bloom

just a 20 y/o discovering the secrets of the universe

[eighteenth-home]

love IS stored in the kitchen; it’s stored in the phone call when i tell my friend i like cheesecake and she calls me, two days later, “do you want to come home and have some cheesecake i made for you,” i teach my friend how to make iced tea and she makes it almost everyday now and sends me a picture of it. my mother sends food anonymously to the hospital every once in a while, “everyone should eat, Fathima,” she says. love is stored in the fried rice i make for my best friend and the muffin she saved for me. love is broken down and encased in the time my friends & i roasted marshmallows over stove fire & made pancakes together. it’s encapsulated in the times i’ve been asked “coffee or tea? neither? some juice, perhaps?” it’s when my friend’s dad says that he will teach me how to cook. it’s in the eyes when they ask you to stay for dinner; when they ask you which soup will make you feel better, which tea will help your cold, how many spoons of sugar you take.

[natkhat-sa-shyam]

there is poetry everywhere if you look close enough:

• at the bottom of my coffee cup, where the last sip is too bitter to drink.

• in the loose petals floating in the flower vase, beautiful but long gone.

• in the commotion of the traffic at midnight, this city never sleeps.

• within the eyes of strangers, either brimming with love, longing, or loss.

• inside the walls of this home, which has seen decades of families come in and out of the door.

• behind the mantlepiece, where dust has settled from fighting the winter frost.

• and in your name, which has found a motherland at the tip of my tongue.

[hamoodmood-deactivated20250309]

Should I have a cup of coffee or should I...?

[bluryyyblu]

[boysaremytoys]

if a boy looked up at me with his pretty eyes and said “please be gentle with me” my brain would simply stop working. like, of course, sweetheart

[thoughtkick]

“Some people there’s no getting over.”

— Lisa Kleypas, Sugar Daddy

[inkskinned]

i have spent a few days listening to the music you like. you have a tattoo of their band's logo on your ribs you got when you were still kind of a kid. my first tattoo was a bird instead. i did the math - we got our first tattoos in the same calendar year. isn't that kind of cool.

my mom loves hallmark movies, so i grew up thinking love would look like a firework. it feels like one, after all. it's just that my house wasn't safe. i thought love was a weapon, could be pointed at your eyes. could lose a finger to it, or teeth. my father used to say passion is everything. i thought that meant constant fighting was a good thing. i thought that meant love looked like a week of bickering, because it was worth the the weekend's boombox apology. i thought quiet love was boring. i thought love had to blot out everything, compel the body and the mind like puppetry. i thought love looks like ruining your own dinner table - but at least you set a feast.

but love looks like a scarf. your hands smoothing it down my chest, being sure each of the edges are tucked in, worried about my asthma attacks being cold-activated. i race you while i'm wearing heels, you hold my hand to guide me downhill while walking my dog. we dance in my living room to waltz of the flowers, i show you how to hold your arms in proper ballet port de bras. you write a song about looking out of my window while the snow falls. i ask you to text my friends back while i'm driving. you play dj in the front seat. somewhere on route 93, we start murmuring about secret things.

oh. there is a difference between peace and dispassion. it was never that i feared quiet, it's that i didn't know what safe felt like. i liked the chaos because it was familiar, not because it was kind. i think i used to fear the word wife. i didn't like the idea of long, lonely days and being yelled at for small things. i didn't like the idea of sacrificing my one beautiful life.

you meet my friends and make a point to learn things about them. we both get excited about the other person's passions. you read my book for hours, squinting at the small words. i try to understand basic guitar information. we talk for four hours on the phone while i string together a garland. we talk for six hours while you write a poem. i save a pintrest tip for the summer about making paper kites. i plan us a week-long trip to maine, map out my favorite places for an eventual hike. you fall asleep on the ride home, and i turn down the radio so it won't wake you up. your quiet hands fold over mine.

when i look up, the stars are brighter. how carefully you woven gold into the corners of my life. when i move, i feel some part of my soul reflected back onto you.

oh, love is not a net. it's a blanket.

[momo33me]

This is a very old Islamic tradition, still alive in parts of Turkey. When a white blanket of snow covers everything - people go to the tops of mountains peaks and scatter seeds and food for the birds through the snowing season so as not to let the birds die of starvation. This deed was started by the Muslim caliph Umar bin Abdul Aziz and is narrated in various books of history and quoted as “Go and spread seeds on the tops of mountains - may the birds not die of starvation in a Muslim country.”

[eighteenth-home]

someday, i will buy every colour of paint in the craft store; cyan, sienna, mauve, even magenta. i will have a drawer full of paint brushes and a shelf full of colours. i will clean my room inch by inch; desk, cupboards, drawers, bed. someday, i will be able to throw out gift wrappers and apology letters; old insignificant flowers, stupid bills made into paper hearts.

someday, looking back won’t hurt as much. making tea will not bring me to tears, and breathing will be just breathing, not 5 things I can see 4 things I can touch. someday, i will miss this grief.

[reasonsforstaying]

when ocean vuong said "this mess i made i made with love" and raymond carver said "would i live my life over again? make the same unforgivable mistakes? yes, given half the chance. yes" and you realize that the imperfection is what makes your life what it is. iain reid said "everything's both ethereal and clunky" and virginia woolf said "the beauty of the world which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder" and it is really a blessing to live on the light and the dark and have everything meet in the middle. and sometimes it's night and it's raining so hard and it's getting worse and worse and you wonder if it's really worth it to stay. but then in the morning the sun rises and there's a rainbow and it's so quiet. and the sky lives for no one but itself and the birds are singing and you are experiencing something so lovely and mary oliver was right to say "it is a serious thing to just be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world" and you are learning how to live.

[lucidloving]

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

[moderndaymystic]

When love visits you again, I pray it stays.

[waitingforthesunrise]

don’t you love when you’re casually reading a random poem and suddenly come across a line that burrows into your bones and becomes the definition of your heart for the next 17 years

[bnmxfld]

I used to build dreams about you.

F. Scott Fitzgerald / Benediction

[softheartedsuggestion]

you are loved no matter how you are feeling

[lilcowgirl7-deactivated20210223]

Everyone: What do u do Me: *opens my dramatic 2am cellphone notes* I’m a writer actually

[thxcrxelprincxss]