how the light gets in

holly // uk // words // pictures

[lifeinsoftfocus]

senescence //

[lifeinsoftfocus]

i can't scrub your touch away -h.b. // six word story

[lifeinsoftfocus]

orient express //

[lifeinsoftfocus]

vanish //

[lifeinsoftfocus]

possess //

when we met last time you gave me flowers pulled up by the roots, soil & all, saying something about how you like to own a thing completely. i thought about giving myself to you, & just what that might mean. after dinner while we idly counted the corvids in your garden i almost asked again, why can't you leave the stems? but i bit closed the lips which you anyway brushed with your most sincere reply. so closing french doors against this city's tangled fevered soundscape i turned instead; followed you serenely, unhesitatingly, loftwards — & gave you everything that i have left -h.b.

[lifeinsoftfocus]

ever since you my soul itches -h.b. // six word story

[lifeinsoftfocus]

      think unholy things;

      impatience is a virtue

      lust, not such a sin…

-h.b.

[lifeinsoftfocus]

dreams sing deceptive

in flashback, the corrective

— not monster, but man..

-h.b.

[lifeinsoftfocus]

i'm sorry  |  please stop  |  it hurts -h.b. // six word story

[lifeinsoftfocus]

supplication //

[lifeinsoftfocus]

on undoings //

the bits of me you annexed weren’t really yours to take — were never meant to ache with knowledge quite so soon; call it the shock of the new.

a small wonder, then, the way my body learned to defer the intrusion — loan of numbness on the never-never that still maintains itself most days (most days).

but the knots you tied my head up in pulled themselves so tight that i get tangled up on bits of the past every time i try to swim to the surface for breath,

& all these valleys i gouged out of myself trying to get free make poor gills.

-h.b.

[lifeinsoftfocus]

be sure to mention me when you talk about ghosts with your future friends... -h.b. // fragment

[lifeinsoftfocus]

my guiltiest pleasure?       hope — the ortolan…

-h.b. // six word story

[lifeinsoftfocus]

dissonance //

[lifeinsoftfocus]

tête a tate //

the redblack thrum of your despair rings out across the decades — commanding my soul attend, & close; swallowing dull hum of the hasty tourist traipse.

prostrated, i come to pray in this closed room flatplane church of abstract jesus & his transatlantic offerings; drawn in once again to the gloomy hell of frames in frames, while behind my lids, the ever-present palinoptic bloom of future blood pools on your studio floor —

i seek no communion in here, & seagram sees no redemption even now, but still i leave each time with the impossible ache inside me

somehow quelled

-h.b.

[lifeinsoftfocus]

come to bed; let’s get unholy…

-h.b. // six word story

[lifeinsoftfocus]

alchemy //