Soils, Toils

A word, a moment, a universe. In the dirt.

[poppiesandpromises]

Controlled by chaos

& ruled by coincidence

Our lot, mere whimsy

[prophetic-memory]

Jorge Luis Borges, "The Stranger"

[a-hymnforher]

In My Death, I'll finally Live.

I hold my breath, still as stone, hoping to vanish into the shadows of the room— an object, unnoticed, unasked for, left behind. And to every question about why I linger here, my only answer is, “I’m nothing. Someone set me down and forgot me. Pay no mind; I only take space because I must.”

I am like a ghost’s breath on a winter window—there, and gone in the same heartbeat. I am the whisper of a song you can’t quite recall, lingering only in fragments of a forgotten melody.

If I could, I’d give myself to earth. I’d dissolve into rain, seeping into thirsty roots, coaxing life from cracked earth.

If I could—if only I could—I’d make myself useful in my death. I’d become the morning mist, rising to greet the dawn and kissing the hills goodbye. I’d be the last ember of a dying fire, holding on long enough to warm someone’s hands before fading to ash.

I would offer every last fragment of myself, letting time and the earth dissolve me completely, so that in my death, I might become something greater than I ever was in life. Perhaps then, even if I lived as though I were already gone, in the end, I could say that in my death, I was finally alive.

[beforeyearning]

patience. click for better quality + transcript under cut.

If not for the weight of wanting—I would be weightless, floating

aimlessly through life. Ironically with grounded eyes, I would

know nothing about the hues of the sky, but would be able to

ascertain the type of grass you’re standing on in a matter of seconds,

watching the cycle of green breaking through brown which

thawed from white, and it fading into brown and then white,

over & over again. Having watched the grass, I would have

thought love as a type of ripening. But instead, the wanting

makes the heart weigh a ton & I live life sprawled out on the

grass, becoming intimate with the forms of clouds & the shapes

it takes. I would not have to tell you about the magic of the light,

no Afremov or Pollock painting would compare to sunrises & sunsets.

I would think love is a soft becoming, you just have to be patient.

[soils-toils]

I wander back to June and the tangled smells of moss and mustard flowers, to the soft surface of your hands colliding with mine, the curl at the corner of your lips, laugh echoes through the woods over the creek. I swear there’s a world where I didn’t go home, where we never left my hammock. I struggle to softly remember us winding back down that road, my choices that led to kissing you goodbye one too many times.

[kiisuuumii]

@kiisuuumii (a theory about the moon)

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Traci Brimhall, Dear Eros

[soils-toils]

I want to be only one sparkly star in a sky full of beautiful constellations that make up your life.

I cannot be the moon for you, I could never be so luminous and large, my celestial love, la Luna symbolizes all of this life for me.

I guide so much of my voyage by your light still and when I cannot see you I know you’re there, I marvel at how bright you are in view, my love unchanged.

-Soil 🕷️

[afteryearning]

[soils-toils]

Mars retrograde here we come.

[soils-toils]

I send you “I miss you” and I mean

scars aching for your hands,

Tissue tingling in your absence,

I mean I am softened since

The first time you bit me back.

I say “I miss you” out loud to myself,

as if you are in the room

and my hip bones become jelly.

[our sweetness feels so spread out]

I crave the inside of your mouth,

It’s 2 am and I fucking miss you,

all I want is to do is

show you my new sheets, dude.

- Soil 🌱

[beforeyearning]

a stranger told you to pay attention to the little things, so that's all i've been doing. click for better quality + transcript under cut.

(After a long remembering).

Heartsick. The exhaustion runs deeper than bones, it’s in the marrow,

the longing floods your veins like someone undid the tourniquet.  You

feel unsteady, like your heart shifted, or you just woke up from a nap

in the wrong body & you spend the next half-hour looking up at the

popcorn ceiling, inventing new constellations, because really that’s

all you could manage to do—you’re terrified. You want a new mouth,

new teeth, a new tongue so you could forget the language of yearning

& the bite of its hunger. You’re consumed by it; you know you can’t go

back to it and escape unscathed—it demands patience, and you’ve been

unknowingly training for it. Your whole life was one big waiting game,

so you wait. And wait some more. And wait.

[soils-toils]

I’m trying hard to keep believing there is a future worth keeping and working toward and I lose sight at least once a day due to internal interplay of thoughts and insecurities so heavily swirling, reminding me that I am the reason the spiral continues, that if only I could slow down perhaps the world around me would slow down too.

[soils-toils]

Shortest most redundant poem, I love you. I can’t ignore the refracted light across my writing desk that makes me wish we had anything space left to shine together, I have so much left to say. The light you emit is missing now and my sight slips away.

[soils-toils]

Crawl inside the shell: a note to self

Here is space for long breaths to fill you with certainty, for gulps of rose tea to thaw you without interference, I hide you here in a nest of extra blankets and tend you with saccharine of Medjool dates, the sweetness handed exclusively to strangers past, loose ends not visible for tying here, your momentary shyness only complimented by silence found in waiting for unrequited lovers to rediscover their truth.

- Soil 🖤

[soils-toils]

The cure for boredom is curiosity and defiance:

I hit send, relentless, and snap another fortune cookie in half revealing only more vague, regurgitated wisdom,

“Time to take a power stance.” I decline.

It wouldn’t take binoculars to see this gigantic ego grasping at straws and gasping for air. Without all these overpromises we made to block the way my brain can get back to its busywork.

-Soil 🖤

[soils-toils]

You don’t actually have to choose just one:

I cloud watch from the roof where I can better see, tying knots in rosary beads, my stormy prayers become seeds and fall to ground to be watered beneath.

Loose lips only know how to spit, how to gush, and those inclined to listen only crave the sugar rush, wings clipped we still burn wandering too close to the sun.

- Soil 🖤