blood-drowned; salt-suffocated

icon by @fruitsfox | main: @quecksilvereyes  | check out my carrd for my social media & tip jar: https://glasswaters.carrd.co/ | get added to the tag list there are no happy endings, because nothing ends. - peter s. beagle

[quecksilvereyes]

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[glasswaters]

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[glasswaters]

God, but I want to crack open your ribcage. I want to press down on your sternum until it lays in pieces, I want to pull on the bones there until they spread outwards - as a flower does in spring, as a mouth does when it waters, I want to take your lungs and scrub them clean.

Let me dig my fingertips into the bronchi until my palms are wet with the blood and the gore, give to me the hollow of your chest, so that I might grasp your heart with the edges of my teeth. I want to curl up in the mess, and press my tongue into your flesh every time it pulses.

I want to take your liver, and your stomach, and your kidneys, and your writhing guts, and I want to make myself a home in between your spine and your muscles.

I want, I want, I want-

Baby, I'm so hungry.

[glasswaters]

God, but I want to crack open your ribcage. I want to press down on your sternum until it lays in pieces, I want to pull on the bones there until they spread outwards - as a flower does in spring, as a mouth does when it waters, I want to take your lungs and scrub them clean.

Let me dig my fingertips into the bronchi until my palms are wet with the blood and the gore, give to me the hollow of your chest, so that I might grasp your heart with the edges of my teeth. I want to curl up in the mess, and press my tongue into your flesh every time it pulses.

I want to take your liver, and your stomach, and your kidneys, and your writhing guts, and I want to make myself a home in between your spine and your muscles.

I want, I want, I want-

Baby, I'm so hungry.

[glasswaters]

On the day of my birth, my mother gave to me the funeral shroud she'd been weaving her whole life — seafoam and salt, and the pressure of the ocean floor. An oyster-mouth, holding just underneath a weary tongue something foreign.

I do not remember her voice. The recall comes in waves, building and breaking and bubbling overhead: the swipe of a hand, a flash of teeth, the delicate fabric and the way her tail twitched whenever the sea lay still and sunlit, and entirely clear.

The fluttering of her gills against my cheek.

On the day of my death, my sisters gave to me their desperate, wailing hands. From within the cresting of the waves, they reached me, already halfway in the grave.

Mother's legacy around my shoulders and in my eyes, and holding the shards of my heart together with hands that knew nothing, with a tongue so withered it might as well have fused into the soft wanting of my throat, I was already spilling blood down the side of the ship.

There is a haze over my eyes, mother mine, and through it, everything looks too far away to touch. This fabric is cool, and soft, and I know every turn and fold of it. Years I have spent handling it, years I have spent looking for you in between the weft and the warp.

Mother-of-pearl, lay yourself around the shapes I cannot deny. Keep apart my mouth, and crawl into my gills. Build yourself, layer upon layer, around this stupid wanton heart, preserve for posterity, if you will, the fingerprints and the teeth marks, and the ache.

I am, blood and all, my mother's issue. I am, teeth and all, spread open for my father's grief.

[glasswaters]

forgive me,

recently I have been

hungry again.

[glasswaters]

oh, silly thing, i am here.

i am a thousand mouths that cry. i am your mother's broken heart. i am the wailing stuck behind your teeth and the roar of some ancient thing chained to each of your knuckles.

i am sharpening my claws and the edges of my tongue. i am the thing you can't catch in the mirrors, i am what lives in the soil of their guts. i am the sweet rot you promised your heart to, when you were too young and too stupid to understand what it meant.

i am your father's stubborn mouth. i am the faint, tired summer sun. i am what you have tried to scrape out of the very marrow of you. i am what you have hollowed your bones and your flesh and your veins for. i am the blood and the bile and the open, pulsing cavity of you. i am the ringing in your ears, the faint, leaded sleep.

i am the heavy beat of metal on your palate. i am.

i am-

i am here.

[glasswaters]

i’m thinking tonight about masterpieces. michelangelo looked at the sixtine chapel and saw; nothing to preserve. virgil wanted his aenid burned and forgotten; only to be saved at the behest of an emperor who thought it flattery. kafka instructed his friend to burn everything he’d ever written - too personal was it, too unfinished.

they were ignored.

instead, their work was taken and held and published and thrown to be gawked at. instead, an emperor, a pope, a friend, took from within the cavities of them their choices; their art.

tumblr rolls out post+. twitter rolls out tip jars. youtube takes half of what creators earn. on social media, there is a ko-fi or a patreon and a polished face in every bio. i show my poems to my mother and she asks if I will publish them before she says anything else. emily dickinson instructed her sister to burn her poetry.

her sister did not listen.

we are a community, says tumblr, we should give back to creators. my last poem had 50 notes. six of those were reblogs that weren’t mine. i lie in bed at 2am and stare at my bright phone screen and the way netflix’s library grows thinner and thinner. the first ad on tumblr that i can reblog is for amazon. amazon takes more than half of what authors earn.

kafka’s friend took barely finished work and hammered it into structure. he is the only reason we know of him.

my father wrote a book and a play when I was barely big enough to reach his knees. when i try to talk to him about writing, he shrugs.

no one wanted to publish it, he says. so i don’t write anymore.

i am filled with poems I have never published, books I haven’t written. There are little snippets of them scattered throughout my life. I link to my ko-fi on my tumblr.

-

asked capitalism of the artist: what is art, if not for consumption? who does art benefit, if it is not consumed? why create at all if you do not market it? who are you, frothing at the mouth about someone publishing someone else’s poems? who are you to hate your magnum opus? what is art, if not in relation to its reception? if no one sees it, how is it art?

said the artist, baring their teeth: it’s mine.

[glasswaters]

sometimes, I wish I could find in myself an endless well of grace to forgive you with. a hole, covered shoddily and hastily, and a drop a thousand meters deep, a spring so close to the core of me that it would burst me right open, if I tapped it.

it feels silly, after all this time, how I think of your hair or the frowning of your mouth, and the rage comes so quick it punches the breath out of me and the sight from my eyes. you were just a child.

just skin and fusing bones and little dull teeth. sparkly shirts and diddle collectibles. smaller than me.

i fear i remember a myth, then. some evil little thing put onto this earth to torment me. point and laugh and bait and switch and disgust. always disgust.

it can't have been all you were. it's all i know.

i still have the letter you wrote me, when my body finally broke down. it's the most insincere fucking thing i have ever gotten in my life. that whole box was a live wire, and the current ran through me, strong enough to make my heart stop, for a breath.

none of you did it willingly. none of you were actually sorry. there was simply an adult in the room who told you what to do. so you did.

because you were nine.

the box rots in my cellar. the well was never dug. i was just a child, too.

[glasswaters]

I: cried Papageno to the night sky

sweet thing, i would hold you gently. i would, i would-

for you, i would crack open my breast. i would take from the mess and the blood my ribs, and whittle them into bars. like this, i might build a cage to keep you in, a bed to cradle you in.

won't you take the sugar from my palms and the kisses from my lips? won't you love me? i would bring you the sweetest treats, the prettiest sticks, the shiniest rocks to decorate that cage with. you would want for nothing, for nothing at all, not even the night sky, or the branches of your birth.

just-

just let me hold you. let me carve from the mess of my guts my heart, my lungs, my tongue - to gift to you. prettiest of beauties. rarest of songbirds, slyest of women - let me chain you.

[glasswaters]

Your love would name me bitch for the sound of my voice. Villain for the thumping of my heart. Soured and spoilt, the fat sits rancid atop the moulding cream and you-

love him?

love that?

I plucked from the guts of a beast a sweet thing, wide eyed, naïve. Gorgeous. Willing, and meek. Bowing before this bitch.

I sent you a gift, a soft, cushioned boy, his heart stitched into his sleeves. Not a callous on those fingers. Not a snag in that voice.

Just sweetness.

I should have known that sugar rots. Softness gives way to fouling, swollen with the eggs of some ravenous thing, making of the ripest of plums a vessel-

Eating it whole, from the pit to the skin.

You would take it, squirming and fat with puss, and set your lips upon it? You would give tongue and heart and life to that dripping maw?

Never speak again. Never rage again. Never rule, certainly.

How long, you silly thing, until he sees your mother in you? You've my rage, darling. You've my airs.

One day, he will no longer think you beautiful. That bosom will grow cold. He might not yet hear the shriek in your voice, or see the stomping of your feet for what it is, but he will. He will take you, and he will worry at your hems until you unravel.

Oh, sweet girl of crumbling thread and lace, how long until your sweetness, too, will rot? Until you rave and rage against these bars you are letting him stake all around you?

How long, my daughter, until your love names you bitch for the running of your mouth? Villain, for the snarling of your teeth? How long until he steals from you again?

Your father did, after all, and he was so, so sweet when first he took me.

Don't be stupid now, and kill Sarastro.

[glasswaters]

i love in fabric. i adore in thread. i craft for you, from yarn and steel, my heart the way it clings to the glass of my throat, drying its wings in the rush of my breath.

i am five years old the first time i knit. unable to distinguish the stitches, i fall asleep repeating my last row in my head. for weeks, i do nothing else.

i don't even read.

i am five years old the first time i crochet. i cannot remember it. it is muscle memory by now. pointer finger up, needle in my right. a cat in my lap.

i am-

i am the fastest in my class. in the time the others make one duck, i make five. i don't need to show my basted seams to my teacher. i am good. at this at least.

the fabric doesn't need speaking to. the thread works the same no matter how rude the words come out.

for my friends, for my loves, i sew. i stitch. i knit. i crochet. i am so fast.

in 2022, i catch covid. the tiredness never goes away.

i slow down.

in 2024, my thyroid starts attacking itself. my mother's heritage yawns its mouth wide open, so desperate to protect itself that it swallows itself whole.

i slow down.

it takes me 3 years to finish a blanket. it takes me almost 9 months to finish a sweater. i am so tired. there is fabric for a dress in my cupboard that i promised a friend two years ago. it took me a year to do six button holes.

i underestimate the time it takes me. laughing, excited, pressed into spreadsheets and laid out in chatrooms, i cannot fathom that-

i am-

the wings aren't yet dry. my eyes are heavy. i need a magnifying glass to undo a seam. a clouding of the lense, says the doctor and waves her hand. it's been there for years.

i didn't know. i didn't-

my grandmother has so little vision that she can barely sign her name on the dotted line. her heritage seeps into me the way her daughter's does. the receptionist laughs. medicine is better now, she says.

i stare at all the unfinished things i am weaving for love. they sit, heavy and sharp edged, somewhere between my mouth and my lungs.

how long will it take?

[glasswaters]

The winds have stopped.

The water is still, now. It lies, flat and blue, between one edge of the world and the other. The foam has sunk back down. Something inside of it is holding its breath.

The wood underneath your hands is crumbling. Maybe it was the salt that did it, or the water. Maybe it was just time, eating its way through the mast as rot does, weaving strings of soft sickness through strands of oak.

Maybe you've been holding on for too long.

The fabric sticking to your skin has lost its bearing to the whetting teeth of the rolling waves. Your skin is red.

When was the last time you took a breath?

Come, now. This is the time. Underneath you, something hungry has creaked open its jaws. All around you, the sea is waiting.

Holding out for you.

[glasswaters]

i always knew mine and my sibling's cats were made of the same stuff, the same features, the same sharp mind. the same screaming wail.

the same purr.

is this what people mean when they talk of twins? she yowls and i hear him echo in the scratching of her throat. he bumps his head against my calf and i feel the brush of her fur.

both of them our loves. both of them the thing that tethered. sweet, sweet things.

so small that even at seventeen years old, the shape of the kitten remains somewhere in the pressing of the haunches. white-and-grey.

green-eyed.

he dies in april. there are so many tumors growing in the rich soil of his guts that he won't eat, anymore. he doesn't make it until his 18th birthday.

she dies in july. there is a tumor growing in the cavern of her mouth, so big that she won't eat, anymore. her 18th birthday was two months ago.

the rest is tears.

[glasswaters]

its my birthday! writing exercise time methinks. just gotta find one.

[glasswaters]

why were you digging?

there's something i lost to the soil and the rain. i can still feel its pulse.

the flowers are wilting, and rotting at the roots. someone must pull them, dear.

something is eating my garden, darling, and the weed killer can't touch it.

there used to be a tree here. do you remember?

the grass has grown tall. the spade is worn thin. the hatchet hosts a wasp nest.

i wasn't.

why were you watching?

must i explain each of my callouses and each of my scars? must i bare all i am?

the river has come, and is resting in the cellar.

what does it matter? the garden is a bloated corpse, its bones laid bare.

i will not leave. you cannot make me.

give me back the shovel. it's mine.

Voting ended onAug 26, 2024

[glasswaters]

my love has gone into the well, and the water is lower now than it has ever been. i cannot touch him, anymore. in the dark and the damp, he is the same colour as the moss. when he calls, it is a choir.

something in my chest groans. something aches.

he cannot climb back up to me. his hands are not made for rough things, and his eyes have forgotten the brightness of the sun. if i cupped him in my palms, i would wick the moisture from his skin.

as a caught fish trying to push air through gills, as a rat trying to breathe water, i would surely kill him.

those fine bones and that wet skin would crack. this mouth would open wide. i couldn't put him back into the water until that small heart has stuttered. until that voice has given out.

it would be too late, then.

go, says my love from where the well holds him tight. you are relieved of your duty. you are relieved of your lord. go, and leave me to the water.

i go. something blooms under my skin. when i press my palms against my breast, i lose my breath. i go.

i wail.

there is a bruise above my heart, and it is darkening. its edges are yellow, and its center is a deep, hard purple. every breath digs into the rough pit where my love sits, watching the water sink into the earth.

the blacksmith cannot keep my heart from breaking. she cannot reach into the hollow of me and fuse the muscle as if it were metal, red-hot and screaming.

instead, she lays three iron bands about my chest, tightest where the bruise is darkest. if i hook a finger underneath them, my breath won't take. there are no locks. there are no keys.

my heart beats on, somehow.