exhale the universe

writing blog for @bohemicns

[deadgirlsupremacy]

short story master list!

[me: realising I should probably make a pinned post for all the published fiction I have available to read free* online] [will keep updated] [hopefully]

Rural Folklore - mature, flashfic, f/f; a woman has a romantic encounter with a banshee

Aries - teen, f/f, mentions of past sexual violence; outsider Saffie has a ram's horn curling around her cheek, new girl Violet is a liar and a witch. This is a love story.

The Art Of Compromise - explicit, f/f, nsfw art; two former rivals walk into a bar

Moonchild, teen, f/f, Emma keeps dying, and whenever she does, the moon sits heavily in her hands

In The Absence Of Moonlight - mature, a girl deals with the aftermath of killing her boyfriend

The Fox Bride - teen, f/m, a werefox looks back at how she met her husband, aka, feral girl/soft boi bisexual rep, aka, I tried to write something vaguely fairytale-like

[*full list of work I've had published including poetry & paywalled stories can be found here]

[deadgirlsupremacy]

Listen, I need to go under. It's better there. Warmer deep in the underneath, the curve of muddy hands finding my spine and clutching tight. In the echo, hole becomes hold; low becomes grow, an unfurling of limbs that stretch until they test the tug of anchor. I want to be half-done, sun-sunk and waterfull, beautiful thing never meant to reach completion. In the burrow, I meet in the middle, stretch language over miles as wide as tall & bigger than breath can hold. I'll be the lungs, then. I'll be the cage that clutches them. I'll be a structure strong enough to do the task of holding. But first I find the hum, sweet song of burial hymn. Says, I have to go lower. lower. lower.

For the @nosebleedclub September prompt: rustle; It's autumn so i'm thinking about trees & that one phantogram song that goes Lucy's underground, she's got mouths to feed... & about renewal meaning death as a means of resurrection but mostly I am thinking about trees

[deadgirlsupremacy]

my brother is a smiley drunk & the only man in the family I trust - Lucy Hannah Ryan, from pink plastic house

my brother is a smiley drunk & the only man in the family I trust.

my brother is a smiley drunk & the only man in the family I trust.

The only man whose hands aren't workworn to pumice — whose hands weren't roughened on another man's skull.

& he's a smiley drunk, eyes baby sunsets curving to smallness where my dad's span the unfocused wide —

Where my dad's scour the tinderbox for a spark to strike inadequacy;

Nostrils flare & the broken chair & flames lick my cheeks like unhousebroken spaniel.

& he's not the smiling type, arterial pulse of braying chuckle already souring on his tongue, bile-soured cider freshly gorged upon,

& he's more the roaring type, words slurred & cruelty unmistakable, teeth spit-shined in the living room light.

& my brother's smiling sober & my dad's jaw busted into fracture & maybe that's a smile, pride in self-deconstruction,

smashed knuckle & smashed jaw & smashed stranger —

& I'll be the man, then, I'll be the final blow & my brother's fatherhood a different animal after all.

[deadgirlsupremacy]

before the flood - Lucy Hannah Ryan from lavender bones issue 2

Before the flood

& this is a poem for before black lace and sadsong were virginal lovers / & this is a poem for every hard-mouthed girl I shaped god into  /  & this is a poem for watching dogs chase rabbits without brutality tripping on the back of my tongue / & this is a poem for blue jeans and white embroidery stretched over the rolling planes of my convulsing body / & this is a poem for drinking the blue and yellow idylls of sunstroke / & this is a poem for the exquisite pain of teasing plaits from butter soft hair / & this is a poem for all the girls I wanted to break more than beat before I learned that definition of hunger / & this is a poem for before the prickly heat of regrown body hair / & this is a poem for before the tinnitus ring of bedside machinery / & this is a poem for before the quivering hands in the bathroom, possessed by phantom maiden costumed as panic attack / & this is a poem for before the squeaking plastic mattress that never fit the brutal angle of aching / & this a poem for before womanhood stole and replaced the girl of me like a faery changeling, the sweet cocoon of girlhood long melted in my hands

[deadgirlsupremacy]

he called me reservoir - Lucy Hannah Ryan from lavender bones issue 2

They say 'drink water' as catch-all cure,   

- drown the revenants of sickness before they rise

     (I think God drowned, once, learned not to breathe, named it baptism)

So I swallowed sky to prevent the rainfall and threw up ocean,

Sweet body weathered by waves, 

and wavering - isn't that so like girlhood, to reorient the world on the fulcrum of splintering spine?

    (I traced veins like constellations, crafted heavenly body from the floodlands within)

Watered like white lilies in the funeral wreath;

I threw up the ocean for four long years,

and came to know why the opening of a river is called the mouth

[deadgirlsupremacy]

[CW self harm] | from the winnow: pop culture

A Study In Girlhood As A Hole In The Fabric of Reality

& I, terrible Scheherazade, scribbling this story so that I might survive it;

& fourteen, terrible chimera girl, Cancer sun and squirming sister rising

(& the stars were different, weren't they, the first time we told this story?)

(there has never been another story, there has only ever been this)

& I, the monster, that's how the men wrote it;

& I, squeezing words between green-gloss fingers until blood rolls down thin wrist

(& the men always write it like that, don't they, woman meaning devil hiding under the stone?)

(the only person writing this is you, diary dear-ed and deified like it's all you ever owned)

& how close to unmade can I brush up against before I can't come back from it?

& I unlock green acquiescence, flooding the gap of girlhood

(& once, all the stars fell into my open mouth)

(& I, terrible, hungry, girl; hold the world closed from within the wound)

[deadgirlsupremacy]

[tw: death] | from the winnow: pop culture

[deadgirlsupremacy]

Remember when I said I wrote a story about agender cyborgs living in a cemetery which was really a meditation on love and memory? Well A Light In The Garden is out today in warning lines / OTHERWORLDS! read the whole issue for free here! (Or scroll to page 58 for moi)

[deadgirlsupremacy]

excerpt from welcome to the dollhouse (ode to Vanessa Ives) from my napowrimo dead girls project / @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge 11. forgotten room

It's hardly big enough to see,

Damnable Ash Wednesday mark,

Her quiet room without a key.

Eased past the ache for symmetry,

Where red had made it all quite stark,

It's hardly big enough to see —

Twin girls in god's menagerie.

[deadgirlsupremacy]

How Very by Lucy Hannah Ryan in drunk monkeys vol. 4 no. 7, pop culture spectacular

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excerpt from guinea pig (ode to Boo) from my napowrimo dead girls project / @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge 10. 2:21 AM

 I was always better at subtraction than addition. that's funny, isn't it? easier to undo a knot than tie it. easier to deny than love yourself. I did well without, you know. small circle and small salad lunch and small shoes that pinched my toes until they throbbed like ten little hearts at the end of my body. but too much heart is no good for a girl, either, and I picture them wrapped in blue bows and handed out like nightly squares of dark chocolate, picture someone say, well, I can afford to be indulgent, just this once.

[deadgirlsupremacy]

excerpt from scarlet (ode to Satine) from my napowrimo dead girls project / @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge 9. Contamination

i. 

you could count the sequin-welts on her skin like you might count daisy petals, she loves me, she loves me not. 

(Intermission)

and you can't catch it, light refracting across the breathless abyss and you can't catch it, the quiver of her jaw when the song slips out from underneath her and you can't catch it, the way she flits between woman and will o'the whisp, insubstantiate as bones press through white as the moon and you can't catch it, the way her shadow splits, the lighthouse and the siren it warns of, you just catch this, the simmering throb of pink desire that splits her mouth and the wild red country that rolls beneath it.

[deadgirlsupremacy]

excerpt from it's always sunny on television (ode to Sarah Lynn) from my napowrimo dead girls project / @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge 8. driving past your elementary school

she wants to tell you about the beehive under her bedroom window but she can't get past the way it sounds like childhood,

when she was little and god was a glass eye and nine spotlights yellow as egg yolks.

[deadgirlsupremacy]

excerpt from purgatorial much? (ode to Jennifer Check) from my napowrimo dead girls project / @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge 4. Devil Town

& there's just enough room for that, the gaps in her Hello Kitty baguette just wide enough       for the aftermath of flame & there's a game on, so she watches the silk shorts shift    & twists her hips to The Who when Roman forgets her name      & downs the lame drinks the dirtbags throw her way, it's a play      the way she cuts her thumb on a bottle cap & sucks it till it stings      sings a lullaby to the guys & their teeth all dripping white      like, she knows this goddamn song, & it goes on & on & on until she's pink       & sinking dizzy with soured tenderness, even the steak here thick with gristle

[deadgirlsupremacy]

excerpt from prophet (ode to Laura Lee) from my napowrimo dead girls project / @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge 6. real angel

everyone is born waterlogged,

but I'm not sorry it happened to me twice.

chlorine makes for a cleaner baptism,

God and his acid kiss. it stings so I know he loves me.

[deadgirlsupremacy]

excerpt from HB (ode to Beverly Katz) from my napowrimo dead girls project / @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge 5. Rusted

1981, and she was gunmetal gray.

it healed over all pretty, cat scratch scar and twin bruise on the boy's cheek, struck by her unflinching colour.

1981, and it set in good, a slow-acting poison of cool pencil lead, trickled through her innards until they all tasted wry and smiled slyly.

[deadgirlsupremacy]

excerpt from to honor and keep (ode to Laura Moon) from my napowrimo dead girls project / @nosebleedclub poetry month challenge 5. love you've given

JUST BECAUSE HE WAS A GOOD MAN DOESN'T MEAN SHE HAS TO FEEL MORE SORRY THAN SHE DID WHEN HE WAS BAD / JUST BECAUSE HE WAS A GOOD MAN DOESN'T MEAN SHE DIDN'T LET HIS CACTUS DIE / JUST BECAUSE HE WAS A GOOD MAN DOESN'T MEAN SHE HAD TO KEEP HIS SHIRTS FRESHLY IRONED ON THE END OF THE BED / JUST BECAUSE HE WAS A GOOD MAN DOESN'T MEAN SHE HADN'T STARTED EATING ALL THE FOOD HE USED TO HATE / JUST BECAUSE HE WAS A GOOD MAN DOESN'T MEAN SHE DIDN'T WEAR HIS BOXERS UNDER HER SHORTEST DRESS / JUST BECAUSE HE WAS A GOOD MAN DOESN'T MEAN SHE HAD TO PICK UP WHEN HIS PARENTS CALLED