The Person Behind The Keyboard Doesn’t Exist

just yelling into the void. feel free to message me with questions/critiques/comments/gay thoughts or anything of the like! i’d love to hear what you have to say :)

[unofficialpoet]

siblings are really like: the darkest parts of us are the same. no, you cannot play your music in the car, all your music sucks; i think all of your interests are unfathomably weird, actually. we cry about the same things. all of us each thought the other was dad’s favorite. you taught me love. you taught me warfare. oh my god, how were we ever so mean to each other as kids? come over here, i’m going to punch you so hard you’ll have to get braces again. holy shit, all of us looked so bad with braces. you look so small in that picture. i’d kill anyone if they hurt you. how did i ever share a bathroom with you? you’re the most horrific slob i’ve ever met. i need a roommate. want to move in together (again)?”

[unofficialpoet]

i wish i could make this hurt into something. i wish i could spin it into something meaningful like the transmutation of straw into gold so then maybe it could mean something to someone. instead it’s just there. heavy. i’m so tired. i’m so tired. i’m worried my skin is growing stiff with disuse, fingernails cracking with the effort of trying to pry up the squeaky floorboards in my head like pulling diseased teeth out of a mouth. i wish i could hold onto someone, i wish i could want something bad enough that i clench it tight in my fist. instead im walking. and it’s always towards something, i know that - my feet know few paths, all of them with set ends. but i never get there. i walk up to the door but i never knock, i twist my tongue around the words but never let them pass my lips. i walk away. i clasp my hands behind my back. i tell myself i don’t need you. i don’t need.

[unofficialpoet]

all i’m saying is that if i was in orpheus’ place, eurydice would have made it.

not for lack of love, no—

if she tripped i would call back to her,

if she cried out for me i would take hasty steps backwards, uncaring for the sharp stones that cut my calves until she righted herself.

it’s just that i don’t look at the things i love head-on.

it’s always stolen glances

using my peripheral vision like a prey animal.

like if i look it in the eyes it’ll bolt,

scramble back on hands and knees to get away;

i’d rather break my fingers than grip something too hard,

rather muzzle myself and let the foamy spit drip through the metal than risk biting down

(i think there’s something wrong with me.

i worry that when people look at me, they see something monstrous).

my eurydice, she understands.

she doesn’t grip my chin in her hands and force it upwards,

doesn’t think she can force that gut-instinct discomfort out of me with honeyed words and sickly-sweet promises.

she just twines her fingers with mine and lets me study the wall while i talk to her. she watches the furrow in my brow and when she looks away, i admire the shape of her eyes.

if she was behind me in that long, dark tunnel, she would have been afraid. of course she would. i would have been shaking along with her.

she would have called out to me, and seen my shoulders stiffen with tension at the sound of her voice, echoing.

she would follow it up with, “i’m okay, keep going,” because she’s clever and knows how to push through.

i would stumble into the glaring midday sun and dig my fingernails into my palms because she told me to wait until i was sure, and i do what she tells me.

she would tackle me with a hug so big from behind that we would fall onto the grass in a heap of limbs. her lips would taste like honey and my laughter would sound like a song.

and i would have looked at her. i would have memorized the golden-brown of her irises and the gentle slope of her nose and the apple-roundness of her cheeks when she smiled. i would have looked like i had been starving for it my whole life, like maybe she won’t flinch when she looks back.

i don’t fault orpheus for looking back. but my eurydice, she would have made it.

[unofficialpoet]

Do you miss me? Do I haunt you? Is it selfish of me to hope that the answer is yes?

[unofficialpoet]

sometimes i still flinch away from gentleness. when those hands reach for me, palms bared like teeth, i still shrink back like a cornered animal growling out “no. i am strong. i don’t need this embrace.”

i wish i snapped my teeth more. i wish i really pulled away when i wanted to, wish i let the softness of my body harden into sharp lines. but instead i let hands smooth away any ridges in the pebbles i picked up while walking.

sometimes i can’t relax when you hold me. sometimes i hold onto the tension like a lifeline, like if i don’t, i’ll sink.

sometimes i hate the soft planes of my face, the gentle bow of my lips. i practice staring myself down in the mirror with my deadliest glare, but all i can muster is someone haunted by something i can’t name.

sometimes i teeter on the edge of my childhood rooftop, only one story from the ground, and try to dig up the feeling of lightning striking the tree a block away, but i don’t even flinch.

i have a pinterest board titled: “what i want to look like” and it’s filled with grotesque creatures with limbs dissolving into smoke alongside beautiful boys with lips just like mine;

two disparate images, and all i can glean from that contrast is that i don’t know what the hell i want to be, just that i want to be different.

[unofficialpoet]

you say “come home with me” and its murmured like a prayer against my lips because what are you if not something to worship? what am i if not an apostle, on my knees at the altar, and what is your command if not the gospel? so i go home with you. of course i do.

i always liked the idea of religion — the idea of forgiveness, of unconditional love, of repentance, of service — but i could never get myself to darken the doorstep of a church or mosque or temple. now i wonder if that’s because i knew you would come along, and i would blaspheme any god i had committed to before that. for i found forgiveness in your unlocked door, found unconditional love in your bed, found repentance and service in a bouquet of flowers, nerves coursing through me as i raise my hand to knock on your door.

will you open it?

[unofficialpoet]

you tell me to make a wish on an eyelash you plucked carefully off my face, i barely think before i close my eyes and blow it off your finger.

you cock your head at me and say, “that was so fast” with a small smile, like you’re surprised. you wait a minute longer before squinting your eyes at me and i know what you’re implying so i say, “i’m not going to tell you what it is.” and you laugh and don’t ask.

a day later the same thing happens and you say it again: “how do you think of them so fast?”

i open my mouth and then close it again, hesitation choking me out like your tie wrapped around my throat. how do i tell you that the thing that came to my mind was just one word? how do i tell you that i couldn’t think of anything else to wish for? how do i tell you that those three letters filled my mind and made my pupils dilate without scaring you off, without giving this moment more gravity than it should have? how do i tell you what i wish for on every eyelash, shooting star, and dandelion i see?

[blossomfully]

Sue Zhao // Dialogues on Love #4 // “Maybe I already do”

[unofficialpoet]

you ask me if i’ll still carry your groceries, and you mean it as a joke but the answer is still yes. i’ll always carry your groceries. even when i’m tired, even when you don’t want me to (especially then), even when the groceries in question is a single pack of gum. i’ll always carry your groceries not because i know you can’t, but because i’ll never see the point in you having to carry your groceries if i’m around — you should never need to bear a load if i’m there to lift it.

so yes, i’ll carry your groceries, i’ll give you my jacket when you’re cold, i’ll switch shoes with you and wear your uncomfortable heels when you’ve been in them for hours. As long as you’ll let me.

[unofficialpoet]

hi I just came across your account when I was going through the #wlw yearning tag and gosh can't thank this hellsite enough for that, I have been browsing your blog since a past few years and you so astutely so accurately are describing the specific feelings, the longings, the doomed yearnings in my heart. It seems as if I bottled up my emotions and let it travel to you by the sea and you took them into your hands and spilled poetry. Thank you so so much for writing, your blog made me feel so seen and it's been a while since I have seen such art housing in the fragments of Tumblr. 💖✨

not to be dramatic but i love you and i’m honored to be the conduit to your emotions. dm me anytime 💜💜💜

[unofficialpoet]

google translate for the language of someone who never learned how to speak their mind

“yeah i’m good, just a little tired” // “i am carrying a weight that i have put into words thousands of times and yet never spoken aloud.”

“i’ll tell you about it later” // “get me drunk and ask me questions about myself so that i can let the answers flow freely like blood from a stab wound, so that when i wake up in the morning in your bed i can dig my fingernails into the scar tissue and be disappointed by the lack of pain.”

“what?” // “i feel the weight of your gaze on me and i can’t decide if it is one i can carry.”

“nothing” // “i stare because it is the way i know to show admiration; to be known is to be loved, and i want you to feel the presence of my love for you, the weight of my gaze, like a cool towel someone who loves you places on your forehead when you have the flu.”

“did you eat today?” // “if you were standing on a pair of train tracks and you heard that telltale whistle, i hope you’d move. i hope you know i’d push you out of the way if you didn’t.”

“totally okay if not” // “if i asked you every day, “are you sick of me?” would you say no every time?”

“how was your day?” // “tell me about every crack in the sidewalk you stepped over, every fleeting feeling that passed through your psyche, every minute of your stupid, boring class you had to sit through and i will listen with eyes and ears wide open.”

[unofficialpoet]

being home feels like toeing the double yellow lines in the middle of the street

cars racing by at fifteen miles over the speed limit

with past and future standing on either side of the road like two lovers,

beckoning.

and as i dance like an acrobat on a tightrope,

i wonder what it means to leave behind,

to grow out of a place like a favorite shirt.

the way that it gets tighter and tighter around your chest

accumulating holes

until finally your mother tells you that it isn’t wearable anymore.

so you put it in the drawer with the rest of your pajamas,

still unwilling to let it go.

and you’re not sad, per se,

honestly, you don’t even notice the place where it used to hang in the closet,

just fill it with new clothes in new colors and sizes.

but sometimes you see the pattern of that shirt on somebody else at your new coffee place

and you wonder if it would fit you if you asked them to borrow it, just for a second,

or if as soon as you put it on, it would morph and shape itself to constrict around your chest,

growing a new hole in the armpit before you even put your arms through the sleeves.

when you get home, you beeline to your pajama drawer,

and try it on,

just to see

and maybe putting your fingers through those familiar holes after seeing that other persons in prime condition makes you want to put patches on it

wear it around again because it’s still technically functional,

or maybe it finally gives you the courage to throw it away

to go back home and visit your childhood friends,

talk and laugh without the bitter taste of melancholy in your throat

and buy a new shirt.

[unofficialpoet]

the way i love men is so different from the way i love women. when i love a man, i want to date him. i want to hug and kiss him and enjoy his company. it’s wonderful and warm, and i love men! but when i love a woman, i want to die for her. i want to set myself on fire to prove my love for her, even if she ends up rejecting me in the end. when i love a woman, i want to let her cut open my chest so she can see her name carved onto my heart’s pulsing surface. i guess my love for men is the campfire you tell scary stories around, and my love for women is the inferno that consumes forests.

[unofficialpoet]

plot twist! turns out i was a lesbian

[unofficialpoet]

i mean to type “like” about some stupid drawing you did but my fingers have memorized the pattern of “love” so well that the muscle memory throws me bodily into confession. and isn’t that a freudian slip if you’ve ever seen one? i practiced saying that i loved you in the margins of my notebook paper, in the notes app of my phone, in confessional posts on tumblr, for so long before i actually said it that it is ingrained in my body as surely as the wrinkles of my knuckles and the tenor of my voice; the only difference now is that i don’t delete the “love” when it shows up in the text box, don’t cringe at the slip of my subconscious as it shows up in the blue bubble. i don’t worry that you see it and know what i’m thinking, instead, i know that you see it and hope that you know what i’m really saying.

[unofficialpoet]

not that anyone asked, but here is the best writing advice i have gotten that i recently saw to fruition: write down all of your ideas. all of em. even the shitty ones. especially the shitty ones. i write mine down in my notes app, but you can carry around a notepad if analog is your cup of tea.

a couple months ago, i wrote down a couple lines of a piece that popped into my head, and i straight up hated it; i thought it sounded bad, i thought the idea was flawed and the execution was clumsy. so i left it in my notes app and didn’t look at it. but yesterday, i was writing and found the perfect place for that idea to fit in within a different piece, so i reworded it and was so happy with the way it turned out.

TLDR; write down all of your ideas, they might come back to you in a better way 

[unofficialpoet]

i’m grateful that i can allow myself to be enamored with you while you nap on my bed. i can quietly study the parts of you: the skin of your leg propped up near your hip in an attempt to get comfortable, the curl of your hands around one another aside the pillow. if i could paint, i would use infatuated strokes to capture this moment: you as you are right now, perfect, unchanging, forever on canvas.

i did not fall in love with you recklessly, nor like you fall asleep now, but walked into love with you eyes wide open. i observed you quietly, from a distance, for weeks on end, with nothing but my own yearning to keep me company. i learned the ways that you move, speak, breathe, imprinting each mannerism on the backs of my eyelids. it only made it more momentous when you finally looked back without averting your eyes.

[unofficialpoet]

coming home feels like ribs by lorde. feels like relief. feels like laughing at the dinner table. feels like string lights in the backyard. feels like riding your bike in an empty parking garage. feels like parking your car at the top of a hill and watching the city lights twinkle in the darkness. feels like the quiet melancholy that permeated your teenage years. feels like kyoto by phoebe bridgers. feels like going back to special places after they’re not special anymore. feels like leaving all over again.