make real art

If you make it, it's real and it's art.

[storydeanwrites]

Litany Against Writer's Block

Has the well dried up? I stare at blank pages and ask myself this, not for the first time. Did I use it all up, whatever finite font of inspiration I was lucky enough to briefly call mine? No, it's just frozen and still for the moment. It will thaw like a river in spring if I just give it time. The page won't stay blank forever. The story's not over. The winter won't last. The well is not dry.

[cityelf]

this poem is about being nonbinary.

[curiousscallop]

poem i foubd in a book at work recently that im completely obsessed with

[storydeanwrites]

I need to believe a friendship can last

across time,

across distance,

across the changes life brings.

I need to know

families of the road

don't break apart

the moment their grand adventure

comes to an end.

Although we get busy

and life makes us hurry

and sometimes survival must take precedent,

I need you to tell me--

only if you mean it!--

that when the world slows down

and it's quiet again

that we will still be there

together

to the end.

[assaultmystic-archive]

whats cool about being trans is my parents are totally right. i did kill their beautiful son. im the thing that animates his corpse in an ever more convincing parody of a happy girl. i devoured him from the inside out and now there is nothing left of him and he is dead dead dead and there is only me, with my hollow eyes and dark eyeliner and long hair, and my big smile. my limp, effeminate gestures belie the marionetting of the boy they loved. my fagginess is his death. already his body becomes a fitter home for my parasitism in full; the tits, the hips, the thighs. sorry about your kid. thanks for the biomass <3

[mybisexualwife]

[storydeanwrites]

The saddest part of hearing my grandma say

"You'll regret all those tattoos

when you're old

and they're faded

and wrinkled

and ugly"

is the the thought that a woman can live so much life

and never be free

of the need to be a beautiful doll.

[storydeanwrites]

Thinking a lot today about how the first sin, the thing that supposedly doomed humankind, was a woman eating.

But you will never convince me that feeling full is damnation, or that hunger is holy.

[storydeanwrites]

Art is not consumed.

It is experienced. It is felt. And it or you or both are changed afterward, but the art still exists when you are done with it. Someone else can experience it brand new right after you, or at the same time as you.

Art is not consumed.

[storydeanwrites]

You only say you love me

in the middle of a fight.

And the saddest part of that is

it still makes everything alright.

You only seem to listen

after you've already shouted me down.

You only toss the lifeline

when you're good and finished watching me drown.

[storydeanwrites]

My favorite quotes from Brave Enough by Cheryl Strayed

[great-gatsby]

every reread kills me a little bit more

[great-gatsby]

reread and enjoy <3

[storydeanwrites]

On Friday, February 13th, 2004, I sat alone in my bedroom contemplating suicide. I felt so alone. I was sad. I was angry. Above all, I was tired. I wrote a note. I had a plan.

I didn't do it, though. When it came time, I realized my plan was too messy. My grandmother would be the one to find me and have to clean it up, and I couldn't do that to her. I needed a new plan.

Thankfully, I never came up with that new plan.

Instead, I kept living. I made new friends. I graduated high school. I made bad decisions. I had adventures. I came out of the closet. I survived an abuser. I went to college, then grad school. I lived on ramen. I did New Year's Eve in Times Square. I went on a cross country road trip and lived in my car. I saw the Grand Canyon. I had inadvisable sex. I met new people and tried new foods and heard new music. I moved to Boston. I was diagnosed with a chronic illness. I met some of my heroes. It wasn't always disappointing. I drank too much. I swore off alcohol. I got laid off, got a new job, went immediately into lockdown. I questioned and then transed my gender. I got my nose pierced to impress a cute girl. I got some tattoos. I gained weight. I drove through Indiana cornfields on a moonlit night. I went on another road trip, this time with friends. I saw New Orleans. I laughed a lot. I cried a lot. I fell in love with my body. I published a book. I got into cosplay. I'm writing another. I made more new friends. I was diagnosed with another chronic illness. I perfected my grandma's biscuits without a recipe, through sense memory and practice alone. I got into fights. I moved to the ocean. I did a podcast. I started drawing for the first time in a decade and found I hadn't totally lost the practice.

I feel alone sometimes. I feel sad sometimes. I feel angry almost all the time, especially when I read the news. I feel deep fear, more often than not. I feel hope, always.

It's been 22 years since I didn't kill myself. Today, I felt kind of down. It was the worst say I'd had in a while. It was still nowhere near how low I was on that day. My lows now are what my normal used to be.

I'm glad I'm here.

[storydeanwrites]

We dreamed big dreams together

in that drafty old apartment.

But we had to fly separate

to make the dreaming real.

I don't know how to tell you how tragic that feels.

[storydeanwrites]

A Walk in the Park

Hey beautiful, he says, drawing out each syllable. I smile and say hello back without turning my head. I don't stop walking, intent on getting out of the windy pre-dusk chill sooner than later.

How are you today? There's an emphasis on you that makes my spine stiffen. I tell him fine, how are you? I'm still walking, a little faster now. I know where this is going.

Sure enough: Why don't you stop and talk with me a while? I didn't realize before this that a voice could leer.

For a wild moment I consider giving him exactly what he's asked for. In my mind I turn around with my sunniest smile and casually lean into his window.

"Sure," this brave mental me agrees, eyes boring into his from inches away. "What did you want to talk about?" And before he has a chance to say anything, I continue.

"The strengths and weaknesses of radical and liberal feminism in developing intersectional strategies for dismantling the patriarchy?" His eyes are already bugging out as he regrets his decisions. "How magical thinking is a necessary coping mechanism and also a dangerous deterrent to progress in absurd times?" He's fumbling for his keys, trying to get his seatbelt back on as unobtrusively as possible.

"Queer readings of contemporary action and horror movies? Southern American foodways? The toxicity of diet culture and so-called wellness influencers? Black holes? Our city's last council meeting? Postmodern readings of the devil in pop culture through an exvangelical lense? String theory?"

Maybe if I hit on something he found interesting enough he would pick a topic and run with it. Maybe we'd talk until the golden light of the afternoon gave way to the bruised purple shadows of dusk. That's the gamble he must have made in his own head, right? Maybe if I catcall her in just the right way, she'll stop and talk to me. Maybe she'll give me her number. It could be the start of something, who knows?

He drives off, tires spinning in the loose gravel, leaves me stumbling in the dirt in his eagerness to get away, as disturbed at this sudden shift in his routine as he wanted to make me feel.

But I'll never know the satisfaction of this dreamy scenario. The meak self-protective part of me keeps me walking, keeps my eyes on the ground just in front of my feet, keeps me moving forward just slowly enough that I don't appear to be fleeing, ears perked for any hint of a footfall behind me, until I reach my car, throw myself behind the wheel, lock the doors.

It was my first time out of the house this week. It's Thursday. I wanted to feel the sun on my face. Go for a brisk walk beneath the trees. I put on my favorite dress because I wanted to feel pretty after a week of being cocooned in bed, depressed.

Was that what made him say something? Is it my fault for drawing his attention? Walking past his car? I run through yet another scenario, preventive this time. I'm in sweatpants and a hoodie, covered from neck to ankles. I didn't fix my hair or wash my face.

I'm vigilant at all times, mindful of everything around me. I keep my head on a swivel, my eyes searching for threats so hard I miss the way the sunlight limns the changing leaves in luminous gold. I give his car a wide berth, foregoing the satisfying crunch of leaves and pinecones underfoot for the squish of the moss and mud further away.

Did I fix it?

[storydeanwrites]

Fun fact: No, I didn't fix it. I'm just as objectifiable in a hoodie and sweats as I am in a pretty dress. Strange men feel just as entitled to open their mouths wide and try to devour me with unwanted words, break into any moment of self-possessed Being with the reminder that their Gaze is on me.

[storydeanwrites]

This body is an object. A vessel, holding spirit like a jar holds clear, cold water. A suit stretched tight over skeleton and soulstuff. In the moments when it goes unobserved it feels so much like mine. When eyes catch at its paperthin edges like nails snagging cloth it feels less so. A shiny quarter wishing with all its might to br a pebble, a thing someone can't wait to pluck from the ground. Value predetermined, trapped within a sweaty palm, stamped by that grasping hand with the label of Mine. But not mine any longer, not in the instant it's observed. Not allowed to just be, unremarkable and unselfconscious among the gravel.

[weltenwellen]

Nicole W. Lee, from "Even the Dust"

[storydeanwrites]

Feel like I'm about something nobody else is about.

Feel like I'm onto something no one else has yet figured out.

Feel like the last dandelion of summer at the end of the drought

when the first drop of rain hits the petals.