liminal

i am the yes that didn’t survive the night.

[celestinow]

anon me anything you want me to write about—a name, a color, a random sentence, a memory, a bit of context, your past, a fantasy, a feeling, or literally anything. give me something and i'll turn it into something.

[celestinow]

celestinow

it's the name my father never let me keep. i am the yes that didn't survive the night. i've lived in a glass house for as long as i can remember, long enough to mistake echoes for company and windows for mirrors.

when i was a kid, i wanted to be a lion. construction cranes fascinated me. i loved the moon enough to mistake it for a compass. i also remember wanting to become a politician. somewhere along the way, i grew to hate the thought of it. funny how life keeps introducing me to people determined to make one out of me anyway.

i've repaired warp drives aboard the enterprise, covered defense against the dark arts on short notice, and shared a drink with magnus bane. hermes—my dad—pretends none of it happened. i let him.

i've lived a hundred lives. none of them were mine. i've borrowed enough worlds that they began remembering me better than i remembered myself. somewhere in between, i stopped wondering whether i was changing or simply becoming easier to rewrite.

come back tomorrow.

perhaps i'll have finally learned the moon's trick.

or perhaps i'll still be the yes that didn't survive the night.

until then, read the pages from the glass house.

[celestinow]

I met this guy here. I was the one who initiated the conversation, and eventually we became friends online. Not just casual friends, there was emotional intimacy between us. He somehow managed to check in on me almost every day, and that fed my delulu.

I became aware of what he was doing, but there was never any clarity behind his actions. That’s when I realized I was never actually in love. I was just in love with the idea of him that I had created in my head.

ok... so the deal was, send me something—literally anything—and i'll turn it into something.

‎this one isn't poetic, but here's something:

‎perhaps that's the cruelest part about it. not realizing they don't love you, but realizing the person you were in love with never actually existed.

‎somewhere between the good mornings, the check-ins, and the silence, we become editors. we trim away the uncertainty, fill in the blank spaces, give meanings to things that were never explained. eventually, we stop seeing the person for who they are, and start seeing the version we've been quietly revising all along.

‎and then one day, reality catches up.

‎not with rejection. not with closure. just a quiet realization.

‎"oh."

‎"i wrote that part."

‎i don't think the lesson is to stop imagining people. i think it's to let them interrupt your imagination. to let them disagree with the version you've written, surprise you, disappoint you, prove you wrong. because maybe that's where love actually begins—not with the person we create, but with the one that survives after we've erased all the fiction.

‎i may not be the best person to talk about love. but hey... that's the something—if that counts for anything.

[celestinow]

i miss your words, c. when will you write again?

-s.

‎i didn't realize i hadn't written anything in a while. here's to all the stories i never got around to writing—the ones i'll probably forget, and the ones from the asks that have been sitting in my inbox waiting for me.

‎a lot has happened these past few weeks.

‎i watched the world cup and found myself rooting for scotland—not because i've always been a fan, but because of their fans. watching them drink an entire city dry made me realize my drinking problem probably isn't as impressive as i thought.

‎i also learned that i don't actually hate hip-hop. turns out i just hate mumble rap. i started binge-watching rap battles and throwing rappers into my playlist whenever i'm getting ready. my rock-and-roll purity has been compromised, and surprisingly, i'm okay with that.

‎i wish i could tell you more about everything that's happened lately.

‎i spent a good chunk of it drunk.

‎thank you for looking for me, ‎

it feels nice to be found when i didn't even realize i'd gotten lost again.

[celestinow]

hey, i had the nicest dream. i could've sworn it was a glimpse into some alternate universe because i wanted it to be real so baaaaaad.

anyway, i was dating sabrina carpenter.

the funny part is, there were stretches of the dream where i didn't even realize it was the sabrina carpenter. all i knew was that i was dating this blonde girl named sab. then at some point my dream decided to reveal, "surprise, idiot. that's the pop star."

i was absolutely living the dream... until the intercom buzzed. lobby called to tell me i had visitors.

i woke up in a panic because i was already an hour late for something i'd set an alarm for. luckily my buddy was cool about it. turns out he was an hour late too.

fast forward to the end of the day—i got drunk (as usual), crashed, and dreamed again.

and somehow... i was dating someone again. i barely remember anything about the second dream, only that i wasn't alone. perhaps that's all there is to it.

maybe all this dating shit is just meant to happen in my dreams. anyway, sabrina gets a pass.

call me delusional all you want. in that universe, we had a life together. lol.

[celestinow]

if you're confused, i'd say no. if you already know the answer but you're just scared to do it… then yes. unless this is something serious. in that case, don't let a random tumblr comment decide your life pls HAHA

you'd be surprised how far i've gone for a tumblr mutual.

but hey, i really appreciate the thought. thank you.

that was just me not knowing whether i should cut my hair or just let it keep growing.

[celestinow]

help me decide: yes or no

[celestinow]

before i go to sleep, i'd just like to remind everyone that there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire. not even taylor swift. good night!

[celestinow]

[celestinow]

too little, too late—too fucking little, too fucking late.

[celestinow]

hey, so this is the fourth ask i've gotten about whether i'm someone. between those four asks, i've been guessed as two different people. two guesses were correct.

i wanted to stay anonymous for a reason, but i also don't want people to think i'm someone else. if you're here because you think i'm them, you're reading the wrong person. i'd rather not have people attaching my words, opinions, or personality to someone who had nothing to do with them.

i'm not dropping their urls because i don't want any traction. this probably makes the whole thing sound more dramatic than it is, but i promise i didn't commit any crime. we just happen to write similarly (personally, i dont think i write the same way that they do) anyway, that's that.

weird, coming off anon. well... slightly off anon. feels like i'm confessing to a crime i didn't commit. slightly sucks, but okay.

p.s. yes, "celestino" is in my actual name. it's on my certificate of birth. you guys just never asked for my full name back on my previous account—which, to be fair, would've been a weird thing to ask. anyway, mystery solved.

[celestinow]

god fucking damn it. he wrote all of that just to say, "yeah, i know it's wrong, but let me see how much i can get away with depending on how everyone reacts."

it's honestly appalling how far some of you will go just to justify being a creep. paragraph after paragraph of nonsensical rigmarole, as if dressing it up in enough words suddenly makes it any less disgusting.

i've said this before, and i'll say it again: if conversations like this make you feel personally attacked, there's a good chance you're part of the problem.

it's really not that complicated. just stop being a creep. it's not rocket science, mate.

and before anyone comes at me with the "white knight" bullshit—my dick is bigger than yours. suck it up, small dick.

[celestinow]

i've been trying to convince myself this isn't another joke the universe is playing on me.

technically, we didn't just meet. we've known each other for a while now, just never enough to become part of each other's routines. then life happened, as it usually does, and suddenly conversations became easier than they had any right to be.

she's a filmmaker. i write.

there's probably something poetic hiding in that, but i'm still too close to it to figure out what. her name is a constellation. which, in hindsight, feels unnecessarily on the nose.

for as long as we've both known each other, she liked women. exclusively. then a few months ago, life happened to her too. an engagement ended. people changed. apparently her ex-fiancée likes men now. apparently she thinks she does too. apparently she thinks she likes me. i don't know if i believe that.

not because i don't think i'm worth liking, but because timing has a funny way of dressing itself up as certainty. grief and familiarity can feel alarmingly similar from the inside. sometimes you meet someone at exactly the point where both of your worlds are rearranging themselves, and your brains mistake recognition for destiny.

i told her i'm not looking for anything romantic. truth be told, i don't think i've been emotionally available for well over a year now.

friends? absolutely. video games until sunrise? sure. getting drunk, getting high, doing objectively stupid things together? probably. hell, maybe even fucking. but romance? that's the only thing i can't seem to offer.

she says she's okay with that, but i already know how stories like this usually end.

maybe somewhere along the way she'll realize this was never about me. maybe she'll discover that i'm simply the bridge between who she was and who she's becoming. maybe she'll wake up one morning and remember that women have always been home.

or maybe she'll stay long enough to find out that the art is considerably kinder than the artist.

either way, i have this awful feeling that one day we'll look back at each other and realize we were standing in the middle of someone else's character development.

hers. mine. both.

what a shame, i think we could've been something genuinely beautiful if i had met her as a different version of myself. instead, she found a writer who's better at imagining futures than believing in them.

and somehow, that feels like the most poetic part of all. goodness fucking gracious. i'm twenty-seven, why am i still getting myself into this kind of shit?

[celestinow]

my bad. i took fitterkarma's "magdo-droga tayo" a little too literally. i forgot the "kimi lang, bawal 'yon" part.

[celestinow]

unused ticket

ok, i'll stray a little from my usual fictional stories this time. mostly because this one actually happened:

it was late january of 2020, just a few weeks before valentine's day. i was nineteen, fresh into what felt like my first real job—the kind that finally let me afford a few things i couldn't before. i was also dating someone who, to this day, i still think was wildly out of my league. you probably know her too, but i'll spare you the name.

back then, dates looked a little different. they were study sessions after her classes, cheap meals in places my wallet could survive, long walks because walking happened to be free. i wanted to give her the kind of dates people write songs about, but my bank account had a very different genre in mind.

then the company announced a valentine's activity. the prize was simple enough: two movie tickets. the mechanics were even simpler—answer a series of trivia questions. i remember smiling to myself because, for once, life had accidentally picked the one thing i was embarrassingly good at. science. history. random facts that had absolutely no business being useful until that exact afternoon.

by the third question, i already knew i was going to win. by the fourth, i was already thinking about what we'd watch. by the fifth, i was figuring out how i'd ask her out without getting in the way of her schedule. by the sixth, i'd already sent her a message.

i won.

for the first time in a while, i felt like i could finally give us one of those painfully stereotypical dates. popcorn. a movie. maybe dinner afterward if i budgeted hard enough.

the universe, apparently, had other plans.

a volcano erupted—not a metaphor, an actual fucking volcano.

classes were suspended, so she had to go home. the place i worked for, unfortunately, still expected me to clock in. we kept telling ourselves we'd figure something out once things settled.

they never really did.

before the ash had fully settled, the pandemic arrived. the distance grew longer than either of us expected, and somewhere in all of that, the cracks we hadn't noticed before became impossible to ignore. i had my lapses too. there were days she needed me and i wasn't there the way i should've been. sometimes because i couldn't. sometimes because i simply didn't know how yet.

months later, we broke up.

years later, i still have the tickets.

last year, she got married.

every now and then she still appears on my dashboard, smiling beside the life she built. strangely enough, i don't really think about the breakup anymore whenever i see her, but i still think about the ticket. somewhere in my room, i'm almost certain it's still there.

unused.

probably expired by now.

it's funny how something so small managed to outlive everything it was meant for, sometimes i think about looking for it. not because i still need it, i think i just want to make sure i didn't imagine any of it.

and if i ever do find it—i'll probably watch toy story 5 twice.

[celestinow]

lets watch happy tree friends together

[celestinow]

kate & blue :))))

katie was talking across from me and i was genuinely trying to listen, i really was. the bar wasn't even that loud either. there was some old song dragging itself through the speakers overhead, glasses clinking every now and then, people laughing from tables nearby. nothing unusual. nothing demanding attention.

my mind kept wandering, not to big things—just small things. the way bottles behind the bar held onto bits of light. ice shifting around in glasses whenever somebody picked them up. the blue glow from a neon sign outside slipping through the windows and stretching itself across the counter. the kind of things people start noticing when they're trying very hard not to stare at somebody.

because every time i'd look at her, i'd immediately look somewhere else again. my drink. the counter. the neon outside. anywhere. everywhere.

i remember she laughed at something and reached over the table for my hand for a second before letting go again. just a second, always a second. i think i should've known then.

but people don't usually realize they're standing inside their last night with someone. they don't realize they're collecting final things while they're still happening. the last drink. the last laugh. the last time you look at someone and think, i'll probably see her again next week.

a few weeks later, i heard she was seeing somebody. and that should've been fine, technically there wasn't anything to lose. there wasn't a relationship ending. there wasn't some giant collapse. there wasn't anything with a name attached to it yet.

suddenly every little thing from that night started coming back differently. the quick glances around the room. the hands that never stayed long enough. the way she'd look around before getting too close.

the way i somehow only ever existed in corners, in late nights, in places where nobody knew us. i think that's when it finally hit me. i was kept like a secret.

out of everything i remember from that night, i barely remember what she said—although i remember the light. blue, spilling across her face from somewhere outside.

and i think that's the cruel thing about memories, they keep the colour—and throw away the warnings.