read your body like Braille

[frannyglassposts]

?

[animentality]

[handwrittenforher]

“how exhausting it must be to carry a love overflowing with empty promises.”

— Handwritten for Her

[souldeepmarrowdeep]

Request

I didn’t ask for your forever,

not at first. You offered it,

Eve’s very own apple, and by God

I was starving.

You painted me as a portrait,

your words and your touch brush

strokes on a canvas barren with need.

You see, I believed you.  All of you.

Trust was easy for a broken shell;

there was nowhere left to crack.

You gilded my scars with gold

and made them beautiful. My body

a trembling leaf on the wind, plucked

from the air was caressed in your hands.

You taught me how to scream

your name while fire danced behind my eyes.

I surrendered to it, to all you are,

to all we wanted.

The teethmarks you left, this time,

don’t bruise. The blood left in me 

is sicker than yours.

Anything you asked, granted. I asked

for your forever.

- Samantha Sastre

[meanwhilepoetry]

Every woman I have ever loved is still working out how to love herself. Has a closetful of ghosts and has been to a hundred funerals of the women she used to be. Wonders what wounds her mother carries that she will never know about. Hopes that the weight of the world doesn't eventually crush her, that she is strong enough to handle it all. Wishes a day will come when she can put it all down, give her aching shoulders a rest. Wants someone to truly see her and not make a feast of her kindness and dreams. Is forever hiding a secret hunger for what calls to her in the dark. Holds a universe inside her, but has been told to make herself smaller despite the paradox. Praise be that universes are not in the business of listening to anyone but themselves. Every woman I have loved has thought about it. The art of disappearing. To be here one day, and the next, like smoke, simply gone.

- Nikita Gill, Every Woman I Have Ever Loved

[ruhlare]

perhaps love is defined by the ability to put your broken pieces back together into something stronger and more beautiful. love says, "i see your sorrows, your flaws and your dark sides, but in them i also see the ability and potential to heal and to grow - to be reborn no matter how many times it takes, and i am willing to stick around you before it, during it and every day after it"

[ruhlare]

"love is a consistent choice"

[derangedrhythms]

Adrienne Rich, Fox: Poems 1998-2000; from ‘If Your Name Is on the List’ (edited excerpt)

[ruhlare]

— A promise.

[soracities]

as of now, you will not recognize me; nothing will relate me to you except those ruins sedimenting in the depth of my soul lamenting me, and making me lament you.

Adonis, from “The Time” (trans. Kamal Abu-Deeb)

[weltenwellen]

Ada Limón, from “The Great Blue Heron Of Dunbar Road”, Bright Dead Things

[artandchocolate]

“Letters from Medea”- Salma Deera

[4am-reflections]

I loved you enough to let you go, but that doesn’t mean this is easy for me. It doesn’t mean my heart isn’t broken.

4am

[souldeepmarrowdeep]

I thought I was flying / but maybe I'm dying tonight

Florence and the Machine, “Sky Full of Song”

[felicitatem]

love for the girls of midnight, the ones with alluring gazes and heart-shaped lips. The girls who are painted pretty in dark lipstick and bold brows, weaving their fingers between your’s while watching the moon dance.

love for the girls of dawn, the ones with wake you with gentle and loving whispers. The girls who sketch their existence in the corners of notebooks and your mind, hiding curious smiles behind the back of her ink-stained hands.

love for the girls of noon, the ones napping stilly besides open windows and tabby cats. The girls who plant lazy kisses across your jaw and make a pillow out of your shoulder, eternally content with the intimacy of comfort.  

love for the girls of dusk, the ones with beautiful voices that lead you home to their embrace. The girls perfumed with oregano and rosemary, studying old recipe books beside the stove and laughing freely at simple miracles.

[antigonick]

She has kissed me. All is shattered.

Virginia Woolf, The Waves (via antigonick)

[souldeepmarrowdeep]

Cloven

When she smoked, it was only clove cigarettes.  I asked her why once and she mumbled something about them being “better on the senses.”   I had to agree with her…something about them almost had me wanting a puff or two.  But no, it wasn’t really a smoke I wanted at all, was it? 

It was that Saturday night during a game of pool at the bar.  You polished off your beer and made that amazing bank shot right into the corner pocket and I knew then.  You asked what I was staring at, and I told you “I was just spaced out for a moment.”  You laughed and had no idea. 

We went camping once, just for a night, where there were no RVs or electricity or other people, and it was perfect.  We just hiked along until we found an alluring clearing that called out to us.  I stole glances at you as we hunted for firewood and grinned at the methodical way you examined each piece before bundling it into your arms.  You never did mind a little dirt.  Later, the clove scent mingled with campfire smoke and bug spray while we roasted hot dogs and talked about our dreams.   I only told you half of mine.  I listened to as many as you could remember: tornados and zombies and that one where you were in your house but it wasn’t your house and then it turned into high school.  You made me laugh until I cried and my face hurt with the joy of it all.  God only knows what time it was when we crawled into our tents.  I dreamt of fathomless oceans.

When your birthday came, we cooked your favorite dinner: fried green tomatoes and shrimp and grits washed down with sweet tea vodka and lemonade.  I called you Idgie Threadgoode and joked with you about your “Southern Belle meal.”  You smacked me with a pillow and knocked me onto the couch.  I pulled you with me and suddenly your face was there…right there…hovering just above mine, and every decision I had ever made paled in comparison to that moment.   Your eyes registered momentary amusement and then something else entirely.

I kissed you.

Everything stopped.   

You tasted like cloves and honey and the time of year when summer melts into fall.  Your hair smelled like the forest after it rains and you were warm…so very warm.   And you were kissing me back.

After hours and minutes and seconds trickled by, you fell asleep, curled into me like a comma, while I ran my fingers through your hair and made you every promise as you slept.   You woke and with a wink said “I had the craziest dream.” 

Funny, so did I.

--Samantha Sastre

[cuntented]