you aren't my vinyl moses

call me R // any pronouns

[electricabsolutes]

i didn’t know that friends were supposed to cheer you on, not smoulder with bitter jealousy didn’t know that friends were people who held you up when you needed it didn’t compare you to anyone, least of all themselves. friends don’t get angry with you for no reason. don’t attack you out of their own insecurities. don’t smother you in their own avalanches and treat you like acceptable collateral. friends are people you can trust, not people who make you feel stupid immature leave you somehow lonelier than you were on your own. friends don’t stoke the fires of your anxiety. friends don’t leave you shaking and crying scared, curled up in the fetal position under heavy blankets struggling to breathe because your brain is running a million miles per hour looping scenarios where you die alone because they’re the only one who’ll have you. you lie. you manipulate. you always did. and i spent years making up excuses               said you didn’t know what you were saying because       i was lonely too and i didn’t know that friendship wasn’t supposed to hurt. you’re not evil. but you still wrecked me. and maybe that wasn’t your goal but it happened and now here we are and i’ve fucking healed. because i lost you and i found myself. looked in the mirror and instead of seeing you i saw the scars you left me with scars i never realized i had shortness of breath i never figured out came from you. and i came back. i found myself in the stories i told in the pine trees and on a glassy lake in a classroom surrounded by children who deserve better lots than they got. i found myself in a circle of people who cared, who loved me in the roll of a die in a gift, given freely i let it go. i am not you. i am more than you told me. i am greater than that. i am a leader. i am a storyteller. i am a writer an artist a friend a lover and a fighter. you’re just one part of my puzzle and i won’t let you be any more than that, not again, not ever. i don’t hate you. i don’t even dislike you. i think you are clever      independent              brave                       strong                              an advocate                                         a wonderer fucking beautiful inside and out. because you’re just one part of my puzzle but you've got your own set of pieces too. today   you make me into a villain tell stories (you were always so good at that) paint a picture of me with horns and a tail when really all i had was a hole in my chest, gaping, black, empty, but not evil just hurting. salt in the wound. acid. molten steel poured over burns that had just barely begun to heal. but still i forgive you. i forgive your false narrative forgive your twisted words. i forgive you knowing that you’ll never see you’ve done something to forgive that you’ll never accept that you did wrong— knowing that you’ll never accept my acceptance of an apology you never offered— i forgive you unconditionally. i forgive you. i forgive you. i forgive you.                and i wish you well.

moving on

            r . p . w.

[electricabsolutes]

ebony; that's what it is, the gavel, edges curved just so; we the undersigned resolve to-- a girl is fifteen years old and they don't care about the child right in front of them --ebony on ebony, crack, the end of a life just not the one it cared about. i am the echo. i am the walls that refuse the decision refuse to absorb the words refuse to be complicit. silent resistance is by nature unheard. the man is not worth anything because he doesn't can't talk and nobody cares enough to listen if he could: the gavel is a dagger and he will be dead in a month frozen or starved or ravaged by illness alone. i say nothing. ignore the bully. that's what they teach you. so they bring in the woman whose skin matches the walnut of the witness stand and sentence her instead for daring to say that it didn't define her they bring in a man who spent too long asleep outdoors charge him with loitering, taking up space in the land of the free nobody notices that his corpse has been stiff for hours. there's still money in his pockets, after all. crack goes the gavel and crack and crack and the walls say nothing. nothing. nothing. i am silent. peaceful protest is, after all the moral thing to do.

SAVE YOUR ACES r. p. w.

[electricabsolutes]

so here we are and it’s barely five o’clock but daylight savings was last week. the sun’s long gone but the light isn’t. windows: rectangles trace lines to the top of skyscrapers glowing yellow; streetlamps headlights. fire in our souls.          sometimes all you can do is yell. nuisance. that’s what we are pulling a dozen officers off their posts to make sure we don’t smash any windows. entitled. that’s what they call us for wanting to be treated like human beings: we are not people in that moment and we do it to ourselves. we’re permanent marker scrawled hastily on cardboard voice hoarse from shouting beats rapped out on a drum we are interlocked fingers racing hearts and we are aching feet arms backs legs we’re the glimmer of the moon in the corner of an eye thermometer slowly dropping below zero we are faceless we are nameless                and in that                                            we are not alone.

SISYPHUS

                       r. p. w.

[electricabsolutes]

you’re twenty-one and you’re the beginning of their ends. lightning cracks outside your window. you’re alone. you’re scared. there’s a lot of firsts you haven’t had yet, and you’re a man, sure but that doesn’t mean thunder doesn’t frighten you. you’re eighteen and you’re sitting at a bus stop with liquor on your lips numb. (or you’re trying to be but the old woman next to you won’t stop talking.) you’re not quite twelve and curiosity’s creeping up on you, ready to pounce. but you don’t see it. you’re just a kid. you’re ordinary and all you ever wanted was to understand things. you’re eighteen and there’s still smoke in your lungs from the cigarette you stubbed out in your mother’s ashtray. you have a knife in your hand but you don’t intend to use it. the old woman looks at you with glowing eyes. you’re a day past seventeen and you wish you were special. the sun sets fire to the horizon and you hate it (briefly, bitterly) for ticking away another day of normalcy. you’re nineteen and you don’t need divinity because there’s a pulse in your wrist that they told you wouldn’t be there by the time you hit high school. there’s a moon glowing coolly in the sky and a crow perched on a branch. black silhouette on a navy sky twenty years old and you want a key. to unlock the invisible shackles around your wrists slip out of your perfect skin into something better suited for music. your fingers sting from the metal of the strings. you try not to look at her but she’s ancient and she’s everywhere and somehow you always knew this would happen. you’re nineteen and lonely and bitter and angry and you feel so many things but every time you let them out things go wrong. you’re just about done with being a teenager but you’ve never felt less like an adult in your life. you are eighteen years old and you’re not scared of the storm outside because what’s in your heart is scarier than that. you wear your clothes half a size too big and your glasses chipped and your hair the same way you’ve had it since grade school. out of the corner of your eye something glitters sparks violet. you’re nineteen and you watch the world moving along without you. you watch people dance to the beat of their own drums and your sadness fades to bitterness to selfishness to lazy, predatory entitlement. you’ve just hit eighteen and you’re full of promise. the music in your head swells and subsides with the beat of your heart. your finger taps a rhythm out on the desk and you look at the photograph again: a blurry figure lying dying in a hospital bed. you are twenty-two years old. twenty-two and you know nothing and somewhere deep down you know that. there’s a pencil in your hand and sun streaming across her throne she looks at you. and you want to be angry you try to be angry but your words come out more bitter than anything. they always told you not to be a cynic. you are seventeen. you are immortal. you’re long gone.

APOTHEOSIS

                                 r. p. w.

[electricabsolutes]

we were inevitable to everyone but us. only a matter of time before it happened: a matter of years months weeks days minutes. there was a countdown ticking and everyone saw the clock but me. and you. you hoped, i think. you didn’t see the numbers dropping column by column but you wished they would. you wished. i know you did because you told me just before the timer hit rock bottom. i kissed you on the hour. eleven. (ten?) whatever it was ended in two zeroes glowing red on the clock beside your bed. ended in your breath soft on my neck. ended in the gentleness of your lips and the way you looked at me when my phone buzzed and i said i– had to go. it was confused. it was quiet. it was hopeful wistful. your face was a work of art, right then, right there as the postscript on the timer changed to AFTER.

IT WASN’T ANYTHING BUT EVERYTHING

r. p. w.

[electricabsolutes]

you are a word with too many letters to pronounce. you are an endless tangle of As and Ts Gs and Cs you are a saga too long to fit in a book. you are a product. a product of millenia a product of minutes. you are the tangle of codes inside your cells. you are the colour of your eyes as much as anything. you are a perfect mistake. you are none of those things. you are the spark of a lighter at two in the morning. you are the faint glow of the streetlights. the smell of smoke words, scrawled in Sharpie on the side of a building. you are lost. you are the sound of the birds in the morning, not the structure of your cochlea the caress of the breeze on your skin not the whorls it stirs in your hair. you are inexplicable. you are inevitable. you are. you are. you are.

IN • TRO • SPEC • TIVE r. p. w.

[electricabsolutes]

see. love at first sight is a myth. because I saw her for the first time in a room of sixteen girls and I thought-- well, I thought nothing. nothing much at all. we were kids i still am but-- more so back then (i don't know about her) (haven't seen her in years). i fell hard when i couldn't see at all. i fell in the dark to whispers and truth-or-dare (we were kids, after all). and she kissed me not much of a kiss (but we were kids). and i excused myself and i went and stood outside in the night and the snow and i realized-- fuck-- this is what it's like. i hate it. i love it. i never want it to end. i fell in love fast but the words didn't come for a while (we were kids, and kids don't fall in love) (well. girls and boys is a different story-- isn't young love just amazing but this is about MY words) it took them a while. hundreds of little jumps in my stomach pins and needles every time she touched me losing the power of speech every time she smiled. and then one day she whispered three tiny words in my ear as she hugged me goodbye for the night. and that's when it hit me. again. harder. this is what it's like. i always thought it was for other people.

NIGHTLIGHTS r. p. w.

[electricabsolutes]

I DON'T MATCH YOUR CRITERIA I don't measure up to your expectations hopes demands I can't do it the way you want me to. I can't climb the ladder you sketched (maybe I could get to the top if there were stairs but that wasn't a option you put on the table) and everyone else scrambles up like it's nothing Looks down from above assures me it's okay There's other places I can go. It's nice up here (they say) but maybe you just weren't meant for it you can do something else you can do something you love. really love. Not like this-- if you loved this You'd make it up the fucking ladder. Must I give up so easy?

--IT'S NOT ABOUT PASSION r.p.w.

[electricabsolutes]

pitch. that's the word for it, for the colour that spills into his eyes, for the darkness that trickles into his lungs and fills his chest until it's all his heart has to pump: pitch, pitch, pitch.  waves crash against the rocks below          and all there is forty feet up is pitch and he's drowning-- five flights of stairs above the ocean. it's fucking ironic. feet above his head flashes the biggest lamp for miles a scream a shout (a warning) but he can't see it from here. he's not the audience. the play's not for him. dead batteries roll across the floor. he hears them.  hears them                        tumble                                      down the stairs thump thump thump clack and he wishes he'd brought his headlamp too and there's the creak of the lantern rotating in the room above. light, for a second. a split second. a flash through the cracks in the floorboards. then it's gone and the lighthouse cries its binary cry to the ships shore ships shore the boy drops his flashlight. dead weight. crack. he's immortal. he's sixteen, and he's all too mortal. and that makes him invincible and pitch is not the immovable object to his unstoppable force. the ladder is three steps to his left. the stars are beautiful tonight.

WE DON’T PRAISE THE ONES WHO SAVE THEMSELVES

                   r. p. w.

prompt by @nosebleedclub // via

[electricabsolutes]

it smells like the future. it's one in the morning --and it smells like the future how reckless we are. how fragile. how joyously we march onwards knowing full well that every step takes us closer to hell and laughing at the dark-- brash. raw. honest. young. i don't need your bullshit. i find my comfort in shouts of revolution the unnerving black-and-white of truth  the thump of a heart inside my chest i find my peace among midnight stargazers i find my peace among the failures among the ones who amount to nothing at all --among the ones who'll die waving a fucking flag because maybe they can't save the world but their hands have one last sweep left in them one last glorious streak of defiance one last brick laid for a future. there's comfort in chaos there's hope in the air. i won't be your stereotype. i won't be your punching bag. i will stand up and (watch me) i'll fucking stay standing, babe

ODE TO JOY

                 r. p. w.

[electricabsolutes]

it's just hard work. (hard work hard work and a hell of a lot of privilige you don't realize you're missing) it's all about putting in the hours. (they don't remind you that those hours are the ones you lost watching the blood drip down your arms) it's nothing but determination. stubbornness. a drive to be better-- do better-- (oh, princess, you're already running on empty by the time you get out of bed) it's just hard work. you can do it too. (but it's okay not to it's okay not to).

FOUR POINT OH

                    r. p. w.

[electricabsolutes]

the six-year-old asks her father: why do they call it a twin bed when there's only room for one? the word's ill-fitting for the space between         single and                    double--  no such gap should cite itself as fit for two-- the nine-year-old lies awake stares at the ceiling reaches one hand out to the side of her mattress (it's close) and the other one to the opposite side (spanning the width of her bed, easily) and wishes it was just a little narrower so as not to be lonely. the thirteen-year-old's fingers slip under the fabric of her underwear as she wonders why          single and                     double (queen and king) wasn't enough why they needed another with enough room to breathe but not enough to stretch the seventeen-year-old traces the collarbone of another girl dark fingers trailing lightly across pale skin, hair falling across the curve of a chest a tangle of blankets bodies-- and the bed's too small (just a little) (just enough). the twenty-six-year-olds can't afford a double and they wouldn't want one anyways. the thirty-year-old falls asleep softly; slowly tumbling down into the warmth of the woman beside her in a bed not built for two.

TWIN

r. p. w.

(prompt by @tsunami-floods // via)

[electricabsolutes]

1. eyes up, girl. fly your damned plane captain your ship both hands on the steering wheel or we all go to hell; (but the plane was damned anyways) 2. eyes up, girl. they're watching you every step you take they're watching you they watch the swing of your hips they watch the red of your lips (sing for yourself) and then quieter (fuck that's off-key) 3. eyes up, girl you'd better be watching yield signs are everywhere and all of them face you (it was never a two-way street) you write up stop signs on construction paper and they melt away in the rain 4. eyes up, girl. you're not stopping. the only way to stop is to go so fast you flip time on its axis and that's a hell of a lot of  gasoline 5. eyes up, girl. but not forwards. look to the right left sideways look at your copilot don't blink and don't you fucking dare apologize 6. eyes up, girl take your hands off the wheel and sing all the damn way down

GOOD INTENTIONS

               r. p. w.

[electricabsolutes]

it was winter (winter) and it was -- thirty below dark out-- thirty below and the ground was iced over (iced over) but she wasn't and she wasn't and neither was i; it was past midnight it was thirty below and the ground was iced over but i could still smell the future in the air smell the two years ahead of us (me) i could hear my heart thumping in my chest and i hoped she couldn't i hoped she could i listened-- ears up, girl, mind sharp, it's thirty below and you'll die out here if you're not careful die out here in your pyjamas sweater bare feet hastily stuffed into winter boots; you'll die out here to the whistling of the wind glow of the cabin window twenty feet  away at thirty below you'll die with laughter bubbling in your chest her acerbic comments in your ears and her, her beside you, saying nothing just breathing fingers inches apart smelling the two years ahead of you. you'll die with her die with your best (friend)? and you'll die with her, too die with someone who's nobody to you but she who could be if you don't die  out here because it's thirty below (thirty below). you're drifting but you're not dying-- thirty below but you're only twenty feet from warmth; twenty feet from the others twenty feet from locked doors from rules and regulations and you hear the wind in the trees (and you think it's a wolf but she tells you it's just physics) and you want to take her hand but you don't it's thirty below and all there is left is promise

THIRTY BELOW

               r. p. w.