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blackout poem a week
This week featuring: Closer to you by Clairo
alone Momma said, "I told you You call me late I pick up Peace of mind Hear it now; I’m fed up Wish I could walk away. I know it won’t change. The things you do only make me want to stay. I need to hear your voice. Know I’m standing here by choice. I’m closer to you.
She twists towards the sun.
No noise, she has no wish to leave her mark on the world. Let no ear hear her coming, or head shift to follow the lines of her being as it blurs into the sky-
(Jagged, drawn by a hand that knew little of creation. She's a knot, limbs of glass and grinding joints, serrated edges clashing together)
She doesn't want betray herself. Not how broken she must be, to fragment at the sight of the new day. Not when she's vulnerable.
strength/ weakness/ strength
Gingerly, she reaches for the light, cups her hands and catches it between her fingers. It's a dry kiss of warmth that buzzes under her skin, a melody pressing against her discoloured irises. It's a sign that she must be alive, somehow.
disbelieving/ believing/ disbelieving
Cracked down the middle is what she is. Sunlight should stream through her as if it cannot wait to leave, repulsed as everything else is to her presence-
(Bones jutting, begging for flesh to split. Mind crooning, dark and threaded with a hatred she cannot scrape from her bones)
But it doesn't. She brushes against the sun, and the sun stays. Pressed against her. Wrapped around her. Casting her in gold, until it's almost as if she has a light of her own, until it's almost as if she's worth something.
More on the Greylek Initiative
-Tell me about this song, then-
Beautiful. It's like bringing flowers to a grave, when previously all you could bring was your body and the immovable desire to claw yourself under the earth.
-And the feeling?-
Dawn light. January light, cold and bitten blue with frost but still /something/, a harkening of days to come and of the blooms that will bud between your toes, under your fingernails... Relief floating a sugary mist in your throat.
-And the girl?-
The girl?
-Yes, the girl-
...I don't have the words.
-Try-
She... Her touch turns my blood to riddles. My breath is ripped clean from my lungs- but so tenderly, so tenderly does she pull me to pieces that I forget I'm being prised open at all, I guide her fingers to my ribs and tell her to dig her nails in and pull.
-It's physical-
It's more than that. It's like handing her a set of keys to everything I ever was and am and can be, and saying, /here, I am yours. take me, do not break me. see me, do not leave me./ And she doesn't. She won't.
-You trust her-
She's given me reason to. She's kept me steady, taken the time to unfold and know me. I adore her, worship her for that.
-Tell me-
It's simple, she sees me. Hears me, moves me, heals me. Strokes my hair and lays me down to rest.
-Do you see her?-
I do. She is the light and the dark, and the silence in-between. The stars trailed in a gauzy film above us and the earth raging below, she is Still, she is Spark, she is the gravity that keeps us spinning. She is a song and my lips ache to form her, she is a melody and my lungs strain to free her, she is a slip of sun that mistakes itself for a jagged construction of glass.
(She is, and was, and will be my heart.)
-You- you love her?-
Isn't it obvious?
-How does it feel?-
Like coming home. Like breathing deep your favourite scent, like the first warmth after winter. Like forgetting how you appear and just being, like forgetting the fall and just swinging. Like smiling alone at home, thinking, like marvelling at a bruise. Like feeling so tender within that you don't think you could ever break again.
WIP: 22:39
Wattpad // Fictionpress // 22:39 tag
The haps: Carthy is a contract killer who doesn’t play by the rules. Sometimes, she doesn’t much fancy killing the victim. Sometimes, she deems the contractor guilty enough to kill instead. One day, somebody is going to catch on and kill her- but for now, she’s doing her best to get by and blot out the rest with alcohol.
Then comes Viridity. Hopelessly naive and with a penchant for romanticism, she’s determined to make friends with her mysterious neighbor. Add this to a few odd killings and a local explosion, what could possibly go wrong? The peeps: Carthy- drunk. Surprisingly proficient despite this. Just wants a national insurance number and a reason to live. Soft spot for the helpless. Would have studied engineering or computer science. Viridity- Art-student-violinist-extraordinaire. Just getting away from home, perpetually sweet, fatally curious. Rich as balls. Gay. Steve- Just wants to protect his sister, happy to stoop to murder. Struggling author. Unlikely friend.
"So tell me, so I don't end up throwing up when we get there- how many fingers did Enya Harrison end up losing? Or was it toes?" Stella asks, ever so slightly lifting her nose in preparation for my answer.
I smile wryly, through the twinge of guilt. "My dear Stella, why on earth would you suspect me of doing such a thing?"
"Oh I don't know, maybe it was the joy on your face when you sliced up that dummy that one time. Y'know, when you dismembered it."
"Her body remains unharmed." I assure her.
Stella nods, grateful. "Did you dress to impress?"
I lift my chin, filled with an odd mixture of pride and embarrassment. "Do I ever not?"
"Did you use the voice?"
"What voice?"
She smirks, bounding along with a new bounce in her step. "Oh I don't know, it's this thing you do when you're really pissed off- like, a cross between sexy-"
I splutter and choke on my indignation. Delighted, Stella merrily continues.
"-Ice cold, velvet soft, perilously quiet and totally spooky- did I mention sexy?" She asks delicately, mirth glittering in her eyes. "Very sexy. I guess power turns me on." She concludes sweetly, lips curled into a wicked grin. She gives her lope an extra calculated swish of the hips, each step becomes an exaggeration of her curves.
A swooping in my gut. The same implacable frustration of the night I watched her in the moonlight. I burst out laughing to drive both sensations away.
"Oh really?" I retort, deftly snatching up her wrists and trapping them between my hands as she yelps in shock. "Well sunshine, I can probably do something with that."
"I'd like to see you try." She croons.
Teeth just grazing her bottom lip, eyes lidded in a lazy smile-
//
More on The Greylek Initiative
Do you remember that time when you held me so tightly that all of the darkness was just beaten away? No Me neither, because That was rather a long time ago My mind is divided into sets of symbols now Grades, phone numbers, unanswered texts Application letters, acceptance letters, time ticking down Warnings on the sides of bottles of pills You know, that sort of stuff I suppose what I mean to say, is that I miss the fluidity, and the emotion that I used to have I miss how when you held me, nothing ever fit just right But that never really mattered because you were you And I was your sky And you took those deadened limbs and sharp elbows because they were mine And I took yours Because that was what we were- a collection of bones knocking together All harsh edges and vulnerability Trying to carve some kind of softer place between us
Memories
Kyla's dreams are beautiful things, even when they predict her death.
Three nights now, she's been splayed out in her sheets, thick locks of tawny hair tangling around her trusting face while she tosses and turns in rhythm to blows not yet come to pass, three nights now, she has jerked awake with a halted heart. For three nights, the unsteady inkings snaking across her body and riddling through her veins have told of her capture, torture, and execution.
This isn't really fair. She's only 13. Such madness pushes her further into her casing of insanity.
She cannot love these dreams, no twisting of logic will allow her that mercy. Not when they spike pain and fear into her sightless eyes, not when they rip away her screens and filters. But still, she appreciates their destructive beauty. Dancing, they trail only splotches across a hundred dimension page. Fluttering, they wisp this way and that on a razor thin breeze, little paper bullets, insubstantial ideals.
More on The Greylek Initiative
Colours flickering across the water Plumes of coloured culture exploding into the cool night air, music of unfamiliar tongues stroking past my ears For little me, this was enough To be swathed in the unknown and surrounded by rich fabrics To be agape at the alien, the unusual, the beauty To devote my eyes and senses, if only for a while But little me never looked up, as I look up now Ceiling tiles, wires, mechanical struts The illusion is broken because How can I not know that it is only cardboard thick?
A dream, revisited
