J. Kronvall

A fucking tragedy

[weltenwellen]

Danez Smith, from “sometimes i wish i felt the side effects" , Homie

[showstudio]

Scarlett Barry on Flickr

[thethoughtsofmany]

You vanished; I stopped writing. My fingers lost the ability to purge out built up letters of despair and shame. My tongue doesn’t dare get involved. Any thoughts that once sat within me have become clumps of salt. My hands shake, I shake. I have no muscle memory of how to get them out of me. I shake convulsively and they still remain inside the shaker. But these grains— these seeds you planted in me do not break loose. I cannot pick up a pen. The words that need undoing cannot be unwound with ink. Perhaps there is no longer a word to say. Perhaps there is no existing word for what you left (almost) empty.

[metamorphesque]

musings on november

― Donald Miller, Holly Warburton, L. M. Montgomery, E. M. Forster, Anne Sexton, Kaye Donachie, Anne Sexton, Emilio Hernandez Martin, Maggie Stiefvater, Nina MacLaughlin (The Paris Review)

˗ˏˋin case you’d like to buy me a☕ˎˊ˗  

[pastperfectcontinuous]

Yes this… the simplicity of routine

[nosebleedclub]

How much more can you withstand?

[inkskinned]

i. what is the measurement associated with this. what is much. what unit of matter is a lifespan.

ii. in the last month i have spent so much time up-and-down that my therapist is on a backlog - i run out of time to tell her things, so we’re a few weeks behind what is currently happening. she keeps threatening to spray me with a hose every time i start apologizing. sorry this is so much, i keep saying. i don’t want to burden her overly.

iii. when you are raised in a house where the peace is rare, you find peace to be stressful. i sense silence as a warning - it means something is coming, but i don’t know enough about it yet to actually get prepared. it’s easier once the storm hits; i know how to go heatless. i know how to shore up. i know how to breathe through it.

iv. at some point, the reality will hit, and i’ll no longer be able to compartmentalize any of this.

v. there is this term: resilience child. in the world of psychology, those are the kids that made-it-out. we bounce-back. we have this elastic quality where the time we spent under pressure has turned us beautiful, glittering. we are held up as wonderful examples of success. our grades, our laughter, all of it. we are in despite, always. there is a shape of a grave right behind us, in our shadow. it bends the light around us. we are always saying - well, it could have been…

vi. the breaking never happens where you expect it to happen. not the sick dog not the overdue rent not the flat tire. the breaking comes up slowly, when you are starting to relax. she puts her cold hands around your mouth and bites the lobe of your ear so tenderly. the thing about this isn’t that she surprises you - it’s that she’s gentle to you. and that being gentle is entirely alien to you.

vii. but yeah i mean, physically? i can squat 220 :) viii. oh, i will withstand this, because i am expected to withstand everything. there’s got to be more coming. there is always more coming. this morning i woke up and i thought - i am a beast of burden. i am boiling over on the stovetop. i am going to find-a-way, because i always do, because i have to, because if i don’t, the whole world slides away from me like soap. i will evaporate.

ix. my friends all laugh and say i remind them of a shark. if i stop moving i die. if i stop moving, it will catch up with me. if i stop moving, someone will notice the shape of the hole i’ve been steadily digging. someone will notice - it’s bloody, whatever it is i’m so intent on burying.

[soracities]

“After all, [the world] is on my side. That is, I’m a part of it. Not separate from it. I walk on the ground and the ground’s walked on by me, I breathe the air and change it, I am entirely interconnected with the world.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

[feral-ballad]

Safia Elhillo, from Home Is Not a Country; “Boys”

[thethoughtsofmany]

I survived every burning, every lashing, every dismissal of your hand

I have the scars on my soiled hands to prove it

I have memories that even the best of swimmers would drown in if they so much as dipped their toes into them.

No longer sinking to my knees in front of you. No longer complying when you tell me to look at you while I suck you down a swollen throat; the throat you’ve tied across branches in each lonely, empty forest we found ourselves in.

Putting yourself or else your name in my mouth if it meant no other words would come out. I stopped begging when I realized nobody but you would hear me.

If I was a force to be reckoned with before, it is only force that you can now use against me.

Drown me like a good witch this time. Don’t run into the still waters after me. Rescue breaths in exchange for another chance to send me on a suicide mission. Let me drown this time because I would rather drown than suck you down again. At least there is freedom in such a death.

[thethoughtsofmany]

I hear hell is freezing today and I hope you have a jacket/ and I don't mean here because that would not be home for you/ this purgatory is vacant but I remember when you said once that you were never coming back/ I won't admit my disappointment because I'm not and if I was I would be lying to one of us/ so today I'm pulling out the garden from beneath my feet and eating apples off the tree/ not screaming-- not even speech will leave these tainted lips/ how can I transfer poison?/ where did it start, with you or me?/ I didn't want to meet you in the street or hear you sing or have you play my body like tight chords on a string/ how deep did you slip into me?/ I cut the ether and you still show up in my sleep, vividly/ thank you for not driving us off any roads but will you save me a dance in front of the moon next time?/ when our underworlds collides, I mean/ I am stung whilst you sting

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“I thought I could know you, those years when I pressed against your length like paper seeking an imprint of something other than itself. And I did, I do: though you are always a few steps ahead, signalling for me to follow.”

— Luisa A. Igloria, from “In the Substrate,” Via Negativa (30 November 2021)

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“Before a moonlit mirror, she and her reflection floated in darkness, two auras of beauty that haunt him still.”

— Greg Sellers, journal entry, “Notes from Neruda’s Ghost,” 2 January 2022

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“Dear girl dreaming me, unbutton my shirt, speak.”

— Dave Smith, from “The Poetry Game,” in Tremble, BWR Chapbook Series, Black Warrior Review (Fall/Winter 1996)

[thethoughtsofmany]

Break the bread

Lick my blood off your

hands

// I’m your communion

[thethoughtsofmany]

I’ve written so many love letters to you. I love you. Oh god, I loved you. I dream about falling in love with you. I dream about drowning in the shower and your drunken, cold hands on my body. I dream about you slapping my face over and over and over and I love you so much for doing it. I loved it when you hurt me more than I’ve ever loved anything. I wish you would hurt me again, which is why I’m writing to you. I don’t write about you hurting me. Maybe I will start, because I loved it so much. I wonder if you loved hurting me as much as I loved you hurting me. I wonder about the moment when you realized I loved you hurting me. I wonder if you really wanted to stop hurting me. Do you hurt the way you hurt others? I imagine you love that quality in yourself tremendously. Sometimes, it would hurt to imagine you hurting someone else as much as you were able to hurt me. It hurt even worse to imagine you could possibly love hurting someone else more than you loved hurting me. That’s how I knew I loved it when you hurt me. You hurt me the worst when you said after years of hurting me that really I was the one hurting you. Do you remember the night you told me I was incapable of hurting you? What a surprise that was to me! Or the night after hurting me when you said you’d never hurt me? I travel back to that hurt when I write you these love letters. I look at my hands with glee when I write because all they do is hurt. See—even now you’re still hurting me without even using your hands! This hurt is magical. I’ve never hurt like this before. I’ve hurt in places hurt does not hurt anymore. And you never truly leave after giving someone such a beautiful thing like hurting. I hurt I hurt I hurt. I tell no one of how much it hurts. This hurt is a secret. If someone were to find out how much I loved you from my hurting, they would surely love hurting too. Perhaps they would write you love letters about hurting.

[lifeinpoetry]

I said, “Don’t touch my mouth. There’s teeth in there,”

and you replied,

“There’s teeth everywhere on you.”

— Avni Vyas, from Little God

[mortalpractice]

“Last night I dreamed I stitched our souls together, […] And whatever happens to souls in dreams must be as true as what happens to our bodies when we’re awake.”

— Caitlin Galway, form “The Lyrebird’s Bell,” The Puritan (no. 51, Fall 2020)