My heart feels sick today
Just like yours two weeks ago
If I’d had to place my bets
You were the last I would’ve guessed
Monterey Bay Aquarium

ellievsbear

roma★
occasionally subtle
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
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tannertan36
tumblr dot com
we're not kids anymore.
Claire Keane
ojovivo
Jules of Nature
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PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
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@listenthreetimes
My heart feels sick today
Just like yours two weeks ago
If I’d had to place my bets
You were the last I would’ve guessed
On my first day of college our professor said,
“Look to your right and look to your left.
“One of you won’t be here by Spring term.”
So rigorous was the start of the program.
I wish they’d told me this in high school,
“Look to your right and look to your left.
“One of you will be dead by 20, one by 30,
“And the last will survive with the guilt.”
Maybe then I would have been prepared for this.
Maybe then it wouldn’t hurt so fucking much.
Maybe then I could have done something to help.
Maybe then I would have sacrificed myself for someone else.
But they don’t ever seem to stop dying,
And I haven’t stopped mourning for 18 years.
But I tell myself every time, “At least I’m still alive to feel it.”
As I mourn another untimely death, “I’m still alive to feel it.”
Rest in Peace Katie <3
Before the era of cell phones
You drove me down a foreign road
To force me out into the rain
Miles from businesses or homes
Now you say you are in my city
A one hour vacation layover
To check your box and declare
“I have visited my daughter.”
The emotions burn sharply
Even after thirty years of neglect
I continue to swallow the tears
As I tell you I will come visit
I realized I’ve had this space for 10 years and I don’t do anything with it anymore. I don’t really write poetry anymore. I started this during a time when I had nothing else and the words flowed from a heart mangled and broken, and this was a part of that healing process. 10 years later I’m such a different person. This year has been the peak of my successes so far, and I haven’t meant to be absent but I think I’ve grown into a new chapter, and honestly just been so damn busy with all that has happened. I fell in love, this time in a different deeper and quieter way. I feel a calm and content I’ve never felt before. I know that this is it, my soulmate. I’ve traveled to four countries for work this year and another just for pleasure. A university paid me to travel and speak on a panel for the students, I’ve met multiple incredibly talented Grammy artists and world renowned people through my job and tackled multiple of the largest events I have ever managed or designed and executed. I live alone now and finally feel financially comfortable in a way I never could have imagined I would achieve wirh the path I chose. While I haven’t been writing as much, I have spent the last year or two deep in book submissions and editing, of which I’ve slacked off lately because of how busy I became, but I will rekindle in the new year. If I ever publish a fictional novel, you will be the first to know. While I still feel far from happy the majority of the time, I am proud to say the depression is so well at bay that when it does hit, I feel as if I’d forgotten what it was like. It’s hard to remember when I felt this dark every day, and now it visits here and there over the months and weeks, but doesn’t linger, doesn’t sit, and I guess all these years of intense therapy have really paid off. I’m reflecting because I went to visit family for the holidays for the first time in many years. Things have changed, yet the people haven’t changed at all. It’s made me realize how different I am now. I don’t belong here, I belong back in the new life I have built. These are some pics from my only afternoon off in Guam on a short tour to Korea and Guam for work just a week or so ago. I don’t know who even still participates in this site from all those 10 years ago, but I will always hold a special place in my heart for this space and what it has meant to me with the release of words I never knew I had, and the subsequent healing. If you’re still around, hit me up on Instagram (in bio). It’s the only place I exist in social media anymore, but I’ll try to maybe update some photos from this year here in the near future.
All my love <3
I gave up on love.
Time and time again I let myself be abused and hurt until I settled more and more, every time a bargain worse than the last, until I felt nothing and thought that was the safest thing I’d ever felt.
Nothing betrayed me.
I let myself be broken by something that never was worth a fraction of the pain caused, let it take the mere shreds I had left holding me together until I became the nothing I had settled for.
I built myself back up again.
It’s hard to settle when you don’t let anyone close, and I spent so much time on my own that I actually managed to fall in love with myself, until suddenly I wasn’t hiding anymore but simply too fucking bright to let anyone dull what I had finally discovered.
And then I met her.
Stranded for six days in another city, I was never looking for this impossible thing, but the second her eyes found mine I could not turn away from her. Days later she held me for a moment, and I remember the entire world disappearing when I realized what I felt for the first time in her arms was this thing I’d always settled without. My heart never disentangled from that embrace, until months later she came to stay with me in my own place.
I found love.
In the most unlikely of places, in the most incredible of ways, because it is when you’re done looking that these things tend to strike you square in the face. Her dark eyes pierce into my heart, while her gentle hands touch me with a consent that could only be acquired through past violation, for in some strange way our histories of pain have allowed us to provide each other the ultimate safety.
My heart is hers.
I feel more now than I’ve ever felt, as if the intensity of this new love somehow outweighs the previous lifetime of pain, and the fear that kept them at arms length simply fails to exist, because one doesn’t need to open a heart that they already live within.
We belong together.
For the first time in my life the empty space in my chest has been filled, by a girl who is no doubt the most beautiful in the world, and our pieces that always belonged, have finally found their way home.
<3
How could I have loved
When the word changes meaning
When everything else feels dull
In comparison to this intensity
How could I have loved
When my heart has tripled in size
Since the day we crash landed
Into each other’s lives
So how could I have loved
When you haven’t left my mind
For a single second since
Your eyes first locked onto mine
Bustling cities in foreign countries
Pockets lined with new money
Walking the streets all alone
Successes leaving me empty
Trapped by my own accomplishments
While I long for her arms to hold me
Her shoulder to lie my head on gently
Our love resounding inside deeply
But instead I’ll eat by myself again
And see her face in every passing
Crying in the back row of the West End
Wishing I was home and not in London
Her eyes lost focus
As autopilot engaged
I drew myself back
So she would feel safe
Her head on my chest
I wasn’t looking for sex
Heart shattering to pieces
As she later thanked me
Because I was the only one
To not force my way past
Their hands struck her
As easily as I hold her
For fifteen whole years
She thought love must hurt
In the way he grabbed her throat
Or the ways they pinned her down
To steal all of her pieces
That fit perfectly in my heart
My hands do not know violence
As I kiss her scars and bruises
The things that once hurt her
Feel safe underneath my touch
Filled with a love so powerful
That all of her guard is lost
I promise to always be gentle
To protect her from ill intentions
For should anyone try to harm her
They will be met with my justice
She speaks so highly of a man
Who would fuck anything that moved
When I gave her everything I had
Except the only thing she wanted
A sex drive equal to that of a man
She should have left me before fucking him
The narrative changes
One year later
Unfaithfulness turns
From shame to pride
I know the truth
Of how you loved him
I know the truth
You loved him more
There has been a hole in my chest
Ever since I was old enough to know
That I could feel for someone
What they couldn’t feel in return
Since the depression took a hold on me
A deep loneliness began carving slowly
Even in the arms of other women
Who fleetingly gave me something
That within mere hours would be gone
Leaving behind the hole that always was
But ever since we opened up fully
Your love has filled me to near bursting
I will never again feel achingly empty
Your gentle fingertips sealing the seams
Around your piece I was always missing
In my heart where the hole once lived
<3
Betrayed before you were even a teen
You endured fifteen years of abuse
Addiction to handle the beatings
That came from those closest to you
The ones who should have intervened
Absolutely failed in their parenting
Yet against all odds you managed
To heal yourself on your own two feet
You are the definition of success
As you help those like you every day
I am so deeply in love with you
As you’ve shared with me your pain
The gentle safety of my open arms
Is yours for the rest of your days <3
Today I feel heavy
Tomorrow I will feel better
Even if I can’t see the surface
I know what direction I’m headed
Having survived thousands of days
Burdened by swinging depression
I’ve learned to just keep swimming
Even when I can’t see any light
I know that it is where it always was
Just past the threshold of my eyesight
So I just keep swimming forward
Knowing I will eventually reach air
They think love is all that matters
Yet what is love but just a feeling
That needs an action to give it meaning
And you acted more than anyone
When you made a choice to betray me
So what was love to you then?
But some other man’s naked body?
You told him you loved him too
And that is what will always wreck me
Sure enough in time
The moment finally came
When I could give nothing
Except for who I was
And like I knew she would
She turned away and left
And all the damage done
Was amplified in her wake
All expenses paid to Paris
Asking me to speak on panels
I think I fell in love the other day
With a girl more broken than me
While his spine deteriorates slowly
The cancer will take her by the fall
I can feel it settling on my heart
Wondering how I’m supposed to feel
When so many good and bad things
Can be happening all at once