WREAK HAVOC ON YOUR OWN MYTHOLOGY
a manifesto of sorts. by Kiernan Norman.
SAY EVERYTHING YOU’RE NOT SUPOSSED TO SAY.
Bite down. Spill.
Dredge the truth up from your ribs.
If it makes someone uncomfortable,
you’re getting somewhere.
If it makes you flinch, you’re close.
If it makes you ache, press harder.
LOVE LIKE YOU’RE BURNING IN REAL TIME.
Love with your hands open,
a pocketful of matches,
no fear of third-degree consequences.
Let it ruin you. Let it rewire you.
Let it make you unbearable.
If it doesn’t change the shape of your mouth,
if it doesn’t show up in your dreams,
it wasn’t love—
just a joke that went on too long.
YOUR SUFFERING IS NOT CURRENCY
What you create from it is.
Blueprint grief.
Canonize longing.
Turn your past into poetry
and then charge admission.
TIME IS NOT REAL, BUT YOUR BONES DISAGREE.
You will feel the weight of years
in your joints.
You will remember things in your muscles
before your mind catches up.
A decade will pass,
and your skin will still tingle
at the memory of hands
that have long since vanished.
You are a clock made of flesh,
and time leaves fingerprints.
IF YOU MUST GO, LEAVE LIKE A COMET.
No quiet exits.
No slipping away unnoticed.
Let them watch as you burn through the sky.
Let them stare until their eyes ache.
Let them wish they had followed you.
Let them wake up years later
with your name still in their mouth.
YOUR SOUL HAS A B-SIDE. PLAY IT LOUD.
The version of you that winks at the moon?
Real.
The one who writes letters
just to bury them under snow?
Real.
The one who flew to Vietnam
to live with a girl she met on 2010s Tumblr?
Also real.
You are a thousand lives,
and all of them are real.
GOD LIVES IN BATHROOM STALLS AND BUS STATIONS.
You will not find divinity in neat places.
You will find it in the drunk girl in the club bathroom,
telling you you’re beautiful.
In the way strangers help each other
at baggage claim.
In the way someone leans in, just slightly,
when they laugh.
Holiness is the street musician
playing for shadows.
Start praying to that.
THE ONES WHO LEAVE NEVER GET TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.
Let them wonder.
Let them rot in their own unknowing.
Let them wake up years later
with your name still in their mouth.
Let them carry it
like a stone in their stomach.
THE DEAD STILL HEAR YOU. SPEAK ACCORDINGLY.
Your ancestors are listening.
Your ghosts are listening.
The version of you
who didn’t make it past that worst night—
she is listening.
Speak like you owe them something.
Because you do.
YOU ARE NOT A SUNDAY MORNING.
You are a Friday night
with blood in your mouth.
You are the reckoning,
the consequence,
the aftermath,
the mess they wake up to
and the ghost they dream about.
EVERY SETTING HAS A VERSION OF YOU STILL WALKING AROUND IN IT.
You are still twenty-four,
draping yourself around campus,
all short skirts and Adderall-eyes,
like you’re everybody’s daydream.
Still eighteen,
getting on the D.C. Metro with a book,
riding up and down the red line
just to pass the evening.
Still thirty-three,
kissing a face you’d been curious to taste
for ten years.
Still eleven,
jumping on the trampoline with your backpack,
waiting for the bus to come.
You are haunting yourself across time zones.
Be kind to the versions of you
who don’t know how the story ends yet.
EVERY SCAR ON YOUR BODY IS A SENTENCE IN A LANGUAGE YOU’RE STILL LEARNING.
Your skin is an unfinished poem.
Your bones are a form of punctuation.
Some wounds never fully close—
they just change their wording.
YOU HAVE LEFT YOURSELF IN PLACES YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO.
There is a version of you
still laughing at that one house party
where you lost your heels
but found a switchblade.
There is a version of you
still running down E 15th Street at 3 AM,
blinding rain, howling.
You are scattered across time
like loose change.
Do not try to gather yourself back up.
You were meant to be infinite.
IF YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN, GO DOWN IN FLAMES.
If they break your heart,
write them into legend.
If they leave you,
make sure they haunt themselves.
If you cry,
let it be in a ball gown,
mascara running down your face
like a Renaissance painting.
Do not suffer quietly.
Wreak havoc on your own mythology.
YOU ARE NOT A HALF-HEARTED THING.
Love like you’re starting a fire
in a dry field.
Love like it will be written about.
Love like you’re trying to leave a scar in history.
Slip between history’s fingers
like a well-kept secret.
Or better—
be the kind of catastrophe
they build monuments for.
PARTS OF YOU Will DIE IN BEDROOMS WHERE YOU WERE LEFT ON READ.
Parts of you will die
in cities that still call your name.
Parts of you will die
in the arms of people
who kissed you like they meant it
and lied.
And yet—
Their mother still asks about you.
You still feel their breath in your hair.
The love stayed—only they left.
YOU ARE A FAITH. ACT ACCORDINGLY.
Worship your own survival.
Build altars to the times
you almost didn’t make it.
Pray at the church of your own spine.
There is no church holier
than the space you take up.
Your body is a relic.
Your mind is a temple.
Your lungs are a sanctuary.
IF YOU MUST GO MISSING, MAKE IT A SPECTACLE.
Disappear into the night
wearing red lipstick and borrowed jewelry.
Slip through the cracks
like a motel vacancy sign at dawn—
Flickering.
Fading.
Gone.
Make them wonder if they imagined you.
Make them see your silhouette
in places you’ve never been.
Make them ask strangers,
“Did you see her?
Did she leave a note?”
IF YOU MUST RETURN, BURN THE BRIDGE BEHIND YOU.
The past is a country
where you do not have citizenship.
Stop applying for visas.
Stop sending postcards.
If you return,
take only your bones,
leave only an echo.
EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL HAUNT YOU. LOVE IT ANYWAY.
Your favorite books will betray you
by meaning different things as you age.
The songs you once danced to
will one day leave you breathless with grief.
Every person who ever touched your skin
left fingerprints under your ribs.
This is the price of having a body.
This is the price of believing in beauty.
Keep paying it.
IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL ALIVE, IT WAS NEVER A WASTE OF TIME.