All your tomorrows start here

Your living dream.

[hellholeglory]

and it is Sunday morning, and you are still sleeping, and I am thinking about how the spine in my favorite book is cracked, and how it can never be uncracked. It is not an important thought, it doesn’t mean much, but it lingers. By some creeping twist of fate, we are now grown up. Who’s to say if we are done, but at least we have arrived somewhere, three months apart. Isn’t that funny, how you can’t seem to get rid of me? We only took things that mattered up the stairs, one by one. Beds, shoes, books with cracked spines. Something to keep me company, something to leave behind. I want attention, and you want a body. It is a fair enough exchange. These things we have learned how to give. The spine is cracked. Some nights I wonder if you would crawl inside my veins if I asked, to sleep in my blood and see if maybe then I could feel what I was afraid of. But then, we both know the one thing I could never do is ask. I don't stop touching you until I fall asleep, fingernails trailing your back and remembering the scar on your shoulder, remembering the night my heart broke with you, remembering that this is borrowed time. Crack. Apparently, if you have a lump in your throat, you can just swallow it, cram it back down your windpipe, like you were never a child, like you will never be one. and it is Sunday morning, and my finger traces the crack of your spine, right down the middle.

cracked spines

[hellholeglory]

“Do you want to be loved, or do you want to be desired?” You say it not in so many words, but enough for me to catch the meaning. You say it at 1:30 a.m. on the one night we thought we wouldn’t drink, and look at us now. Sneaking into the kitchen to challenge our livers and our inhibitions. We could never be drunk enough to not know what this means. You say it like an offer for one of the two. I just have to take it. I am waiting for something in this house to be louder than the beating of my heart. I am waiting for my head to tell me this is a bad idea. Aren’t they two sides of the same coin, love and want? And aren’t your fingers itching to flip it again after it has landed on one? This feels personal. There is no one around sucking the tension out of the air, nothing to drown out the promises you whisper. We have touched before, before the world had started holding its breath and freezing the moments. Your hands are much louder now, and they reach for me, and I don't think about you touching me. I think about being touched, about being warm and beautiful, and about how I will never forget this. I tell you the last part, and it sounds like an accusation. Love is patient, love is kind. What is this, then, if it is not love, but it simmers so slowly? Should it be more eager to boil, just so we can know the difference? I have learned to run marathons long before we met. My lungs remember what it feels like to save strength, to hold hope. They teach me again now, because we can feel a heat creeping, reaching for our heels. What if it has caught up with us after all these years, ready to collect? What side did the coin land on this time, dear, please tell me, I am too afraid to look.

What if I want both?

[hellholeglory]

The ways I love: 1. At first, it was deliberate. I chose you, picked you out, thinking it was still a game. I was too young for it to be serious, but I didn’t realize I was too old for it not to be. Crush me. Mold me, but never look at me too long. If I find out who you are before I have done everything for you, I won’t know who I am. It lingers, but it doesn’t burn anymore. Maybe it never did. 2. You want me, for now, for however long, I don’t dare to ask. I can’t risk it mattering to me, so I take another shot and your eyes shine again. You’re pretty, I think, and you touch me like you touched the others, and I can be a part of something if you want me to be. From midnight until the sunrise, until I walk home and feel the breeze announcing the end of summer. It will never be the same after this. 3. The promise of a new beginning, only a glance, you don’t even make eye contact. Strangers have a way of tugging at your heart that makes you desperately want to be in a braver body. 4. It would almost be too perfect, so I don’t let it be love. Or perhaps I do, but you seem good, so I refuse to let it get to my head how you hold my hand or my waist or my whispers. Something always simmers, it’s a tug of maybe-love that will never end. If it did, it could only go wrong. 5. The search for kind eyes in a loud room is often a hopeless one. Every now and then, it makes the hands on your hips feel more tender than they are. Less hungry, if only for a while. 6. At the end, there is always a mirror. There is always another side of the bed. There is always a scale that is recklessly tipped, that swings back and forth like a pendulum. It is a necessary evil, this love. It is the only one that’s ever only yours.

The things I remember feeing

[hellholeglory]

We're doing that thing again, where it gets dangerous. And I'm starting to see elephants in rooms they could never fit in, and he keeps his eyes closed. That way, maybe the kettle will finally boil.

Stop waiting ??

[ghostresidues]

richard siken quotes that make me cry

•if you don’t believe in god, then who are you talking to?

•i hope it’s love. i’m trying really hard to make it love.

•we left footprints in the slush of ourselves, getting out of there.

•your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything.

•he’s easy to desire since there’s not much to him.

•why live a life? well, why are you asking?

•people like to think war means something.

•even when i look away i am still looking.

•he didn’t know how to say it. years later he still didn’t know how to say it, and she was gone.

•i clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. i’d rather quit. i’d rather be sad.

•someone has to leave first. this is a very old story. there is no other version of this story.

•tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.

•i swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouth.

•i couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but i wore his jacket for the longest time.

•tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.

•i want to tell you this story without having to be in it.

•he takes you in his arms and pushes your flesh around to see if you could ever be ugly to him.

•you wanted to be in love and he happened to get in the way.

•i don’t really blame you for being dead but you can’t have your sweater back.

•people get hurt here. people fall down and stay down and i don’t like the way the song goes.

•someone is digging your grave right now.

[hellholeglory]

"My God, you broke my heart, do you really not know that? You broke my heart the day you let me go, and a million times over since then. With every word you said that day, and every word you haven't since. And now there you are, after six years, six fucking years it took you, and I still couldn't look at you without feeling like you'd swallow all my anger before I could throw it at you. You take everything, all I have, all I am, and you don't even do anything with it. If you'd known I'd be here, you would have never walked through that door, because you were always happy enough keeping the past buried somewhere so dark -" "Of course I knew." "What?" Lungs deflate. A heartbeat, the first since eighteen. Blood in cheeks, pumping adrenaline and love, at least the chance of it. A battle inside a body for the upper hand, mind against disbelief against love against a scream. "I knew you'd be here. I came for you, you and nothing else. I never forgot." "Why didn't you say?" Why didn't you come sooner. "And miss you confessing all of this?" "Fuck off." A smile, despite yourself. He is still him. You are still you. And now what? Don't forget he hasn't apologized. Don't pretend that any of the excuses you have tried to make up for him were real. Please let one of them be real. "Took you long enough." Let's play, then. "I figured it would be safer if I let you think about things a bit, you know, calm down a little." He speaks softly, and the words hug his throat, but they are sharper than he knows. "You're unbearable." Maybe the smiles hide the anger. Maybe the lighthearted sounds mask the truth behind the words. Maybe this is the only way to speak from a soul heavy with guilt to a heart shattered.

What do you mean when you say these things

[letscrywolff-deactivated2024013]

We don’t do this– this heavy breathing, mouths open, tongue swallowing air and breath and pushing December back until it tastes like him chocking. No, it’s never us on the bathroom floor, calling it healing. Until it is

Safelight (via letscrywolff)

[inkskinned]

Sometimes you just gotta say. in another time, it would have been you

[hellholeglory]

My fingers haven’t bled in years, and the wounds have healed up so much I’m starting to doubt they were ever there in the first place. The ‘you’ in my poems has always worn the same face, because it was only ever you I wanted to say anything to. If I write this down, surely it must echo somewhere. This longing I have no words for, this haunting in a language my mother didn’t teach me. No one ever has to read it, or hear it, or say it back to me, but someone has to feel it. I remember a time the night air called out to me through a cracked window, and I wanted nothing more than to taste it, because it smelled like serenity. There is a nostalgia buried so deep between my memories I struggle to grasp it. My fingers haven’t touched yours in years, and there is no tragedy here, only a notion. That’s all it ever is.

call me

[hellholeglory]

We welcome the rain of ashes, because haven't we been suffocating all along anyway? The only thing that seemed constant was the sweat on our skins, everything else melted away in that unrelenting summer. Autumn came, and dried the last thing that connected us. How lonely to envy someone their heartbreak. The way home is littered with ghost spots and uneven memories. Was it three years or three months ago that we last said goodbye at this bus stop? Does it matter? We pretend we'll learn from the past by repeating it. The only way to feel right is if we're all body, no person. That's how we get along best, because if there's nothing inside, nothing can hurt. I never asked you for anything, so I assume it must have been my eyes begging you to make me ache. We've never been good with words, I tell myself. I've alway been good at making up excuses you didn't care to ask for. No one has ever touched me in a way I could feel. You came close this year, but that was worse. 'I don't think it ever went away'

Debris from a year of nothing exploding

[lighterary]

“You Are Jeff” by Richard Siken

[hellholeglory]

Oh, I am going to dance with the fire you lit inside me too long ago. I will let the sparks leave my heart and you will feel them pour away from me with every touch. Maybe then you'll know.

Is it still spite if we do it together?

[donna-marieriley-deactivated202]

We Meet Again

in an empty book shop. No, in a field of violets. At a farmer’s market down South when the heat has broken like an eggshell. Your hair is longer. Shorter. Dyed bright purple. Still the same. We meet again by chance at a New York City bus stop. You have exact change. I wink at the driver. We meet again in February when the snow is so tired of itself it melts into the pavements like a slow yawn. We meet again at a poetry club in the heart of some small town in England. You sip at a beer. Keep your legs crossed. Find my eyes in the corner, two pinpricks in the distance. Fairy lights around a fireplace. We meet again after the in-between years. We’re older. You look it. I hear your voice over the intercom in a railroad station. I catch your scent in the aisle of a supermarket. We meet again at the feet of the Eiffel Tower. Neither of us impressed. No, both of us swollen with awe. Your camera frames me before you even notice. We meet again in the middle of the ocean. No, under a bridge in Mexico. No, in the shadow of a skyscraper. Under the scope of a comet. At the edge of the universe. Before the end of the world. We meet again at a party. Leave together. Make love until we turn to salt. Until we are nothing but steam rising in a windowless room. Until we remember what tore us apart to begin with. We meet again at the brink of a climax. No, at the root of a toothache. In the hollows of your collarbone. At the height of our loneliness. 

[hellholeglory]

Made of dynamite sticks and a fuse for lips, I handed you the lighter (I wish I would have had to disguise it as innocence or love or passion or anything other than desperation) and before I even got the chance to assure you I wanted to burn with you, the spark traveled into my heart. Oh, and how gloriously we blew up. The biggest bang the universe had ever seen, surely it must have noticed. A firey baptism, a declaration of martyrdom, a rebirth and a eulogy, that’s what I had wanted. With you. And wasn’t it intimate, dancing with the flames licking away our skin and moving from you to me like we were one? Devouring all the layers that separated your soul from mine, until all that would be left were your ashes and my ashes, and they would have to bury us together because no one could tell one lover from the other anymore. I didn’t know that you had burned yourself before, many times. That you had become so acquainted with the flames they now greeted you as an old friend, as one of their own. That they had slowly stripped all life from you, and all your love and empathy and soul had been smoked out until there was nothing flammable left to sacrifice. So you staggered from the bonfire I had become, just in time for me to see you cough up grime and blood before the fire you had ignited years ago finally claimed me whole, as you looked on, thinking maybe now I would also be part of the flames forever. They scattered my ashes in all the places where I used to feel most alone, and I don’t blame them. I left a dark, lifeless mark on the green grass when I went out. All you left was the lighter.

They used to burn witches, now they burn lovers.

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

It’s like a dance, you spend the whole night trying to reach him but caught on that invisible wire so that you only get to spin in half centimetres around him.

He said, you’re with me, stick to me like glue,

and you do all night, never leave the side of him that raises an arm subconsciously, the side he lets you tuck yourself into,

without realising he’s doing it.

And when you both fall asleep unexpectedly, almost sitting up, you shake him awake to lead him to the bed. He looks confused, you’re not supposed to do that anymore because it’s not like that, but he’s got no hesitation left, pulls his clothes off and you’re not expecting the way he pulls you to his body, the way you fit in the space, how solid his chest feels holding himself against your back. You sigh out all the hardness that has settled since the last time you were held like this, and he’s breathing in deep too, twice, three times, like a finally, like a hallelujah. And you forgive him for making you start things you cannot finish because he never finished anything he started in you. You got matching burns, you see, from falling over at the park like you were still kids and laughing. Because this is what happens when you’re with him, so much of your truth spills out you should put some of it back in case it unsettles his calm. You’ll reassure him in the morning when he looks at his jeans spilling coins onto the floor that he was invited, that it was all about innocence, all about being in sync. But this is it, the specific kind of burning for the things you love, and nothing eases it, only itself.

[hellholeglory]

Your hand on my stomach, my back to your chest, my blood the echo of my pounding heart in my ears. I beg the noise away, and your hand moves, and I barely flinch and it doesn’t feel wrong and that's  worse. Your hand down my back, your fingers on my thighs and up and down and up again, under my shirt and in my hair, and thunder breaks louder and longer than I’ve ever known. It sounds like an omen, and my body shakes once it’s mine again. Your hand on me, my chest is a cage and a battlefield, my head spins before I move because I know if I dared I would spin, all the way, all I’d have to do is roll over, and you would still be there, and you would be real and you wouldn’t stop touching me and remember the edge I once talked about, the one we keep stumbling towards? I thought if we turned around we’d be safe from the pit, turns out you can’t outrun something that lives inside your heart. Your hand moves, up and down, up and down, under my shirt, over my pants, up and down, trailing lazily and with too much purpose to mean nothing, up and down, and I shouldn’t feel it anywhere else but I do, up and down, my chest rises up and down your hand moves up and down my mind goes up and down and up in flames, up to something, up to no good,up, up, down. Your hand is all over my thoughts, waving them away into the fog that forgets them, your hand doesn't stop and my skin pays the price, wearing the memory of your touch like a secret carved just underneath the surface, your hand almost wakes the ugly courage sleeping in my heart, your hand is everywhere and always and I like it.

I’ll go mad if you touch me and I’ll go mad if you don’t

[sozbuckets]

‘And was it really how you sing it, dear? All I remember was the blood and tears. And did you love me like the way you wrote?’ 'Oh, I’m afraid so. I’m afraid so.’

Keaton Henson, “Old Lovers in Dressing Rooms” (via sozbuckets)