ад

Welcome to the dying. I don't bite.

[inkskinned]

no, i understand the only way out is through, i know this and i am very familiar with the concept and i have forced myself through and through and through and through, like an arrow to an apple; like a bird to the air. i push myself through mesh and sieve and stormdrain.

i am saying this thing is like stone to me. i am saying i have taken a pickaxe and a plow and a chisel and a spoon to it and i have made no dent or scratch in the surface. i have pushed and pushed, sisyphus beside me, and still my skin gave before the stone could.

i am telling you if there is a passage i do not see or some kind of clever way to thwart this enemy i'll take it. i've been up down and sideways of it, i've whispered to it and cajoled it and sang to it. i have tended to it like a kitten and i've kicked it to the curb. i have exhausted all available avenues and approaches as are available to me. i'll do whatever stupid fetch quest or answer the riddles three. i am standing here and every part of my body hurts and the stone is unmoved. please. if you know how to resolve this, i'm begging you.

and still, you say. the only way out is through.

[asfdhgsdkjhgb]

something about lonely dogs, idk

gnaw at the heartbeat - wenyi xue / moon song - phoebe bridgers / let dead dogs lie - silas denver melvin / @strawberry-crocodile / nice pup - chloe moriondo / @ashstfu / @valtsv / @inkskinned / it will come back - hozier / @twoheadedfawnn / @/simplyrotten / clean slated state - the altogether / speeches for dr frankenstein - margaret atwood / faulty - leila chatti / belovéd - yves olade / against the kitchen floor - will wood / st bernard - lincoln / imposter syndrome - sidney gish

[inkskinned]

i hold onto it like a feather or more like a four-leaf clover. at some point, it's going to happen. at some point, we will all get the news of his passing.

we play prophet, my brother and i, discussing the point endlessly. he says that if it happens at night, we probably won't hear for a few days while they scramble; a governmental weekend at bernie's. i say i want it to happen live on camera; my brother says, chuckling, that's dark. oh well, it's dark, then - suddenly now we have to believe in the sanctity of life, just because he's an old white man?

it's going to happen. i keep it like a lozenge or a warm cup of tea. i like to imagine where i'll be. will i be mid-dinner or on a walk with my dog or at work. i'll have to take a few sick days, immediately. maybe i'll be on a date with my pretty girl, and we'll have to pause the dinner to run to the car, consummate dessert. i imagine how i'll find out - some part of me kind of wants it to be through that one destiel meme, or thousands of crabs dancing. maybe i'll be in a crowded room: and for once, a newsreel push notification goes off, and every person starts laughing.

my friends and i invent possibilities. what will we do, in those blissful few hours after? surely we should get a tattoo of the day and the very minute, that's got to be a new kind of angel number. or maybe we should fill the house entirely with bubbles, walk around in lingerie; surely we should bring our instruments and voices onto the streets. in every version of the future, we all mention dancing, because yes, haphazard and wild and free, we are going to be dancing, kicking up our heels and howling. it will be beautiful, we keep saying, the joy will be so wild; the omnipresence of it almost cloying.

it's going to happen, i hold onto it like a stone fruit or a seedling. i make promises to those around me: if you ever get two calls in a row from me, it's because somebody is dying. or it's because the person that died is that somebody. we pinky-promise: as soon as you know, please tell me. call me at work. call me if it's 3 in the morning. i want to know as soon as you know. i don't even care if i'm told by my sleep paralysis demon or the spider that lives on my ceiling. tell me.

of course after it happens we'll need to do a bunch of other things. the work will not stop, it is unyielding.

but i picture that moment, of course. and i know, warmly: at some point, it is coming.

[smakkabagms]

lately, hills castle-covered, predatory with fog and   fields where branches, peeled to white bone, dangle harsh and pure as the moon everything is lit this way: who will put me back together? watery as the well in the pitchblack night, whose mouth     swallowing itself sits fat and silent as gemstones lost to the bottom - for all of my wanting I cannot parse my way through this density, cannot bring myself     to surface where light and land seems to still and wait - for me? no, the world moves on - leaves crinkle in their woodland caves,     wolves dance across the moorlands, my bones, pressed to oblivion, will not recall the name of the flesh they Carried And lost -

[smakkabagms]

a selkie splits my skull on the flux of seawave that swells and bangs like mad god fists on the gray shoreline rock, I remember moorlands soft and moody, a lover inescapable And I escaped, I came here, to the shoreline where I saw her, perched against the rocks, the stone - I felt the property of my body fledge and flee and wither like haulm in thatching season when it should not rain yet   water came, like a horizon of blood, whetting my life down to slippery bone wind tore out my dreamy roots, in my hands I grappled with thin wicker baskets and the remnants of a memory no longer mine - it was a loss like fire, releasing that basket, letting it float down into the sea and be consumed and then there was running, the violence of angels and suns, there were wars forged by gods and fists I buried into the water a Hunter’s mind

[smakkabagms]

dark as sloe, as pitch, as void-touched flux herons careen over the gray sea, flickering like stars in murky water: all of this world sits at the edge of our understanding like animals who wait to drink from fresh spring pools               I did not ask for pardon when I should have this is the human way: too frail, too indulgent of our own narrowness                   it is easier than admitting over coarse sips of morning coffee, black and unwieldy, none of this means anything anyway

[smakkabagms]

all day, that suffering distinction and             having made a mess of it all, I make my bed             stuffy, dark-as-a-cauldron, sleepless             as a screech owl - and O, all our cries amount to nothing! My apron, sea-stained, pockets         full of cowries that click as I walk I decide at some         point -for it had to be a decision made  - that I         would embrace colors and sounds and be seen

[inkskinned]

i both hope i never see you again and also wish you could fucking see me now; you miserable fuck. i both picture a clarifying moment of personal vengeance but more often i sit back in my peace, just grateful that you no longer know any part of me. and yes, i know you're probably somewhere pantomiming happiness, pretending like nothing happened, like you don't even remember me - and yes, that shit makes me furious when i think about it. but i'm in therapy. i'm healing. less and less i feel the wound bleed. more and more often i am so content it spills out of me. i got my laughter back, i got back my dancing. i love myself more than you ever did.

so the adage of revenge is maybe validated. i have my incredible, vibrant reward: without you, i've made a life well-lived.

[inkskinned]

I just want to be the person you write poetry about. Not even good poetry. The poetry of 1 AM text messages that try to spell out love in sloppy metaphors about stars and smoking. The kind of poetry of a lonely windowpane in rain. The kind that swells up in your throat while you’re drunk so when you speak it into my voice-mail it’s just, “You’re so beautiful and goddammit I’m in love with you.” Rearranged letter magnets on the refrigerator kind of poetry. Small note in the jacket pocket kind of poetry. The wordless poetry when you’re staring out the black windows of an empty train. Half-rhymed abandoned words you scribble out between meetings and forget on your desk. I want to be the person you try for, the one you spend hours scratching your head and tugging on your hair trying to frame into language beyond “fuck everything else you’re all I care about.” I want to be unspeakable to you, but glittering in your veins so you feel like if you don’t talk about it you’ll explode into stardust. What I’m saying is I want to matter to you like you do to me. I’m saying write me poetry.

[dysphoria-things]

(no beers in) do you guys think i'm redeemable

[textpostscymraeg]

(heb unrhyw gwrw) ydych chi bois yn meddwl fy mod i'n waredadwy

[dearwithwings]

a night of sleep on either of these would fix me

[filmnoirsbian]

Joan Tierney

[inkskinned]

i stayed for this; for murky coffee at the bottom of my cup. for pulling another tick off my dog. the sun came down, though - i wish you could have seen it - and i swear to you; everything was so violently beautiful that even god hiccupped. it is a long life of small moments. i am so glad for that. i work a knot out of my hair. i am briefly annoyed by the omnipresence of dust. and above, overhead in magic: the moon has tilted herself - a gentle, yielding cusp.

[paper-wounds]

[a-berrante]

[paper-wounds]

[nixscriptum]