the fragility of openness

an open book written in a long forgotten language. original work, unless otherwise stated.

[fragilityofopenness]

“Jesus Christ”, you moan in my ear. You’re constantly confusing me with other lovers. And I constantly confuse myself because you damn well didn’t come to to me to be saved. I’m constantly falling in love with my “father”, as though holding the hands of lost souls is going to do anything other than lock me behind similar bars to every jail cell that he occupies. I felt it today. The feeling of growing up. I can see now, with contact clear vision, that winning you over subconsciously tells my 10-year-old self that in some reality daddy loves you more than his suffering. More than the comfort of not taking responsibility for 50 years worth of existence. More than his entitlement. His love is my hands being pried open to help and love and forgive him over and over and over again. Please, know that this doesn’t mean that I don’t adore the crows that stake their claim on the corner of your eyes. Or your music face. Or the way that your bottom lip gets caught on that tooth that doesn’t curl in with the rest. Or that excited/nervous thing that you do with your hands all over my body. No. There are significant parts that the young girl within me demands to be known. Like playing naive to your perpetually warm seat at the bar. Or the straw crusted with coke on your floor that I somehow convinced myself not to lick at 10 AM, while I was looking for the scissors. Or opiate breaks because I sure as shit know that feeling isn’t your forte. Fuck this kind of deja vu. The young lady within me sees your glisten-rimmed eyes as I go to leave and yells, “shit, shit, shit don’t you dare do this again with your eyes shut” This isn’t something I’m going to write pretty. It is far too ingrained in my psyche for that. Extract it with nature for nurture. I stuck and poked “daddy’s girl” on my thigh before I was 3. Before I knew that daddy meant absent and daddy meant an inspiration as a fuck-up that I held onto all the way to 22. Now all of my lovers know, because I had to tell them, that the ink was far more permanent than he ever was. I need to warn my sister. Remind her: Even when your love is the kind you lack the language to describe, and you hold it with as much passion as you can muster, there are going to be driftwood sized slivers of our father in all of our lovers. They will float through every “I love you” that you cast out to Sea. But the Sea literally could not give any less of a shit. She doesn’t know the difference. This is important. Because when I am allowing some one else’s desire of me to dictate my self worth, I remind myself of the Ocean. The same huge fucking body of water that our father brought me to the moment that our mother let him. I remind myself that I am 55% water. I have half of a fucking Ocean within me. My lovers do not define my tides. No, only the Moon has the power to do that.

[oofpoetry]

Listen to me, your body is not a temple. Temples can be destroyed and desecrated. Your body is a forest—thick canopies of maple trees and sweet scented wildflowers sprouting in the underwood. You will grow back, over and over, no matter how badly you are devastated.

Beau Taplin (via oofpoetry)

[wearehuman-afterall]

You know that feeling when you don’t have enough hand to hold someone? Like index finger can’t begin at cheek bone and land at hip or ankle. Wrist only lands, pulsating at jaw and it’s so much life beating on life that it’s just so much, yet still an entire body length not long enough. You fit so perfectly. 4 years later and we have both grown into new versions of ourselves and yet, still. We could play levee, because between the two of us no amount of water is going to pass through our crevice to crevice ratio. Maybe this is why we weigh so heavy Keeping all that is within us safe from the flood of emotions that we brew at home. Collect all the Portland rain and send it down to California with you when you visit home. I know that there are young parts of you that have been dehydrated of love from since you were born. Send her some of our love rain. I always end up precipitating with you. Hold her the way you hold me and be kind, tell her: We all hold different people in different parts of our body depending on what kind of hurt they caused us. Remind her: You hold her within all parts of your body with all the kind of hurt that she held in her still small hands. Look at her the way that you look at me and take her elbows and look her in the eye and instead of this being a scolding, re-teach this to be an act of saying “I see you, I love you, I accept you”. Look at you! You have grown into the body that holds you. You answer to the name that fits this body, regardless of what genitalia and society try’s to tell you. I am so proud of the human you have become. Even despite the broken knuckles And the dark crescent moon eyes and kidneys that wreak havoc of booze. Remind yourself that these are the ways that you handle the symptoms of the empty space of what you were created from. She deserves all of the love in the world even if you can only keep finding the edges of a broken childhood. Remember that these are only pieces of her that you relentlessly attempt to scatter to hell.

Even Shit Fertilizes The Things That We Love, Ivy Dowhan, Source: @thefragilityofopenness (via wearehuman-afterall)

[lovelysuggestion]

you are healing. the missing pieces will return in time.

[fragilityofopenness]

I think that maybe I haven't been hugging myself enough lately.

[wearehuman-afterall]

Sure, I know what tired feels like. Why, in this language, are all of our feelings like something instead of just having a word for what they are. Why do we have to metaphor our human experiences into communication? I know what tired feels like. But this is something different. I am terrified of energy. Distracted by visual trails that stem from adrenal glands shot to hell and I know this because I’ve had 5 espresso shots and they’ve done nothing. Bathroom breaks and these moments are when I miss cocaine the most. Anxiety is a shapeshifter. Dissipating drastically every month but when it returns, it is like an old friend that was really toxic. I can hardly recognize it. Like it has lost a ton of weight and started taking better care of itself. Even though it effects me almost as drastically as before. But in a more gentile/aggressive way. No space or time could sever the bond. I’ve been taking too many in the midday-cold-sweats-feeling-like-a-cinder-block sense. Cider block is my protection forum. Cinder block while I’m puking cement. This leaves such a bad taste in my mouth and I’m so confused. I’m so fucking confused. Nothing feels right and everything feels wrong and in these moments when I’m walking around with an eye patch on one eye and the other without visual aid all I know how to do is go with what I feel.

Jack And Jill Went Up The Netflix and Hill (via wearehuman-afterall)

[fragilityofopenness]

You were only gentle in the quiet moments. Every other moment you were mayhem. And not the kind that dances softly on the skin, rather the kind that aims at lovers as though they are bulls eyes.

A Reminder Once Nostalgia Hits

[fragilityofopenness]

Hotel rooms and skin claustrophobic with bites. Maybe this is the way that we learn that our skin and bones are sanctuary. Or maybe this is the way that we scratch ourselves raw into oblivion. This is not an easy lesson to learn. Especially when your outer layers are crawling while simultaneously you are trying to crawl out. Miss the ashtray after rolling the cherry out like it is like an ice cream sundae. Ya know? Drinking red wine out of a hotel plastic cup and I feel like the twin towers. Every story from the beginning, collapsing into myself. Joints can only do so much and fire, so quickly, can turn from illumination to utter destruction in only moments. And for some fucking reason I think I want soft skin at the same time I think I want skyscraper hip ones and clavicles that have the capacity to volume all of my salt storms as well as the winter Pacific rain. Sometimes I wish I could relocate my cracked hallow teeth to my shoulder blades. Sometimes I realize that continuously shrinking only means that I have less muscle to carry the weight of the world that I am far too stubborn to put down.

[neo-somaliana]

I must learn to love the fool in me–the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool.

Theodore Isaac Rubin (via thnkr-zero)

[fragilityofopenness]

Before you know it something’s over. Suddenly someone’s missing at the table.

Grudges, Steven Dunn

[fragilityofopenness]

I feel like a deathbed. Ya know, the kind that lesbians sleep in And the kind that human carcasses are decomposing in. Yet I will still build a hotel room around myself. So inviting, but only after many terribly uncomfortable nights of sleep. Or not sleep at all. REST AREA: that is full of bed bugs and the only kind of contagious that makes your skin crawl. Magnetized fingernails can’t scratch this away. I have a trash can full of sleep and nutrients labeled “So far out of reach because fingertips can only touch things that are tangible”. Half hold my hand into oblivion. Scatter the evidence. Regurgitate truth so that the lie tests won’t give you away. Yes, I’m a handful, maybe 15. But filling your hands with your unconditional loves is one of the best things that your fingers can hold.

You Took My Tastebuds With You (Source: thefragilityofopenness)

[fragilityofopenness]

Your subconscious has her own hum for when I crawl into bed with you. It vibrates the bed and it’s sheets. I am so in love with you that I forget how easily that can lead to flowers at the beginning of spring: completely closed, maybe terrified to bloom, yet on the verge of blossoming nonetheless. Every time that you are searching for utensils, you will find me in the silverware drawer when you need your big spoon. It gives me more space to hold you and even more surface area to scoop up all of the pieces of you that you don’t know how to digest.

“Kiss Me Before I Throw Up” (Source: thefragilityofopenness)

[fragilityofopenness]

Maybe I didn't read you enough of my poetry. Maybe that's why I lost you. I remember, you tiredly and truly loved me the only night I ever did.

[wearehuman-afterall]

There is this constant state of unquenchable thirst this insatiable desire to be the consumerist that is furthest away from society. Maybe this is where it stems from..? Maybe we find our own things to consume us because a shopping spree only sounds like an anxiety attack? I think some of us were born with insatiable souls. We flick our tongues at what makes us tick. Even after the clock strikes twelve. Especially after the clock strikes twelve. I wanna be the miracle ear that spews words with wings that fly their way through darkness. Bat my eyelashes into echolocation because we all have taught ourselves very well to be masters of disguise. We have been dis-guided. Picking our way through the patches to find the paths that match our fingernail scratched skin. We have our doubts of the end even before we begin.

(via wearehuman-afterall)

[wearehuman-afterall]

1/13- Sometimes I feel like magic and sometimes I feel like mold And sometimes I want to shoot all of the screaming children on the bus. Every time I look down, I’m wearing the same hands. I wonder if learning new languages slowly but surely helps us make sense of it all. Maybe that is why we often go mad: because it takes more than one culture to understand existence. Maybe it is that the more that we know, the more space we have to find peace and quiet.

(via wearehuman-afterall)

[writingsforwinter]

My grandmother cracks eggs the same way the man who invaded her house

locked the bedroom door and wouldn’t let her leave

until he was finished: fierce & loud, with purpose, as if whatever came spilling

out of her body would be useful.

With eggs, there is only yolk. With my grandmother, there...

[fragilityofopenness]

98 degree yourself away from this and that and BAM reality could get anyone to tap out in a boxing ring. When you remove your rose colored drunk goggles for so long, the back of the mind starts to creep out further than just your peripheral vision. Maybe some of us need vices to keep us sane. Or maybe I’m just rationalizing. Currently: Somewhat terrified of falling down stairs to my death. Somewhat feeling EVERYTHING. I almost started crying on the bus because of the way someone was walking. Breaking yourself down is easy when all of the lights are on. Fingernail tally marks down your back. Counting all of the ways your brain sustains. But coping with what? Running from who? Un-decorate your footsteps and leave yourself to raw toes and balls and heels. You have been trekking a pretty edgy cliff there, kid. Un-masque your rade. Your pores are dirty, they’re filthy. Black heads, black lungs, un-blacken your eyes. Light fire to your soul. Baby steps- high heels leave you with far more than just a few inches to fall.

You Can’t Heat Up The Coke Plate In The Microwave Because Radiation (Source: thefragilityofopenness)