Letters From The Gaps

A collection of writings! Old sad stuff, new happier stuff, horror, prose, and some writing that falls through the gaps

[letters-from-the-gaps]

A poem about my favorite Russian space dog

An ode to Laika

Patron Saint of One-Way

Trips.

Journeys you can’t come 

back

from.

Glimmering little star, Canis

Major Tom

I followed you.

all the way to the sound of 

hope and

joy and

wild green growth.

I owe you my life,

and I love you

very

much.

[apoemaday]

Bashō in Ireland

by Billy Collins

I am like the Japanese poet who longed to be in Kyoto even though he was already in Kyoto.

I am not exactly like him because I am not Japanese and I have no idea what Kyoto is like.

But once, while walking around the Irish town of Ballyvaughan I caught myself longing to be in Ballyvaughan.

The sensation of being homesick for a place that is not my home while being right in the middle of it

was particularly strong when I passed the hotel bar then the fluorescent depth of a launderette,

also when I stood at the crossroads with the road signs pointing in 3 directions and the enormous buses making the turn.

It might have had something to do with the nearby limestone hills and the rain collecting on my collar,

but then again I have longed to be with a number of people while the two of us were sitting in a room

on an ordinary evening without a limestone hill in sight, thousands of miles from Kyoto

and the simple wonders of Ballyvaughan, which reminds me of another Japanese poet

who wrote how much he enjoyed not being able to see his favorite mountain because of all the fog.

[apoemaday]

A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck

by Ilya Kaminsky

Alfonso stumbles from the corpse of the soldier. The townspeople are cheering, elated, pounding him on the back. Those who climbed the trees to watch applaud from the branches. Momma Galya shouts about pigs, pigs clean as men. At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?

[constellation-talker]

Written 11/10/2025

[letters-from-the-gaps]

Palaver, First Draft

A Story about a Gun Witch, a Vampire, and an Endless Night.

When Marigold wakes up, it is under an endless night sky, a deep indigo studded with a million pinpricks of glowing white light, the gleaming radiance of far-away stars. This comes as a deep and abiding shock to her: the last she saw the sky it had been a hateful high noon, as it had been the day before, and the day before that. She has not seen the night sky—  indeed any other sky—  for…days, she thinks, though surely that can’t be right. She closes her eyes against the sudden onslaught of the headache that’s been following her for who knows how long, a sharp thing that cleaves right down the center of her skull; white hot agony lances behind her eyes like forked lightning. She groans, voice scratchy and raw, and slowly pushes herself to sitting. The scene clicks into focus with precise, rapid detail: there’s a campfire burning a few feet away; the sand dunes roll towards the horizon in all directions; there is a man sitting opposite her, on the other side of the campfire.

“Good evening, Marigold Velfor. I mean you no harm.” 

The man’s voice is a desert wind blowing across a starving caravan. The man’s voice is the sun-bleached skull of some great predator finally cracking under the noonday heat. The man’s voice is the howling of starving scavengers straying ever closer to an uneasy camp. The fact that he knows her name is the least of Marigold’s concerns at this point. Her spine straightens, her posture suddenly proper and polite, the splitting image of a diplomat at a stately table. The image is especially impressive, given both the complete lack of any kind of table and the state of absolute disarray the diplomat is in. She looks like shit.

“Hail, stranger. Under what pretenses do we now speak?” She hates how her voice cracks, hates just how weak she sounds. Once, just once, she’d like her failing body to at least pretend it isn’t sprinting for the grave. The stranger’s expression barely changes beyond a subtle quirk of his lips, before that awful voice comes rumbling forth once more. 

“Peace, Gun Witch, peace. I seek palaver. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Palaver?” She can’t keep the incredulity out of her voice. “Been a very long time since I’ve been entreated for a palaver, stranger. Long time since any Witch’s been entreated for palaver…” He chuckles, just slightly, and by all the dead Gods the sound of it makes her skin crawl. His eyes—  a dull red, she notes with half a thought—  haven’t left hers since she woke. She’s pretty sure he hasn’t blinked.

“My, you are a canny one, aren’t you? My apologies for such an early blunder. I could’ve guessed it had been some time since I’d last crossed paths with a Leadslinger. Suppose I hadn’t anticipated it’d be so long the damn word would’ve fallen out of favor.” 

Every new word is a fresh jolt of fear in Marigold’s veins. She hadn’t suspected this would be a pleasant, normal interaction; she had walked for the better part of a fortnight under the unceasing glare of a sun that did not set, yet had woken up beneath the deepest and truest night she’d ever seen, one not marred by man’s own lights. She had been alone for far longer, a lone traveler through endless dunes and dead towns, yet she had woken up at a campfire already lit, not alone. Through it all, the sun-scorched desert, the annihilating sun, she had felt the constant weight of her Gun against her right hip. She can neither feel nor see that most crucial extension of herself now, no matter how hard she looks with eyes or feels with her own sharpened Sight. She has woken up nearly unarmed, with every disadvantage, the deck stacked against her so brazenly as to be almost beyond reproach. She almost feels giddy.

“I’ll forgive you the blunder if you’d tell me what I can call you, stranger.” 

“Very polite of you, Miss Velfor,” he says with what seems like genuine warmth. “You can call me John, should it please you.”

“Well met, John. D’you have any water, by chance? My throat is fuckin’ killing me.”

That gets a genuine laugh out of the man called John, a terrible thing that wrenches itself free from his throat. He reaches somewhere to his left and throws her a waterskin, a full waterskin, a full waterskin that her hands frantically report is full of cold water. She thanks him before she forgets her manners, brings the skin to her lips and takes a long, slow pull. She wants to drink more. It’s cold, and it washes over her dried-out throat like a sermon, and it takes all of her willpower and the stern voice of her teacher to put it down after a moment. Too much too fast and she’ll be sick. John looks as though he hadn’t moved at all, statuesque across the fire. Looking at him more closely does nothing to illuminate who he might be, where he might have come from: his clothes are worn, nondescript, out of fashion by several decades; there are no insignias or logos anywhere on his person that Marigold can see. His voice, haunting as it is, carries only the faintest traces of an accent she cannot place for the life of her. Were she a younger woman, were she still a foolish girl, she might even mistake him for a mirage, a heat-stroke illusion conjured from her animal subconscious.

“So,” Marigold says, “you seek to palaver, d’you?” The water quiets that awful headache, throws darkness over the lightning behind her eyes, and she takes cautious pulls from the waterskin, careful not to flood her dried-out system. John grins again, cracked lips pulling back from pearly white teeth, speaking with that awful voice from nowhere.

“I do, Miss Velfor, I do. I come seeking palaver with you, Gun Witch of the Sixth Chamber, and I do so bearing both gifts and terms.” 

“You’ve done your homework, Ser John: rarely does anyone who seeks audience with a Witch possess the foresight to come so armed.”

“You flatter me, Miss Marigold!” John’s smile widens, grotesque in a way that Marigold’s animal hind brain can’t articulate to her fore brain; she thinks that the firelight catches on the edge of something… sharp. “But I’ve always had a weak spot for the stuff.

“The gifts I offer freely. Regardless of the terms, they are yours: water, to recoup your lost strength and keep it through your journeys hence; rations for a week or two; safety, here at this campfire, until such a time as our palaver has passed and the sun has risen once more.”

Marigold can’t help the way shock creeps across her face, and she silently curses her traitorous expression. She barely spares a thought to the idea that the goods might be poisoned or otherwise tampered with. There are easier ways to die than double crossing a Witch, and John does not strike Marigold as a man eager for a terrible death. After a moment’s pause she gestures for him to continue.

“The terms are simple. I desire knowledge about the things transpiring beyond this desert, knowledge both logistical and circumstantial. I want to know things, Miss Marigold, both facts and stories, myths and data. In return, I offer my honest and truthful answer to any question you pose, provided I am able to answer it at all.” John’s posture shifts steadily forward, closer to the fire, to Marigold. Now, she’s certain— this is not a normal man: his teeth are far too sharp for that. Part of her—  the part of her that longs, always, for the Gun—  urges caution, urges violence. It wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to decline this offer, to turn her back and sleep…

“The terms are amenable, Ser John. We have an accord; a palaver is struck.” There’s a thrum of power, a sense of weight that settles over her shoulders, the familiar feeling that deals always leave her with. Something sacred settles over the pair of them. John feels it too, she knows, she sees in the way he straightens up, and the way his dull red eyes seem to brighten, ever so slightly, in the campfire’s glow. There is a pause, a moment of amicable silence, before the questions begin.

Many of them are, true to his word, logistical. How long has she been walking; how far was the last town she stopped in; what is the name of the place she came from; how many Chambers are there now; and so on. A Witch from a higher Chamber— the 3rd or 4th, perhaps, certainly the 2nd— would likely find themselves suspicious of these questions. John is far from subtle, after all. It’s quite obvious he’s creating a map in his head, an outline of the world beyond these accursed dunes. Marigold doesn’t feel even a hint of paranoia. She isn’t positive yet but she’s fairly certain she knows what John is, and regardless of the particulars Marigold has grown terribly familiar with the sight of starving men: John may not want for food or for water, but he’s so hungry for stories that she’s shocked it hasn’t killed him. He drinks down every detail she provides, hangs onto every word regardless of significance, politely asks for clarifications and expansions at nearly every turn. Marigold Velfor weaves for him a map of the world as she knows it; the thing called John stares at every line, every named place, every spot where the map is unfinished, with the same kind of reverence. Eventually the conversation lulls; Marigold wets her throat with another pull of water before she speaks.

“Ser John, I have my first question for you, if you don’t mind?”

“Of course, Miss Marigold— I promised as much, didn’t I?”

“What— and please know that I don’t mean to be rude— what precisely are you, John?”

For a long moment the only noise is that of the campfire, a miniscule symphony of crackles broken by the occasional pop. John’s eyes turn distant, far away, as if he is lost down the roads of some long-forgotten memory. Marigold does not move, but she does not find herself afraid: if John had wanted to kill her, there had surely been easier moments. Even without her Gun she knows she could put up one hell of a fight. No, she doesn’t think John will kill her, and so she lets the silence hang over them, lets it grow and stretch until it is almost a third body at their palaver.

“Old, for one,” he finally begins, “though you guessed as much already. I am…well. Perhaps it is easier to start with the things I was. I was a man called John— I won’t call John my name, anymore, but it used to be— and I wasn’t quite a Witch, like yourself. I was a generation or two behind the very first to bear that name: we did not deal in magic, Miss Marigold, but we were experts when it came to the dealings of lead.” John’s hands are remarkably expressive, Marigold notes, and she kicks herself for not recognizing a gunslinger’s hands earlier. His voice is still awful, unnatural against her ears, but there’s a hint of musicality to it. She thinks he must have been a mighty fine singer in his youth. He continues, “‘Sheriff’ is the wrong word, but I don’t know a more accurate one that you’d also understand…it’ll do for now. I used to be a sheriff. I like to think I was a damn good one, too: fair as I could be, even-handed even when the only thing I thought someone deserved was a shallow grave. The point is I tried, Marigold Velfor. I…” He trails off again. The part of her brain that’s responsible for keeping time tells her, despairingly, that they’ve been talking for hours; the endless canopy of stars above them has not moved at all. This perturbs her, distantly, but is ultimately ignored. If the choice is between ‘eternal night’ and ‘eternal noon,’ she knows her choice.

“‘Course, every good gunslinger meets their fork in the road. Mine had red eyes and remarkably sharp teeth. I don’t know if you’ve figured out a cohesive word for them, these days. We called ‘em all sorts of things, few of them accurate, none of them flattering. Mine caught me…oh, let’s see,” he said, looking out into the East, squinting at the endless legions of identical dunes, “few miles from here, over yonder. I won’t waste either of our time and explain what you can probably guess.”

Marigold can see it in her mind’s eye: the sudden flash of a body in frantic motion, the horrible glint of razor-sharp teeth, the bright hot crimson of blood violently introduced to the night air. He wouldn’t have seen the thing coming. Wouldn’t have stood a chance even if he had: whoever John used to be died, right then and there (she’d bet good money he got his shot off anyways). She lets the old gunslinger— because past the teeth and the eyes, past whatever else is wrong with him, John is one of her long distant kin— collect himself for a spell.

“What happened next, John?” She asks.

“The damndest thing, Marigold: I got back up. The sun never rose for me, neither, though I’m fairly certain that’s a uniquely ‘me’ problem. Who knows,” he grinned, “maybe this desert just really fucking hates gunslingers, eh?” They both laugh at that, two relics, two dogs too old to learn new tricks, two strangers sitting around a campfire trading stories. 

The sun will rise soon. John won’t see it— he’ll be long gone by then— but Marigold will wake up to a cool, bright morning beside a dead campfire, well rested and well fed. Her Gun will be next to her, her rucksack full of rations, both waterskins cold to the touch. She’ll get up; she’ll break camp, far more carefully than she might have any other night; she’ll leave behind a map; she’ll leave this accursed stretch of barren sand far, far behind her. 

[letters-from-the-gaps]

I WAS TALKING TO A FRIEND ABOUT POETRY AND HOW MUCH IT HURTS

The best poems I’ve read have been home invaders that smash in my window and before I know it

are prying open my rib cage with bloody 12-point hands and holding up my twitching heart to my face

saying to me THIS IS THE THING YOU FEEL WITH AND THIS IS THE THING YOU ARE

AND THIS IS THE THING YOU FIGHT AND THIS IS THE THING  I’M SPEAKING TO. DO YOU HEAR ME? THIS IS THE POINT.

[letters-from-the-gaps]

I'm Still Thinking About Ada Límon's Lies About Sea Creatures

[letters-from-the-gaps]

Hi! I'm still alive, I swear! Currently abroad finishing up college, so doing MUCH more writing; expect more of this! Love you all!

[letters-from-the-gaps]

Palaver, First Draft

A Story about a Gun Witch, a Vampire, and an Endless Night.

When Marigold wakes up, it is under an endless night sky, a deep indigo studded with a million pinpricks of glowing white light, the gleaming radiance of far-away stars. This comes as a deep and abiding shock to her: the last she saw the sky it had been a hateful high noon, as it had been the day before, and the day before that. She has not seen the night sky—  indeed any other sky—  for…days, she thinks, though surely that can’t be right. She closes her eyes against the sudden onslaught of the headache that’s been following her for who knows how long, a sharp thing that cleaves right down the center of her skull; white hot agony lances behind her eyes like forked lightning. She groans, voice scratchy and raw, and slowly pushes herself to sitting. The scene clicks into focus with precise, rapid detail: there’s a campfire burning a few feet away; the sand dunes roll towards the horizon in all directions; there is a man sitting opposite her, on the other side of the campfire.

“Good evening, Marigold Velfor. I mean you no harm.” 

The man’s voice is a desert wind blowing across a starving caravan. The man’s voice is the sun-bleached skull of some great predator finally cracking under the noonday heat. The man’s voice is the howling of starving scavengers straying ever closer to an uneasy camp. The fact that he knows her name is the least of Marigold’s concerns at this point. Her spine straightens, her posture suddenly proper and polite, the splitting image of a diplomat at a stately table. The image is especially impressive, given both the complete lack of any kind of table and the state of absolute disarray the diplomat is in. She looks like shit.

“Hail, stranger. Under what pretenses do we now speak?” She hates how her voice cracks, hates just how weak she sounds. Once, just once, she’d like her failing body to at least pretend it isn’t sprinting for the grave. The stranger’s expression barely changes beyond a subtle quirk of his lips, before that awful voice comes rumbling forth once more. 

“Peace, Gun Witch, peace. I seek palaver. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Palaver?” She can’t keep the incredulity out of her voice. “Been a very long time since I’ve been entreated for a palaver, stranger. Long time since any Witch’s been entreated for palaver…” He chuckles, just slightly, and by all the dead Gods the sound of it makes her skin crawl. His eyes—  a dull red, she notes with half a thought—  haven’t left hers since she woke. She’s pretty sure he hasn’t blinked.

“My, you are a canny one, aren’t you? My apologies for such an early blunder. I could’ve guessed it had been some time since I’d last crossed paths with a Leadslinger. Suppose I hadn’t anticipated it’d be so long the damn word would’ve fallen out of favor.” 

Every new word is a fresh jolt of fear in Marigold’s veins. She hadn’t suspected this would be a pleasant, normal interaction; she had walked for the better part of a fortnight under the unceasing glare of a sun that did not set, yet had woken up beneath the deepest and truest night she’d ever seen, one not marred by man’s own lights. She had been alone for far longer, a lone traveler through endless dunes and dead towns, yet she had woken up at a campfire already lit, not alone. Through it all, the sun-scorched desert, the annihilating sun, she had felt the constant weight of her Gun against her right hip. She can neither feel nor see that most crucial extension of herself now, no matter how hard she looks with eyes or feels with her own sharpened Sight. She has woken up nearly unarmed, with every disadvantage, the deck stacked against her so brazenly as to be almost beyond reproach. She almost feels giddy.

“I’ll forgive you the blunder if you’d tell me what I can call you, stranger.” 

“Very polite of you, Miss Velfor,” he says with what seems like genuine warmth. “You can call me John, should it please you.”

“Well met, John. D’you have any water, by chance? My throat is fuckin’ killing me.”

That gets a genuine laugh out of the man called John, a terrible thing that wrenches itself free from his throat. He reaches somewhere to his left and throws her a waterskin, a full waterskin, a full waterskin that her hands frantically report is full of cold water. She thanks him before she forgets her manners, brings the skin to her lips and takes a long, slow pull. She wants to drink more. It’s cold, and it washes over her dried-out throat like a sermon, and it takes all of her willpower and the stern voice of her teacher to put it down after a moment. Too much too fast and she’ll be sick. John looks as though he hadn’t moved at all, statuesque across the fire. Looking at him more closely does nothing to illuminate who he might be, where he might have come from: his clothes are worn, nondescript, out of fashion by several decades; there are no insignias or logos anywhere on his person that Marigold can see. His voice, haunting as it is, carries only the faintest traces of an accent she cannot place for the life of her. Were she a younger woman, were she still a foolish girl, she might even mistake him for a mirage, a heat-stroke illusion conjured from her animal subconscious.

“So,” Marigold says, “you seek to palaver, d’you?” The water quiets that awful headache, throws darkness over the lightning behind her eyes, and she takes cautious pulls from the waterskin, careful not to flood her dried-out system. John grins again, cracked lips pulling back from pearly white teeth, speaking with that awful voice from nowhere.

“I do, Miss Velfor, I do. I come seeking palaver with you, Gun Witch of the Sixth Chamber, and I do so bearing both gifts and terms.” 

“You’ve done your homework, Ser John: rarely does anyone who seeks audience with a Witch possess the foresight to come so armed.”

“You flatter me, Miss Marigold!” John’s smile widens, grotesque in a way that Marigold’s animal hind brain can’t articulate to her fore brain; she thinks that the firelight catches on the edge of something… sharp. “But I’ve always had a weak spot for the stuff.

“The gifts I offer freely. Regardless of the terms, they are yours: water, to recoup your lost strength and keep it through your journeys hence; rations for a week or two; safety, here at this campfire, until such a time as our palaver has passed and the sun has risen once more.”

Marigold can’t help the way shock creeps across her face, and she silently curses her traitorous expression. She barely spares a thought to the idea that the goods might be poisoned or otherwise tampered with. There are easier ways to die than double crossing a Witch, and John does not strike Marigold as a man eager for a terrible death. After a moment’s pause she gestures for him to continue.

“The terms are simple. I desire knowledge about the things transpiring beyond this desert, knowledge both logistical and circumstantial. I want to know things, Miss Marigold, both facts and stories, myths and data. In return, I offer my honest and truthful answer to any question you pose, provided I am able to answer it at all.” John’s posture shifts steadily forward, closer to the fire, to Marigold. Now, she’s certain— this is not a normal man: his teeth are far too sharp for that. Part of her—  the part of her that longs, always, for the Gun—  urges caution, urges violence. It wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to decline this offer, to turn her back and sleep…

“The terms are amenable, Ser John. We have an accord; a palaver is struck.” There’s a thrum of power, a sense of weight that settles over her shoulders, the familiar feeling that deals always leave her with. Something sacred settles over the pair of them. John feels it too, she knows, she sees in the way he straightens up, and the way his dull red eyes seem to brighten, ever so slightly, in the campfire’s glow. There is a pause, a moment of amicable silence, before the questions begin.

Many of them are, true to his word, logistical. How long has she been walking; how far was the last town she stopped in; what is the name of the place she came from; how many Chambers are there now; and so on. A Witch from a higher Chamber— the 3rd or 4th, perhaps, certainly the 2nd— would likely find themselves suspicious of these questions. John is far from subtle, after all. It’s quite obvious he’s creating a map in his head, an outline of the world beyond these accursed dunes. Marigold doesn’t feel even a hint of paranoia. She isn’t positive yet but she’s fairly certain she knows what John is, and regardless of the particulars Marigold has grown terribly familiar with the sight of starving men: John may not want for food or for water, but he’s so hungry for stories that she’s shocked it hasn’t killed him. He drinks down every detail she provides, hangs onto every word regardless of significance, politely asks for clarifications and expansions at nearly every turn. Marigold Velfor weaves for him a map of the world as she knows it; the thing called John stares at every line, every named place, every spot where the map is unfinished, with the same kind of reverence. Eventually the conversation lulls; Marigold wets her throat with another pull of water before she speaks.

“Ser John, I have my first question for you, if you don’t mind?”

“Of course, Miss Marigold— I promised as much, didn’t I?”

“What— and please know that I don’t mean to be rude— what precisely are you, John?”

For a long moment the only noise is that of the campfire, a miniscule symphony of crackles broken by the occasional pop. John’s eyes turn distant, far away, as if he is lost down the roads of some long-forgotten memory. Marigold does not move, but she does not find herself afraid: if John had wanted to kill her, there had surely been easier moments. Even without her Gun she knows she could put up one hell of a fight. No, she doesn’t think John will kill her, and so she lets the silence hang over them, lets it grow and stretch until it is almost a third body at their palaver.

“Old, for one,” he finally begins, “though you guessed as much already. I am…well. Perhaps it is easier to start with the things I was. I was a man called John— I won’t call John my name, anymore, but it used to be— and I wasn’t quite a Witch, like yourself. I was a generation or two behind the very first to bear that name: we did not deal in magic, Miss Marigold, but we were experts when it came to the dealings of lead.” John’s hands are remarkably expressive, Marigold notes, and she kicks herself for not recognizing a gunslinger’s hands earlier. His voice is still awful, unnatural against her ears, but there’s a hint of musicality to it. She thinks he must have been a mighty fine singer in his youth. He continues, “‘Sheriff’ is the wrong word, but I don’t know a more accurate one that you’d also understand…it’ll do for now. I used to be a sheriff. I like to think I was a damn good one, too: fair as I could be, even-handed even when the only thing I thought someone deserved was a shallow grave. The point is I tried, Marigold Velfor. I…” He trails off again. The part of her brain that’s responsible for keeping time tells her, despairingly, that they’ve been talking for hours; the endless canopy of stars above them has not moved at all. This perturbs her, distantly, but is ultimately ignored. If the choice is between ‘eternal night’ and ‘eternal noon,’ she knows her choice.

“‘Course, every good gunslinger meets their fork in the road. Mine had red eyes and remarkably sharp teeth. I don’t know if you’ve figured out a cohesive word for them, these days. We called ‘em all sorts of things, few of them accurate, none of them flattering. Mine caught me…oh, let’s see,” he said, looking out into the East, squinting at the endless legions of identical dunes, “few miles from here, over yonder. I won’t waste either of our time and explain what you can probably guess.”

Marigold can see it in her mind’s eye: the sudden flash of a body in frantic motion, the horrible glint of razor-sharp teeth, the bright hot crimson of blood violently introduced to the night air. He wouldn’t have seen the thing coming. Wouldn’t have stood a chance even if he had: whoever John used to be died, right then and there (she’d bet good money he got his shot off anyways). She lets the old gunslinger— because past the teeth and the eyes, past whatever else is wrong with him, John is one of her long distant kin— collect himself for a spell.

“What happened next, John?” She asks.

“The damndest thing, Marigold: I got back up. The sun never rose for me, neither, though I’m fairly certain that’s a uniquely ‘me’ problem. Who knows,” he grinned, “maybe this desert just really fucking hates gunslingers, eh?” They both laugh at that, two relics, two dogs too old to learn new tricks, two strangers sitting around a campfire trading stories. 

The sun will rise soon. John won’t see it— he’ll be long gone by then— but Marigold will wake up to a cool, bright morning beside a dead campfire, well rested and well fed. Her Gun will be next to her, her rucksack full of rations, both waterskins cold to the touch. She’ll get up; she’ll break camp, far more carefully than she might have any other night; she’ll leave behind a map; she’ll leave this accursed stretch of barren sand far, far behind her. 

[letters-from-the-gaps]

I WAS TALKING TO A FRIEND ABOUT POETRY AND HOW MUCH IT HURTS

The best poems I’ve read have been home invaders that smash in my window and before I know it

are prying open my rib cage with bloody 12-point hands and holding up my twitching heart to my face

saying to me THIS IS THE THING YOU FEEL WITH AND THIS IS THE THING YOU ARE

AND THIS IS THE THING YOU FIGHT AND THIS IS THE THING  I’M SPEAKING TO. DO YOU HEAR ME? THIS IS THE POINT.

[letters-from-the-gaps]

I'm Still Thinking About Ada Límon's Lies About Sea Creatures

[lelif]

on survival

-// @aridante // @orivu // @buzzkillgirls // ? // ? // richard siken// @cemeterything // moomin, tove jansson// @disenchanted-killjoy // isn't that enough, shawn mendes// @ prettytheyswag on twitter// @ coletyumuch on twitter// ? // ? // bird by bird, anne lamott// undertale// @strawberrycircuits

[thetrial]

Visit Original Link

couldn’t stop thinking about this post

[ramblingsarah]

gotta lie down every time I remember this recording and the post about it

[anarcho-weirdism]

babe are you okay i saw you were reblogging “No Children (live at the bottom of the hill)” again?

[minotauri]

Humans pretend to be good in small ways for social clout but underneath where it counts, very definitely all selfish and bad.

[recklessmoss]

𝙻𝙰𝙸𝙺𝙰 𝚃𝙾 𝙶𝚁𝙾𝚄𝙽𝙳 𝙲𝙾𝙽𝚃𝚁𝙾𝙻 — I miss you , Have I told you that yet?

[dappermouth]

- Dog star, burning through a vast black sky -

In memory of Laika: a greater friend to mankind than mankind was to her.

[spyglassrealms]

Dog Star burning through a vast, black sky

Heaven-Wolf, so far above, yet we still hear your cry

Thirty thousand years your kind has kept our sacred bond

Laika, dear, your memory forever carries on

[inbabylontheywept]

@letters-from-the-gaps I summon thee

[letters-from-the-gaps]

@inbabylontheywept I have a big ass print of this!!!!

[letters-from-the-gaps]

Patron Saint of Bloody Teeth

An attempt at getting a little less sanitized with my writing. Fair bit of gorey imagery coming up, so no hard feelings if that's not your jam!

They added a new Saint

Did you hear? And not a 

Mild one, either. Not one you could de-

Fang, de-claw, turn into something spineless 

And empty. Gilded and hollow. No, this Saint came

Barreling into Heaven riding a stolen car. Yes,

Riding, not driving. She had her entrails wrapped around its

Steering wheel, was holding her small intestine like reins. Like

She was driving a chariot. Heaven had forgotten that the 

Sun was pulled by chariots before He got 

Involved: she figured it was time to remind Him. Anyways,

After the terrible clamor of trumpets and horns and the 

Billion billion wings of ten million angels subsided, and 

After Saint Peter had gotten his wits back–snatched from the edge, 

Inches away from joining the sinners he had just sent downstairs–

They asked her who she was, with their many mouthed formalities. 

Word on the street is they asked her:

“WHO ARE YOU, INTERLOPER, TO SULLY THE GATES OF THE LORD YOUR GOD? WHO ARE YOU, VICIOUS LITTLE THING, TO LEAVE TIRE TRACKS ON THE HEAVENLY CLOUDS OF THE LORD YOUR GOD?”

A buddy of mine says they sounded like fog horns, like lighthouses, like 

Falling cities and burning stars. I think they sounded tired. And very

Afraid. 

She did not step off her smoldering chariot, and she certainly didn’t let

Go of her bloody reins. She looked at them, that heavenly host arrayed against

Her–seraphs and cherubs and towers and wheels aplenty–and she smiled 

With a hundred golden canines, and she said to them:

“MY NAME DOESN’T MATTER ANYMORE–IT DIED WHEN I DID, SMASHED AGAINST THE ROCKS OF A LIFE I WASN’T CUT OUT FOR. I’M THE PATRON SAINT OF BLOODY TEETH; PATRON SAINT OF BROKEN KNUCKLES; PATRON SAINT OF SIN-STAINED LOVERS AND SMOKE-TINGED FUCKBUDDIES AND EVERY MISBEGOTTEN FOOL ON THIS ROTTEN EARTH. YOU SHOULD GIVE ME YOUR GOD, SO I CAN EAT HIS HEART. I’LL SETTLE FOR A HALO.”

And lord, her voice was awesome. Not in the way that

I said it, before I ate shit skating. Not in the way that the movies would

Butcher it, turn it into spectacle for spectacle’s sake. I mean

Awesome the way they meant it in the Old Testament. It shook

The pearly gates, sent the residents of the great beyond scattering for 

Cover. For shelter. My buddy went with them–he told me, later, that her voice sounded

Like a train, like a riot, like a dying coyote and a roaring fire. I thought

She sounded like the kind of person I needed to hear

From when I was on Earth. She sounded like her voice hadn’t

Quite caught up with the hormones. She sounded like she could kick

My ass, and every ass in sight. She sounded like she loved me.

There wasn’t a whole lot they could do, that 

Heavenly host. When the Big Man–Hallowed be his 

Name, Blessed be his steps–came by to see what the 

Divine holy fuck had happened, he stopped right in his

Dvine holy tracks. He whispered something to an angel next to him,

And then he said something to the feral chariot rider who had

Smashed his fucking fence, and then she laughed.

She laughed long, and hard, till she was coughing up burning blood, 

Crying acid tears. She laughed till He had to ask if she was 

Alright. She told Him to go somewhere I won’t repeat,

And then she asked if her halo would

Hurt.

He told her it wouldn’t.

I think she was disappointed at that. It didn’t stop her though.

The Patron Saint of Bloody Teeth. Her name isn’t

Important–she said so herself. Her name is whatever

You need it to be. Alive, or dead, or a secret

Third thing. 

And, God as my witness, she wears her names like buckles and

Belts and straps and collars, like ladder laces and 

Torn off patches and flags of a million colors. 

Brighter than the sun.

Not as bright as her halo.

Or her 

Teeth.