it was summer. you sat on the front steps with your knees pulled to your chest, sweat sticking your shirt to your back. your mother was beside you, smoking, her face turned toward the street like she was waiting for something to arrive and already knew it wouldn’t.
she said it without looking at you. “he didn’t love you.”
you watched a moth beat itself stupid against the porch light.
there was no argument. just that sentence. flat, final. and the sound of the neighbor’s sprinklers taunting you somewhere down the block.
you didn’t say anything. you wrapped your arms tighter around your legs, felt your heartbeat in your knees.
she tapped her cigarette. “he loved the idea of a family,” she said. “that’s not the same thing.”
you nodded, though it wasn’t really a question.
later, you’d replay it over and over. the stillness, the way she said it like she was describing the weather. you’d think maybe she was trying to protect you. or maybe she just couldn’t stand the thought of you growing up waiting for something that wasn’t coming.
that night, you learned what absence sounded like.
she didn’t mourn him, not in any conventional sense. grief was too neat, too polite, and she had never trafficked in anything so civilized. but the news of his death cleaved against her skull like a hammer across slate, leaving iotas of something, forbidden, alive. he had always been a strange friction in her orbit — half-annoyance, half-intrigue, a boy whose presence both grated and ignited, whose glance seemed to trace the edges of her own indifference.
their connection had never had a name. it had been a crooked wire strung tight between them, vibrating with a curiosity neither could — or would — claim. now it lay severed, and she could feel it in the hollow place behind her ribs: a thrill, sharp and metallic.
she let herself trace the memory of him anyway — the way he had been a splinter in her mind, a thread that refused to unravel. there was something decadent in the impossibility of it, a cruel delight in the awareness that a person could leave you altered without ever touching you, without ever meaning to. she tasted that absence, bitter and just as permanent, and it made her pulse race. she knew, even as she turned her attention elsewhere, that the echo of him would linger — sharp, illicit, and unclaimed — like a sentence too heavy to finish.
they should make a version of socializing that doesn’t make you feel like you’re still the weird 12 year old kid that doesn’t know why she’s not normal like the other kids
you are the child of unmet ambition — the heir not to empire, but to echo. your mother was a journalist in the way some women are saints or sinners — entirely, furiously, without compromise. she walked through the world like a woman who knew too much and carried it all in silence. she smoked too many cigarettes and drank her coffee black, bitter as truth.
she never wore perfume, only ink — it clung to her fingers, stained her cuticles, soaked into her cuffs like holy oil. she believed in the sanctity of the story, in peeling back the skin of the world to expose the beating, bloody truth beneath. but the world did not believe in her.
she came of age in newsrooms full of men with soft hands and softer hearts, all too willing to steal her leads, rewrite her lines, and call her difficult when she refused to smile. there were stories she broke that bore another’s name in print. investigations she pieced together like a surgeon with no anesthesia, only to watch them rot in editorial purgatory. there was once an exposé, her magnum opus, that could’ve shattered reputations and rewritten history. it was buried beneath lawsuits and threats, and her name was scrubbed from it like graffiti on a white wall. no apology. no credit. just silence. and still, she wrote. in margins, on napkins, in the dead of night when you were just a breath of warmth sleeping down the hall.
she interviewed ghosts, catalogued the sins of the powerful, wept over the innocence of the wrongfully damned. she believed that words could save the world. but the world did not save her.
you remember the fights with rent. the hollow fridge. the borrowed clothes. but most of all, you remember the box. it still lives beneath your bed, battered, duct-taped, sacred. inside: her old reporter’s notebooks with their frantic shorthand and righteous anger. cassette tapes of interviews that never aired, full of trembling voices telling the truth. rejection letters, typed and folded like tombstones, each one kinder than it had any right to be. an old press pass with her photo — younger than you are now, eyes full of fire, wearing the lipstick she only put on when she wanted to be taken seriously by men who never would.
the smell of that box is dust and paper and dreams, and you breathe it like incense. she never asked you to follow in her footsteps. she never needed to. you were raised not on lullabies, but on ledes. you learned to read from her editor’s marks, to lie from her sources, to pray by listening to her curse at the evening news.
you came into this world already furious, already starving. she fed you the truth until you were full of ache. your inheritance was not money, not a name that opened doors — but hunger. hunger sharpened by principle. a craving for justice curled like smoke around your ribs. a bone-deep vow: you would not miss. so you chase the story like it’s prey. you keep late hours and darker company. you wear her spine like armor, her voice in your ear like a compass. you burn your bridges before you cross them because you already know — if the world won’t make room for you, you’ll carve a space with your teeth.
and yet, in your quietest moments, you still return to the box. you thumb through her old notes, trying to decipher what she left unsaid. you trace her underlines like scripture. you find her in the margins — in half-sentences and hastily scrawled phone numbers — and you wonder if this is how all mythologies begin: with a woman too good to win, and a child who refuses to forget. you are her second draft. bloodier, sharper, unedited. and one day, when your name glows atop a headline that breaks the world in two, you will fold that clipping into the box, close the lid, and whisper: this one was yours.
everyone here talks like they already know how the story ends. they walk like they’ve memorized the script: reciting perfect opinions at dinner, quoting philosophers they only half understand, wearing their family names like armor. it’s not that i feel out of place exactly. just not edited for the same audience.
today in foundations of political theory, someone asked if i got in through “the international pool,” which i assume was code for “you don’t sound like you’re from here.” i just smiled and told them it’s called working for things. ( they didn’t laugh. i didn’t expect them to. )
the truth is, i like it here. i like the cold mornings and the sharp quiet of the library before breakfast. i like how the architecture feels like it’s daring you to be impressive. but there’s this undercurrent i can’t quite put into words. like everyone else got handed a guidebook and i’m making mine from scratch. sometimes i wonder if i’m being paranoid. then i remember i’ve been right before.
professor lang said my last piece had “promise.” she meant it. i think. i just wish “promise” felt like more than a prelude.
there’s a girl in my dorm who never uses her real name. everyone calls her rabbit. she wears a different coat every day and never explains where she goes after lecture. i asked her once and she said, “if i told you, you’d ruin it.”
anyway. i’m still figuring things out. but i’m starting to think that being on the outside isn’t always a disadvantage. sometimes it’s the only place you can really see from.
#028. post - leatherbound journal.
filed under: red wax, no seal.
the garden was colder than i remembered, or perhaps i had become less alive to warmth. i remember his shoulder grazing mine like an omen. not intentional, but not accidental either. the air between us changed temperature, like something electrical had wandered in from the sea. he spoke, and i answered, and somewhere in the marrow of that conversation, so brief it might have been mistaken for nothing at all, i felt my teeth itch with the shape of his thoughts.
i knew him. not in name, but in the way crows know the sky by silhouette. the way wolves recognize the curve of a stranger’s throat. there was a hum behind his words, a careful dissonance that clung to his syllables like smoke on silk. my voice caught, soft, only because anything louder would’ve cleaved the moment. i was tired, of course i was tired. i have always been tired. but i remember the way he looked at me, like i had interrupted something in him. like i had stepped into a dream he had not meant to share.
he wanted to speak, i could feel it. not about facts, not about names. no. he wanted to confess something bloodless and intimate. he wanted to see if i could still bleed.
i think he nearly asked. something terrible. something divine. i would have said yes.
i know how the society writes its girls: “unremarkably bright.” i have been waiting, cultivating the wait, letting it rot into something useful. that i have become fluent in the language of almosts, of near - victories and the long arithmetic of betrayal.
but i wasn’t ready, not then. i was still fraying. still cradling my ruin like a child.
now?
now i have teeth where i used to have mercy. now i would take his hand, not out of trust but to feel the pulse there. to confirm he was still human enough to wound. i would ask him, plainly, “what will you do with me once i speak?” and if he told me: destroy me, then perhaps i’d let him try.
and if he still wonders who i’d choose to ruin, he should’ve known:
you are the child of unmet ambition. your mother, a journalist with spine and soul, never got her big break — so you made it your burden to achieve what she couldn't. her old notebooks, interviews, and rejection letters live in a box beneath your bed. you study them like scripture. your inheritance was never wealth — it was a legacy of hunger, of principle, of near-misses. you swore you wouldn’t miss.
core themes.
betrayal & theft of identity.
the central act of creative theft is a metaphor for deeper existential fears: being forgotten, erased, or usurped. it's not just plagiarism — it's soul theft. the original writer is sacrificed for another's ambition.
obsession & descent.
consumed by a need to create something truly hers, a compulsion born from guilt and unfulfilled ambition. obsession becomes a religion, leading her to the trial and society.
guilt & consequence.
haunted — not only by what she did, but by what she failed to become.
legacy & anonymity.
the desire to be remembered wars with the fear of being revealed. there is also a question of what it means to truly “own” a story.
truth vs narrative.
wants to write the definitive account — but truth is elusive, especially in a society built on secrets. there's a dark irony: even in pursuit of truth, she is still shaping, controlling, and possibly manipulating narrative.
archetypes.
the usurper / the confessor / the observer turned author.
a thief who wants redemption — not by giving back what she stole, but by creating something "purely hers." morally ambiguous, desperate for authorship, and ironically still stealing in a new way (the truth of the tragedy’s death).
the usurper — took what wasn't hers and succeeded by it.
the confessor — desperate to be heard, possibly seeking absolution through truth.
beliefs.
justice without a record is just revenge. the story is more important than your life — or anyone else's reputation. memory is resistance. you believe in recording things others want forgotten. power rewrites history. you won’t let it.
conflict.
you walk a razor's edge.
hero or martyr? truth-teller or exploiter? conscience or voyeur? you claim neutrality, but deep down you want the truth to mean something. you fear becoming complicit in the very machine you’re documenting — or worse, becoming addicted to the tragedy itself.
inadequacy. she believes she was born average in a world that only values greatness. every time she sits down to write, that knowledge gnaws at her. “you are not enough.”
traits.
virtue: unshakable commitment to the truth.
vice: obsession. you’ll follow the story into the dark and drag others with you.
public persona: quiet, perceptive, always watching.
private drive: you want redemption. for your mother, for the forgotten. for yourself. but you’ll settle for justice.
flaw: you believe that if the story is good enough, it justifies nearly anything.
skills.
investigation: you find inconsistencies in alibis, and motives hidden between lines of policy.
photography: you capture more with a shutter than most do with words. you see people’s real faces.
archival work: you can navigate forgotten microfilm reels, cracked yearbooks, forbidden archives.
stealth and subterfuge: you’re quiet when it matters. you blend in, because the best witness is the one they forget was there.
interviewing: you know how to listen. and when to let silence speak.
writing: your words sting. the truth lives.
color palette.
muted sepia, weathered black, charcoal gray.
rust-stained cream, faded oxblood, ink-spill navy.
flecks of gold foil like cigarette ash — barely there, but deliberate.
signature visuals.
film grain overlays on surveillance footage.
coffee rings on old newspaper articles.
polaroid's pinned with rusted tacks, corners curling.
handwritten annotations in the margins of death.
shattered glass in soft focus.
unsent drafts, locked filing cabinets.
a single light swinging overhead in a dark room.
style.
oversized men's blazers in deep navy or camel, always slightly worn.
buttoned shirts, monochrome turtlenecks, and vintage press pins.
wireframe glasses she doesn’t need (sometimes wears them anyway).
scuffed leather satchel, ink-stained fingers, and a black camera bag that never leaves her side.
practical boots, dark lipstick only on rare nights she wants to intimidate.
no jewelry — unless it's her mother’s broken watch, long since stopped.
objects that follow her.
a voice recorder with batteries taped in.
highlighted clippings from school newspapers.
a USB drive labeled “untitled 1”.
mismatched notebooks full of timelines, diagrams, theories — and one page she ripped out.
old emails she won’t delete.
a screenshot she never should’ve taken.
a worn copy of in cold blood, annotated with questions like “who decides who deserves to die?”.
soundtrack.
crystals – of monsters and men.
⟶ a bright sound twisted with weight; the lie that sounds like hope.
control – halsey.
⟶ for the part of her that likes being underestimated — until she’s not.
intro – the xx.
⟶ her walking blue ivy’s cobblestone halls, camera bag swinging, secrets ticking.
heavy in your arms – florence + the machine.
⟶ for the guilt that clings like a second skin.
bury a friend – billie eilish.
⟶ the moment she receives the envelope. the shift. the chill.
oblivion – grimes.
⟶ feminine, distant, surreal — a strange comfort in detachment.
the rip – portishead.
⟶ blurry photos, unsent messages, and what haunts her at 2am.
god’s whisper – raury.
⟶ defiance cloaked in devotion; her silent vow to find the truth — no matter the cost.
the mute – radical face.
⟶ a song for the one who speaks with ink, not voice. cold, reverent, mourning.
samskeyti – sigur rós.
⟶ instrumental; for the night she finally opens the envelope. breath caught, hands shaking.
nightcall – kavinsky.
⟶ noir tension — the stakes rising, the pulse behind the poker face.
i am not a robot – marina and the diamonds (stripped version).
⟶ the conflict she won't admit: does she want the truth, or absolution?
st. jude – florence + the machine.
⟶ “maybe i’ve always been more comfortable in chaos.”
youth – daughter.
⟶ innocence as a myth; nostalgia that tastes like ash.
tennis court – lorde.
⟶ composed on the outside. cracking underneath.
everyday rituals.
unplugs her phone before bed. she doesn’t trust what it might say while she sleeps.
stacks notebooks by season, not subject. spring for strategy. fall for guilt.
always rewatches security footage twice. once with detachment. once like a mourner.
keeps backup SD cards hidden in hollowed-out books. usually the bell jar or the secret history.
walks blue ivy’s campus in the late hours like a ghost tracing crime scenes that don’t exist.
doesn’t correct rumors about herself. let them wonder if she knows too much — or nothing at all.
places she haunts.
the archives, where silence buzzes like electricity.
the rooftop above the journalism building, where she smokes when she needs to feel her breath.
the student café at 3pm, always with a cold espresso, scribbling notes no one else will ever read.
library stacks, where the air is always one degree too cold — and people forget how loud they breathe,
the empty lecture halls post-dusk, where the echo of power still lingers from long-dead men.
her energy.
an unopened envelope in your desk drawer you can’t bring yourself to throw away.
a woman you remember from a party who never told you her name.
knowing someone is lying — but not being able to prove it.
a camera shutter in a silent room.
the moment between a question and an answer.
if she were a season : late autumn.
when the leaves are brittle and gold, the sky bruised before evening. when things rot beautifully, and the ground forgets what warmth feels like.
if she were a scent.
black tea, wet concrete, static electricity. the ghost of her mother’s perfume lingering in an old coat. ink. film developer fluid. dust. smudged lipstick on the rim of a coffee mug.
if you touched her thoughts.
you’d feel cold stone. you’d hear a match being struck, and footsteps walking away. you’d see a camera flash — and forget what came before it.
“On the surface, I was poised, cool, indifferent. (…) The discrepancy between what I would show the world and the chaos I felt grew steadily more intense.”
— Louise Glück, Proofs & Theories: Essays on Poetry
pixelskylines
discoholicmusic
andulkaphoto
