tianaa

i<3 strawberry cow and ice spice

[pinkstrawbabie]

Adjacent

sometimes i want to explain
all of the love that I hold in my heart for you,
it feels so intense that nothing comes out,
“I love you” never feels like enough
I wish I could give you the stars and all of your dreams,
actualized into a small heart-shaped box.
I feel for you like the moon loves the sun,
how the horizon kisses the earth at sunset.

[pinkstrawbabie]

Forgetful

Sometimes I forget I’m a person,
who’s words wash over the ears
of my listeners,
who’s attitude penetrates their hearts,
but it is because for too long,
it has been all I have thought about;
how the wind looks when disturbing my features,
when my face becomes the red-hot
coals of the fire as my
embarrassment of the mundane washes over me.
I have always been too aware
of other people’s ability to perceive
and how I come off
I’ve always cared too much, letting
your thoughts control my every move
like a Sim.

[pinkstrawbabie]

heres a story i made for a creative writ class, it had to be x amount of words but i want to expand it some time so lmk thoughts :

The Sweetest Berry

In the first few days of spring when everything was freshly thawed, I was way too drunk and came outside to tell my patch of sweet budding strawberries how much I love them. After that I must’ve passed out because I woke up in the dirt the next noon. There was a huge shadow over me, and as my eyes rose I saw this big fat strawberry, about the size of a cozy cottage, sitting sturdy on the soil before me. I’m not sure if it was my words or the strawberry daiquiri I threw up onto them, but fate had made it grow exponentially overnight.

I watched it for weeks unsure what to do. For it being a big fruit, you’d think it would have started decomposing into worm food but it was just as fresh as the first day I woke up beside it. One day looking at my many piles of books in my room, I decided that I could at least try to turn this berry into a cozy library. I called my friends over and they helped me carve out the room and dehydrate the inside so it wasn’t wet. I set up all my bookshelves and brought in a set of thrifted armchairs. With all the leftover berry, I gave my friends each a few buckets to take home, but that left me with nearly a truckload of strawberry guts. I tried my best to cook strawberry into everything I ate, but each day I hardly made a dent in my seemingly endless supply. I spent most of my days in my strawlibarry reading or in my kitchen cooking up strawberry desserts.

By summer I thought that through all of this I would have started to despise strawberries, but my love only continued to grow. It felt impossible to do anything without this red fruit being baked into, cut up and thrown over, or reduced into a dipping sauce for any of the foods I ate. All I could dream about was strawberries, and you know how dreams are; you can never be sure if they’re prophetic or just abstract ideas thrown together. The dreams were lighthearted adventures, like scuba diving for a shell just peeking out of the sand, and instead of a spiral conch, there’s a strawberry stuck in the sand. In the background I could feel her, Berry, whispering kind affirmations to me. But as the season progressed, she got more intense. She told me how cute I’d look as a strawberry, how she wished I was planted right beside her. 

In the first days of fall when I prepared a strawberry water bath, I saw my reflection for the first time in months. I wasn't sure if it was the pink tint of the water, but the longer I looked the more apparent it became that my skin had turned red! Not only that, but my hair had turned green and there were black dots all over my face like freckles. Then my dreams started to rush to the front of my mind. I did NOT want to be planted, I couldn’t live in the dirt! It would suck to be stuck there forever, unable to go see my friends. 

I had to get out of there, so I went to my friend Petal’s house. When she first saw me, she held my face in her hands and tried to brush away the black dots. At first Petal just brushed over them, but then as she kept gently stroking my face, the little seeds started falling off one by one until they were all gone. Then she kissed all over my face with the same delicate touch, she kissed my hands, each finger. With each kiss she laid upon me, my skin lightened more and more until it was back to its normal peachy color. 

I’ve felt the obsession, the attachment weaken every day. I’m still not sick of strawberries, maybe they’re part of my DNA now. I didn’t have it in my heart to demolish her, so now it's used as my cat room. It would have sucked reading in a strawberry in the winter anyways. I think Berry still exerts some influence over what resides in it because my cats have all turned red with little green sprouts on their heads and black dots in their fur. Better them than me. I think because they’re cats and have a natural resistance to being controlled, that it hasn’t affected their lives too much; they roam around like normal and I haven't found any planted in the dirt so far. I think what she really wanted was to grow something of her own, to have her own sweet little plants to look after and adore.

[pinkstrawbabie]

over-medium style love

I have grown tired of most men,

but I love a man who gives me everything.

The kind of man who serves me breakfast in bed,

but sometimes it slips out that he is just like every other man.

I love this man who gives me most things—

like kind words and flawlessly fried eggs— 

but sometimes it slips out he is just like every other man

when I feel him consider my femininity before my humanity.

When it comes to kind words and flawlessly fried eggs,

I like my love fried medium, bouncing with energy and jelly-like. 

When I feel him consider my femininity before my humanity,

I feel like a solid, dry, overcooked yolk; cold and useless.

I like my love fried medium, bouncing with energy and jelly-like,

but sometimes you don’t know till you take your first bite

and feel the hard, dry, overcooked yolks, cold and useless,

like the excuses he makes to defend his misogynist idols.

But sometimes you don’t know till you take your first bite

if the yolk will pour into your heart or sink into your stomach

like the excuses he makes to defend his misogynist idols.

I’m very particular about how I like my eggs;

if the yolk will pour into my heart or sink into my stomach,

I push my plate away, and ask for my order to be met,

I’m very particular about how I like my eggs,

So don’t promise me something you can’t cook.

I push my plate away, and ask for my order to be met—

the kind of man who serves me breakfast in bed.

So don’t promise me something you can’t cook

or I may grow tired again.

[pinkstrawbabie]

zodiac

you are my sisters sign,

sagittarius,

the archer,

who shot an arrow into my heart and

i have loved you ever since.

As a gemini, I adore you with all two of me.

We balance out so well, fire and air

chaotic but in harmony.

[pinkstrawbabie]

reflections

On the way to my mother’s mother’s warm
cabin built on the lake I spent much of my youth,
I’d kick my feet and step on mama’s heart
when I would miss this boyfriend that stood too tall
over my head like a skyscraper, blocking the sun;
back when I thought the coolness was pleasant.
Before I knew that his 3.7 years above me would overshadow
my own kindness, that has been passed down by the sweet hands
of my mother, who showed me the sun and encouraged me
to savor the energy it gave. I would pout at the opportunity
to not spend this one weekend with the same person I spent
every week with. She told me distance makes the heart grow
fonder, so I would pour my tears into i miss you texts.

The distance gave me time, so I searched for all my reflections—
in the water evolved by the ripples our sweet swaying feet
spread, in the mirror seeing my skin glow
from the memories we were creating each day, in the spoon
that sparkles on its way to cradle the love of chocolate
ice cream passed down through all my mothers—I
saw in my heart the warmth of all the women before me.
Distance made my heart grow fonder, for all the feminine
love that brought me closer to myself. Distance told
me that I didn’t miss him, but that I would miss
who I’d become without him.

Now, we go back to float through the lake on the pontoon
and I bask in the sunlight that the women in my life shine on me.
After seeing all of my sweet reflections, I now
feel the joy of taking my time to notice the way the water
lets my sunray hair flow, the sand that exfoliates my rough feet,
the homes of the spiders, carefully crafted to glimmer,
just like the water that splashes up from our banter on the boat.

[pinkstrawbabie]

Obit-inspired poem

my home- died may 15 2021, when my mom had to leave her whole life behind to save herself and took my sister with her like a mama bear only able to save one of her babies. It went from visiting every two days to just weekends to every month like the grains of hourglass sand as they run out. I still rest here but it is no longer a home. I had to say goodbye to the warm voice of my mother telling me she was home from work at three AM, and said goodbye to her little surprises, like a new outfit or our favorite dinner for the night. I will dearly miss cooking in the kitchen while waving our hips to Kelis songs, and her kind words of comfort in the passing moments when our schedules slightly overlapped between night shift ER nurse and college student. Survived by the loneliness of my father, the decaying relationship between my father and sister, and my own hope for my mothers new future. As long as I am in this home, may she be missed here but live on forever away from this cold, soulless house.

[pinkstrawbabie]

Fire lord

Night’s we’d run around the house alone,
I loved the absence of a burning fist.
We staggered into the split between the furniture and the wall
we created because there was no one to tell us not to.
The only thing that took us out of our own world was the
chainsaw that echos from his gaped mouth.
dad passed out on the couch, tired from a long day of work and
nourishing us with tv dinners,
his arm limp to hold the hand of the attention
he claimed he always gave us.

Back in those nights we felt free,
my brother and I calmed by the absence of fire,
we got to live our dream of watching tv all night.
We watched Avatar the Last Airbender, we
spent so many nights rewatching, looking for
any new episode our eyes never touched.
Many nights we saw the same repeated episode,
“The Boiling Rock” where the siblings wait
in agony for their father to show up, to hear his steps
echo through the metal of the prisoner ship that sways
over the boiling water. After the last prisoner has walked off,
only shadows remain as the tension builds
in any tea kettle left alone too long.

My mother always worked the night shift
to avoid the cost of an expensive daycare,
so here rests my father, the nightly
stay-at-home babysitter, accompanied by
the parental guidance of Nicktoons to show us
what a dad should be. He fed us and ushered us to bed when
he eventually woke up, isn’t that enough?

Many of my memories exist in the time between
dreams of loving my father and the wakefulness of what
a parent should be. Those nights I held the rose-tinted impression
that a dad who is present is better than no dad.
But now my stomach yearns for the warmth
that brings life to a home cooked meal,
When its absence has twisted my stomach with bad habits,
this tension only boils as I grow older, looking for the father that I love
more than I fear.

[pinkstrawbabie]

Ugly

We were never close,
or maybe a little too close for a short time,
like the snapping of a rubber band
our union was over as suddenly as it started,
pulling the hairs on my skin off as it passed.
I thought we left on a good note
I remember the last thing you said to me, an apology
but I was naive
and had hope in a man.
I was set up to fail.

[pinkstrawbabie]

weeds

One day I’d like to name my kids
Mary Jane and Paper Plane,
a tribute to my love of this earthy green
flower, a sweet bud i’d love to run through
a field of these fuzzy, sticky sweet killa.

[pinkstrawbabie]

Untitled;(

Sometimes the worst parts of me come out
when I try to understand how you see the world,
how you see me.
How can you love him and hate me?
We are one in the same.
And yet you are so different, unchanging
and still I have no idea who you are.

[pinkstrawbabie]

Moonlighted

Flowers come up on the moon
pushing through the silver dusty crust,
they come out glowing.
from afar they are a soft mist on the horizon,
silver on silver with a hint of their sweet pink interior.
flowers grown from love, their roots hold deep.

the moon charges my crystals,
sends her soft powerful beams between
the vibrations, separating the rose from the quartz
refracting its powerful energy into my heart when i wear it,
i carry the slivers of the moon around my neck.

[pinkstrawbabie]

Let Go

I wish you would just let go
so that i could let go.
It’s my fault for catching glimpses and looking through windows,
trying to understand who you’ve become.

Is there a spell on me? Am I being pulled to you?
the same way the tides are pulled to the moon,
i wish i could let go, but even when it fades,
a new moon comes and darkens me.

I’m great at subtleties, i pick up the hints
thrown into the wind like scraps of paper
that were once love notes. But where do you end and
my imagination starts? I can never tell.
Watching someone wave at you,
only to be waving at someone behind you.
If you hate me just say so.

[pinkstrawbabie]

Rose-tinted

Buttercups and striped sweaters,
a locket filled with luck, or love—they seem to blur together.
Even in darkest times,
when the world has fallen apart
you are the only thing to calm me.

Thoughts directed towards you, rose petals—
he loves me.
Drifting towards the pink sky, the warm honey
of your eyes.
All I want is to be wrapped in your arms with my mind left alone.
You are my pink lemonade in the summer,
cooling me down before I melt into nothing.
I love you I love you I love you.

[pinkstrawbabie]

Sighting

Silhouette recognized anywhere,
whether it’s the sidewalk that leads to the library,
at the end of the cereal aisle,
along the horizon of the parking lot,
you look just like someone I wish
I had never known.

Silhouettes that seem recognizable,
you know it’s them by the curve
of their distinct posture, the shape
of their hair as it grows from their head,
the specific way they initiate their steps.
You know who they are from one glance a
half-second in their direction a quarter-mile away.
And you look for them in every
crowd, hallway, car driving beside you,
but sometimes it’s not who you expect.
The fear pushes you to assumption,
and you feel both relieved and lost.

[pinkstrawbabie]

Nope

Within writ mountains of apologies
fields of decaying roses sit, alongside
my vallying poems. As much as I want light
to shine on them, I bury them
with vagueness and dirt.
I write to let go, but coming back only
grabs me by the throat so
Sometimes I can't breathe.

[pinkstrawbabie]

we post art on here ?