#hey postman

[writingfromruins]

the comfort of god is in estrangement; i'm a stranger to the people who have raised me, but i'll always have an extra absent father, whose love is a schrödinger's love: he knows me totally and cannot help but love the faults: he never looked at me once and hates me for the crooked teeth i got from him, or the shining.

A body is an image is a body, my crooked teeth a cage, prayer and tongue both captives in my maw, captivations, in my image I make mistakes. I am only so good at being loved. There is faith and there is tightrope walking. There is faith and there is mountain climbing. I do all of the above with net and harness and a knife for making sacrifices. I don’t demand this of those I love- but I am only so good at loving too. I do not understand it, I am good at cutting ropes. There is faith and there is a shape of higher power that someday I may know again, however: Today I take the bus

and all my faith is used up on that.

A HOUSE YOU DON’T GO BACK TO // PD

[writingfromruins]

Can you write something about raging at God?

God.

Like. My god, my fucking god, the one I was given at birth when the cold water hit my forehead, before I even knew what god meant, what god was supposed to mean, what god would come to mean, how goddamn mean god could be, my god.

I was supposed to be holy and pure and not this wretched beautiful mess of a person I am now, and yes I love the mosaic made of sea glass shrapnel more than I ever loved the stained glass windows but that doesn’t change the fact that all my edges were only smoothed by my drowning. My god.

If you exist then you have done me a disservice in your inaction. My god. If you exist then it is in your name I was thrown down the well to float or drown and die either way. My god. It is in your name I was baptized. I give you back all your holy water spent fruitlessly on me. I give you back enough water to flood heaven.

[writingfromruins]

There are frogs in the library

After the apocalypse came the library became a swamp with standing water up to your knees. They say there was a school trip then, and you can see in the children’s section beloved books shoved high as children on step-stools and each others shoulders could manage. The entire warriors cats series has a home on the very top, where the ducks tend to hang out. In other sections you can see the classics saved, Shakespeare, Twain, some poetry lover reshelving Whitman next to TS Eliot to keep them above the tide. I slosh through the stacks and see what people thought to save when the waters came, when they didn’t know how long the end of the world would last, how high the waters would get. The encyclopedia, by now long out of date, was moved in order, book by book. You can see the water stains on the y-z section where it was partially submerged before its rescue. I wonder at it, as I listen to the frogs sing, and try to imagine the people who, before the waters stilled and the tadpoles came, who decided book by book to save the stories, saying, “you were written, and you were loved, and so I will try and save you.”

[writingfromruins]

The water in your whiskey, the brass passed off as gold

Hell, but when everyone else here is seeing double you’ll be sharper by an inch, by a measure, and you’ve never been one for romance, not really, not the way you think you ought to be, but the rings on your fingers don’t bend when you throw a punch and that’s all you’ve ever really asked for. You kick your legs on the barstool and when it closes you stop by the basement of your friend the counterfeiter and ask to see his latest project. He grins and pulls it out of the box and sets it on the scale- 21 grams exactly, he says. Still missing something though. Still got work to do. You don’t mind and sit while he sings to his synthetic soul. You think you wouldn’t mind swapping it out for yours. You match with it.

[writingfromruins]

glass teeth and broken promises

You can see right through him when he smiles. The transparent tombstone lineup of the teeth is unsettling, least of all because he seems completely unaware. The light burns bright as it hits and goes through them, leaving little burnt spots on his tongue and cheek and throat. He is telling you that there is nothing wrong but you can see the cave of his mouth crumbling into ash.

His canines have a jagged edge, a break in them that makes you wonder what he sank his teeth in last. Makes you wonder if this time it’ll be you. His hand is on your shoulder and he presses down, heavy, and you watch the lie coil itself into existence through his teeth, through the trust-me grin, and he opens his mouth to promise that he’d never hurt you and you watch it slide out like a slug. His hand squeezes your shoulder. He doesn’t notice his tongue as it scrapes a layer of itself off against that edge of the canine. It figures. He’s had lot of practice with all the broken things that live in his mouth.

[writingfromruins]

👉👈 i like your poems about livingish cities can you do smth w that as a prompt?

its a quieter hour, sometime after two but before dawn. Barefoot in a public park parking lot (and mindful of the glass) I feel the heartbeat of the city thrumming under my feet and I shiver. I pick a direction, start walking, and you can hear what the city sings if you listen right. Every city sings to itself and every city is built on the bones and bodies of the cities that lived there before it. You take a deep breath and the still living cadaver of your city sings to you as you wander the streets. Nothing lasts forever. You still haven’t made your piece with that. You think, perhaps, the city has.

[writingfromruins]

my grandmother's wake is two crowded rooms. we are barefaced, laughing,

and simultaneously i am not even in the state and i don’t know if she’s already been buried and simultaneously i am receiving assembly line condolences overwhelmed and trying not to be visibly disassociated. Later I am curled up in an armchair, fairy lights on, turning my grandmother’s bracelet that lives on my dresser over in my hands just to feel the shape of it. She never knew my name. This was probably for the best. I don’t know where she’s buried. I figure that’s a fair trade of ignorance. My other grandmother made me blankets up until the day she couldn’t anymore. I wear a ring from her jewelry box. It never leaves my hand. She never got to know my name. One day I will introduce myself to her grave.

[writingfromruins]

It’s been a while, but I’m in the mood to do some askbox poetry. Send me a few words, an aesthetic, or even a starter line and I’ll try to spin something from it!