#ethan likes

[the-gang-and-i]

[perpetualisms]

Blood/Knifeplay and Breathplay.

hng

[fortifiedsmiles]

The Once Great and Mighty (All Who Have Fallen)

More of the heat, the air, the lust.

More her.

It's easy, her fingers dig into your back, leaving crescents that'll make you remember for days. When you lie awake in the middle of the night you'll still feel her fingers on your skin.

The thought drives you mad. To retaliate you move faster, hands pushing her wrists to the mattress, teeth marking her neck.

It's a game, faster, faster until her head rolls back and your back (free of her hands) arches.

The cheap moans stop and she pants beneath you.

Your lips move from her neck to the shell of her ear. "I love you." You pant, voice broken.

Her eyes are wide; wild.

"Not for what you're paying."

You stare.

"You don't love me, but that's okay. It's always okay."

You wish she would scream at you but the girl's soft spoken. She still looks like an angel.

And for the life of you, you wish you could forget. Wish it was that simple but angels only fly away when you want them to stay, so this girl (at this point it alarms you you don't know her name) will be forever seared in your mind.

The angel fallen from grace.

The one that got away.

[perpetualisms]

[fortifiedsmiles]

I don't believe in it myself, that lost world of absolute coherence: Vermeer's The Kitchen Maid where light glazes the jug and the milk of paradise pours into the basin. The girl's grip is steady as she gauges the flow, it's a task two hands can manage. The milk still steams from the cow, the cow flicks her tail and goes on grazing in a field of gold. Heraldic crows inscribe arrows from heaven: the path all good news travels. The farmer wipes his brow but when he looks up all he sees is the sun, a cloud of midges, the distance left to plough. In Les Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berri the frame is frozen, the farmer perfected as in an attitude of prayer, but this is art. Say he is praying—suppose his youngest boy has diphtheria. His wife sat up all night brewing herbal tea but the farmer needed to sleep. There's been too much sun, a hail of poisoned darts, they're going to lose the crop. Crows, after all, are carrion birds; see how they circle the thatched roof of the hut? And as for Vermeer's bountiful maiden, note her pensive face. She's careful not to spill a drop because she's a servant, indentured at ten to a prosperous family. From the swell of her bodice we might guess she's carrying the burgher's child. We could make it a sad story. What we discovered in the Renaissance was perspective.

Susan Glickman(FOR MY STUDENTS IN ENGLISH 108 WHO COMPLAIN THAT ALL MODERN LITERATURE IS TOO DEPRESSING)