is it better to speak or to die? @habitfordestruction - Tumblr Blog

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i wrote a song about you it has 25 different parts that don’t belong together i scream and cry and there’s no melody what so ever youll love it listen to it every day i wrote a song about you it has 25 different parts that don’t belong together i scream and cry and there’s no melody what so ever youll love it listen to it every day i wrote a song about you it has 25 different parts that don’t belong together i scream and cry and there’s no melody what so ever youll love it listen to it every day i wrote a song about you it has 25 different parts that don’t belong together i scream and cry and there’s no melody what so ever youll love it listen to it every day i wrote a song about you it has 25 different parts that don’t belong together i scream and cry and there’s no melody what so ever youll love it listen to it every day i wrote a song about you it has 25 different parts that don’t belong together i scream and cry and there’s no melody what so ever youll love it listen to it every day

Last night, a man asked me to dance. I was all done up with feathers in my hair, playing pretend with the best of them. And so, drunk on a little too much champagne and fairy lights, and missing the feeling of your arms round my waist, I gave him my hand as a thought experiment.

There is something in me that recoils when touched by hands too hard, when held against a chest too broad, when kissed by a mouth too stubbled over with age. In the Before, I play the game. I laugh with the right force at the right time, I shine for him and bask in his attentive light, my eyes twinkling in just the right way…

But after, I feel his hand on my back and every thread I’ve carefully woven together in this story of us dissolves. Suddenly his light is harsh, I am burning. His breath on my neck acrid in the stifled evening air. His lips approach mine and I turn my head coyly to hide my disgust, and my ribcage strains against the skin of my back, my very organs clawing within me to get away.

What is wrong with me What is wrong with me what is wrong with me what is wrong with me what is wrong with me what is wrong with me

My long-forgotten mantra from high-school parties started with its low humming, a sickness creeping forth from my bowels as waves of nausea reverberate through me. Memories of a putrid hollowness in my chest as I lay under my boyfriend’s strong arm, staring at a painting on the wall to wish myself into it, shrinking away from male hands, male torsos, male mouths, male legs covered in coarse hair like some grotesque arachnid. The smell of male bodies, close enough to slip underneath the cloud-cover of scented spray, sat heavily in my nose like mud, like stagnant water you know instinctively not to touch.

What is wrong with me?

It took me so long to learn that I do not have to learn to love his grasp, so many years of subjection and suppression and pinning myself to him like an insect to styrofoam, each needle crafted from fear of failure, of otherness, of queerness, of what would happen to the limelight of the male gaze if I admit my absence of desire.

But the lean arm of every she I have known has softened me. I fold in and toward her like a sunflower. I long for the light of her eyes to rain down on me, when I feel a droplet I become still more parched. I am undone by a desire as true as gravity. I am undone.

And I know, now, I cannot fight gravity.