milky blue;

collections of light and shadow

[lanebrianne-blog]

A teaser for the third book in the Raven Cycle series, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, by Maggie Stiefvater, published by Scholastic. (Official U.S. release date Octob...

Impossibly excited for this book!!

[lanebrianne-blog]

Autopsy

(A collaboration with http://givethekidabreak.tumblr.com/. My writing is in italics.)

  Every time they touched they died a little on the inside- unconscious invisible deaths that went unnoticed by the haphazard, directionless frenzy that they called new love

In a wasteland of a body, gutting, carving, hollowing, they made homes for each other to inhabit during the silent mourning months; lighting fires inside the atria of their hearts, singing requiems into the rose-tinted dawn.

The arduous monotony of time was soon embraced with a renewed fervour that ripped the scabs off old wounds and left sediments of bittersweet on their tongues that were too large to swallow.

The only escape was drowning, was releasing, was sloughing off the old skin; shedding the dusty bones and twisted ligaments, peeling kisses from their lips and the backs of knees, ridding themselves of the ropes that tied them down, letting soft air catch their ruined bodies.

They fell without the ruse of safety nets or eternity filling the night with the sound of moving furniture and resentment. Nail bitten fingers of coffee-cup warmed hands now ceased to touch for the fear of disintegrating before reaching the front door. 

Trails of scorched skin looped across the entryway while they peeled each other’s’ fingernails from the crevices beneath their shoulder blades; their bruised throats humming the dusty refrains of lullabies. But honeyed words were not enough to soothe the ache of a first lost love.  

[lanebrianne-blog]

A note to the month of my birth;

August,

you have tasted like longing this year. Like missing and pining and all those other ing words that make my heart stutter. I wake most mornings with the taste of the blackberries my family picked me last year for my birthday hung from the roof of my mouth. I’ve woke most mornings with a headache fierce enough to make me see spots – unusual for me, but I’ve developed the habit of sleeping on my stomach this month, my arms crossed over my chest, palms pressed flat against my heart, and this arrangement does strange things to my neck. My spine, too. I think it’s trying to shape itself like a spoon in order to scoop away all the things I’ve missed. All the things I’ve been pining and longing for these last few weeks. I think my body is trying hard at being new shapes. At being all the places I wish I could be and all the people I’ve been waiting to meet. It’s making space for the memories I’ve been furiously collecting; in case my bulging pockets spring a leak and the water comes rushing in, carrying bits of my childhood away with its departure. This month I’ve been writing less and watching more. My eyes are sore and unfocused at the end of nearly every day and although this not-writing is supposed to be a sort of therapy my fingertips are so swollen with all the words they have not given life too. There are muscles growing stagnant and useless from so much neglect and even the thunderstorms have not stopped by often enough to relieve the ache in my hands. I have been meaning to heal; penciling it in at the top of each and every to-do list I make, but the time always seems to slip away and while I’m healing it’s not nearly enough to close up the holes or mend the burn marks. But something else I’ve slowly come to realize in these hours of watching and seeing and wondering is that maybe those holes and burn marks are there for a reason; that maybe they aren’t supposed to be closed up and covered over. Maybe I’m supposed to fill them up, until they’re bursting like my pockets and my blackberry mouth and my spoon spine. Maybe the goal isn’t to make anything look like it did before the healing was needed. Maybe the goal this time is to fill those holes with light. To devour light until it is all I am, until I’m made of sunshine and stars and pieces of the moon. Until I’m all lightness and feathers and these puffy white clouds swimming through chunks of blue sky. Until I’m something completely new and vibrant and dazzling - more me than I ever had the courage to be before.

[lanebrianne-blog]

Flaw is such an ugly word

Why do so many people think that flaws are ugly? What exactly do they think makes us human? I want to know your scars and the stories behind them. The moon white marks across your cheeks and arms, the long ago cuts and scrapes that patterns your chest and legs. I want to drink in the stories of your mistakes and all the dreams that crumbled before you gave them wings. I want to love all the parts of you other people said weren’t good enough the parts you see in the mirror and wish you could change. Flaw is such an ugly word I want to underline your sorrow with kisses and understand the language of your slumped shoulders. I want to know all of you, even the things you’ve kept hidden; the broken pieces, the odds and ends no one else would take. I want to know everything that makes you who you are. I want to love your flaws. Flaw is such an ugly word

[lanebrianne-blog]

There are strange wormy-caterpillar creatures slowly devouring a poor milkweed plant a few feet away from me and it looks like they’re burning through the leaves instead of chewing them and all I can think about is the caterpillar-things using their creepy digestive juices, or whatever the heck they’re scorching the plant with, on my skin and I know I should love them anyway, because all living things are beautiful but I think I might have nightmares now.

[lanebrianne-blog]

oh darling, there are ways to heal;

It is not possible for me to take away all of your pain. To sweep it up into a pile and scoop it into my arms. It is not possible for me to save you from hurting, to stop the damage before it sets in. But if I could, oh darling, if I could… I still wouldn’t. Because there are lessons to be learned from suffering. Because you are strong enough to find those scattered pieces, to map out the way the less-than-familiar bits fit together now that the damage has been done. And I will be there to help you along the way. I will hold you when you’re tired and feed you hope when you are stretched too thin; but I will not do the work for you. Because there is something to be said for someone who knows how to heal. Because learning that you will mend is something no one else can give you. Because somewhere along the way you will discover that you are strong. You will learn that you are still whole. No matter how many portions of yourself you try to rearrange or cut away or place in a new order; you are still whole. No matter how much you try to pull from between your bones. You are still whole. You always have been and you always will be and you will continue to find ways to heal, to love your fullness and all that it comprises; the pieces others called ugly and the parts no one had the right to touch. You will never look the way you did before you were wounded, before you were in too many bits and pieces to count or comprehend, but that does not mean that you are not whole. I will not do the work for you, because somewhere along the way you will discover that you are strong enough to stand on your own.

[lanebrianne-blog]

Fragments and Distance

It’s been four years and I can’t remember your face, just your rough knuckles against the underside of my breasts and the sound your teeth made as they scraped my tiny birthstone earrings. Sometimes I still feel your breath when I wake between nightmares but I don’t remember how the insides of your cheeks tasted or what your tongue felt like. When I think of the line of your shoulders all I can picture is the horizon; jagged with white pines. Your palms are the ponds in my backyard, your spine the stretch of sidewalk on my way home from work. You are scattered and unmade, a body strewn across miles of land. You are fainter than a memory; a half-thought, dissipating in the night.

You are so far gone and I cannot even remember you leaving.

(and the worst part is that I don’t know if that tastes like victory or an admission of defeat)

[lanebrianne-blog]

Drought

You smell like electrical currents,

like static trapped beneath the blankets

and you taste like the dry earth

before the swollen clouds burst apart overhead.

Like thunder-deprived summers,

like dusty bones

and bodies that haven’t seen a flood

in who knows how long.

[lanebrianne-blog]

I spent days breathing in the heavy summer air;

swallowing storms

just to fill the space you created inside of me

when you left without saying goodbye.

[lanebrianne-blog]

Parcels

I took the ugly things, the pieces that always gave me nightmares; your palm on my thigh, fingers creeping like spider legs; kisses strung along my collarbones like milky white pearls; my vocal cords bruised from all the words you killed in my throat and wrapped them up in brown packing paper, tied them tight with sunny yellow ribbons. Tried to make them pretty, to make them presentable, lovable, desirable. But they were only a collection of all the times and ways and places you touched me when I was too frightened to say no.

[lanebrianne-blog]

Other girls disobeyed their mothers by kissing older boys late at night in the shadow of the trees that lined the alley behind the gymnasium.

I disobeyed my mother by climbing trees in the early morning, wearing my Sunday best, watching my breath puff into the dawn and wishing away the strands of my life.

[lanebrianne-blog]

Poison kisses, poison touch

Sunlight brushed the kitchen counters golden and painted rainbows across your eyelashes. I was in love with blue skies and dewdrop flowers, with the veins that traveled beneath your skin and the way your bones formed a puzzle I could never quite master. You were summer and warmth, arms like home, eyes like comfort. But when I kissed you, your mouth tasted like cherry pits; hard and bitter. A choking hazard hidden by sweet red flesh.

Metaphors make you sound like something beautiful, something wonderful and exotic, but when you strip everything away you’re just another slow killing poison.

[lanebrianne-blog]

I've been terrible at posting. What is wrong with me?

[lanebrianne-blog]

Lay It Bare, Summer Skin on Flickr.

[lanebrianne-blog]

Anchor

I was aching for hands,

have been aching for hands

these long, cold months.

For the whorls of fingertips

smearing their identity

from the edge of my navel

to the basin of my hip.

I was aching for touch

from strangers, from lovers,

from friends.

For skin on skin,

for feeling to anchor me,

to ground and center me.

To move the sorrow

from my skull,

to displace the fog

that has rooted in my lungs.

I was aching for a reprieve

from the hunger nesting

in my stomach.

Aching for a release

from the fire burning

through my womb.

For a safe place to hide

from the angry swell

of ocean rising above my head.

[lanebrianne-blog]

.

My body is not a place for dirty hands and cruel intentions. My body is not meant to be used.

My body is not a playground. It is not a work of art for your eyes to feast on.

My body does not belong to you or anyone else. It is not something you can own.

My body is not a temple for you to come worship inside of. It is not a place to write your name on.

My body is my home.

My body is my safe place. It is the arms I find comfort in; the place that always holds the light.

[lanebrianne-blog]

My soul is aching for something beautiful.