We all Bleed Ink

Creative writing that makes no sense out of context? Hell yes. Thoughts of an Empath who feels too much and yeah—the ink might be digital, but that doesn't mean it isn't real. | Trigger warning for dark themes. Don't ruin yourself, love.

[last-babbling-jay]

martyrs. i can't help but be drawn to them, all blood-smoke and resignation and an almost fisted hand, curled but not quite there. their hands usually shake when i see them. sometimes its a small tremor you would never notice unless you looked for it and sometimes its so bad they can't hold anything in their hands. most of them aren't even adults yet, they usually die before their 18th birthday, and if they don't they know it will be soon so they set their jaw, curl their hands into fists, and pray to all the gods that have forsaken them‒let the end be quick.

[wearealsoboats]

make your choice

[last-babbling-jay]

The only thing I can remember about divinity is how it burned

white hot in the back of my throat salt always on my tongue on my eyes burning and fire tearing down each other, tearing down us and salt on my lips as you kiss me and leave me in the house burning and i think this is absolution the stinging of saltwater on my cheeks and the fire burning my fingers and the smell of ash choking me.

This is absolution for the sinners and the saints and i don't know which one I am, but the smoke reminds me of you smiling as you snuff out a cigarette and kissing me with blackened lips and yeah, this is absolution.

[last-babbling-jay]

Death probably tastes like honey at this point

[martyrsuggestion]

cigarette queen, smokes herself dead and rises again.

[last-babbling-jay]

we ask the gods for peace.

they laugh.

tell us:

'as if your story could end in anything other than tragedy.'

we know one day one of us will not walk off the battlefield alive.

we know that day will be soon.

we know our mortality as we know each other,

intimately, softly, devastatingly.

we also know that when one of us doesn't make it back the other won't be far behind.

we'll ache and die, and then,

maybe,

we can end our story with peace.

[last-babbling-jay]

one: you're at college now, far from your parents house, and they don't control you anymore, and you grin at the because it took five years to be free and dammit it's so worth it.

two: they taught you good and evil, right and wrong, polarization and gaslighting and suffocation and gods-i-can't-do-this-anymore. but what they didn't teach you: when you get free, move out, break the rules, there's a rightness to that they never let you have.

three: when you dye your hair, cut it all off, wear only black lipstick and eyeliner, buy a leather jacket, rebel in any way you can, you free yourself in a fundamental way‒you're becoming you again.

four: sunday isn't holy anymore. you don't have to go to church and worship a god you don't believe in, who doesn't deserve to be worshiped in the first place. you don't have to pretend, you can sleep in and rest and finally take that deep breath you could never take on sunday.

-PICK A FREEDOM

|strict parents and religion|

[last-babbling-jay]

it feels a bit like murder,

feeding the wolf who knows who

and neglecting the wolf who doesn't.

a bit like freedom,

letting the you who wasn't really you

die a slow death.

a bit like love,

embracing who you are,

who you always were.

[last-babbling-jay]

But the voice buried in her head spoke for the first time in a decade, reminding her why she had left for those forty years after the war; all the gods are dead now, it's only you.

-From my unpublished writings

[last-babbling-jay]

and you smile sharp. sharp enough to cut a star in half. to crack bones on its edge.

“it’s immortality darling,” you say it like a curse.

maybe it is.

[last-babbling-jay]

And there’s something different-not magical, not anymore-about singing your soul out in an abandoned cathedral. It echoes back, you don’t know which is more powerful, your voice or the deep otherness of the church.

[last-babbling-jay]

And I think it’s a kind of nostalgia. Knowing what can be, those little moments, the humanity, the companionship, and that you’ll never have it. A nostalgia for a future you know you’ll never be a part of.

After all, nothing brings people together like singing bohemian rhapsody.

[last-babbling-jay]

One day she woke up and decided she would die for them.

And she did.

Maybe she would have realized she was wiping out the red in her ledger if she held that hammer, and I wish that had happened, but she’s smiling as she falls. So maybe she realizes that she’s a hero. Maybe she does.

Or maybe she hopes she is.

Or maybe she woke up one day and decided she would die for them and if she’s going to save them then yeah, she’s going to fall. And she’s going to smile as she falls because maybe now they have a chance at that ending they tried so hard to get five years before.

And if she’s not there to see it, then that’s okay.

Like a river.

[last-babbling-jay]

Flying isn’t that hard, the only prerequisite is not being afraid to fall.

[last-babbling-jay]

And hey, we can’t die.

But if you can’t die, are you really alive?

[last-babbling-jay]

because we were children.

because you looked at the paint on our hands and called it blood. because then it was red on our hands, dripping off our fingers, choking us in its scent.

because we were children.

because one day you decided we had been free for long enough and shoved guns into our hands.

because we had to die to find peace. And even then it wasn’t freedom.

because we used to be children.

and we hadn’t reached a decade before red was all there was left in our ledgers.

[last-babbling-jay]

you smile again. it’s a soft thing this time, all hesitant and sad and we’re-not-gods-anymore.