serendipity

jessie. she/her. writer. please ask permission & credit me if you use any of my work anywhere! all writing | prose | poetry lighting & writing

[cosmicwritings]

birthright, j.l.

[cosmicwritings]

to think i desecrated the temple of my body and called it love. mostly, i wanted to be useful, which in turn meant i wanted to be wanted. these two things aren't mutually exclusive, but when you have a past of getting torn apart for love, things get lost in translation. i thought exchanging myself was the price of being seen, how did i get it so wrong? i'm unlearning some untruths that were stitched into my seams. we're trying to replace these threads with something gentler. we are calling the temple of my body a place of love instead.

- j.l.

[cosmicwritings]

She’s the girl that makes people worry – not too badly, just enough so that you’re wondering if she will ever breathe again when you’re sitting on the bathroom floor with her after a night out, wiping mascara from her cheeks and listening her tell you that she loves you and she’s sorry, she’s always goddamn sorry.

But they take these words and they roll them around. She’s always goddamn sorry, but she does it again. Blink, and she’s taken two more shots after she’d sworn off drinking this morning. Blink, and she’s kissing a boy she’s said she wouldn’t. Blink, and she’s going home, tripping over heels, trying to find some sort of deliverance in a stranger’s bed.

Did you find it? You want to ask, Did you find what you were looking for?

Her lipstick’s been rubbed off. She smiles anyway, all teeth – she’s got loneliness trapped in there, but she won’t say it out loud. Never.

She’s the girl that makes people worry – except not really, because everyone knows she’s going to be okay again. Self-loathing is stitched to her like a second skin, but if there’s something she knows about herself, it’s this: she has weathered every storm in her life and has come out breathing. So she’ll kiss the wrong boy, and that girl she loves will break her heart, and sometimes she’ll feel so fucking insane that she’ll break every good thing in her life, and none of this will ever stick because she will rebuild. Twenties are a godforsaken place, but never permanent. She'll feel that like a tattoo in her bones.

[cosmicwritings]

backstab, j.l. 

[cosmicwritings]

thinking of you, lights dim and eyes blurred. i can only reply to people on hinge when i have a joint in my hand. making small talk with strangers is hard when i’m actively thinking about you, but harder still when i go about my every day. washing the dishes is a sad affair when i’m not waiting for someone to tell me that they miss me. when i hop back on the dating apps at 3am like clockwork, it is because it is my only way of getting over you. texting back thank yous to compliments feels like i’m winning a war sometimes, like fuck you is being painted on the tombstone of us. can everyone on this godforsaken app see through me? hello, sexy. i’m not brand new. i’m wine-stained and ruined. i’m fine, thank you, how are you? i let someone swallow me whole already. i know you can’t touch me this far away but you see - i still have shrapnel from people who used to love me. i still have shrapnel from people who said they loved me.

how to move on, j.l.

[cosmicwritings]

write me a love song, j.l.

[cosmicwritings]

you can't be a god without  giving something of yourself. i tried to warn you but my hands are knives trying to be birds, trying to be free. your hands are empty  revolvers, eager and begging me to teach you how to aim.  my love, i was asking for a rotten redemption in your lips. i thought letting myself be soft with you would prove that flesh was not the only  human part left of me. but i gave you your first kiss of power in my desperation.  i was trying to undo my mistakes, but you can't made deals with gods without a sacrifice. i didn't want to trade your clean hands for my black soul. godhood, like girlhood, is a damning thing.

corruptions starts with the mouth, j.l. for @julictcapulet ( rosalyn & ina )

[cosmicwritings]

boys born from a battlefield should have iron bones and an iron heart, but boys born from love have its own kind of magic humming inside. they want so many pieces of  you. they want a villain and a hero, and you just wanted to be a boy. you could've had riches but you just wanted peace. you're a puncture wound away from splitting, but kind is not the same as fragile. you have been sewing the seams of your own  wounds for far too long. when the dust settles, you are a ghost. many men made a fool of death, but you met him and  find something sad and lonely about his weary hands. boys born from a battlefield  chase their whole lives to silence  the restlessness, but boys born from love did what's asked of them and now want a softer ending.

the boy who lived for a chance of peace, j.l.

[cosmicwritings]

is this what being older feels like? missing you but not loving you. it's a weird feeling. except - it's not true, i suppose i mean not being in love with you. loving you is somewhere ingrained in me. if you strip me down to nothing, i think i'll always know how to do that. but i'm not in love with you and i'm sitting here, remembering what breathing feels like. time heals wounds. i didn't believe it until now. i look at your profile and i had spent so many of my teenage years doing the same, opening my heart and trying to scream. i thought i had learnt your face by heart back then, so i was waiting for that familiarity to hit me like a suckerpunch. but i felt that love like a kiss. i felt it like coming home. did you miss me too? god, how nice. our friendship got lost in the awful, that’s always been our regret.

[cosmicwritings]

your left hook and my open heart. your friend's laughter from downstairs, the kind of drunk at 4am that makes everything look a little like glitter. i was running through the woods and howling, you were the only one who saw right through. but glitter becomes lights and the sun comes up and you never wanted to be special, only wanted, so - poof! you disappear like the world's worst magic act. you were gone and never left, you were absent and always here. i miss you like always, even though i don't think i love you anymore. it's a kind of hard secret to dig out of my bones. you were really good at doing nothing but keeping me tame.

[cosmicwritings]

what i almost told you but never did by j.l. 

[cosmicwritings]

i.

kissing you still feels like missing you, which is to say that you can kiss me all you want again but you will never hold me the same way you did a year ago. apparently, this is a dealbreaker for me. 

ii.

mary asks what heartbreak looks like for me. she is a writer and has never learnt to hold her tongue. i say that mostly it was forgetting i loved to dance. mostly it was the way the cereal box took twice as long to finish alone but i keep buying the multipack anyway. i say, mary, it doesn't matter what heartbreak looks like. but heartbreak has made me look like a fraud.

iii.

i think it is a wednesday when you call but i lose track of dates like losing sleep. it's the same story: you want to try again, and then you don't, and then you do, and i am back to tending wounds that don't heal.

iv.

last night, i left the house and i laughed with some friends and i drank my weight at the pub to throw it up and i loved every moment of it. they don't let me think about you. today, it has been five months since i've seen you. today, there's a crack of sunlight on an overcast day.

v.

kissing you still feels like missing you, and i am getting very good at both. we are cupid's favourite version of groundhog day but i still think there's going to be a different ending every time. if you come back again, i will do things differently. if you love me again, i will try better - not harder, i have always tried the hardest i could. i want kissing you to just feel like kissing you again. i feel your absence in every touch.

- falling apart in five parts, j.l.

[cosmicwritings]

i wasn't lying when i said i was always going to want you but it's a dull ache now kinda like stubbing your toe right i was pins and needles i was screaming in pain the entire time but mostly i forget it hurts now i love you and i'm never going to claw my way back out of that but it's fine now i can breathe! imagine that! i can think about the way you say my name and not feel the slice of love! if you touched me again i would probably be black and blue but it’s not a fight, is it? you’re saying it’s a shot in the dark red light emergency room accident, not a war never a war, but i can’t even feel you sometimes anymore could you ever believe me if i told you that

[cosmicwritings]

did i ever say thank you or did i get caught up in the i hate yous? the slamming doors and the tear-stained pillow and the pathetic voicemails. no, i mean it, did i ever say thank you for the way you made me kind for a moment. love makes me soft, i'll admit, it makes me do silly things, but i was also better because of you. the train wreck is still a train wreck but it was a beautiful journey if you think about it. i can look people in the eye now without flinching. i can let a boy sleep in my bed all the way to morning and not feel dirty. you made me laugh easier and i think i'm going to spend my life chasing that again but it's okay, i'm really thankful i was something good for a moment. never have i felt gentle, i've always been a burning house, thank you for making me warm.

[cosmicwritings]

taking you in like a shot, like the four pills i take every morning, like a bullet wound to the brain. you greedy motherfucker, you cruel son of a bitch. what did you have to burrow under my skin for? think about us untarnished, a grand prize that anyone would cheat to win. we should've been able to hold forever in our broken teeth. when i said you could have me, i meant it, so you're not allowed to say that you turned away because you didn't know. taking you in like every temporary adrenaline rush to my veins but baby i made a mistake because i can't get you out now.

[cosmicwritings]

@hannahabbott rlly said ‘siken’s just like gunshot bullet wounds hands hands broken glass and it always slaps’ so here’s some siken-esque poetry/prose of mine lol

[cosmicwritings]

breaking myself down to pieces, trying to find a part of me that would be okay with the crumbs you could only give me. my love, i had to say no, and you know i did. you said it yourself, you wouldn't live with yourself if i gave up everything. i keep thinking, i've rebuilt myself from scratch so many times before, i've lived with entire sections of me chipped away and i could do it again. 

the scene of me clinging to you, holding my tears somewhere in the hollow of my throat. buried my face into your neck, made you turn around so i couldn't see the look on your face. sink my teeth into your back, i was trying to stop myself from letting you slip through my fingers, but you can't love me and i have to be okay with that. being an adult means leaving sometimes, what a heart attack past me would've had. for the younger version of me that thought i had to sit in the ruins to prove my love. love shouldn't be a war. love shouldn't always be a fight but i've never had one that hasn't tried to kill me. i think if you met me years ago, i would've stayed, but that's life isn't it, we call it growth or something equally painful.