dream me a soft world

it's time to wake up. we were never cut out for more than a dream.

[inkstellations]

I GAVE YOU MY ALL because I did not want it. I gave you my disappointment (all-that-hope-tainted-by-reality) and my joy (daisy-chains-and-summer-breeze), everything except the hollow rage sitting low in my belly and the searing heat behind my eyes. it’s selfish to treat a woman like a warehouse, to open up her chest in the dead of night and sneak all the unwanted stuff in. but baby, keep my love safe for me until I’m strong enough to march up to you, look you dead in the eye, and demand it back.

a. n. s. | temporary storage

[inkstellations]

a. n. s. | special exhibit: born for war

[inkstellations]

the movies taught me that love is a feeling: fierce and soft and hits you all at once. unfamiliar eyes meeting in a coffee shop, desperate dances of lips and teeth. the movies taught me that love is starvation. my mother taught me that love is work: murmured apologies after a screaming match, never going to bed angry. my mother taught me that love is compromise. you taught me that love is a state of being: small and infinite, a contradiction. laughter and poetry and lipstick stains, puffy eyes and winking at yourself in the mirror. you taught me that I'm allowed to save some love for myself.

a. n. s. | a (self-) love story

[inkstellations]

I wish we used the word 'love' more to mean something that wasn't romantic. I wish it could say: I CARE you MATTER* *(but no, I'm not sure that I want to kiss you). and when my friend took my hand at a coffee shop and told me he had feelings for me, I wished there were simple words to say:     i. you're important to me.           (but I don't know in what way)     ii. you make my life better.     iii. you make me smile     iv. I miss you when you're not there      v. you deserve the best                   (I don't know if I love you the way you want me to               or the way you deserve to be loved. but this is what I have,                      it isn't a yes / it isn't commitment / it's just this:                                  I care. you matter. I love you.)

a. n. s. | help me to write a love poem that doesn’t promise forever 

[inkstellations]

it's been 62 days since I last wrote a poem. maybe I'm running out of things to say. maybe I'm forgetting what it means to ache with every inhale and burn with every exhale. maybe I stole my own words from under my tongue as I sanded my edges to smoothness, as I turned my glass shards to flower petals. maybe to write is to ache & burn & sting, and to listen is to smile & dance & sing. maybe I'm done screaming into a void of self-pity. maybe forgetting how to write is learning how to live.

a. n. s. | maybe

[inkstellations]

I. I'm fourteen and she walks me home, jumping out of the way when we pass under street lamps. she wears a little black dress and tentatively hooks her pinky through mine. her fingers are clammy and she blows me a kiss when we reach my door, whispering:  until next time II. the second time she finds me, I'm under the covers and it's dark. she settles in my head like she's been there all along. now I can't remember a time when she wasn't there, counting what-ifs on her fingers and drumming their rhythm against the inside of my skull. III. she creeps up on me in the bath when I'm shaving my legs. my belly looks a little too round, and the razor gleams. it's unnerving. I run into my bedroom and slam the door. IV.  I'm by the knife block in the kitchen and pressing a knife to my wrist. I turn around, and for once in my goddamn life, she isn't there. my empty head gives me the strength to put the knife back in the block. my face is wet and I sink to the floor, pressing the unbroken skin of my wrist to my lips. V. I still see her sometimes: out of the corner of my eye, after awakening from a dream. the hem of her dress disappears around the street corner. I find her sitting on the washing machine one day, cradling my cat in her arms. she winks at me, and I'm ready for her to lead me away right then and there. VI. I've never met her, not really. I don't remember her face but I miss her. It's all kinds of fucked up, but sometimes I just miss her.

a. n. s. | death is a girl in a little black dress

[inkstellations]

imagine this: the sky turns blue and thick around us, there’s a pane of glass between us and the world. imagine this: when you laugh, bubbles blow out of your mouth. it makes you start giggling until your sides ache and you've finally tasted all that joy you were saving under your tongue. close your eyes and think of it: the entire sea in a bottle, contained for you and me. someone flicks in a coin, every now and then, and it sinks: down,         down ,                 down, until it joins us in the depths where we can't see it shine. no one will ever see tears on your cheeks, not here. there’s saltwater all around and the fish can’t be bothered to give a damn. imagine this, sweetheart: the world isn’t an oyster. it’s an aquarium.

a. n. s. | aqua-marine

[inkstellations]

wipe me off your blackboard, baby. there’s chalk dust on your fingers. wash it off. you deserve more than fingerprint ghosts, reminding you of what was, and what won’t be again. ours will be a bittersweet goodbye: drops of salt on our tongues. a crackling radio that goes out before we can say all we need. I’ll hide my goodbye in the waves. it’ll wait there  until it picks up your heartbeat, and my farewell will make its way home to you.

a. n. s.

[inkstellations]

scientists discovered that there are ten times more galaxies in the universe than we thought there were.  it turns out that looking at the night sky doesn’t tell you everything, but there's no harm in looking up anyway. we sit shoulder to shoulder and point at all those long-dead stars. you miss a lot in a cursory glance. you miss the constellations  and the galaxies, and sometimes, you miss the love too.  but it’s there in the spaces between our fingers and the softness of your hands as you braid my hair.  the universe is cosmic and large and forever expanding, and sometimes we get caught up in the eternity of it all.  so let’s count our stars and freckles, our constellations and eyelashes. let’s build an infinite universe inside an infinite universe and stay there for a while. let's give ourselves some time to breathe.

a. n. s.

[inkstellations]

when I was made, words were poured into my bones & locked away, encased in blood and flesh. they hum and buzz under inches of skin. I know they're there. I know they're beautiful. they leak, running in my blood, burning through my heart &; lungs & soul, stopping short when my tongue tries to taste them. can you free them? snap my bones if you must, open their cage with my broken ribs. release them & let them blow away on the breeze. they waited long inside me,  but they were never mine. they deserve more than a sliced tongue and scattered bones. they shouldn't rest in the graveyard where my poetry goes to die.

a. n. s.

bone-deep

[inkstellations]

a common misconception about romantics: we do not fall in love with people as often as one may think. we fall for: -the shape of her lips, -the curve of his eyelashes, -and the colored streaks in their hair. we fall in love with moments we can never keep (sand castles that wash away as the tide comes in) love us and leave us, you’ll be yet another piece in our patchwork hearts. you think we are gentle, that we do nothing but get drunk on perfume and poetry, falling in love under a mess of constellations, but we will not break, not forever. our bones knit back together after you shatter them. we break & we mend. we endure, and I think that’s the most romantic thing of all.

a. n. s.

the life cycle of a romantic

(via inkstellations)

[inkstellations]

I am tired (of the weight of words in my belly) (of twisting my truth into something that is beautiful but no longer true). I wrote poems at midnight and they were raw and mine. I wrote poems on a deadline and they were hollow, echoes of words that belong to someone else. I thought I was creative, but I was just tip-toeing up to the boundary, dipping my toes in clichés and all those things someone else said better and first. I wrote what I thought they wanted to hear instead of what I needed to say, and my words went stale and crumbled into dirt between my teeth. it’s been three years and I’m still scraping the sand off my tongue. it’s been three years and I’m still learning how to breathe without crushed-up rocks in my lungs. it’s been three years and I'm still a goddamn work-in-progress.

a. n. s.

starting over

[inkstellations]

we stand by the sea, arms brushing. her words tangle in mine and I think I want to kiss her. she's the morning sun. I've got a sun standing right next to me. it’s a marvel she hasn’t burnt me up yet, but she will. god knows she will. a couple walks by, hand in hand. they smile and point at me, the idiot wax-winged girl who lost her sense of self-preservation on her way to the sea. I never knew a star to be uncertain, but she’s doing a good job of it now. she braids our fingers together nice and slow, and this is it. this is when my wings catch on fire and all the salt burns out of my blood. this is when the phoenix burns and rises. this is when she loves me. this is when I fall.

maybe icarus flew too close to the sun because he was born to burn

a. n. s.

Icarus Reborn

[inkstellations]

you're that moment when the sun forgets to rise & the stars wink out, one by one, the quiet before the storm and the end of it all. I think you were cursed like Midas was, sweetheart. everything you touch turns to smoke and gold. so if you're gonna ruin me, mold me into a masterpiece first. burn me and forge me in the heart of a star. rewrite the definition of beautiful, make it synonymous with destruction. I waited decades for this moment, baby. I'm counting on you to make it spectacular.

a. n. s.

golden girl

[inkstellations]

mama remembers a little girl who laughed free and loud, a sunshine girl with buckteeth and long skirts.   the girl in the mirror is different. her eyeliner is sharp and her teeth are all straightened out now. papa remembers a little girl who dreamed of light, a girl who couldn’t touch the moon but reached for it anyway. the girl in the mirror is tired. her eyes don’t look up anymore. she scrounges for fallen stars on the ground and her hands blister from holding them too tight. mama remembers a baby girl who never cried and smiled fresh like dew. the girl in the mirror doesn’t remember that baby girl, but she doesn’t cry either. mirror-girl’s got a question on her tongue. she writes it on the fogged up glass every night. where did she go? where did the little girl go? papa frowns all sad and says, time stole her away, baby. but she’ll come home one night, you know. she’ll tap at your window and you’ll let her in with the wind. she’ll give you stars from her pockets and sing: remember me? I’m that girl you used to be.

a. n. s.

youth

[inkstellations]

mama, you told me with tears in your eyes that you feel cheated all the time. you didn't deserve this. you didn't deserve the girl you got. she isn't kind enough or good enough and sometimes forgets how to smile, ate up years of your life and gave nothing in return. she is three sizes bigger than you asked for.  mama i'm sorry.  if I could shrink in the wash I would. I've tried standing under the shower until my skin goes cherry-red and waiting for my hips to go all slender and doll-like. I've tried using an old toothbrush to scrub the poison off my tongue but it stains . mama i'm sorry, I'm so goddamn sorry you didn't check the return policy when you brought me home without seeing if I fit first.

a.n.s.

[inkstellations]

you were always the one to weep over Icarus's melted wings while I stood behind you, cracking jokes about the idiocy of wax feathers. we love like the moon and the sea. you pull me to you & I have no choice in the matter. but one day, my waves will sweep you right out of the sky and down to this world of dirt and mud and saltwater. let me take this goddess that is you and make her mortal. we will no longer converse in myths. that is where we are different, after all. instead we will deal in breathing patterns and heartbeats, because that is where we are the same. lovely moon, won't you venture down for just one date with the lonely sea?

a. n. s.

moon & sea, you & me