noël blue

he/they ★ words :)

[noeltopia]

father forever

in the bath when i was three popcorn grew on the apricot tree outside the window. me and him, babbled hands as daddy sings. daddy’s girl, daddy’s boy, daddy’s little something, once. sweetie, darling, tumour child, raising you was pulling teeth and hitting you upside the head but i’ll read stories in your bed and tell you of the apricot tree that grows popcorn just for me. i saw him slope away from me inside a mall in leicestershire; he shows his love through sixty pounds instead of sending fifty-five and no more popcorn seems to grow on the apricot tree outside the window

[noeltopia]

simplification

i churn grey dread and orange panic inside the great mass of myself. worry has become the new normal. dread is grey and quiet at night and panic is orange and spiky. i long for the rolling and smoothing of calm and the having of nothing to do. sometimes i wish to see blood on my palms as justification. purification. melt ugly feelings into sensical terms and force them romantic under the light. gentle orange spotlights at all times. i have to hold myself and whisper “love, you are not in any danger” and the words are sugar cherry red and sweet upon my tongue.

[noeltopia]

green thirteen

i’ll be buried in my bedroom, filled with moss and torn by time. i flagged it with a grave marker back when i turned thirteen, and was sentenced to a social death because i was unclean; a large, unsightly thing. drown me in the reservoir. lay my weary bones to rest and leave me well alone or else, laugh at me in death when my ears can hear no more, or, at least, i can’t be told. after all, i’m stagnant water  with a film of ugly algae; sitting mildew since thirteen. i don’t want to be to blame for once. leave my bones to dust here until the end of time. no one will visit my deathbed and mutter amongst themselves “how on earth did they bury them up on the second floor?” and outside the window, the sky will be blue, and the grass freshly cut and crisp green.

[noeltopia]

billie-sue pachinko

i am youth so i am yellow, blue, purple, all the girl colours, i am pink bikes and fine hair, i am plastic barrettes in the floorboards. derealisation. i am winter. i am the dark yellow of a winter night and i am the blurring falling snow and i am grey cold empty dread. i am nostalgia. i am a memory. i am demential synapses and i am the cloggy glue in the blood and i am neuronal cell death. i am the static on a forgotten record. i am disc rot. i am failing electronics. i am a movie left in the dvd player of a moulding television. i am a beloved movie in a rotting pile of wires and cathode tubes, i am a beloved childhood movie, i am a scratched but loved movie, i am a movie left to die in a tv abandoned and ruined by time

[noeltopia]

deermice and harefish

passing cars flick glowing retinas over curled-up bodies deep down in the ditch. we were not made for fluorescent lighting and the world at night seems far too bright than the gentle beams from our childhood cars dipped low and slow, shining just for us. and we held out our books from the back seat and we hoped to catch licks of yellow light like fireflies as it flickered by, then bedtime under orange streetlights. they cradled us in their hands like mice. we were the future, and they wanted it bright.

the bench in the classroom flickers red-pink-clear and the words on the whiteboard fall into numbers and squiggle falsely under squinting eyes into rabbits, badgers, dormice, hares, a foreign language to the brave new world, and a strange look on from the weary teachers, who watch the world as it plays the river and selfishly erodes its own riverbanks, but were stuck fast in the net early on and have to watch children play in the dirt a little less for every generation that passes. we squirm together like fish under fractions.

we are the new deer caught in headlights and you will find us at the side of the road hunched and bleeding, dazzled and cold.

[noeltopia]

new england lament

we have hushed conversations about you over my lunch and their breakfast, a quiet sermon over the phone and stilted sentences in messages. you collected us like bottle caps, crusty blue, green, red, lime metal, and you put us in a drawer and then forgot of our existence. we discuss it at great length. over my toast, and their eggs. you told me once you were afraid of arizona’s heat from the safety of the big house with the fish in massachusetts. now you paint next door. you softened bone and pulled ribs from my chest as easily as you pluck roots from the ground, and tucked them away deep in your sleeves, and took you and your blood-stained linen, and discarded them in a corner in new mexico, 5000 miles away from my softening brain. “everything is because of this,” i whisper, and above the orange is the whistling of the wind.

[noeltopia]

sunshine

i was born with deep green sludge in my veins. i didn’t cry; i looked around the hospital room oblivious to the deep green sludge of my mother. i did not cry until it burned my tiny nostrils. september was ashamed of me, and certainly november was as distant as ever.

a small child stood in young, dull april; my pink fists clutched at mismatched pencils. banishment to the bedroom brought colour to the walls as the green sludge of my mother clattered pots in the kitchen. sound makes you watch your step, and anger in the dawn makes you watch your temper.

the hurried absence of a father by may drenches a house with thickened spite. teenagehood, alone with her for the first time, her undisguised hatred for the way i took her potential and twisted it into the balloon animal of myself. deep green bitter spite, contempt, remorse,

the generational curse of a mother and a daughter.

[noeltopia]

fantasy city

i lost my voice in my room about four years ago. i choked on a hoarse throat under fairy lights long broken. i broke the desk i wrote words down on about six weeks ago. i took a mallet to it when the screws didn’t cooperate.

everyone is meant to leave the nest about two years ago. instead, i sigh at badly-stacked washing up on the dish rack. this room should be no longer mine as of about two years ago. instead, the caustic present churns with past poured down the plughole.

once, there were chemicals, sunrays, colours, petrol-stained peonies and tarnished morning stars. now there is quiet in the morning, rancid nostalgia, the taste of my mother’s perfume punctuates my sprite.

they built a dam in my brain out of the past four years, stoppering sentience behind it like trapped rivers. i used to feel rainwater coolly on my palms, but now i don’t quite recall exactly when the storm dried up.

now there is nothing, a void space between the eyes, dull, tired, and empty clouds softening all vision. growing ever blanker as four months passed, then four years, disconnecting shivering hands from the brain.

hubris at sixteen and obscure visions of the future push your hands to write meaningless poems of getting older. but how can i keep on building cities of empty fantasies when the bleak realities of real life encompass everything?

[noeltopia]

i started this blog in december 2019. it was the first tumblr i was ever truly active on, and i had no idea how tags or anything worked. i was freshly 16 and at the age where i was just starting to discover who and what i was, and a lot of it came through in the poetry i posted here. i had very rigid ideas of what literature and poetry was, as i had stopped doing it for a very long time. i wanted attention. i was eager, although i didnt know it then. i was hopeful.

covid hit three months later, in march 2020. i was in the year group whose gcses were cancelled. i posted one poem right as covid hit, in march, and then my last poem i posted in september of 2020 around when i started sixth form, after the longest summer i will ever have in my life. it was also the best summer i have had in my life. i spent 5 months calling with my best friends so constantly to the point i woke up at 6pm and went to bed at 9am just to talk to them. i realised my identity and tried to come out to a mother i would quickly find out was transphobic. i made a lot of friends. i started to gain some real footing on who i was.

i blinked and i am in march 2024. it is four years and a few days since i posted my second to last poem, which is a number that feels truly shocking to type out as it feels like it has been a year at most. in 2019 i turned 16, but in 2024 i will turn 21. this fact upsets me as the absolute formative amount of ageing i went through between the ages of 13-16 feels like it was my entire life and that there isnt room for anything else worthwhile to occur. on my 18th birthday, i held the frog teddy i bought for myself and listened to lord huron at full volume to block out the fear blurring its way into the edges like a migraine. on my 19th birthday, i was alone and terrified in my university dorm. i can't even remember my 20th birthday because of how insignificant it was. ageing, past the age of 18, went from being something exciting to something terrifying in a way i told myself it never would. and yet i am still here, and yet i still age. in a few months, it will be my 21st, and it will likely be at home, and it will likely be alone.

in the space between 16 and now, a lot happened. there were some pretty good things. they sit tiny next to the fact i lost my best friend in 2021 because they turned out to be quite literally the worst person i have ever known on this planet. i will never forgive them for what they did. realistically, every problem i hold against them is so small in the scale of the universe that maybe it isn’t worth holding onto at all, but i have not learned that lesson. i am aggressively refusing that lesson, in fact. at least for right now.

my mental health also took the biggest nosedive it has ever taken. sixth form shut down all sense of self discovery i had once i begin to nosedive in my academics and lose all of my friends. i still havent regained my footing. it has been 2 years since i left sixth form, and i still havent regained my footing.

but it is nice to look back over this blog and not regret a single thing i wrote.

all of this is to say i am going to start posting here again. and, in the most cliche way possible, i am going to do it for me this time. and i am going to post whatever i want without caring whether or not it is refined enough, because life is scarily fleeting and i can do whatever i want.

i was first allergictodrowning, and when i thought that was stupid i became autumndrowns, and now i will be something else that i havent decided yet but it will definitely be equally as stupid. :)

[noeltopia]

the autumn and the crows

i hear the crows on the breeze

and i kick my way through burnt leaves

and i actually feel alive,

instead of feeling like

i dont breathe, because

the rest of the year im not sure i do

but when autumn drifts back around

always autumn

the cold sun hits my back and

the sky is just the right blue and

the air is crisp and i breathe it and

theres the crows up in the trees and

theyre shouting at me, calling me, and

i think the same thing

why does the world feel so alive now

because it sure didnt before

but now everything is breathing with life

and i hear the crows calling

even though the leaves are dead

and the flowers are dying

just like they do every year

but the leaves come back every year

and the flowers come back every year

and i come back every year

for the autumn and the crows

[noeltopia]

(undeserving of) sympathy

the stars twist out of their places

from the night sky, warping

under the pressure as

i dodge your gaze.

the void of your eyes stares anyway.

why did you leave? you ask.

i stare off into the space of the dark evening. 

i am the one to blame here.

i don't have an answer, and

you seem to have realised that too.

you finally take your black holes and leave,

shutting me away with the stars

that refuse to stay still

as i search for just a

please, just a

little bit of sympathy.

[noeltopia]

(daisy) chains

i still like to think of you as

the summer afternoon where you pulled

each and every daisy you could find from the grass 

and threaded them together with careful fingers, 

lacing their stems together in a way

i could never quite follow,

never quite replicate.

you held up your work to show me, and i smiled.

today, i saw the daisy chain for the first time in a while.

it was long kicked under my bed into the dust. the

petals have fallen off, the stems long yellowed just like

you turned sour in those last few weeks,

shattered voice leaving behind tiny shards of glass that

cut my hands and scratched their way into my heart.

i threw the remains of the chain away,

ignoring the way the last petals

crumbled to dust between my trembling fingers.

[noeltopia]

sea foam blues

5 am again. too early to find myself underwater, 

drowning in the lack of something distinctly you, and yet 

the sea foam sky continues to lighten, bathing the window in 

deep shades of blue-green as i reluctantly rub the sleep from my eyes.

i watch the way a stray drop of water runs aimlessly down the pane, 

pooling with the others on the ledge,

a little ocean rushing past right outside my room.

the stars fade from the sky, diamonds dulling on a watery backdrop,

tarnished silver rusting into unrecognisable coppery excuses

as i sit on my bed and smooth down the sheets, fingers brushing over crisp linen.

but even as the day wears on, bright teals of the morning fading 

into its regular green-blue haze, the water keeps on pouring

and i hear you in every drop that falls.

[noeltopia]

lover’s monologue

3:32 pm, august 14th, 2010

you hold my hand for the first time.

we’re sat on the floor of the apartment, legs crossed, not yet feeling the stiffness from the uncomfortable nature of wooden flooring. the afternoon sun seeps in through the window at our left, bringing out the strands of gold laced through your eyes like a jar of deep coppery honey lifted to the sunlight. we started off having a conversation about what to have for dinner, but we’ve absent-mindedly strayed further and further away from the topic until we’re half sustaining some conversation about cats, half watching an old rerun of jeopardy on the downright awful television set i got for ten bucks at a yard sale. 

it’s my favourite way to spend an afternoon. sun out, tv on, and you, warm at my side, going on about some weird breed of cat i’ve never even heard of.

our conversation has lulled, and i find my eyes drifting back to the tv as the jeopardy answers flash up on the dim little screen. im about to ask you if you’ll compromise with a pizza, but in that moment, through the noise of the tv, the sunlight, your warmth against my side, it happens.

you move slowly, at first. the side of your hand brushes against mine, cautious, as if you’re testing the waters, seeing how i’ll react to your adventurous move. i stay still, letting you feel the way, skin unbelievably soft against my own. you must have taken my stillness as a good sign, because you venture further and your fingers gently, carefully, lace their way through mine until we’re entwined.

i forget what i was even going to ask. my entire train of thought is derailed, redirected to crash into a brick wall, but the wall is made of fondness, warmth, and growing love. i turn to look at you to find those golden eyes - your eyes - fixed on me, and when all i find in your face is happiness and a hint of nerves, i lean forwards and brush my lips against yours until you grow impatient and kiss me properly.

when we eventually pull away, your smile is enough to warm me long after the sun sets and i have to reluctantly get up to turn on the light. we don’t end up getting pizza, after all: we get your original idea of indian takeout, and it’s the best food i’ve eaten in a long, long time.

[noeltopia]

Can I send a poem request?

please do!! i love writing from prompts so go right ahead my dude :)

[noeltopia]

whats in a name

in my heart, im

scrawling the word in

bloodied ink as i go.

i have no pen to do it with,

but i trace the outline of the 

letters, gently cupping them with

my hands. it is precious,

the one thing i hold close to me

even though if they knew

what meaning it held,

it could become poison ivy

wrapped around my throat.

but for now, i hold it with

gentle hands. i chose it. it is mine,

and i will continue to hold it

until my hands can grip no more.

[noeltopia]

golden days (ii)

buttercups are starting to gather by

your grave. i pause in the

silence of the graveyard to look,

and then crouch down, reading

your name for what feels like the 

hundredth time, the inscription on the stone 

burned into my mind permanently. the sun

comes down on your resting place,

soft rays dusting your headstone and

reminding me of the way it used to

shine on your hair. the breeze gently

sways the grass, unheard under the

quiet hum of traffic from the road outside

the little cemetery, but i dont hear anything

but the faint song of your voice in the wind.