[sophucui]

[pulldrone-deactivated20240307]

all i have are these ways i feel

[sophucui]

every whore gets into heaven

[tankhall]

janie ink for marlee ♡

[tankhall]

[sophucui]

gifted a stolen gardenia to my dream girl and kissed my penpal on the lips tonight

[housofpsychoticwomn]

ethel cain @ vega, copenhagen

by me

[wrongsara-deactivated20220716]

Joanna Newsom Photographed by Sylvia Plachy

[sophucui]

because surrender is sweet

because you always hurt the one you love

[tankhall]

2027 ; i will pay you to keep your hand over my mouth

[sophucui]

my first memory is the deep end of the community pool. i was too young for school, and my mom hoped i would entertain myself while she sunbathed. i didn’t yet know how to swim, but i did know i wasn’t supposed to get in the water without floaties. my fat little toes were burning on the concrete, ten pink starbursts. i needed relief. mama wasn’t looking, so i ran to the pool’s edge and i jumped. the water is what i remember most. halfway between the surface and the bottom, it held me in its cool and quiet blue. though i knew i couldn’t breathe, i wasn’t afraid. i felt safe suspended in that stillness, somehow filled with perfect peace despite my empty lungs. the feeling left as suddenly as it arrived when s stranger dove in after me, their strange hands ripping me from my peace. i was furious, but too small to fight their grasp. who was this person? in my memory they have no face. but i remember the rage at being pulled away from my new home in the blue. i never could have stayed in the water, i would have drowned. but i’ve spent my whole life of learning to live on land trying to get back to that feeling.

[tankhall]

photography by @expiredidealist

[sophucui]

tonight an old friend sent me a photo of an envelope enclosed with a letter i sent them ten years ago. three fruit stamps on the upper right corner. two names, birth names we both discarded shortly after the letter was sent, written in the respective spaces for sender and recipient. it was mailed from tacoma to british columbia, time zones away from where i now live.

they asked, “was this from you? was going through old keepsakes of letters and notes and precious lil objects and came across this.”

it took me a moment to recognize the dead name and the handwriting, though it was unmistakably mine. i have no recollection of ever writing or sending the letter, nor a memory that they had ever lived in that commune in bc. no memory of the day i handwrote it, chose the stamps, dropped it through the slot in some mailbox a decade ago. yes, it was from me.

i have immense grief around the loss of my memory. it used to be so sharp. i've never remembered much from childhood, but since my teenage years i kept meticulous records in my mind. remembering everything that happened down to the minutiae protected me as much as it hurt me. now i can't remember most of my own life, and that scares me more than it comforts me. becoming physically disabled forced me to confront the question: who am i outside of what i can do? but more recently i keep wondering: who am i without the knowledge of my own story? memory loss is another death of self in a series of many over the past few years. seeing a letter i have no recollection of writing is a small comfort in the midst of this grief. parts of me live on in ink and paper, in the keepsakes and memories of people who have known and loved me, even when those parts are dead to me.

[sophucui]

where there is love there is enough

[plumslices]

Scarification by John Joyce at Scarab Body Arts

[sweatermuppet]

i understand its chronic pain but every day seems a bit excessive

[sophucui]

you never need to call my name, though i love it all the same, i know you by your knock on the door

i know you by your footsteps on the floor