My Heart Wanders.

Known as the flight risk, the wanderer and the one you'll never see coming.

[feral-ballad]

Blythe Baird, from If My Body Could Speak; “Eat”

[Text ID: “I am trying to stop doing / things that don’t make any sense. Body, / forgive me. I am trying. I am trying. I am still trying.]

[feral-ballad]

Claire C. Holland, from I Am Not Your Final Girl: Poems; “Ginger”

[Text ID: “I got cursed, in every way a / woman can. / You kill yourself, over and over, / to be different.”]

[lunchboxpoems]

WHAT YOU MISSED THAT DAY YOU WERE ABSENT FROM FOURTH GRADE

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas, how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else— something important—and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. This prompted Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks, and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear; also, that you have enough. The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence. And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions, and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost, and one person add up to something.

BRAD AARON MODLIN

[fairydrowning]

"I did not like to be touched, but it was a strange dislike. I did not like to be touched because I craved it too much. I wanted to be held very tight so I would not break."

-Marya Hornbacher, Wasted

[fairydrowning]

"I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do."

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, More Than Just A House

[myheart-thewanderer]

My mind has begun to go crazy tonight as I search the city streets for you.

We created these buildings we do not care about and I can not help but want to set them ablaze when I think of you.

In my mind, the beautiful ones always burn first in the fire, just as you did on that July day.

I will not have remorse for my destruction and tearing down the walls built to keep me out.

Why should I?

Your brown eyes still haunt them all even when I rest, so why should they stay alive when I wake?

I know you are happy on your side of the world. I do.

I know that the buildings there are built with the sweetest of intention and crafted to exude both their grandiosity and their humble origins.

But here?

Here each town looks the same and every city is much too hot.

I feel it in my bones that I will collapse in each of them before my days are over and I finally die.

Oh, how I wish you had taken me with you to see the toucans in Panama.

I wish you could have shown me your origins with pride.

I wish you could have shown me how beautiful humanity can be when it is built by our shared condition and the nurturing we find in community.

I would have flown every plane, sailed ever ship and written every letter to be by your side.

Alas, I never got the chance.

So now, I wake to dreams of you and pray to go back to sleep.

I scream at the sun and he laughs.

I cry to Luna and she weeps alongside me.

I talk to the universe and she has no answers for me.

The sun, the moon and the universe know it is all just a matter of time for me to reach you.

I suppose I know that, too.

But for now I will rage against the passage of time and hope my body will forgive me for the fight.

[4s1na]

"my darling, you will never be unloved by me you are too well tangled in my soul"

— Atticus

[thelatinlibrarian-deactivated20]

<3

[badassentity]

A Victorian home being moved by boat in Tiburon, California, in 1957

[malojasnake]

— Sunrise, by Louise Glück

[drewyyy]

[artthatgivesmefeelings]

Jusepe de Ribera (Spanish, 1591 - 1652) Saint Jerome and the Angel of Judgement, Detail, 1626

[mephistopheles]

[myheart-thewanderer]

I do still wonder if you miss me. At this point it's a nasty habit of mine.

I wake up with your name on my lips and fall asleep dreaming of being enveloped by your arms.

It's not fair that life moved on.

My mind rages against the passage of time and my body tries to keep up.

I am not even a half a century old, but my mind believes itself to be old enough to conquer all the knowledge acquired since the first man was born.

I have always been a stubborn woman and quick to fight, but lately my body has grown too tired of it.

So I rest and think of your blue eyes and wonder what they will do if they ever see me again.

I like to believe they would greet me the same as they did when we first met and you gave me that crooked smile.

I like to believe that the electricity of your touch could still break the power grids as we try to pretend that we do not need each other.

My body misses you every day it is away from yours. It craves you as if you were sent to heal me from the damage my own mind caused.

Alas, I know we are both human and we can not fix each other and I will only come back to you in my dreams.

I love you so intensely there that when I wake I must find a way to cope.

On good days, I run and play with the birds who seem to understand my want to fly with them.

On bad days, I turn to a bottle of red wine and a cigarette with a movie playing softly in the background.

Life moves on. I will be happy soon without you as you are without me.

But until then I must learn what it means to sit with the loneliness and the aches it causes.

I must learn to recognize my own face and body as it ages with my mind.

I must learn to fight for myself again and to fight for the world I have always wanted to save.

[hwhwgwhnwnwbwbwg-deactivated202]

“𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘮𝘺 𝘣𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘐’𝘮 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨.”

-𝘑𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘚𝘢𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘯 𝘍𝘰𝘦𝘳

[weltenwellen]

Anaïs Nin, Fire: From “A Journal of Love”: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1937

[without-ado]

Full Pink Moon in Scorpio by Rami Ammoun (Apr. 2021)

[myheart-thewanderer]

What do you think about when you write on your grief?

Honestly? It depends on the day.

Sometimes I am only writing about my grief to cope with it and try to make sense of it's weight.

Other days, I am playing with it simply because I have held onto it for so many years.

On my bad days, I think of sunburns and funerals and wilting flowers.

But, on my good days? Well... I think of the moon, my friends, my family and the writers/poets/artists who shared a space with me when they could.