I used to. All the projects, all the words, all the little daily devotions—they’re on pause. And that pause is heavier than I thought it’d be. My body hurts, my spirits are low, and I’m trying to remember patience. Trying to let stillness do its slow, stubborn work.

I wish I could tag so many more of you—whole constellations of names that live quietly on my dash, the ones I read in silence like secret scriptures. Maybe I will make my own version of this later, a half-broken list stitched together in coffee stains and insomnia, just to pull more of you into the room with me.

For now, though, I’ll tag a few souls whose words keep echoing in mine: @bibsboems @phoenixmoon333 @mooneyedandglowing @vampymoongrl @ashesinverses @pasthalfsquid

If you feel like participating, I’d love to see your answers. No pressure, just an open door. Consider this my way of saying: I see you, I read you, you matter.

[catholicguilt87]

“lab notes from a failed experiment”

we called it chemistry. as if naming the fire meant we understood it. as if the crash of our hands, the glow in your eyes, the static humming through the air was science and not just hunger dressed in a lab coat.

you struck the match, and i swore it was holy. i breathed the smoke, called it love, pretended i wasn’t choking even as my lungs wrote obituaries with every cough.

we were a classroom experiment left unsupervised. bottles uncapped. wires crossed. sparks spitting across the desk until everything smelled like ozone and ruin. we laughed as it burned. because laughter felt easier than admitting we didn’t know how to stop it.

every kiss was an equation that didn’t balance. every silence a proof we couldn’t solve. we thought devotion would be enough to keep the test tubes from breaking. but love doesn’t follow formulas. love spills. love stains. love leaves burns on your skin that don’t fade, even when the fire’s long dead.

you were acid. i was open flesh. together we hissed, we smoked, we left scars across the table and called it a success. because failure feels less cruel when you rename it art.

but in the end, there was no cure. no antidote. just me in the wreck, taking notes in the silence, writing down every tremor, every fracture, every place i still smelled of you. lab notes no one will ever read, proof that even disasters deserve to be remembered.

they say chemistry fades. they’re right. but the burns stay. the cracks remain. and me— i keep writing about it. because if love was an experiment, then i was your failed hypothesis, your mistake written in smoke. and i’d run the trial again, burn myself again, if it meant one more spark, one more second of thinking the fire was forever.

[catholicguilt87]

“silent worship, sinner’s hymn”

we made contact— skin on skin, breath on breath— but never dared to call it prayer. because prayer implies heaven, and we were never aiming up. we aimed for the dirt, the sheets, the shadows thick enough to hide the tremble in our mouths.

you worshipped quiet. not churches. not hymns. just silence stretched thin, heavy as smoke in a locked room. and me— i broke silence like glass. every touch a confession, every kiss a whispered crime, every bruise proof that holiness doesn’t have to be clean.

i whispered, and you called it sin. but i’ve never trusted saints. they smile too wide, bleed too little. give me sinners— hands shaking, mouths dirty, eyes begging for something they don’t dare name. give me ruin to kneel before. give me you.

the silence was never empty. it hummed. it ached. it pressed against our teeth until we bit down hard enough to taste blood. and wasn’t that the point? to feel alive in the wreck of our own shame? to find a god in each other’s hands, even if that god was nothing more than heat and hunger?

i am a sinner. but i never lied about it. never dressed it in lace. never sold it as salvation. i just said: here i am, broken and loud, trembling with want, ready to worship the way i know how— through scars, through trembling, through the kind of devotion that ruins as it saves.

and when you pressed your forehead to mine, breath catching like a prayer cut short, i understood— we weren’t making love. we weren’t making sin. we were making proof. proof that even in silence, the body speaks. proof that even in ruin, devotion survives. proof that even a whisper can shake the whole cathedral.

so let the saints keep their purity. let the priests choke on their hymns. i’ll take this silence, this whisper, this bruise. i’ll take your body as gospel, your mouth as scripture, your skin as the altar i kneel at.

because if this is sin, then it’s the only holy thing i’ve ever known.