city of starlight

arni

[stranded-king]

and if i let my smallness stop me, i’ll never reach the moon

more on insta

[padehler]

I went to the beach with my 1957 Kodak Pony IV and all my photos came back super hazy and old-looking. It is okay if you want to pretend I took these is 1957

[velarris]

tahamul.

[soothingmask1]

“A lover doesn’t discourage your growth. A lover says, ‘I see who you are today, I cannot wait to see who you become tomorrow.’”

[velarris]

logging in to this blog feels weird. almost like trying to fit into an old sweater i’ve undoubtedly outgrown. i don’t know if anyone still remembers me, or if anyone would even begin to want to care. but i think, with the long winter month ahead, i’m going to take quiet refuge here from a time to another. so, hello. i guess i’m back?

[c-isnenegro]

[velarris]

If you needed a reminder today: he's just a boy.

[poeticamenteflor]

[velarris]

Somehow, this one tastes like sea salt tears and too sweet coffee. It reaches past your lips and pulls your teeth together, and people can see the surging loneliness contorting across your face. Despite the disdain it leaves as aftertaste, you’re unable to unearth the desire to wash it away. You sit with your teeth gritted, your eyelids in a forceful collapse, but you can’t do anything about the godawful feeling coalescing on your tongue – the hurt muting your senses to a lull. You’ve never tolerated romanticizing pain and chaos. You’ve crushed any embellishments made for nine p.m.’s jam packed with sorrow. But this hurt, it takes you aback. It grabs your frame of mind and intoxicates you. This hurt, it pierces past your skin like a drug.

how does this round taste? // aed

[velarris]

please don’t ever feel like you need someone to complete you. don’t ever feel like life will be bleak once someone leaves you. no matter how many rainstorms rage inside of your heart or how much time it takes for the chaos to quiet, the sunlight will break through again. i promise.

[velarris]

if you’re sitting there with your heart going through a brutal breaking, please take comfort in the fact that you are not alone. you have never been alone. at this point in my life, when i have to coerce myself to let go of something that’s only brought me good, i turn to my friends to fill in the gaps that are growing too large. and it is heart wrenching, to realize that my hurting and my ache do not stand on their own. that the very same people that give me warmth feel cold during the same evenings as well. but in a fleeting, selfish moment, i let myself be comforted by the fact that this pain is what makes me human. that this is horrible and painstaking, but it will never be permanent. i hope you find the courage to let yourself feel. to forgive yourself for this hurt. and to come out of it a version of you with a stronger heart.

[larmoyante]

If you love somebody they turn into a God. But you can’t control what kind of God they turn into.

Emery Allen, Holy Things in This World

[velarris]

to you,

whenever i allow myself to contemplate the reality of you and i, i always arrive at the same conclusion. whenever i push past the fear of ruining the good with too many thoughts and actually reflect, i (without fail) come to terms with a singular feeling: gratitude. i think that in itself is beautiful. that in itself speaks more of soft wonders and gentle memories than any other attraction i’ve ever forged before.

i close my eyes and i picture our moments dipped in spontaneous sunset viewings and the comfort of warm hugs. i close my eyes and the black of projected eyelids becomes specked with beaming light. i know, even if pain rushes in to knock me down on my knees, i will always be so in touch with the light you’ve given me. i will always look back and see something good.

i write you this letter now, in a regular tuesday afternoon, to keep my heart afloat. i see the end of what we have in the length of time that separates us. i see the finale approaching, albeit quietly. isn’t it funny how everything about you has been soft? that everything i feel and everything i see hinges on the gentleness i’ve never quite seen from another person before?

and that is why i’m grateful. that despite the warning signs and red flags and echoing alarms that exist in the distance, the end will be quiet too. i have never known love that reminds me of autumn rainfall or soft sheets. i have never known love that slips underneath your door and wraps you in warmth. i thank you for that. for in the underbelly of occasional heartache, there is always the good of what we did have. there is always the magic of what we did feel.

i was meaning to craft this letter to silently ask you for more. to say the words i want to say but will never really obtain the right to do so. but once i let the words bleed from my fingertips, they came together on their own. this is not a letter to weep over, to spill much of my heartache into. this is a letter to tell you, and remind me, that you are the boy that’s made my life brighter. that you are the serendipitous love i will never ever forget.

thank you, truly, for showing me a fraction of what i truly deserve.

much love - now and indefinitely.

[danger]

[wnq-writers]

The universe works in mysterious ways, and just as the heavens shift so that certain planets may briefly align only once in a lifetime – so too can this happen with souls. Sometimes you will meet someone who seems so perfect for you that it is as if you were created from the same celestial material… yet you find your trajectories taking you away from each other in hopelessly opposite directions. It seems almost cruel… to find a love so perfect only to lose it after such a brief time, but it is simply because your paths were destined to cross but not converge as one. You are, to each other, but a shooting star… a momentary flash of brilliance… a beacon of light sent to brighten each other’s lives and illuminate each other’s true path. So let them go with a thankful heart… Wish them well on their journey and accept with grace the fact that some people fit perfectly into your heart but not your life and it is as simple and as complicated as that.

Ranata Suzuki | Crossing Paths

[wnq-writers]

Ways to Love Yourself 1. Know yourself You cannot love someone you don’t even know. 2. Accept that you have strengths and weaknesses. You have skills and problems. Do a SWOT Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) of yourself if you want but remember, opportunities and threats are external. You don’t have control over them. But you can use your strengths and improve on your weaknesses, both of which are internal, to handle the external. 3. Disliking certain things about yourself is normal. That gives room for improvement. Improve. Don’t be lazy and choose the path of self loathing. 4. Forgive yourself Understand that making mistakes is the way to grow. If you hadn’t fallen on your bum a couple hundred times you would have never learned to walk. If as a baby after one fall, after one mistake of breaking something, you would have decided to just sit in the corner and never try again, you would still be sitting there with the broken pieces. Don’t do that. Learn from your toddler self. Get up. And the only way you can do that is by forgiving yourself. 5. Accept that as of now you do not love yourself. Lying to yourself won’t eventually lead you to believe it as the truth. Lying to someone you love is not a way to love them. 6. Disregard what others say about you. So much of the good and bad they tell you really has more to do with themselves; their mindset and mood, their motives and interest. Don’t let people fill in blanks for you. That won’t lead to a happy ending, it won’t lead to a story you can call your own. 7. Be patient with yourself, be kind. Being hard on yourself is a really stupid thing to do. It isn’t productive, it isn’t one bit effective and it is completely unnecessary. 8. Discard the idea that you are breakable. Reject the concept that someone can leave you broken. They can hurt you, yes and they can cause you an immense amount of pain but they cannot break you. You aren’t made of glass. Give your cells a little more credit. Give your heart a little more of it too. 9. When you realize that the grass is greener on the other side, don’t draw up plans to ruin that grass or come up with a way where you can camp on it and abandon your own grass. Instead, take a trip to the shop to buy some fertilizer and tend to your own grass. Upskill yourself constantly. 10. Learn new things. Invest time and energy in things that interest you.You didn’t learn to play piano in school but always wished to? Who said there is an age limit. In most cases the saying, ‘it is never too late’ stands absolutely true. 11. Look yourself in the mirror. You can admire or just observe. Look into your eyes. Look at your reflection. Just look. Have a see in what’s inside. Don’t look away. Have the courage to see the truth. 12. Spend time with yourself. Buy yourself flowers if flowers are what you love. Don’t wait to meet the right person to do the things you always wanted to. Go star gazing, skinny dipping. Solo travel. Do whatever you want to and can. Write your future/past self a letter. Cook yourself a meal. Buy yourself some ice cream. Click goofy selfies. 13. Learn to accept compliments. Be graceful. All you have to do is say ‘thank you’. And please don’t feel the immediate need of returning the compliment. You don’t always have to give when you get. Especially when you don’t really have anything to give. A ‘thank you’ and a smile are more than enough. 14. Learn to be okay in silence. The voices in your head? They terrorize you, I know. But trust me, they go away. They go away if you face them. There are no demons in your head. These are just echoes of your fears and insecurities. Listen to them. Breathe deep. Know that they are weak. Face them head on. And then ask them to leave. 15. Accept your body. However it is or it isn’t. It has accepted you in every possible way. Accept it and see how it accepts you even more. Accepting doesn’t mean not changing something that you can in a healthy way. It only means that your love is unconditional. Your love is whole. And that is the only way to love yourself. Wholly.

creatingnikki

[velarris]

that's the thing about my heart. it latches on to the good things that bring it joy. it sees a little bit of light and tastes a lot of sweet, and much of it quickly surrenders - no thought, no consideration. it will start becoming so tragically afraid of risk when it's too late, with it securely locked onto the thing that's made it soft again. that is where the disaster comes in. everything starts with wide-eyed 1 AMs, chest so full of fear, fingers in perpetual quivers. then it grows into afternoons with thoughts never wavering from worry. it pushes past time frames and lives inside of my mind, persistent in its assault. i wish there was a way for me to swim out of the deep. to taste sweet, but only for that moment. to see the light, and not feel the overwhelming need to pocket it forever. i wish i could feel and not be so worried about the aftermath. i wish i could love and not be concerned about the fallout.

reflection // aed