#piningpoet

[thepiningpoet]

S P R E A D Y O U R W I N G S . . .

Because it's never too late to soar.

[thepiningpoet]

There's just this: I've grown to love you. That's all. There's nothing more to say. I tried to pull the earliest saplings by their roots, kill it at its earliest sprouts, but it's no use anymore. It's grown into an evergreen that I can't be rid of. So have me, or don't. But if you shan't have me, then take your axe without hesitancy, as I have not the strength to bear it, and cut all down that lay before us, or what little remains. And please, don't hack at it steadily, taking your leisurely time in the matter. Strike true, swiftly as a guillotine and let me not feel it again. Make me loathe you from the surface of my skin, to the marrow of my bones, so I won't mourn the loss. That's how a love dies. It never passes gracefully, unnoticeably, by God's natural means. No. It's smothered in its own bed and takes its last breaths slowly. We, my dear, are the murderers.

- K.A.H.

[thepiningpoet]

https://thepiningpoet.tumblr.com

We are very proud to announce “The Pining Poet” e-journal publication: The first-ever digest dedicated to all things pertaining to Dark Academia. For writing/fashion/art submissions, please write to us at [email protected].

Question for the next issue: What does Dark Academia mean to you?

Note: All submissions must be original content from you.

Writing Submissions:

Please state full name (that you wish to be shown in the publication) - Author's bio (a short 3-4 sentences, no more.)

File types should be in Rich Text Format or PDF

Please check your file for grammatical errors/typos BEFORE sending it

Art Submissions:

Please state full name (that you wish to be shown in the publication)

Art should be a high-resolution scan if possible. If not, a well-lit and clear picture of high quality. Low-res pictures of grainy or unclear quality will be immediately rejected.

Fashion/Style Submissions:

Please state full name (that you wish to be shown in the publication) and country of residence

Pictures should be well-lit, clear, and of high quality. Photos that don't fit this standard will be rejected

If professionally photographed, the name of the photographer must be provided

Submissions close by mid-January. Thank you!

[thepiningpoet]

You're like the sun: after staring at you a little while, when I close my eyes I can still see you. The image of you is burned into my mind. You are inerasable.

-K.A.H.

[thepiningpoet]

Entry 426:

Your name and address are missing from the envelope, like all the ones before. I'm afraid I've lost count of how many. At this point, my own cowardice has embittered me.

When people refer to haunting, they often think of death. But those that mistake it as such, dare say, have never truly felt this word in all its authenticity, as it lives and breathes. Haunting isn't death. It's life. People haunt you, things haunt you because they're still very much alive somewhere...deep inside, a light refusing to be snuffed out, spilling their lasting poison around the ridges and valleys of your brain and refusing to let up. People don't often refer to love and obsession in this way. And yet they should be. Hardly anything is more haunting than the idea of love or the illusion it gives.

I remember the last words my father spoke to me more than I do the decomposing corpse I stumbled across in the woods years later that committed suicide. Whether it be the idea of love or love lost, these are the things that haunt us. And so your eyes have with me. They've haunted me this year and two months, but God...I've felt every second of those four hundred twenty-six days. The days we spoke, passed like minutes. The days without a word dispersed, elapsed like years. And you keep me hanging on this precarious tightrope with no glimpse of a net beneath me, with some days me simply wishing the wind would have its way or that I would let my footing slip. But then I would always wonder if you were waiting for me at the end of the rope all this time, with a hand extended. The image of you waiting there is what haunts me...an image that has never happened and may never be, but God, I wish it to.

When people say you can't want or give what you've never been shown, it's the cruellest of lies. I have this idea of love, that I've never experienced, but I know what it shall be, how it shall look like, what it should feel like. I haven't felt it, but I'm determined I will, just as I am determined to smell you, touch you, breathe you in and shiver and tremble at the idea of all these wonderful fantasies coming true at some unprecedented point in time. You can kill a person but you can't kill a dream. They live on somewhere. That is exactly what haunting is, I suppose. It's either a dream or a nightmare that passes telepathically from one individual to the next and never truly leaves.

You just keep giving me reasons to look back. You're a dream I can't quite get my hands around but one that always gives me just enough hope to make me think that maybe one day I can. Maybe you won't leave me fully because I've done the same to you somehow unknowingly, that I've instilled your visions in those quiet, wretched hours of dusk and dawn. And the night sweeps over your eyelashes like an intoxicating dream; my frame, ghostlike, my eyes somehow sorrowful yet whimsical at the idea of that one thing which I've never received and always given. Has this haunted you as your gaze has me? If this be true, let our fates be the same.

- K.A.H.

[thepiningpoet]

ENTRY 079: I simply wanted to know what it would be like to graze my hand across the otherworldly softness of your cheek and by it, not to have felt the winters of my life anymore. That’s all. But even having prayed to God for this is too much. To ask to swim in the spiral galaxies and drink the stars would be more easily achievable than what I have asked. I have sworn to forget you and yet I find the threads of your words, of our sacred conversations, interwoven in the tapestry of my writings, of my art, of everything. By the time I’ve removed every aspect of you from me, my life is not a patchwork of dreams anymore; it’s nothing more than threadbare rags from your extraction. There’s nothing left anymore. The hopelessness is insurmountable. I tell you in all earnestness, I have never felt as alone in the world as I feel now. My sorrow twists around me as tightly as a noose. I have nowhere to turn anymore but to my own forlornness and greet it with all open-armed familiarity as I would an old companion. Come, my old cimmerian friend, I too am a creature of the night, as the last light in my hands has shunned me and is mine no more. Come into me and let us become one. Let me forsake this too infrequently incandescent world and have no remembrance of it. Yet still, as I step into the darkness and let the caliginous surroundings consume me, I see you. I see you in all clarity within my mind’s eye. You’re like the sun: after staring at you a little while, when I close my eyes I can still see you. The image of you is burned into my mind. You are inerasable.

K.A.H.

[thepiningpoet]

Donning the Mask

There's something about you that always appealed to me. But then again, I always had expensive taste. I always gravitated towards things I couldn't afford...things just out of reach. Even in people; people with greater spirits than my own, people with braver souls, people who always saw the good in everyone and everything despite the flowers around us withering, the world moaning in death. But when I see you, it's like it's always Spring where you tread lightly, like frost never touches you, or at least, you never show it. Perhaps under your gloves, there's frostbite. If it's a mask you wear, you wear it impeccably well. Teach me not to suffer anymore. Teach me how to wear it as you do.

-K.A.H.

[thepiningpoet]

I think sometimes people are afraid of the ugly I'm capable of creating, and in truth, I love to create it just as much as I love to create what is beautiful. They're not so different really, that's what makes both so captivating for me. Both are uncommon, both demand attention. Both are capable of instilling fear in one's heart. They can make you afraid to speak clearly, they can make you afraid to breathe, they can make you afraid to look...but you're compelled to look anyway. They are the world's great truth-sayers, for they need no introduction, no fanfare, and how we respond to each is a reflection of our own souls. And that's what is marvelous about the beauty and the beast; they're two separate sides of the same moon. One bathed in light, the other immersed in shadow. Does not the detectable edge of the moon's darkness against the night sky ensnare your attention just as much as the side that beams the sun's glory? Yes, they both demand our attention just the same.

-K.A.H.