a.

sometimes an emotion

[myrhnhn]

From The Bungalow

we're six months in and now the rags have a place to go1 and the kettle wakes the kitchen up every nine we have memorized which parts of the house the balete sheds the most leaves and we have left the old plants  to survive in the garden all on their own now that the rainy days have begun

on the weekends there is a familiar quiet and we spend the afternoons falling asleep in the living room half-watching horror films with wine glasses on the floor  stained with leftover moscatos

and one time i heard a friend, almost a sibling now, say, "this feels nice,” i felt it so profoundly– a peace found undemanded appearing in a moment so mundane "is this what ten years into marriage looks like?" i said maybe, and that was the moment i began taking note of what peace feels like in its rawest form promising myself to never get involved with someone unless his presence feels like coming home to a clean, warm house after a day out in the storm

1 I used to live in an old, refurbished bungalow with two other friends. It was a spacious home of at least 200 sqm, and the middle of the house where every room meets is a huge kitchen with a bright skylight above. We were starting out, we didn't know how living together works. I brought a lot of kitchen fixtures and utensils, but despite the space, there were no homes for everyday things, including the kitchen rags. It took us six months to find a home for each.

[maanl1cht]

hello tumblr, my safe space since 2012—

i will be a published author with a book. forthcoming 2027. details soon. x

—A.

[myrhnhn]

Downpour

Rivers simply do not forget who they are if you take the water out of them. Droughts flourish for a while thinning the elongated stream, then the storms remind the river  where it used to be. 

We call it flooding. The river calls it remembering. 

I, too, am made mostly of the same things.  A body of water, some mud, some little careful fittings that keep me alive. 

Then the seasons keep changing and I forget who I am: sometimes for a moment,  a few days, sometimes a few years. 

And when I remember:  a huge downpour.

A few unintended casualties in the line of sight. 

Apologies for remembering that I, too, am living. 

[myrhnhn]

“I try my best to be brave,” is a lie I tell myself every day. I have been brave all my life, there is no other way to be. Even now as anguish takes hold of my life, I am brave. I take the long road. I walk through it alone. I pass the barren fields. I scoot over the glaciers. I am barefeet, calloused for the years they persevered. So many agonies protrude but I do not skip them. Later on I will have realized that some things in life are irrevocable, and this does not only apply to bad things. Yes. The fact is irrevocable. Written in history, in so much of my teenage poetry. There is no lie there. The hands that have touched me with filth, the stains my body took from it, the scar so fleshlike, so lifelike, colored with nature, almost invisible to the skin. It is so imprinted that on my deathbed, the physical body will fade and the only thing left to bury me with is this. It is irrevocable. But so is bravery: I have it once and I have it for life. It greets me as I walk out the door, a door seldom opened that the hinges are growing rusts on the edges. Bravery does not make sense of things. It does not tell you what to do–it is already in the doing, bypassing the thinking, the doubting, exclaiming: I will stand my ground for all eternity and though I may perish, you will not be able to take me down with ease.

[myrhnhn]

Oh my god, this feeling I feel is terrifying. What if it goes on for months, or years, or decades? What do I do with this and how can these clumsy hands be able to hold this without breaking? It is so terrifying to live. Happiness feels like a bowl of hot soup you're afraid to break while holding.

[myrhnhn]

“A woman who writes feels too much [...] She thinks she can warn the stars. A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl.”

– Anne Sexton, The Black Art poem

[myrhnhn]

23 December.

A dream: Waking up to an unknown town, one deprived of electricity and modern technology. Takes effort to make something out of nothing. It is midday, I am helping mother sort out something from a long cart. From where we stand, only a few houses can be seen. Then there is the ocean. The brown sand. I could not remember anything else but the people I am about to leave behind—just my neighbors, I don't have any feeling attached. I walked to the shore, the sun is behind me, strikingly hot. My shadow is bigger than me. I look back to see my mother still working. I don't know where I am headed but I rode a simple boat.

As I reach the next island I see only a mixture of greens and blues, the calmest shade of blue you would see in Instagram posts. The current fights hard, the huge rocks sitting by the ocean don't seem to dry. I am somewhere, in a place I don't know how to belong but I do. There is a feeling that I am dying in the dream, and is it why I am visiting this beautiful island? Hundreds of people are here, are they dying as well? There is an immense amount of happiness, the kind that makes you want to feel like you're about to die.

[wordsnquotes]

Anyone who cares about you has to realize that you need a little looking after, nothing else really matters.

Franz Kafka, The Letters to Milena