taking back my feelings like it's such a radical idea

aesthetic/poetry side blog. tags common triggers and whatever mutuals request.

[pcet-blog1]

she sold her sadness on street corners, made her fortune off clever wordings and bottled tears because misery doesn't need to dress up much to look like art.

[pcet-blog1]

i want to get naked with you. strip down to our bare selves, pull the cloth off our souls and be honest, let me see when you're at your absolute ugliest and i promise i'll show you how ugly can be valuable, can matter, i want to rub my mind against yours, get ecstacy, get high from conversation and laughter and nothing at all.

[pcet-blog1]

she looked at me and smiled like an abyss, her eyes were the kind of desperate you don't want to understand, and she told me she was leaving town, that i was the only thing she might want to take with her if i'd just say yes. once i read a newspaper that said a girl was found murdered. she couldn't be identified. the police were asking for help. i was eleven. i asked my dad what had happened, and he said, probably another one of those runaway kids, died a thousand miles away from home, from anyone who knew them. at the time i thought, how awful why would anyone ever risk that? it never struck me that someone might prefer to be buried in an unnamed grave to being found by the people who knew them, that family or relationship didn't always mean love. five years later and i still don't know what became of her. sometimes i wonder if she became a newspaper article, or maybe a footnote, saying 'unidentified body, police requesting help.' sometimes i wonder what she went through when everybody had their backs turned. if the mysterious torture she lived was so terrible that she'd prefer an unnamed grave in a town that doesn't know her tombstone should be marble, and her funeral march should be a stairway to heaven.

[pcet-blog1]

he was the kind of boy your mom warns you about, with a cesspool for a heart and honey dripping from his lips, but she never told you how sweet he'd sound when he told you about his music, when he told you about his love, when he told you about how he loved the way your hair fans out past your waist and the way it shines in the sun. she never warned you about how you know he's a bad choice and you go ahead and make it anyway, not in spite of the risk but

because of it.

[pcet-blog1]

his eyes were sky blue and surrounded by wrinkles; he'd been squinting at the sun for too damn long, as he'd say if you asked him. through car windows and the occasional bottle he'd stare at it, but never reach for it, he didn't think he stood a chance. he'd look, and he'd look with the kind of longing that erased everyone else, that left only the two of them, reaching for one another and never touching. he said it never upset him, and i knew it was the truth.

[pcet-blog1]

Inhale. Exhale. Filthy habit. Someday it'll kill her, but not today, not yet. The taste is bitter. The taste is sweeter. She tilts her head, looks at you, smiles in that puzzling way that always leaves you wondering. Dark brown eyes squint, can't quite look at the sun, not yet, she's Icarus without the available wax. She pulls herself together now, looks at you, sees you now. Asks you to leave her. You do. She didn't think you had it in you.

[pcet-blog1]

Today, she deposits the contents of her belly for inspection in the sink. The results come back affirmative: one-hundred percent pure desperation, mistaken for worship.

[pcet-blog1]

you look at me, and you're smiling, and all i'd have to do would be lean closer, tilt my head some and kiss you, right there, on your bright pink lips. painted, of course. i wonder what you'd say if you knew your best friend and chat partner in history kept thinking about putting her arm around your waist and holding your hand. just an inch to the left and i'd be kissing you like you were my girlfriend. i always change my mind and aim for the forehead.

[pcet-blog1]

a pink bubble hovers between her lips. she sucks it back in, chews, blows again. baby, she says, won't you buy me another drink? so you do, because it's really no good protesting like this.

[pcet-blog1]

he was the victim in January. you looked at him and saw prey, unwilling to defend itself, a weak but pretty boy ripe for debauching, who better to do the honors than you? sentimentalist, you called him one time, because as a cynic it was your job. the flush was expected as he confessed his dreams to you, but the smile was not. a branch of grapes just out of reach and you get him to gape at you in the shadow. how many innuendos can you pack into a sentence? it becomes more of a game than he is and the way he splutters makes it worthwhile. you have just buried a schoolmate, you'd think you'd feel something other than elation as he stutters his fables to you, but you are Bacchus and joy found in obscenity is the stuff you live for. you lean in towards him, closer, your faces almost touch and you shouldn't be this breathless, but then you grab a grape from the branch, thank god you're the taller one! and pop it into your mouth, roll it around and chew-- he doesn't wince. what a choirboy. hardly an ariadne, you think to yourself; you hated studying greek literature but wasn't there some beautiful satyr that was remarkably weak-willed and hung around dionysus? that's him, you reckon, and the sun beats down around him and his eyes are fixed on you still, and you think the wind might have stopped for a second (they say your best friend believes in nothing, but you think he at least believes that we all can be good, so in a way you're more the atheist than he is, hah) sometimes you really have to stop yourself from staring at how his hair catches the light, church bells in the background ringing, you don't think about vows as he meets your eyes and looks away like a fairytale heroine. always sounded so ugly, so why does he make it pretty the juice spills out on your lips, and you reflectively lick them, and then he winces, then. then you lean in and kiss him, and when he pulls away it's all over, and you soothe his exclamation with another, and then you're on him, and come to think of it wasn't Ampelos beloved by Dionysus all along? your mythology teacher seemed to skip over, and God but you wish you'd known. you were the victim in May.

[pcet-blog1]

pour honey into my ears, baby, i'm waiting for the proof of your affection except not so much proof as rationalization, and how pathetic am i to accept it. you like to keep your nails done in pastels, your hair blonde and flowing, your shoes tall and your dresses dainty. freud would spot the patterns of absentee mother or too-adored sister, but all i see is your priorities (of which i am consistently on the bottom five, if not one) around your friends, you dissolve into giggling about boys; your family gets force-fed lies about putting off marriage. you fake your straightness until there's no room for me when you go out. you kiss me goodbye and i catch a whiff of your perfume when you pass me on your way out. goodbye, i think, and i practice, and i say it to you when you come back smelling of cologne instead (and your expression breaks me.)

[pcet-blog1]

for a moment, you were silhouetted by the city and the comets crashing down overhead, just a shape against the fires and explosions and signs of the end. you stretched out your arms and turned to me, and just as suddenly the moment was gone, you were just a person: a frightened person in the certain knowledge that this is it, this is the end of everything and of you.

[pcet-blog1]

you make eyes when i lock lips with my lady love, angry, uncertain you've built your skyscrapers on an uncertain foundation: the status quo was never meant to be forever, and now? now we are here we are real and we are so goddamn beautiful

[pcet-blog1]

there's something insignificant about it. you get up and you breathe and you keep living, pretty much the same as before. your house doesn't change when you ruin someone. you talk to your mom and do your homework you go to bed and jack off and keep living, pretty much the same as before. your friends don't change when you ruin someone. you go to school and drink at parties you get up and eat breakfast and keep living, pretty much the same as before. your habits don't change when you ruin someone. there's something insignificant about it. you go to bed and cry and sleep and you keep living, pretty much the same as before. your life doesn't change when you ruin someone.

[pcet-blog1]

1. she takes her coffee black and sneers at the people who need it to not taste bitter. you hide your white chocolate mocha and feel weak. 2. you can only listen to music that sounds like the future and she sings showtunes in the shower. 3. a dog approaches you and you back away she runs forward and kneels down and pets it and coos about how cute it is while you pray it doesn't get any closer. 4. you hide your lipstick when she comes over, ashamed of your reliance on patriarchal beauty enhancers. 5. one day she is wearing a sweater in the most garish orange color you've ever seen. she tells you this color is how she wants her house. 6. the smell of cigarettes disgusts you and she smokes a pack a day. 7. you kiss her and suddenly it doesn't matter it doesn't matter it doesn't matter

[pcet-blog1]

faintly, you wonder how benevolent you really are and why we bestow pity upon those whose fathers left, but summarily ignore those whose sisters never write or talk at all, as though one abandonment should be inferior.

[pcet-blog1]

break the silence, you think for two years. then she does, and you think what changed. what do you need. what do you want what now all of a sudden. it reminds you of the beacon that time on that island hellscape, it reminds you of the air about to implode when you lived together, it reminds you of the hurt you lived together. your relationship, you realize, is in its imperfect tense.