Bengisu

⊹ I post my own photography and poetry as well as art I see on the internet. ⊹

[insummerigrieve]

A love only the branch of a willow tree could conjure.

[likemonalisa]

Chloe Sevigny, Vogue Italia, 2003

[sniktbaby-deactivated20260715]

Midsommar (2019) dir. Ari Aster

[somerandomrecluse]

A Nightmare on Elm Street | 1984 | Dir. Wes Craven

“Whatever you do….don’t fall asleep.”

[1this1corrosion1]

[luperina]

[lamignonette]

[insummerigrieve]

My birthday is seeping into me

There’s a pressure that builds in my chest every year around this time. I still can’t put a name on it.

Ever since I recognized that people celebrated birthdays, mine made me feel strange and disconnected. It felt as if the day had nothing to do with me. I remember standing in places with people, cake or whatever in front of me, and feeling like someone else should be blowing out the candles. I never knew how to enjoy the attention. I always felt too aware of being watched and celebrated. Why am I celebrated again? I never claimed my years.

Now, the feeling is sharper and heavier. My dad’s been gone for five years, but around my birthday, the grief creeps in louder. Five was his favorite number. I know this because I valued stupid little info like this when I was a kid. My mom’s is three by the way. I don’t need reminders that my birthday is coming. I start feeling like I’m floating again. I feel detached yet impatient. I want to crawl out of my own skin before August begins and eventually leads to September.

This year, my body decided to join the panic. My period is late. My appetite is gone. I’m getting cramps, fatigue and dread. I try not to spiral, but I find myself checking the date over and over again. I hate how close it is now. I hate that something that should feel light, playful and special makes me feel heavier than ever. Every year feels like I’m running out of time to become someone who feels real.

I feel like the years are stacking up on a version of me I don’t fully recognize. I don’t like it when people celebrate my birthday, yet I feel like crying when they do. I feel like crying when someone expresses that they’re happy I’m here. I don’t know what to do with it.

If you enjoyed this, my Substack has a lot more little essays of mine. I would really appreciate it if you check out my website too!

[strangledplanet]

[angelicdewdrop]

[angelicdewdrop]

[thelovelclubarchive]

I haven’t left the room in three days and I think the ceiling’s beginning to slope. The floor tiles have started curling at the edges like dying leaves or burnt paper and the mirror has grown a foggy film like it’s ashamed to look at me. There’s a damp spot in the corner above the sink that drips exactly every seventeen seconds. I know because I counted it while scratching at the skin around my ribs, which have become more noticeable lately, not from beauty or discipline, but rot. Something sweet is festering inside me. I smell like bleach and the sour aftermath of sleep. I’ve been brushing my teeth with salt again. The foam clots on my tongue and I gag every time, but it feels like penance.

The books I used to love now sit heavy and swollen on their shelves like bloated corpses. I tried to open one yesterday and it hissed. The characters have all turned on me. The words are greasy, slipping through my mind like fingers through a drained sink. I tried writing a letter to god or the bank or my mother but all I wrote was I’m sorry for making such a scene of myself. I don’t even know who it was meant for. Maybe the man upstairs who walks like he’s digging his way through the floorboards. Maybe myself. Maybe the girl I used to be, who kept her drawers neat and believed she could be loved without shrinking.

There’s hair in the drain and flies in the fruit bowl and I keep washing my underwear in the same bucket I use to mop the floor. Everything smells vaguely of iron and dead flowers. I can’t stop thinking about all the people I’ve ever kissed and how none of them ever really looked me in the eye. I’ve been sleeping with the fan on full blast because I like the sound of the blades threatening to come loose. It’s summer, or some imitation of it, hot and wet and unforgiving. I feel like I’m being simmered. Like I'm soup. Like I should be ladled out and served to someone who knows what to do with me.

My body has become a leaking archive of everything I never said aloud. It itches in places I can’t reach. I want someone to hold me down and scrub me clean with scalding water and ammonia, pick the sadness out of my hair strand by strand, and burn it. I want to be rewritten in neater handwriting, the kind they use for love letters or eulogies. I want to sleep for six years and wake up with new teeth. There’s nothing romantic about decay but I think I’m starting to like the smell of it.

[the-moon-whisperer]

[afacelesschampion]

SERVANT (2019 - 2023) | 4.10 "Fallen"

[dreamstars]

[slaterinc]

[cybervoidd]