criminals.

sideblog for fahc poetry/writing.

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I spent the past 30 minutes crying about your poetry It's absolutely beautiful 🥺

oh my god thank u so much!! i don't check this blog often so i'm seeing this Super late but i appreciate it so much 💙💜

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- everything looks better from the edge.

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- the end of gavin's world / the end of ryan's world.

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mistakes lead me to you, the way a river leads to safety or a harmless drink at sixteen leads to a dozen every night when you're twenty-three or ancient rome leads to ruin.

we're a collapse waiting to happen, a tragedy in the making, a story where you turn the page expecting it to continue but it doesn't. it just stops, it just ends, i just love you endlessly even though you're gone.

say, i build your goodbye in my head well before i build our future because the ones i love have a habit of leaving and i suspect you'll be no different. say, i try not to wonder if you love me too.

you don't,

but maybe if you could see the best in my worst, i could be something worth loving.

- turned to sorrow

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criminals rattle when they run, pockets of shell casings and bullets and teeth and bones and the crosses they used to hang from their necks when they were young. young, five years old kneeling to a god who these days would send them to a hell they've long stopped believing in, now twenty five years and counting and still holding onto five years old. young, twenty five years old clinging to a gun that's the closest to praying they'll ever get. until they're on their deathbed.

someone, somewhere, laughs, and their words are the weakest attempt at reinventing truth that any of them have ever heard. not a lie, not quite, but a parody of every time their religion of non believers called out for a thing they haven't considered in years.

“everyone prays, then,” someone says, reinventing truth.

“not me,” michael says, defiance in his features, and suddenly he's young, fifteen years old screaming at anyone that will listen to help him. someone in the street, preferably, but you can never really tell if god hears you. maybe he's listening, or maybe he's got an angel call centre that deals with prayers begging from sinners, or maybe he left a long time ago and michael should burrow through his drawer and throw that cross out his window like he's been meaning to do for years.

throw the cross, wash every word he was once taught from his throat, and do his best attempt at pretending the inevitability of his end doesn't scared him. like some days he doesn't almost put down his gun or burn all his money or jump town with the impossible venture in mind of making an honest living after the mess he's left behind in los santos.

“everyone prays, then,” someone says, reworking the fabric of michael's being.

“not me,” he lies.

- michael's done some kneeling in his time and it has nothing to do with prayer or god.

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gavin remembers summers, the way the city burned orange at the tips during sunset and how the police were always too busy chasing flames to notice. it wasn't quite gold, not the way gavin wished, all those old shirts of his tucked and buried into his dresser like all his friends resting in all those unnamed graves in the cemetery.

he can reach out and touch the setting sun, filter the orange light through his spread fingers, but he can't climb that balcony to get close enough to the sky to ask god for a favour. he hasn't earned a favour, couldn't even pray without having to wipe his stained red hands on his jeans. but, maybe, maybe, maybe-- if he wishes hard enough, all those dead things will forgive him. maybe orange skyrises and long nights won't haunt him the same as they used to.

- the sun burns the city at sunset, and gavin burns in an entirely different way.

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you ever seen a funeral before?, michael asks, and his tone is sincere enough that gavin shakes for three days while remembering the words. some days, he wants to tell michael no, that the only funeral he’s been to is his own-- dead years, dead childhood, barely living adult whose bodies live miles apart. gavin’s never been whole, secret. gavin’s a split of criminal and boy who never quite grew up the way he wanted, not a secret.

you ever seen a body break before?, ryan asks, and gavin watches the way his eyes flicker pleasantly at the thought, can’t sleep without seeing it. nights pass, weekends and holidays and birthdays, and no one dies but gavin stop being able to tell the dead from the living a long time ago. at the end of the day, it’s all the same, and heavy whispers in a shot up bank make gavin wonder if ryan ever thinks about him the way he thinks about corpses.

you think we’ll see eachother again?, gavin asks, and he can’t gauge the air in the room but he knows it’s tight to breathe. everyone’s staring like they’ve seen a ghost, like jesus christ himself rose up and predicted the end of days. the boy in gavin shrinks, the criminal in him reaches for his gun and ignores how alive the city is as it wakes up around them. gavin’s hands are cold as if they’re dead, and maybe this love was never meant to be a whole one; quiet, like this early morning, like this eulogy.

- open casket.

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they keep asking about you, as if i haven't searched a hundred miles of this city for any traces of your ghost. you're a hungry criminal, nothing is ever good enough for you, and you swallow your resetting lives like whiskey- like burning, like demons. i'm chasing patterns and voices in the wind and this constant pounding in my chest that loves you.

they keep saying i shouldn't, but i think about shaking your shoulders and kissing your spirited mouth and it gets hard to do anything right after that. hungry criminals opening their mouth for bullets never do live long enough, so my hands are too human and alive and it's even worse now that you're not. everything i love dies, and everyone becomes a ghost.

eventually, eventually, eventually.

- mind over matter, leaving over love.

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time, like many other things, is fractured. he tries to hold onto the two languages he knows, as if the back and forth of mixing up his words can make up for all of this running out. sand, golden and familiar, slips through his fingers as easily as his lover's hand did the day they died, and it's all running out. as if god gave it a curfew and it's going to make it on time, but it's going to take him and everything he loves with it. mostly, he imagines walls not having clocks and bodies not aging with the days and people not having birthdays or anniversaries to celebrate. if he closes his eyes, the world stands still, the timers freeze, his lover doesn't die on impact.

time, like many other things, is fractured. like his heart, like his voice split down the middle as he screamed his throat raw, like his bruised body always trying to make it just one more day. time has no business doing this- being this. everything humans invent becomes cruel, there is no hesitance to that business. only sorrow that it had to be like this and now it cannot stop. for all these hours he has learnt to ignore, he sits in the celebration of sunset and wonders if these things will ever be gentler. if he closes his eyes, the sun still sets, the birds go home the same time they do most evenings, his lover doesn't have the time to say goodbye.

time is fractured, is unforgivable and unforgettable, and will give you the seconds you need to die because it already gave you years to live. gavin spends his short life missing everything he never did right, and trying to forgive out with failing hands what to do with all these broken hours.

- symptoms.

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we can't forgive ourselves for these things we didn't mean to do, and i can't forgive myself for not knowing how to die. trust me, i've tried, and tried, and thrown myself under a collapsing grey sky waiting for it to finally finish the job.

there are a handful of things i don't know, haven't bothered to figure out, and ninety nine out of a hundred of them have every letter of your name stamped onto them;

firstly, i think i love you. sometimes i worry if you knew, all this dying would be for nothing because you'd kill me before i could kill myself.

secondly, i think you love me. but most times i mistake these identical rings on our hands as a way to identify each other's bodies and not as a promise. it doesn't have to be anything, it doesn't, but i twist the gold around my finger and it means too much.

thirdly, everything i haven't bothered to figure out fits under three umbrellas of tragedy- you love me, and you don't, and these burrowed out holes in my heart have enough room for all these things to occupy. all ninety nine of them.

there is this one thing that i don't know, that has more to do with me than you or us, and it's the only thing i will never say out loud. one day i'll slip and tell you i love you, and that i think you love me too, and that there are a couple of things attached to those thoughts that are more insecurity than secret.

the one hundredth thing i don't know, that i have counted on my fingers like sheep while trying to sleep with police sirens in my ears: do i even deserve to be here?

the one thing i do know: i'm lonely, and it's taken me five years to realise i can't do this alone any more than i can't keep trying to get myself killed like this.

- if i had a second life, maybe i could've done something with all this wasted time

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i. these bad intentions are killing me. even though my intentions with you, your heart, your body- they've never been anything less than pure, than my hands reaching for you as if they don't know how not to.

ii. i'll admit i'm not quite the best at keeping things good, at knowing when to put down my self destruct button and let the world do the ruin for once. we're all claws and teeth and guns and knives, and bad intentions. sometimes, sometimes- sometimes, i wonder what will destroy this for us first. as long as it's not me, i don't mind; kill me if you want, just let me try to keep a good thing good for once.

iii. this ill-intent sits above my collarbone on the good days. on the bad, it's in my nails, digging harsh into the flesh of your arm and begging you to let the police catch us. on the real bad days, it sits heavy under my tongue and lets you kiss it from my mouth until you're dragging me through the night with your gun and a plan. i don't know what i'm doing to you, but it's not good, and it's not gentle, and i dream of me dying in your arms almost every time i close my eyes so what the fuck are we supposed to do with all of this?

iv. this being us, being the rubble in our shoes and hair, and our saliva pink with blood from biting our tongues too hard. it was in the explosion that rocked our feet and threw us against a wall clutching broken ribs.

v. you know the story of adam and eve, you know if i had the choice i'd pull part of my snapped rib from my chest and try to build a better version of myself from it. i'd let my bad intentions rest under his skin until they tainted someone else, and someone else, and someone else. i'm a mechanism of tragedy, of ruin and destruction, and of shaking hands that don't know how to stop doing this. if you asked me to, though, i think i might try. i don't know how to, but it's easy to imagine giving up the narrative of this anti-hero i've built myself and focus instead on learning how to be gentle.

vi. you could teach me how to be kind and i would let you.

vii. you could tell me you're just like me and i'd believe you.

viii. i don't know if it's worse if they warned me or worse if they didn't. but, they knew. they knew you were fire and flames, and would let the whole world burn around you for the thrill of chasing the smoke. i do it because i don't know how to stop, i'm not sure about you but your laugh and your grin and the bullets clicking together in your fist are more terrifying than my fear of destroying this. you're going to ruin this, slip my borrowed bad intentions back under my tongue and kiss what little gentleness i was harbouring from my neck.

ix. you're going to ruin us and i'm going to let you. truth be told, i'll let it happen. because i love you, and i love your jacket around my shoulders, and because i have spent too many years wanting to be the victim of someone else's malevolence just so i wouldn’t have to become a victim of my own. 

x. pass me back the worst parts of myself i leant you, give me the ghosts of every life you took that was almost mine, slip my body into the cold of your shadow. bad intentions, ill-intent- we only wanted to ruin each other, we weren't meant to fall in love with this evil, we weren't meant to want to keep it safe unlike everything we never tried to protect. maybe the real ruin here is all the things we didn't mean to do.

- ruinology / an analysis of the anti-hero.

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1. gavin will be scared when he dies. he'll be scared and he'll be grabbing at michael, and michael will be kind enough to tell him it's okay even though it's not.

2. he'll kiss the bullet that ends his life and everyone knows it, like they know all of his friends will outlive him.

3. “it's okay. gavin, it's okay” it's not, but michael's a hurricane of a man, and you forgive the tornado for all its destruction if it spares you. only you.

4. there's a man sitting on a beach, with sandy hair and tanned skin, and the water underneath him is stained red. red,

5. gavin's dreaming again, but he tightens aching, dead fingers in michael's jacket sleeve and for a moment, for a second, he feels real.

- do not resuscitate.

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i'm a little late to it but thank u for a hundred followers!!!  ♡.

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is this supposed to make sense?

we get older and the dams break, and our parents stop reminding us to look both ways before we cross the street. you say it's because they disowned us well before we disowned who we used to be; i don't say anything, but i hope that silence says what i cannot.

crossing the road without my dad always feels like the world is going to end.

crossing the road without my mother always feels like waiting for the worst to happen.

crossing the road with you always feels like knowing that if/when we went missing, there would be no search party. there would be no people wishing we'd return, pick up our guns and torment this city like we earned the right to this destruction. like gods. as if we built this ground you're walking on so we're allowed to push it back into the earth.

we are buying out time with our love, trading in kisses and wedding rings we stole from these widows we made. to keep ourselves alive, to keep them out of our way, to sacrifice so we could be here.

would u take it back? would u take it back? would u take it back? [2:14am] - sent from (redacted)

this empty in my chess is like a crater, like an asteroid sent from a god we play pretend with crashed right between my ribs and stole my heart. & this is your best impression of loving me; religion, god, the knees of my jeans worn through from all this praying

confession, a booth, my lips still hot against your neck as i kneel before you:

do u love me? or do u love what we made? [_:__pm] - sent from (redacted)

- the bible or a myth, we are neither and both.

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this city dissects us, and it's funny but i'm not laughing. this city pulls us apart and uproots us and says, you never quite die, but you are a dying thing.

this road dissects us, and it's funny but i don't get the joke. the police officer scrutinises us and says, do you know how fast you were going? did you ever learn how to stop?

this home dissects us, and it's funny but i've forgotten how to laugh. our landlord knocks on our door and says, i know this isn't your version of a kingdom, but you'll have to pay sometime.

we dissect us, and it's not funny so i don't laugh. you press your fingers to my chest and say, will we ever learn? should we let the fire swallow us?

this dissects us, and there is no joke here. it stains our blood to the concrete and says, they saw the news, and you can keep pretending, but this will catch up with you eventually. everything will.

this city, this road, this home, us, this: you can stop trying to prove you're alive.

- practical joke.