#cvldbones

[inkmagician]

dream the bodies warm again. no one could forget that they have to end somewhere we kissed to pieces. look we will ruin us.

— arlen c. + books | blackout poem from richard siken’s “scheherazade”

[blueribboninmyhair]

chinatown tonight’s gonna set something on fire, and for once I pray it’s not me. i take my shoes off in the temple and pray it’s not me. this is how we bring in the lunar new year, through the back door. wet nose blackened by a gong-sounded midnight twitching at the smell of salivating switchblades, and mother-wary saying “get inside, get inside.“ Chinese violins and cement beneath our aegean bones weighing the odds between cracking open and just telling the truth. and do you know the difference? are you seeing this shit? the dragons are dancing above us, setting fire to our parking tickets. can you smell the earthly worries and the city steamed cha siu bao? all burning our tongues. the slow motion meteor showers from beneath your bangs. the pine trees bend for you in ways you’d never ask them to, and yet, and yet. i saw a spirit walking last night, bandaging stray dogs. she chewed her bubble gum like it was 2004, scratched them when the fleas bit because they needed not because they asked. we wait for our change at the dim sum, and I pull you away from the after dark poker table because you’re young like clay, and i don’t want you getting any ideas about what it means to be a girl in red with slang on your hips and chinese firecrackers at your ankles. always having to run away from your own footsteps. so i pull you away and we watch the lobster tank with your eyes wide like lily pads under a blue moon. the christian saints won’t ever touch me like that. we’re cheap. we save the bacon grease. our altar is made of plastic. buddha and guan yin cry rice water while mom curses her burning shrimp, year of the chicken? are you fucking kidding me? it will run in circles even after you cut off its head.  here is how we pay for the crimes dug under snake burrows. a buried hatchet marked in rabbit bones better suited for witches rites. you always need something from the dead, whether you are digging them up, or aching up a storm on their doorstep. here is how we pay for the Chinese takeout: all American in the wild, taking back what is not mine behind a gun cocked jaw, moony agitation pressed with dog panting palms into virgin wrists, and family jewels. the lazy Susan freckled with pot. and no eye contact, because I am shy. i shut the door and say thank you, have a nice day! but we move like we have no homes, the last descendants of bruised cicadas and lost lotus flowers, searching for family in that black lake asphyxiating on sewer sludge some people call massachusetts. this is how we bring in the lunar new year. shy eyes at the sky, like you are peaking for a sign.

3. woah wait ur Asian? u don’t look like it tho lmao

[inkmagician]

i know how you kissed her last night / eyes open and mouth closed / hands like doves fluttering at her shoulders, never holding / still // i know how you looked over her head / for something already gone / pretended her warmth beneath your fingertips / was me instead // i know you better than that / oh she's the sun, something you can only see / out of your periphery / something you can only touch / in pieces and never in wholes // i know you in continents / maybe her light can paint you gold / but i held your trembling hands in the dark / and your doves found a roost in me

— come home | arlen c. | my books

[inkmagician]

one. Every morning leaves me with a mouthful of sorrow. I tell myself that’s because missing you is like an ache but that’s not all true: I miss you, I do, but more than that I miss myself when I was with you, I miss the girl lost in the wildflowers with her eyes open. Eventually the mornings fade into afternoons spent on the couch sifting through maps and ticket stubs and photos littered across the coffee table, a shrine to all the places we’ve been and never will again, but the weight on my tongue never lifts.

two. Sometimes I spend hours listening to your favorite songs to drown out the sound of the girl in the wildflowers calling my name, I think about how you were always full of dreams and ideas and ink-smudged maps with roads that led on and on until the end of forever, you were always so much, you were always more, and I think I was more when I was with you, too.

three. One year ago I buried two fallen angels beneath the wildflowers in the meadow behind our neighborhood, two children with fragile, brittle bones and decaying wings, the evening light paling our haloes and washing the youth right out of our skin. I was too busy crying to realize one of them was still alive, still worth saving.

four. Today I’m going to dig up the girl in the wildflowers and kiss her dirt-streaked cheeks and hold her hand until it becomes warm again. (I won’t look at your body, but the thought of it will be a ghost in my head anyway, like it always is.) She and I will go traveling to all the places marked on our map that you and I wanted to—I think you would have liked that. We’ll hold hands and run into the horizon until, just for a moment, the light breaks around our edges and we blur into one person again, and it will feel just like coming home.

— arlen c. | check out my books

[inkmagician]

we love to glorify best friends who fall apart, but what’s sadder is two people who never were friends to begin with. because you’ve had a chance with your best friend, you’ve tried being with each other, but all the pinky promises in the world can’t erase the fact that she’s the sun and you’re the moon and you two just weren’t meant to exist in the same sky.

but maybe the guy who sits behind you in chem class could have been your real best friend if only you’d talked to him. maybe the girl who was reading the same book as you on the subway could have been your future love. and all it took was one missed opportunity, one moment of possibility that died when you swallowed your words. maybe you could have been more than stars gathered in different constellations, strangers sent adrift on diverging paths, never knowing what could have been.

— arlen c. | my books

[tim-lucy]

cvldbones replied to your post: hey there. do you happen to know how theo knows...

just realized that “lmao” sounded antagonistic rly just was “lmao"ing @ jeff davis’ trash ass i am so sorry for my awkwardness

omg haha NO IM THE SAME WAY im always afraid of sounding antagonistic IM ALSO AWKWARD. but OHHHH now that you mention it i vaguely remember him saying something about that, thank you! i had a feeling i might have just zoned out because scott or lydia wasnt on the screen LOL :D

[mcrmaidlesbian]

" "I'm from Saturn", she tells you. You sit back and put your hand to your face as you smile, while she tells you of her fictional outer space adventures. Little do you know how she keeps floating around, impervious to our gravity, taking days to try to figure out how she can land her feet on the ground, and when she does, to try to stand still; trying to cover up how every step she takes feels heavy. Using her humor to drown that weightless feeling. Little do you know how she shares the galaxies of her mind to the people that twinkle her eye, but leaves the black holes in her heart behind." - saturn girl | j.h.

[arteomis]

i don’t know what love is, she whispers, i don’t think i ever knew. i always thought love would feel like fireworks …until i met you. and i won’t call this love yet, but it’s not fireworks, and it's not a flame. but it does make me feel soft and warm and i'm hoping, someday, to give it a name.

firsts. m.g.