BOREAS, THE OH HELLOS ( 2020 )
some lines have been edited to better fit | change pronouns or gendered words as needed ! content warnings for : n/a
“ when the feeling leaves you, it moves so slow. ”
“ you don’t even feel it go when the bitter creeps in to bite you whole. ”
“ a spectre unreflected, oh, it keeps you cold. ”
“ it’s like a blanket of white, unbroken by the soil below. ”
“ the sound don’t carry, won’t rise or fall. ”
“ it damps the racket, chokes it back. ”
“ you paved your hades with precious stone. ”
“ you made an hеirloom to patricians and the rich alone. ”
“ the toll for crossing i’d owе charon would atrophy a half of me. ”
“ well, i’m not quite ready to turn to bone, to petrify the shred of life i’m holding onto. ”
“ there’s no peace to upset, that spirit’s flown. ”
“ this ossified philosophising’s getting old. ”
“ i don’t mean to speak so collectively. ”
“ i know i don’t make it easy to even wanna hear it. ”
“ what can i say, what can i say, what can i say? ”
“ the more i recite it, the more you wanna fight it, the more my language is sounding fabricated. ”
“ if there’s one thing i know, it’s either the growing is slow or it cuts to the bone. ”
“ i’ll keep half of my words in my mouth, let the syllables fall out at a steady trickling. ”
“ i’ll be your roof caving in. ”
“ you don’t know what you don’t know yet. ”
“ yeah, i go on forgetting it, don’t you go on forgetting it, too. ”
“ i don’t mean to speak so intrusively. ”
“ i know i don’t make it easy to even wanna see it. ”
“ nothing old, nothing new. ”
“ if there’s two things i know, it’s that the sky looked white and the water like wine when i first met you. ”
“ somewhere along the line, rayleigh scattered across my eye, and i found her blue. ”
“ what other lapis lazuli was hiding behind my color blindness? ”
“ what did i miss, what did i miss, what did i miss? ”
“ wars are raising for her. ”
“ crusades to adore her, the light of your afterword. ”
“ are you losing her true nature when you loosen nomenclature, when you gift another moniker?”
“ what’s true is like a sickle, it’ll cut you to the middle. ”
“ your rose is without a thorn. ”
“ no, my mouth don’t taste of metal from the pot here to the kettle. ”
“ i think we got a lot we gotta learn. ”
“ even though by any other name her scent would linger sweetly, all the same. ”
“ call her briar long enough and you’ll tangle up the true and the fable. ”
“ your dowry, it ain’t fooling- the pyrite is showing through. ”
“ It won’t buy you that empty tomb. ”
“ no alchemic incantation for a counterfeit salvation can appease your leviathan groom. ”
“ no, love’ll get you slaughtered, like a ram at the altar. ”
“ what is safe ain’t the same as what is good. ”
“ so lay compress to the aching of your body made for breaking. ”
“ we’ve got a lot of breaking left to do. ”
“ the crucifix and the hangman – they both agree. ”
“ change comes so cheaply for those of us already at the table. ”
“ with my back on the floor, the cold linoleum is icing my growing pains. ”
“ my threads are coming loose. ”
” i’m one spoon away from setting the ends of my hair on fire. ”
“ if i’m kindling for a little while, at least i’d feel of use. ”
“ maybe then my breath could embody a wildfire starting. ”
“ i’d sweep up the forest floor and my body breathe life into the corners. ”
“ i’d be lying if i told you i’m keeping tidy anymore. ”
“ yeah, i swing from believing that maybe my working will all pay off to considering drinking with molotov. ”
“ i’m halfway out the door. ”
“ promise me, that you’ll start where i end. ”
“ i promise to give you everything that i am. ”
“ we’ll go on and on and on.”
“ in the end, all i hope for is to be a bit of warmth for you when there’s not a lot of warmth left to go around. ”
“ in the end, i’m feeling more and more there won’t be any end. ”
“ no ice walls, no frozen firmament, to clearly define the corners and lines of a divine invention. ”
“ so paper-thin, you see right through it. ”
“ i bet when you can’t find an edge by a map half-written, it could feel like the end.”
“ the inkwells of prophecy and cartography dried up long ago. ”
“ they’re hoarse from speaking of our studied hesitation to shoulder the weight of our bad-bеhaving. ”
“ when atlas shrugs, whose back is breaking? ”
“ i know how it feels to thе hands- heavy as the heavens, a weight that could fold you- to keep holding. ”
” well, you’ll stand, like you stood as a babe, tugging at the house plants: all on your own. ”
“ honest and truly, you’ll rise like land, pulled up at the sound of some strange commandment. ”
“ a moon alight, reflecting fully. ”
“ i guess it would feel like rebirth out of some kind of dying to see yourself so glowing. ”
