22⚢

liminal headspaces are fleeting moments of depression and joy and emotional overwhelm and transcendence - this is a space for the word vomit that ensues. sometimes also a thought dump for cryptic unsaid words. all original work.

[liminalheadspaces]

this year's theme is nostalgia🪄🐇🧚🏻‍♀️✨️

[liminalheadspaces]

I'm sick and tired of being the angry dog, growling and tugging against the chain. Let me in. Let me lay down on the warm blanket by the fireplace. My fur may be mangled and wet, but it is still soft and glows like the sun.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Obsessed with reverence but abhorrent of worship. It is weakness, mind-twisting, indoctrinating. But will we always revere until we've scraped up our knees; until we've given too much of our palms; until we hate ourselves and turn green in spite? The jaded shine on your cheek, the same one that kissed the ground beneath my feet - was it always meant to appear? Were you never meant to stay?

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Yearning is a different kind of loneliness. The softest dreams are the hardest to wake from because the green vile jealousy seeps through my pores as I return to my world. Why couldn't it have been me?

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

I treasure these moments where the soft warm glow of my own street lamp floods the room like a little pocket of starlight in the wide expanse of our universe. Time is fluid and the veil is lucid and I can feel through the void itself and commune with all of me. For a minute, the silly little postcards and the goofy photos on the wall don't look cheap and boring, but their own kind of magic serving their purpose. What I would give to feel like this forever.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Being alone has helped me survive. In a strange way it has. There's nothing that could go wrong beyond my own doing. There's no one to invalidate or misunderstand and make things worse. I know that being alone will save me again. But at the same time, I know it is also slowly killing me. And I wonder when the slow-acting poison will finally catch up and my magical potion will work no longer.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Let my dreams be kind to me tonight. If you must enter them, please tread carefully and leave a trail of only soft whispers and loving words. I am so tired and I don't want to fight and hurt and bruise tonight.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

I don't know if you believe in the red string, but today, I feel it tugging and biting my skin. In the early hours of the morning, the thin threads squeezed my neck and wrists till I turned a beautiful lavender. I am left with nothing but your name and the epiphany that it was never about the mess we made. It was always about my fear, this unbearable pit at my stomach that gathered when I remembered today that you weren't a story I made up. That you were real. That you really saw me, perceived me in a way I had been waiting my whole life for. But bitter are the harmless wishes we weave myths around. Being completely seen petrifies me. I feel nauseous and frozen, and all I want to do is run away from my own body. I forgot what that felt like until today, until that thread tightened. And I fear tonight it will draw blood.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Pretend for a second you don't know me. Close your eyes, let the tips of your fingers trace the ridges in my palms. Can you feel it? Do you see all that I am? Do you see where I could go? Do you see all my selves and all their journeys? Don't you see, it was all predestined. You were always meant to crumple me in your fist. And I was always meant to thrive in the concrete. So many paths and all of them lead back to right here: your fingers in my palms, and us wishing we could rewrite history. We always land right back here.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

It's really cold out, much earlier than I expected. My cheeks are red like that night when I leaned over the bridge. I think about you often these days. Someone told me you're speaking to me in cryptic ways. I want to believe they're right because I don't think I'm staying here much longer, and I'd really like to see you before I go. There's still a few things I'd like to do before the cold frosts over.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Maybe one day I will know how it feels to love longing. I am captivated by longing in that it holds me captive, squeezes me raw. I return to it because I love the familiar softness of bruises. But I know it is dangerous; I know I have drawn blood before. I only hope that one day I might submit to longing without the danger, a longing that does not desire self-destruction.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Another year will pass and I will experience something so extraordinary I can't believe it and I will be thrown into a loop of pure awe and dazed fear. And once again, it'll pass and the equilibrium will be reset. Whoever said death in rebirth was right. I've shed these scales so many times that my past lives feel like a fever dream.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Loud laughter plays out on a bright animated screen. I glance to my side and share a smile with our group scattered across the row. Their smiles twitch. Uncanny Valley. I'm not supposed to be here. Oh no, I've done it again. I've wormed my way into people's lives and tricked myself into believing my own delusion of forever. Now, I must quietly excuse myself because I was never invited in the first place. Why must I only realize halfway through? Will I just be a dream? Something you made up in the haze of passing seasons? The routine of quiet shuffling up a theatre aisle feels familiar today, and before I know it, the door swings shut behind me. I fear I'm doomed to grow apart from ninety-nine percent of everyone I meet. I've run through so many people that I don't recognize myself anymore.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

I asked the tree, with its leaves littered across the pavement in the middle of summer, if it hurts to watch your guts spilled on the concrete floor beside your body. I asked if it would have anything left to shed by the time the cold breezes came around town. It whispered, it doesn't matter how I feel; it's the way it is. What matters is my bark that will be touched by the dawn of new centuries you will never see.

-serena

<3

[tiredandlonelymuse]

by Sarah Pardini

[liminalheadspaces]

On the bus today, I was thinking about how my future self wouldn't let me stay this way, so they definitely know more about me than I myself do now. For a brief moment, when we spoke, I could see them. Old and wrinkled. And it hit me - before today, before June 8th, 2024, I had never once seen myself old. Older perhaps, but not old, elderly. It felt like something inside me had healed and the timeline had shifted a couple months ago, and perhaps in this lifetime, I will grow old and I will know what it feels like to live for years and years.

-serena

<3

[liminalheadspaces]

Everything always comes back to the simple truth - is everything I'm feeling true or is there something deeply twisted in knots in my head and the sick mush of my brain will one day be studied in textbooks that explain the dreams of a mad author.

-serena

<3