Burn Your Fingertips

| Lose yourself with me. Let the rain swallow our shame dear | 21 |

[darkspaceboytoy]

I think if you really asked me what constitutes or defines “tumblr prose”, it’s not any particular quality, or language, or imagery or themes or what have you. It’s an ineffable feeling that every line is meant to be post-worthy.

[bemusedbibliophile]

I usually tell my students that “close reading” means looking at what is actually on the page, reading the text itself, rather than some idea “behind the text.” It means noticing things in the writing, things in the writing that stand out. To give you some idea of what this means, I’ve made up a list of five sorts of things that a close reading might typically notice: (1) unusual vocabulary, words that surprise either because they are unfamiliar or because they seem to belong to a different context; (2) words that seem unnecessarily repeated, as if the word keeps insisting on being written; (3) images or metaphors, especially ones that are used repeatedly and are somewhat surprising given the context; (4) what is in italics or parentheses; and (5) footnotes that seem too long. This list is far from complete—in fact, no complete list is possible—but the list is meant to begin to give you an idea of what sorts of things we notice when we’re doing close reading.

What all five of my examples have in common is that they are minor elements in the text; they are not main ideas. In fact, your usual practice of reading which focuses on main ideas would dismiss them all as marginal or trivial. Another thing they have in common is that, although they are minor, they are nonetheless conspicuous, eye-catching: they are either surprising or repeated, set off from the text or too long. Close reading pays attention to elements in the text which, although marginal, are nonetheless emphatic, prominent—elements in the text which ought to be quietly subordinate to the main idea, but which textually call attention to themselves.

Most of you have been educated to ignore such elements. You have been taught to seek out and identify the main ideas, dismissing the trivial as you go. This has had to be trained into you: read to a young child sometime, you will notice she has the annoying habit of interrupting the flow of the story to draw attention to some minor thing. Close reading resembles the interruptions of that child. It is a method of undoing the training that keeps us to the straight and narrow path of main ideas. It is a way of learning not to disregard those features of the text that attract our attention, but are not principal ideas.

Jane Gallop, “The Ethics of Close Reading: Close Encounters,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Vol.16, No.3 (Fall 2000), pg.7-8 (x)

[romance-with-a-liminal-space]

You killed something in me

Something that I loved

You took all my passion and light and joy and cast your shadow over it.

I became an infinitesimal thing.

You might as well have forgotten my name. I no longer had the courage to say it.

You took what made me who I am and broke it into a glittering dust

and you gave me to the wind.

Thrust from your palm into a shattered persistence.

Despite your best efforts I remain.

You look over at me now, a broken, mended thing.

Gradually bound back together

But the wind carried away something that I treasured. Some part of me that sparkled, and danced in the light.

Your shadow never left me.

This is who I am now.

Full of pain and spite.

[romance-with-a-liminal-space]

I dream of waking next to you

The velvet

of your skin

Touching mine.

I dream of writing your name in the back of books,

next to mine,

my surname replaced with yours.

I dream of being someone whose body steps with mine

Like the stereotype of this choreographed dance.

I dream of waking up and my bed not being empty.

Not having to dream of your ghost.

I dream of matching mugs, and towel sets we picked together

I dream of glassware and dinners

I dream of knowing that home carries your touch

like every part of my body.

[romance-with-a-liminal-space]

I give you every reason not to love me

With the things I put you through

A rainstorm soaking you to the bone

I see you shiver

But the cold doesn’t seem to bother you

Sometimes it’s feels like you’re far away

I count the seconds between the brilliant light and the rolling growl that follows

I wonder, when the distance grows between them

If the lightning ever worries you

But you just smile, two feet planted on

the ground

And tell me that it just flows through you.

Sometimes I feel like the rain, falling, cold

But you hold me. You boil tea for two,

And your eyes, warm, tell me you love me.

[animentality]

[hubblegleeflower]

The great thing about huge declarations is that the most times you're ever going to have to deliver on them is ONCE. And even that is vanishingly unlikely. The dishes happen every day. My feet hurt now. The kids need a lift to piano lessons every week. The grenade is hypothetical.

[themythicalcodfish]

You’d die for me? I’d prefer someone who’d live for me, thanks.

[romance-with-a-liminal-space]

You taste like peach and warm coffee

I sit beside you and listen to you play

The words I wrote for you.

I’ve waited a lifetime for someone to see me the way you do.

As if I’m something small and warm

You hold me to your heart and listen to me speak.

As the sun curls up behind the mountains, the last crack of light disappearing as I read to you

You want to listen.

You want to scream with me

the things we’re afraid of

Let them echo off the hills.

I lie awake, thinking of eucalyptus and cinnamon.

And that smile that feels like sunlight.

I’ve waited too long to feel like this, but now I do, it’s like I always have.

[romance-with-a-liminal-space]

I hope you want me like I want you.

That those things you said mean what I hope them to.

I hope you’re thinking of me now dear.

With a fondness in your heart; bring

home a eucalyptus leaf for me.

And think kindly of me.

As I think kindly of you.

[krxtiee]

now every song I listen to is about her

[romance-with-a-liminal-space]

I’m grinning and hoping you feel it too.

But the smile that spread across your face like sunlight when you saw me says all it needs to,

I don’t know if you lie awake like I do,

But the gentle fall of your hair, and the red across your face,

How could you ever sleep?

Under the layers of prickling nettle, lies a glittering heart,

You yearn to be warm, held between two hands.

I see the kindness in you, I see the mist,

Falling across your eyes. A gentle spin, inviting and cool.

I’ve watched that cold melt away. A soul full of light breaking through.

I hope you feel the way I do. But you seem as stupid as me about all this.

[romance-with-a-liminal-space]

I want to laugh and love and spin and dance.

I want to watch the smile spread across your face, a moment of brightness.

I want to lie and listen to the rain fall among the gum trees, and smell the soft dirt and leaves.

I want to love again.

Let the lilting mists and hazy breeze return to my buzzing heart.

I want to curse my love as I lie awake,

Curse you as I write my soul into little

inadequate sentences

Let me fail to express my heart to you, the words

muddied on the page.

Weave my heart into my sleeves. Let it hurt again.

I’m tired of being protected. I’m weary of the small breaks.

I want to love you.

But I don’t know if I can.

[k029110]

Franz Kafka, Letters To Milena

[kosmogrl]

[fateofgrace]

coco mellors, cleopatra and frankenstein.

[rottingangelcorpse]

i think i must be hard to love

[romance-with-a-liminal-space]

Violence,

a self defined by the distortion of who I think I am.

Who do you think I am?

An uncanny copy? A gentle fuzz?

We are all made from the same stuff in the end.

Just another construct of

Me, myself and I.

[elizabethsinclair]

there is a love in which i will always know you, just incase you forget.

love elizabeth s.