words and tchotchkes

william i don’t know what i’m doing here 23 | sthlm | orchid-child https://linktr.ee/billyboyo

[overclassy]

[sanseterrer]

[7pleiades7]

Lost Pleiad (1884) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825 – 1905), oil on canvas, 195.5 cm (76.9 in) x 95 cm (37.4 in), Private Collection

[cloudy-billy-boy]

choix à faire

when i was in the 7th grade we had to choose an elective language class in school. we could choose between spanish and french.

quite a few of my friends had picked spanish. i was drawn to french, and it made sense to me.

i told my dad. i told him "a lot of people are choosing spanish, so it's good if i choose french. see, that way we're spreading our resources out. the likelihood that someone in the group can communicate abroad is larger than if we all only knew the same languages". of course, i didn't know then that i would never be proficient enough to converse in french anyway.

but he said to me, he laughed and said "that's ridiculous. you see the use for spanish, and yet you choose french? you can choose whatever you would like, but don't trust that you will always have people around you to balance with".

i have always scanned for gaps i could fill, places i could fit and be good in. he always taught me that i should assume to be alone. i think he was.

and anyways, i still remember my school-french.

william 23jun26

[cloudy-billy-boy]

[unusual-suspects]

x

[boneandhoney]

Sought after only when

tragedy is near

never good enough to be

part of a permanent pair

Always overbearing

I am left there

looked at for board shoulders, narrow

waist, and soft skin

it’s like 11:30 text have become

my next in kin

regret taste like blood

when all I do is bite

my tongue

my throat is dry from

words I’ve already sung

I keep returning to the almost

[unusual-suspects]

x

[cloudy-billy-boy]

[unusual-suspects]

x

[mollybeenoel]

[cloudy-billy-boy]

Disdain

You believe your nonchalance is impenetrable. But you don’t feel the thickness of your presence as it grows distastefully in my mouth and makes me salivate with nausea.

It smacks into my shins and makes me stumble across the floor, breaking out into uncoordinated dance as my stomach drops and spills out everything I’ve ever swallowed.

You painted a wonderfully monstrous portrait of me. A caricature of my intentions and placed it neatly in a frame.

Hung it up high like a diploma. An award for a disingenuous creature.

It is too late. I cannot save us.

I am wrong before I speak. As the words come out in crooked syllables they prove themselves time again. It’s self-sufficient in that way.

The heat of your gaze beats down on me like a spotlight. It follows me across the floor as I dance until I can’t breathe any longer.

I am 8 years old.

I lived this life before.

[paper-wounds]

[chocoette]

[cloudy-billy-boy]

The Good Child

I read a lot of poems about The Good Child.

The glass child. The easy child.

The child who took care of their own needs by simply never having any.

To be easy.

To be loved.

I cry most often for The Good Child.

But when I lift my gaze to ponder into the reflection of an earlier life, The Good Child refuses to meet my eyes.

I was never, truly, The Good Child. I was a martyr, even in my infancy.

I’ll ruffle my own hair, and pinch my own cheeks. I was a smart child. I have always known. I could always read. And I began to forget about The Good Child and instead wondered if I were ever a child at all.

For if I were a child, I would have been The Good Child.

For if I were innocent, I would have been the easy child.

But I was not.

I was an old child.

I could tell that I should have been an easy child, and yet I refused. Frankly, I never perceived myself as any child. Being treated as a child was therefore simply ludicrous. Of course I would not stand for it, I thought, for I am not any child at all.

I was an adult, goddamn it! And you should treat me as such!

But I was a cowardly child. Stubborn in my beliefs, arrogant enough to begin my longwinded defences but never brave enough to let it land. Too foolish to stick to my word, terrified of letting it be inspected without me there to polish it. I always remembered too late that I should be The Good Child.

In my crusade for fairness I shrank into The Good Child. Every word that left my mouth would regress me, until I was only The Good Child in hindsight.

The Good Child would never have crusaded. The Good Child would never have needs, we discussed this already.

I could see the outline of The Good Child shamefully staring up at me from on top of my soapbox. But it was always too late for me to live inside of it by the time it caught my eye.

The Good Child passed through me like a cold sweat and sowed my feet back onto my shadow when I would get too big.

So, I was never The Good Child.

I was the ashamed child. Shame, is a powerful tool. And Shame steeped me and built for me a new soul.

I found myself worshipping Shame. For I could see clearly now — through the haze of shame — that I was never The Good Child.

I was the horrid child. The wretched child.

It was too late. I was already a martyr.

For I believed that I was The Good Child, and that means I will never be The Good Child.

william 02apr26

[boredasfluff]

You start to realize how utterly alone you are when you have exciting news that you need to talk about to begin processing it, and absolutely no one to share it with..

[hadeskores]

I’m so tired, when will I get to bury my face into your chest and rest?