#tremblingwarsong

[myth-boy]

⚡️

& so there’s lightning lining youreyelids like silver

& the scent of ozone likenostalgia, heavy but gentlein your bones

& autumn passes like a lover,and buries itself in soil

& somewhere, in its lonely,a temple hollows itself insnow

[blueribboninmyhair]

Ok we are not nothing. You know the evening sky like a drunken mother in a nightgown, you know in the morning when she cracks like the axe split the cherry tree and lies all cold on the ground, and the dog inside pawing at your red toes, your pre-pubescent growth spurts aching with the dawn. Something haunting. Like the echo of the rubber ball rolling under the bed that your limbs have outgrown but you can’t afford much better, your room is tilted down on this side, lower sunk into the earth, punched and swallowed, but cursed all the same. like a loose tooth. red dawn on your jam and toast, and your legs stop swinging, you reach a hand in, and yank at that hanging chrysalis feeling, and lick it when it’s free, and this is why they’ll call you bucky butterfingers you just don’t know it yet Something ugly, and childish, and smeared around your gaping mouth like blood, we can just pretend it’s cherry popsicle. I tried to cut my fingers off with safety scissors, you left me all alone behind that fence, those great big sunflowers with moving heads and stiff necks, and yellow tongues, I used to run out back with milky slopping glue in the corners of my eyes and eat all the carrots and dirt and hedges I wanted, alone, until a grown up found me, and peeled me from the garden by scruff of my neck, she closed the bathroom door behind me, told me to wash my face with blue dish soap, and I cried when it stung, when it made my tongue feel like a slug in salt, but I said ouch very quiet with her wrinkly, rubber hands squeezing in under my play-doh ribs, cartilaginous and still soft, like a tadpole in mud. she turned her nose and said I smelled like a wet dog and plopped me covered in scrapes and full of wriggling worms like fly ridden fruit, her black skirts bit away the feeding curl of ants I fed my stale cookies to, she sat me with a towel to dry in the time out room to be eaten by fat clowns with clocks for faces, and half past midnight for teeth, I buckled my mouth, I was brave, crossed arms and wolf fur under my armpits, wild thing screaming for her mother the alphabet backwards smashing doll houses in velcro Mary Janes, the sand box bully, the monkey bar hog with wood chip splintered knuckles and callouses to prove it, covered in scrapes and caved in and hollowed out like an empty pint of ice cream, I have spare band aids in my pockets, like confetti to a cheap magician why are those purple things under your eyes so big? can’t you do something about them? don’t you want to be a better girl?

bees and their empty homes

[prcserpina]

sakshi, for the name thing. hope you're well, love. <3

sakshi: sweltering heat, blooming lilies tucked between interlaced fingers, love, oil lamps burning in the darkness, bronze and gold intricacies, anklets draped with bells, mirrored and sequined skirts, vermilion and the fragrance of saffron, the stars on a cloudless night. 

no more please

[dosenherz]

i hope it does not hurt as much as it used to: pulling words like teeth from the wound. i hope the soft is more than tapestry stuck to the inside of his mouth is mellow tangerine: the colour of sun dripping all over the ground before she shifts into gold. i hope your hands shake as volatile as bird wings drawn south, and equally violent - feathered throat refusing to die. so you remember to grasp your glass with a vice-grip, and their bodies perched like cats dozing in the sun, and then how we learnt to let things go: flesh spread like rivers / rifts in the sand / sad lines around your mama’s eyes. so you remember that you wanted to put the bones back. so you remember that you wanted to leave the graveyard earth on doorsteps when you come full circle, entering yourself again. so you remember that everything runs backwards when un-done: better than your heart touching the mouth of a gun. the air is electric noise before lightning and that metal taste is as tender as what we’ve become.

[fantodsdhrit]

Letter VII: Is Blue The Warmest Color?

a collaboration (contd.) with @tremblingwarsong

dear S,

so, everyone wants to be special: be the sun of some solar system, petrified, of being angels without wings---it's as if, mortality has banished the turtle they have inside, always summoning the hare to win it all, sweep away everything. the kettle is always whistling--- the human clay is molded to guide its ship away from the shore, but will inevitably crash

against the rocks. now, when i sit here on this bench, look up to the sky between the silhouettes of neem leaves (they make you eat them, when you leave the cremation grounds), if you can recall the scene from 'blue is the warmest color' when they're lying on the grass, smoking; my lungs are heavy, and i think I've forgotten what

it's like to be ordinary, but i feel ordinary, i do. after all: we are all vulnerable acting invincible.

D

---------------------

dear D,

have you read that thing about how we humans are made of stardust--- it’s such immense pressure to look up at the sky, while being told, that you're made from the ashes of all that shines above you; you could have the might of the sun / we forget, rather often about how we aren't invincible---nothing is

but tell me, could it really be that bad to pretend?

yesterday, i wrote a poem for the moon, like i was her only lover, and it felt great for a second---but reality always kicks in, doesn't it. another piece of dry grass in the haystack / i am but the needle that wants to prick---then again, aren't we all?

it’s all an illusion / we are nothing.

S

[fantodsdhrit]

Letter VI: Sheesham (Rosewood)

a collaboration (contd.) with @tremblingwarsong

dear S,

today, i saw a family in the garden during my morning stroll; not an advertisement-family, but more flesh-and-blood---a husband-wife and two children (boy and girl, about 5-6) and i could make out that it was "just a day in the park" for them, with a camera, frolicking around, all the mirth and laughter; as if they were in their own reality, their own realm.

the father climbed this fallen, sheesham tree with his children and the mother was taking pictures. and when i started to walk back home: i felt sorry for the kids, their purity and innocence, which will slowly trickle down in the name of humanity and tangibility; time will blemish their minds and things will move on as they ought to, decaying, fleeting, like the conventional rolling wheel. they say,

"the created must become dust." and i often wonder, is everyone loosening their grip?

D

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dear D,

the world is a horrible place and we are lost in it; running from door to door looking for something---conveniently lost in our questions of who, and when, and where like there is too much in the world to decipher. the clock strikes twelve everyday--- it is just us who aren't looking; too lost in looking for meaning.

i am unsure about what i want to say---dear, if i was struck with hope, and i could tell you about how the stars have held the sky even in the harshest of times, and how they always will. there will be a time where our hearts will jump as they did, in puddles; happily. dear, i can tell you about how we are all trying to conserve ourselves; our childishness in our blood, and how times will get better, eventually---the world is falling to its roots again or it will---soon, just you wait---

dear, i could tell you everything is made to end. isn't it? the circle of life, is all that really prevails; we are all just puppets trying to fool ourselves into thinking that we hold the strings.

S

[fantodsdhrit]

Letter V: Antediluvian

a collaboration (contd.) with @tremblingwarsong

dear D,

i could say it’s okay, but don’t you see how i see nothing at all / from here on out— why do you stay, and surrender to my crazy whims of inflicting pain / this couldn’t be one of those—Adam breaks his rib for me (Eve) to come alive—don’t you see the times have destroyed us all; in this search for more, and more and more, and how i haven’t said enough— and how you never hear the rush / the winds have been unkind / the mouth has been forgotten—but here we are, here we are / back in time; unsure of whether it was ever really the apple that poisoned us; if it weren’t enough.

S

———

dear S,

there are reasons, courteous enough, to break your bones; when you move on with expectations that are worn-out, when your silence is a static peeling fresh wounds in suburban life: primitive, the only wheel, rolling, disconsolately—when your lost earring goes underwater, featured in a fashion magazine; when you spill milkshake on purpose, drink venom instead and use outdated assassin antics; when your mouth smells of gasoline before an inferno ready to devour marshmallow hearts; when you’ve had enough and not enough of everything; sixteen more than us, than the apple we bit.

D

[fantodsdhrit]

Letter IV: Chiaroscuro

a collaboration (contd.) with @tremblingwarsong

Dear D,

The softness isn’t gone; it is late evening, And the winter is setting back into our bones Again—have you seen the sun, through our Smokey haze today? tell me, did you like it?

Remember the train we took to get away, And how we met, running—i still see the red Behind my eyes, and i see you too; there is A flame where we left our feet—the seeds

Have grown into trees. The winter has set in— The flowers in my stomach are wilting, but The music never stops—don’t you see how we Have danced every morning with the sun

Don’t you see how afraid i have been—i have Missed you; i have missed the beats of our song, And how my thawing has always needed your Warmth. I am sorry, i have been dreaming; again.

S

———

Dear S,

This isn’t fair / you rip your heart out / blend it Into these words / and send it / to me—well, how Should I receive it? / how can I? / matchup to This spectacle / and appear flimsy / apparently

Things have become photosensitive / perhaps a Blur / every moment it becomes / more difficult To distinguish / which is which / I’ve learnt to / let Go / and watch things / burn out / like candles

Leaving some wax / an aftertaste / then wait For it too / to dissolve / you’ve taken up all / the Lines / left nothing to decipher / except brush Strokes / your portrait / with crude edges / a

Stream / that flows in me / hasn’t decided if / Reality is dreamlike / and vice versa / sometimes They collapse into each other / like us / erase This dividing line / my warmth is your softness.

D