#escapril 2022

[drunk-on-writing]

and there you were picking up my broken bits and reassembling me into a mosaic when my new pieces didn’t fit old spaces my sharp edges were sure to make your fingers bleed but you took your time with me you were so patient, so careful, so sure and for the first time, it didn’t hurt to have someone hold me i may have glued me back together, but you were the one who held me in place

(cc, 2022)

[ambiguouspuzuma]

computer

this poem won't be read aloud. just words in code, an online scrawl; trapped on-the-line, within a cloud, whose gentle snows will never fall,

doomed never to be breathed to life, to be made real. robbed of so much: its quill left dry beside its knife, deprived of parchment's tender touch.

in times gone by, it might have soared when rhymes were shared and flown like kites, as voice reigned over pen and sword and poets sang away the nights.

traditions of a bygone age, replaced by paper, then machine. silenced and trapped within this cage. stanzas pressed up against the screen.

in one sense, it's no less unfurled than the abortive thoughts I think but never voice into the world. left bloodless, bone dry, void of ink.

for all its creativity it lives within these narrow bounds. born into this captivity, and here it dies; without a sound.

[lexmwrites]

the aftermath // Instagram: @_lexmwrites ✨

[aielylois]

1. It is no stretch to wrap my arms around everything I have ever loved. The only question is: how much time do I have left? How much time do I have to return all this love I’ve been given? All this love that I hold dear. All this love I am learning to give.

2. The fact of the matter is this- I am no stranger to the push and pull of my memories. But I know that the rose-tinted glasses become rusted if you wear them for too long.

3. Surely it’s strange to think that walking a tightrope between your past present and future is as simple as toeing the line? As if a dip into your memories doesn’t submerge you in the end, leaving you wallowing through that pit in your chest filled with all the time you thought you had left but-

4. Time is a cat in a box. Every time you remember to look you realise how ahead how behind how on time you are. Sometimes you forget to look and the next time you see the cat, it’s grey, when you swore it was black before (or was it white?). And sometimes, you forget the box exists. Forget the cat curled up or yowling or purring inside. Forget that everything is in motion and you’re never exactly where you were a second ago because the earth moves under you and it moves around the sun and the universe expands and the cat is neither dead or alive and sometimes you just need to remember-

5. I am I am I am. Between this crush of time and the throes of these people I am still here. I am still this thing, this being, this creator, this writer, this friend, this anak. How miraculous that I should exist in this time in this space. How improbable that I should exist at all and yet and yet and yet I stare up at a cotton candy sky watching the birds fly-

6. Home? Where is home? Is it in the country that birthed me or the country that raised me? When my tongue betrays me in both lands, who’s to say where I belong? Somewhere my syntax isn’t a sign post. Somewhere my accent doesn’t accentuate how lost I am. Somewhere I can truly be heard. Somewhere I can trust my voice to carry me home.

- ylm (with credit to Ocean Vuong for the footnote poem structure)

Prompts: a poem beginning with "everything is easier when you're home" - The Remnant Archive on ig // limbs + strange behaviour + crush + time (nonlinear) - Escapril on ig // love you've given + rusted - @nosebleedclub

pic id under the cut:

Typed text in black ink on a white background. The text reads: "Everything is easier when you're home." After each word there is a superscript number from one to six, so 'Everything' is 1, 'is' is 2, 'easier' is 3, 'when' is 4, 'you're' is 5, and 'home' is 6.

[xaiper-moony]

23. Parpadea y te lo perderás

La forma en que tus ojos se arrugan cada vez que sonríes

Haciendo que mi corazón aletee, como las mariposas

Recorriendo la mente, en la luz una vez hosca

Iluminando los rincones más oscuros de la habitación con los colores más vivos

Era carmesí, vibrando infrarrojo en los semáforos de la ciudad cuando corrimos hacia el concierto

O un atardecer anaranjado poniéndose sobre nuestros sueños y sobre nuestras sombras

Como el papel amarillento de la última carta que me escribiste

O la risa bajo las hojas de cristal esmeralda que caían alrededor nuestro en un bosque urbano

Aquellos saltos a través de los charcos de la primera lluvia azulada que vimos juntos saliendo de la escuela

Parecido a la tinta de tu pluma volviéndose púrpura, ultravioleta: ardiendo a través de mi corazón anhelante

Un toque, ese sentimiento

Indemne en tus brazos

Tenía 17 años, abrumado

¿Así fue enamorarse por primera vez?

Sentir nada más que el latido silencioso y fugaz de mi corazón

Amplificando todo en pleno esplendor, todo tan verdadero

Totalmente cegado por la forma en que el amor brillaba a través de tus ojos

Una felicidad que una vez pensé que estaba perdida, hasta que te conocí

~•~

Hasta que dormí por un segundo, un parpadeo y todo se salió de control

¿Qué sucedió? Lo cierto es que lo sabia y me daba miedo admitirlo

Claro, era algo de lo que no me gustaba hablar

En un parpadeo deje de ver la luz del arcoiris

Pero aún guardo esos colores en mi corazón

Los resguardo junto a tu presencia, con tus escritos ocultos

[purple-hippocampus]

Sometimes I wonder if you feel the same. If you ever look at the stars and wonder what I’m doing. If you ever eat that fruit and remember the joke I made about its flavor. If you listen to that song, or hear someone mention that author, or see a word in that language, and you can’t help thinking about me.

And the rest of the time I know for sure that just one of us fell.

[sunriseantebellum]

“past the smokescreen, atop the embers”

i get it—the fire inside you keeps you warm, as comforting as a cauterized wound. pain means little to you now as long as it comes from the outside. after all, it bears the biggest difference: it heals.

you fan the flame of vengeance like it keeps you alive. you may feel you’ve lost everything else, but hate is not all that is left. there is family, not just borne of blood, but of blood shed and spared— we save each other.

i see you past your darkness. darling, take off the mask. let the smoke clear. can’t you feel your fire within burning you, too? douse it before it turns you to ash; i cannot hold you that way.

if you can forgive just one person, let it be yourself. tell the child that still lives inside you his fear is wrong: he is loved and he will never be abandoned again. he will see it when we stand together atop the embers.

— j.a.

escapril day 16: fire

[encrucijada]

“daughter.”

“don’t call me that.”

“the prince is here to see you.”

“i don’t want to see him.”

“you’ve been hiding in the garden since you arrived. you haven’t even gone up to have a look at your room. we had it decorated and fixed before you arrived.”

“i didn’t arrive, i was taken. i want to know when my mother is going to be back.”

“again with the dragon. you were always going to come back to us, darling. the dragon was just a test of courage for your suitors.”

“i know that. i helped mother get rid of those men who were trying to take me away.”

“you— helped the dragon?”

“they were trying to take me away.”

“you killed those princes?”

“yes… when is my mother coming back? i’m not marrying that man who hurt her. he walked into our home and hurt her, now he intents me to marry him?”

“that was what we agreed.”

“i didn’t agree. take me back.”

“no, you’re staying here. you don’t have to come into the castle but you are not going back to that tower, not now you’re back after fifteen years. i missed fifteen years of you, darling. i’m sure you can learn to like the prince.”

“you didn’t miss fifteen years of my life, your highness. you gave them away. it’s only now that your conjured son is dead that you want me back. return me to my mother, or even with no claws or fire i will find a way to kill that prince.”

garden