[thoughtsinmychest]

He walks into the kitchen with his eyes closed and breaks a glass. Knocked off the table, one in a set of four, all we had. He says, loud, “It’s not my fault!” and ambles away as my mother starts to clean up the glass. “You miss this,” she laughs and says to me, as if I don’t see tiny acts of violence anywhere my eyes are open. He doesn’t say please or thank you to the waitress at breakfast, mother doesn’t notice it, we leave in a car and i shouldn’t be the one to drive. The sticks and stones of selfishness pile up high enough to shelter any man, any born-into-it kind of capital-b Boy,

[thoughtsinmychest]

Sweet dreams mugwort and other things pattern plus nice monster with big snout and cloud dreams like when dragons have smoke from nostrils if it's for kids

Fems with dragons please

[thoughtsinmychest]

"am i gay?" comic compilation in which u illustrate one of the moments you realized you were gay, past or present

[thoughtsinmychest]

LETTERS FROM A TIME CAPSULE

in sixth grade, I Kissed a Girl comes on the radio

and i think about how i should be

using chapstick. it plays at the last birthday party

i am invited to

as a child and my mother scoffs,

"you know what that song is about, right?"

so i pretend she is talking about the next song,

which is Halo, and i tell her about seeing the beauty

in people unwilling

to see it in themselves.

i remember crying two months later

when my dad found out the kids at school

had started calling me a lesbian. The ugly girl,

and all i wanted was to assure him it wasn’t true,

trying to convince myself

it couldn’t be.

in seventh grade when boys would touch me

without asking, i was just glad

that something about me could be gratifying.

i knew what a crush on a boy felt like

and i knew i wasn’t allowed

to share a bed with girls

at sleepovers. Trying to pray

to the stars, artificial light

doesn’t give clear answers, doesn’t give

queer answers. i remember seeing the girls

in control and feeling flustered.

i always thought i wanted to be them

and maybe i wanted to be under them,

i remember another girl asked me

which i would have sex with

if i “HAD TO”, i remember being nauseated

when i knew the answer,

Today, i think fondly of blowing my cover

with a facebook memory,

every carefully held marble spilling

out of my mouth

and across the hardwood.

At seventeen i found an outfit

I never knew I was planning.

When I recognized the taste

of my own love, i let myself feel

so high and wracked with satisfaction

i forgot how many years laid between

the desire and the deed.

Do you recognize when

you deserve to be ashamed?

Like courage grew into me

from the hiding places,

secret youth unidentified,

and with all my heat

it cried for how long

it had been waiting to meet me.

[thoughtsinmychest]

flexible, beautiful, human ethereal, your lips tug at the edges of others’ cheeks.  the ground offers up to you its solidity and you meld with them into clay as cool as your blues you will not lose yourself if you keep track with the phases of the moon. with your heart held high you will get over it, look in the mirror as it reflects the moon. you will not drown if you are still treading water. 

[thoughtsinmychest]

my nudes are for me the cotton of my skin pulls me up in the morning but what i want os a laundry basket full, every fabric mixed and abrasive and silken and plush against mine,  i can keep stitching if i want to. quilt myself into the largest security blanket i’ve ever had. this is how i take care of me. problem never that what other is doing is not enough, problem is that i don’t float one stone when i am an ocean. the cycle needs rivers and lakes and a waterfall of all the needs I am.

[inkskinned]

it’s bad when it isn’t your fault. you don’t become a dancer because your body grows in the wrong size (ballerinas don’t have hips, dear), so even though your heart loves it, you shuffle by without it, only doing salsa in the store, taking easy-peasy classes and closing your eyes. 

or you love the idea of math, of simplicity, of a language all can speak. but you sit down and they swim in front of your nose, taunting you. you spend hours hunched over a book reading the same two sentences over and over. walk yourself through kumon videos and wikihow and wolfram alpha. but it comes back with a “D” and you gotta just. know you tried and it didn’t work out, did it. this isn’t something you can manage.

there are worse dreams to lose, of course, than the what-ifs. but then you’re lying there half-drunk and saying “yeah, i loved ice skating but my knees gave out” “i wanted to run a bakery but with what startup money” “after he died it didn’t make sense to go to school anymore”. like you know that you never even had a door, that you only had a window to peek in and see a better land. like, you had a glimpse, and even while looking, you knew - this one wasn’t for you.

there’s worse things to lose, you tell yourself. there’s worse things to lose.

[thoughtsinmychest]

conservationist i consider the birds with their feet on the grass skittering like marbles & finding holes & i imagine the state of body parts hitting the pavement with a smack & if the blood goes colder instantly or only when it has been witnessed & how stained glass commands the floor only with the will of the sun & would a precipice still be an edge without something that could fall

[thoughtsinmychest]

I see in God in your sometimes rugged touch and my always soft back, In my knees on the floor for prayer at your hips. What were we ever afraid of. What pillow does not know that my mouth loves yours. A cry that sneaks out of a street in Allston echoes your release and through a window I watch the sky far away because my eyes are open and I know nothing but your body heat and release and a body that fits me, The night smiles like it has known us all along; the splattering timeline that brought us to it. We are more than the sum of our collective parts. We merge as perpendicular lines and become a door; I pass through and see the light of divinity. And it is our afterglow, and your quiet "wow," And my prayers are answered.

[thoughtsinmychest]

over the lip of a michelob ultra can my mother asks nothing, but with her hands touches my arm, touches my shoulder, touches my mouth, i am expected to open for this. a wet purpose. a trained dog is left to die, howls in the woods, is met by coyotes. is eaten alive.

she would get so mad at me when i’m sorrys would spill all over the floor, wringing out what smelled like dishonesty as if she didn’t teach guilt as hunting strategy. i would let the color bloom across the carpeting as an upturned drink, a leak through the floor and into the ceiling, all her hopes for warmth seeping away in liquid, into the earth that holds the dead animals that hold what we, violently, could not.

when the sun goes out, the warmth clinging to my skin dies. i watch her fall asleep in front of the tv and maybe she never meant anything but for me to survive; too hot not to wake. maybe it is fair for me to cook bricks out of the mud, her sloughed-off slip of mercy, always impatient to keep myself warm. in tradition, i will burn the building, soundly resting.

[luthienne]

Don’t be afraid to suffer—take your heaviness and give it back to the earth’s own weight; the mountains are heavy, the oceans are heavy.

Rainer Maria Rilke (b. 4 December 1875), from The Poetry of Rilke; “Sonnets to Orpheus”  (via moaka)

[thoughtsinmychest]

My sweater smells like my lover and although I know I'll see them again in two days, I am grateful to wear this piece of home until then. Comfort arrives in small doses. Tying on a blue necklace, slipping a smooth rock into a dress pocket, opening a Snapchat I knew it was okay to save. How some days I can eat with no trouble and a forest of repurpose grows from my fertile body and I am still welcomed in its ecosystem.

[alonesomes]

He doesn’t want my good heart in my good body he wants my mouth on a plate metal fork clicking against his tongue my lipstick staining his gums He wants to touch me where it hurts and only where it hurts He wants to take me home He wants to carve me up into something metallic something sharp wants to carve me up until I’m small enough to swallow gasoline and talk to God Every night he sharpens his steel on the hipbone he made from me Kisses the mouth he took the one that says his name right and doesn’t bite Sometimes he calls me baby and I swallow my own tongue Sometimes he hands me the knife just to watch me give it back.

SHARP, by Caitlyn Siehl (via alonesomes)

[luthienne]

Don’t be afraid to suffer—take your heaviness and give it back to the earth’s own weight; the mountains are heavy, the oceans are heavy.

Rainer Maria Rilke (b. 4 December 1875), from The Poetry of Rilke; “Sonnets to Orpheus”  (via moaka)

[thoughtsinmychest]

The folds of my thighs break open and swallow my body into a void. She falls in the direction of open space, repelled by gravity. The reverb of her curve turns stars to look, new black hole, unidentified, empty of precious metal meaning, heatless vacuum vacuous space. Dig lower than the gems they are searching for, the world on the inside is filled with soft edges of keratin. Edges form a canyon of soft and cutting, sharp edges, thick depths; one could climb down for miles. Some stranger has selected today whether or not I am allowed to be fat. To claim the name and hold it close to my chest even when it is wielded with intent to pull my flesh apart raw. The allowance as to whether I am “not fat, don’t say that,” or if I’ve gained weight since you last saw me unmedicated. I can spill over your table and you will only deny me when my desserts are not yours to take. only when I pool into too much of your space behind your seat on the train because I don’t fit. I don’t fit right and you see it. It depends on how much you like me, I guess, whether I am fat or I am forgotten, blossoming a succulent fat peony from start to finish, don’t just call me pink, don’t you take it away from me when I have snatched it from your hands like your leftovers in the trash. In the kitchen I am mother’s flesh, denial of shape making meaning. My pieces will not be pulled, will not circle the drain. Will not be ground up. Will not be brushed off. I will be like peanut butter, smooth, unsalted. Like pudding, like condensed sweet milk, feeling my belly on top of my thighs or the folds in my back turned. This softness will carry my body: home.

[thoughtsinmychest]

The folds of my thighs break open and swallow my body into a void., repelled by gravity. The reverb of big curve turns stars to look, new black hole, unidentified, empty of precious metal, heated vacuum. Dig lower than the gems they are searching for, the world on the inside is filled with soft edges of keratin. Edges form a canyon of soft and cutting; sharp edges, thick depths; climb down for miles. Some stranger has selected today whether or not I am allowed to have fat. To claim the name and hold it close to my chest even when it is wielded with intent to pull my flesh apart raw. I can spill over your table and you will only deny me when my desserts are not yours to take. I will snatch it from your hands like your leftovers in the trash.  Don’t just call me pink, when I am blossoming a succulent fat peony from start to finish. My pieces will not be pulled, will not circle the drain. Will not be ground up. Will not be brushed off. I will be like peanut butter, smooth, unsalted. Like pudding, like condensed sweet milk, feeling my belly on top of my thighs or the thick of my hips against the arm rests. This softness will carry, my body: home.

[thoughtsinmychest]

My recovery bites into some other fruit that tends to make my skin itch. I used to collect stuffed animals, often the ones that came in a big kids meal, and talk to them until I was much older than I should have been. I say used to like I don’t still wish I had them when I think about them. Why wouldn’t I keep exacto blades in my backpack. Excuses grow like tall grass that no one wants to part anyway, a turn around to the clear conversation, I tuck the grass like insulation into every pocket & wet another patch of dirt  when I heard once that platelets from menstrual blood were good fertilizer & so I wiped whatever happened to my skin with a rag and squeezed it out over a raspberry bush. It grew out as long as a lawn could reach and drooped flowers onto the tree roots like a threat. The sun would have parched it. I waited for raspberries to fruit on me. Refused to wash like the dust of inability and the dirt of staying out of my own head would turn into soil. Fruit didn’t scab over and I ate and ate until the moon came back out. Read to me constellations that were made up fresh every night. & a coyote unable to cross the river yet howls without a mother. & two lightningbug boys land on the skin of an animal with no recollection of what the right way to be safe is yet. They’re distracted. It’s by their own light.  Whatever they landed on feels cold as the night falls even though the season is not yet changing. I burrowed my toes into the ground and waited to see if this made them wet. A triangle of metal wrapped in my.palm is colder than the soil is and I wonder if the vehicle of a piece of fabric is needed to fertilize the fruiting plants. & they will grow and seed regardless, but I heard this makes them better. Like a flood of serotonin or something high the running coyote feels. I heard that flexing jaws around this is better once.

[thoughtsinmychest]

i have since never believed in fabric softener

and in that session, my stomach held itself against my back      as if no part of me should touch him     it seems my body knew better, didn’t want to fit anything that refused to fit me, nor asked to have my feet on the floor, sometimes my tongue reminds me to reject things     just in case. i listen to the fluidity in my body as it understands me now. i inhale all the way and pout my stomach, if the oxygen does not reach my depths     my heart must be holding tight, with need to tremble. fingers, too cold, will still touch      everything soft and nourishing     even the breeze as it touches my skin     wants to know that i belong.