to be alone with you

be gay do poetry

[filmnoirsbian]

07/29

[lovecrumbss]

golden hour in september - michael dudash / kim english / leon wyczółkowski / olga kvasha 

[squareupgod-inactive]

homesick, a c!crime boys poem 

[roach-works]

do you ever think about how past generations made post-apocalyptic media as a nightmare, as a warning, as a horror story, because they were so scared of their world falling apart, because the thought of their world in ruins terrified them, because things were so good all they could fear was what if it stopped–

but the world has been burning around us for so long that now when we look at those fictional ruins we feel a terrible longing. it's like a promise, a wrapped present we keep picking up and shaking, listening, wondering when we'll get it. it's like boxing, watching a guy get punched in the face over and over, until you just start praying he'll fall down already. you look at a picture of a skyscraper blown apart and you see the trees growing out of the cracked windows and you know that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow you have to go to work again and you wonder when you will finally get to lie down.

how many more years are there between my hands on this keyboard, and grass growing quietly up through all our old bones?

[deadpoet-skull]

[anakinskyqueer-deactivated20230]

oranges as intimacy, intimacy as romance, and romance as sensuality.

mount eerie from “tinin in tibet.” // emma elizabeth tillman’s “untitled.” // marge piercy, “the nuisance.” // jeanne illenye’s “orange burst” (detail). // frank ocean from “golden girl.” // stefanie_sarley on instagram (marginally edited). // university of michigan’s symbolism project. // eva woolridge’s “blinding pain.” // anne sexton, “a self-portrait In letters.”

[seaoflove]

https://evelionheart.medium.com/on-the-intimacy-of-the-mundane-863f9efb3c39

[genderoutlaws]

Poem featured in Bi Women Vol. 5 No. 4 - 1987

[journalsandjunk]

[loveologist]

[ID: Two pages of paper. One shows an x-ray of a human hand. Text reads, “The hand has 27 bones.” There is an x-ray of a different person’s hand. Text reads, “Each of mine misses each of yours.” End ID]

[jaanjahan]

listen: being left behind

working for the knife by mitski / a river dies of thirst by mahmoud darwish / the waves by virginia woolf / lilithnoah / so far away by agust d ft. suran (credit doolsetbangtan) / right where you left me by taylor swift / wild geese by mary oliver / the time traveler’s wife dr. robert schwentke / october by mary oliver / night sky with exit wounds by ocean vuong

[sunsoakd]

on being unable to say it

emma, jane austen 

“self-portrait at 28,” david berman

“figure it out,” orla gartland, art by @oozins​

red doc>, anne carson

“how to draw a horse,” emma hunsinger

“the crane wife,” cj hauser

“the torn-up road,” richard siken

[inkskinned]

"you seem nervous," he said.

"i'm pretty worried." and then i laughed, high and weird and strained.

he nodded at me and i nodded at him and i pressed my hands very hard together, which is what i do when i want to be politely still but i'm nervous and want to move.

"so there's a lot of ways to think about this test," he said, "but for what i'm about to show you - well. let's picture the test is out of 100."

"okay," i said. i had begged him to give me a "half test"; one i could afford out-of-pocket. i had good insurance; behavioral health wasn't offered for me. i'd been paying for a therapist by working 3 jobs; a situation that stressed me out enough i joked she earned her keep. if i took the whole test, the pricetag began at nine hundred and thirty.

robert the learning specialist is nice. robert was referred to me by a friend. i like all his books and his nice chairs and the warm browns he decorates with.

this is a funny story. i think this story is very fucking funny.

he places his hand on the side of the monitor and looks up over it at me. "so, there are diagnostic requirements for each condition to be considered medically significant. nobody really scores lower than, in this example, 30."

okay. i was 25 and ready for this - that all the self-care, self-treatment... it was pointless. it had always been possible: i don't have adhd, im just fucking stupid. im lazy. im the worst student and a terrible friend. everyone was right about me. this was a personality kind of a thing. i was pretending. i was jumping on an internet trend.

"at 60," robert continues, "and - again, these aren't the real numbers - but at 60, we would consider that to be significant enough for diagnosis. after that, we tend to think of it as increasing in severity."

his brows are knit. he looks strained. so i probably got a 14. i probably didn't take it right. im probably the first person on earth to waste three hundred dollars just to be told i broke the test. fuck. they're going to cancel my meds.

robert turns the screen around. there's a graph on it, a bunch of lines and numbers too small for me to read. "here's the diagnostic line, this 60 i talked about". he points to a yellow band, a little bouncy wave close to the middle. "here's the average citizen, at a 37". this is a red one, closer to the bottom. then he points to a blue. "at a 75 to 78, we would consider the situation to be severe. it's not marked, but 90 would be extreme. does this make sense?"

"yes. definitely." more nodding, more hand pressing. i skitter my eyes around the grey shape, trying to find where my results are. maybe along one of the control lines?

"out of a possible score of 100," he says, "you scored ninety-eight."

he points up at the top, a sparkling lime green wiggle. i hadn't seen it; it was too close to the border of the graph. he gently points back-and-forth from yellow to green, like he is breaking bad news to me.

"well," i say. "so i won the test? or is that a bad thing."

"i've been doing this work for over forty years," he tells me, "and never in my whole career have i seen someone score so highly."

"i have adhd," i say.

"well, these are preliminary tests, and it would be unprofessional for me to confirm until we continue to -"

"i super have adhd," i repeat.

he turns the screen back around. "i think it's - i would be remiss not to say that i find it extremely impressive you've been able to structure your life around this in such a way that you have remained undiagnosed until now."

"well," i say. "i did have a feeling." let out a little laugh again. sharp like a bark. "sorry. oh my god. sorry, i don't mean to laugh. it's just. i have," i repeat, "like super severe adhd."

robert rests his hands on his desk and looks at me. he looks sad, even though this whole thing is hysterically funny. "yes. i think that i can confirm that, but, like i said, i have to encourage you to take the whole test and to -"

"i thought," i say, and for some reason i think it's funnier than anything i ever said - "i literally thought i was faking."

"well." he moves the monitor so it isn't between us. "if i might say something? if you're experiencing these symptoms so frequently that your entire life has been structured around preparing for their inevitability - my question is always; why would you be faking? when you are alone, when you are struggling, what is the point of faking? wouldn't you be able to turn it off? once you received the attention or the accolades, wouldn't you stop? you've talked to me about how much you feel this - and i'm quoting you here" he looks at his notes. "... ruins your life. why would you submit to that, without any actual payout?"

"oh my god." i have to text everyone i know about this immediately. "i have adhd. like big. like the biggest. severely."

"well," robert's brows are creasing.

"sorry," i can't stop laughing, "you just - i mean. i just had the stray thought - what if i've faked this so well that the test can't tell that i'm lying?"

[luthienne]

H.D., from Helen in Egypt

[Text ID: take my hands in your hands, / teach me to remember, / teach me not to remember.]

[metamorphesque]

― Hiromi Kawakami, The Briefcase

[ritikajyala]

Last night, I told my mother "I wish I was dead" in a fit of rage and winter clouded her eyes. But it wasn't white and it wasn't quiet, it resembled something like helplessness and rage. She was in pain and I knew I hurt her. I wanted to say something, anything, but how do you withdraw a declaration of war? How do you stop the bombs that already destroyed homelands? In that moment I remembered how she always told me that when she was a kid, she was too afraid to sleep with the lights on. Not because she was afraid of monsters, but because she feared her grandmother would die. Because when you're a kid, not seeing it means it doesn't exist anymore. I saw the winter in her eyes again and I knew I had switched off the light, she wasn't angry, she was afraid.

And I also remembered how she always told me I'd always be 3 years old for her, always a child, and for the first time, I heard in the voice of a three year old "I wish I was dead". My heart broke. And I wanted to hug her and hold her, tell her I was sorry, that I didn't mean it. Before I could move a hand, she left the room. The entire evening, I saw myself as she saw me, a 3 year old child. I saw the child hurt herself and cry herself to sleep every week, fight her friends with her tiny hands and two ponytails, I saw her depression and her anxiety, I saw her yell "I wish I was dead" and I knew. I knew. I wanted to shout through the walls, yell and cry and tell my mother that now I KNEW, but I didn't. I wept and wept until I heard a quiet knock, and a soft familiar voice whispered, "Dinner is ready".

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

[headspace-hotel]

"Monster," poem assembled from quotations drawn from Wikipedia articles

[inkskinned]

i. there's three stages of wound healing (sometimes considered four, depending on the document). the last is largely invisible; called remodeling.

ii. they tore down my high school.

iii. the final wound healing stage happens below the dermis, after the scab has flaked off. it is a slow process involving repairing muscle and tissue - and often replaces lost viscera with scar tissue.

iv. i can't remember the order of it, but i know it went something like - pink blue purple white. since you braided it for me, i wore the bracelet for two years, long after it had started to disintegrate.

v. remodeling can last up to a year.

vi. i'm getting surgery soon. medically included hole. i can't wear metal during the process, so i have to take off all my jewelry. i told you once, right - i've been wearing this ring every day since i was 22. i'm worried about my cartilage piercing - i've never had to take it out before, i don't know how to put it back in.

vii. it is possible for skin cells to begin to lose their ability to duplicate, thereby losing their ability to heal. this might happen, for example, when a wound has not completed the remodeling stage but a second wound interrupts the healing process. repeated trauma causes a breakdown on the cellular level.

viii. can a body be a church? there is a vaulted difference between life's call before and the echo, resounding - after, after, after. the ringing click of heels on a stone floor. without looking, i know the steps are always leaving.

ix. scar tissue has no blood. it cannot coagulate. injury to scar tissue does not follow the same wound healing cycle as normal tissue.

x. it's okay. the high school had asbestos. the bracelet was something you made in five minutes. my abdomen will be professionally stitched back together. the worship i wasted will leak somewhere else, onto a different sun, a different life. a different poem.

-- "How do you heal?" ... well stefan frankly i don't // r.i.d