Yikes

It’s a work in progress

[irreparableinnocence]

Options for an intelligent young woman in her 20s:

Kill self

Transition

Betray self for nothing

Move to a brand new city and teach self how to die

Be a lesbian

Imagine Sisyphus happy

[whitebrickwalll]

“I am nothing more

Than a shadow on the wall

Pinned neatly to a clothesline

With the ghosts of other lies

Or

Maybe not a few

Just one.

“But it is a just lie,” and his breath is sweet like hickory

Leaving sooty streaks

On my paper skin

“It is a noble lie”

But I am thin and gray,

Fading charcoal rubbing against stone

So when the light goes out

And silence floods my empty cage

I can no longer tell the difference

Between noble and true.

Not anymore.

Not in the dark.”

—Plato

[ravishmewithyourwords]

“It’s like I just want to go home and then I realize I am home and it’s the worst feeling in the entire world.”

— 3:09 am (via frost-and-foxes)

[whitebrickwalll]

“My method is to break my own heart, so no one else has to.”

—will you break it for me?

[whitebrickwalll]

“Sad boy, sad boy, tell me all your woes,

Dig up my garden just to bring me one rose

Sad boy, sad boy, whisper all your fears

Let me shoulder your burdens, wipe away your tears

Sad boy, sad boy, can’t you see that I’m your pawn?

You watched me disappear and never even knew that I had gone.

Sad boy, sad boy, you tread upon my heart

And I spoke not a word, too afraid for us to part

Sad boy, sad boy, it’s never been about your pain,

I just can’t bear to watch my spirit slowly wane

Sad boy, sad boy, I think that I should go,

Before I lose myself entirely in your woe.”

—I think I found him

[whitebrickwalll]

“If this were a romcom we would’ve been friends for years until “you filled out,” and “I grew boobs and grew out my hair,” and you took one meaningful look into my beautiful blue eyes and just knew I was the one. And I would want you to fuck me underneath the summer stars on my copper roof, right next to the bottle of shitty wine we spilled climbing drunk out through my bedroom window. And afterwards we would definitely listen to vinyl in my bathtub at 3am while smoking a blunt and roasting all the trashy poetry I wrote about my exes. And of course we would fight on the car ride home from your best friend’s house party about that ambiguous and all-consuming lie you told me, and I’d demand you let me out of the FUCKING car, and you’d unlock the door and let me storm off into the pouring rain. I’d walk 15 blocks home and you’d be waiting for me on the front steps in the pouring rain, looking like you haven’t stopped crying since I left. I’d help you study for biology by taking off an item of clothing each time you got a flash card right, and you’d let me borrow your t-shirts after we fuck. My pillows and my sheets would smell like even when you’re gone. You’d tell me you love me and I’d believe you.

But bitch guess what? Your life isn’t a romcom. Grow up and deal with it.”

—life isn’t a fucking movie

[limoncellolacroix]

“MAYBE IT’S NOT MY WEEKEND, BUT IT’S GONNA BE MY YEAR” I scream at 12 am with tears streaming down my face and a bottle of champagne in my hand. it has not been my year yet. it’s not even a weekend today is Thursday

[whitebrickwalll]

Sisterhood

Through a fog so thick and bitter,

Marble eyes that darkly glitter,

At an eerie, chilling scene,

Of a wicked scarlet queen,

She has ruled these lands in shadow,

From the boughs of the weeping widow

On a raging rabid steed, born of purest breed

Drunk on Power, Slave to Greed

Candles bleed in darkened rooms,

White sheets encase a royal womb,

Stained glass windows dark with dust

Rotting wine, sweet, cloying lust

The mirrors stained and shattered,

Ancient tapestries in tatters

Distant mountains shift and groan

With a lonely, loathing tone

Distant mountains glare and moan,

With a painful mourning tone—with a lonely loathing tone

The thicket where had grown the rose,

Thrust through with a bleakly bitter prose

The phantom that haunts these grounds

Elicits the howling of the hounds, the fist that meekly pounds—the angry barking of the hounds.

It is an empty horror house

Thick with shadow flames we tried to douse

But the screams rang out like bells,

In a gaping, blackened hell

At last we burned in silence

With a quiet angry violence

And in the stillness of the glade

Awaited the menace of the Shade

A Shakespearean Tragedy

God forsake the ghosts you see

Through a fog so thick and bitter,

Marble eyes that darkly glitter,

At an eerie, chilling scene,

Of a wicked scarlet queen,

Cruel and dark her reign supreme.

[whitebrickwalll]

Do you think that the number of cows on the world will ever surpass the number of humans?

Tough question. I’d say almost definitely, and most likely within the next 2.5 years. It’ll be called the cowpocalypse, and they’ll eventually wipe the human race of the face of the earth! Next question pls!

[whitebrickwalll]

Lavosier’s Law

“Our end will be a forgotten one,”

and they are words who themselves have forgotten

the pen that gave them life, and

the man who once mastered all it wrote.

Although I’ve taken to imagining

Herman Melville, parchment on his desk,

familiar letters in the crease of his brow,

a captain of destitute seas whose obituary spoke

not of fearsome whales and vengeful seamen,

but of a broken writer they christen Harry.

And when I was young, playing out back with

the pine tree sentries,

I liked to wrap my goosebumps in a quilt of shimmering stars,

look up at an empty winter sky, and whisper into the wind

a prayer to the goddess Artemis,

who, lifetimes away in her crowning glory, only turned her sorrowful gaze

to an angry burning sky, while the immortal oceans raged

and rose rapidly from their years-long rest

to turn Athens into Atlantis.

“Our end will be a forgotten one,” and in that moment I know,

I must have already forgotten.

“Humanity, Herman!” I breathe out loud, to the ghost I’ve trapped

in my ivory prison.

“We are chasing sunsets in the west,

sprinting into the callous eastern wind.

We paint the land with our blood and open fire on the sky,”

my laugh is a child in awe--innocent, breathless,

and older than Atlas

“We think we can see the world from the windows of our trains...

but all we really know are highways and parking lots,

and streetlights in the dead of night.

“We are an ignorant people,

cruel and cataclysmic,

and we will never truly know what it is we destroy.”

[whitebrickwalll]

Fuck Seagulls

Lost in the cacophony of the raging sea, in the tangy air

of ocean gloom, hooded dunes and tide pools

beneath the cool, silver light of a rising moon

like vibrio fischeri in a mirrored lake of dusk,

girlish shrieks rise from

the parted lips of a little girl,

drinking salt, and

screaming amicably when her father’s outstretched arms

stray close enough to tag her.

Under the water’s surface, a school of fish glitters

like gold foil in the creamy foam of a champagne sea,

and a lone seagull with opal eyes

wanders across the open sand,

head cocked, gaze searching for his lost flock.

The little girl, her eyes aflame with

the fever glow of tag in the dark and sea glass in the harbor,

she digs her feet, bare and puffy pink with sunburn,

into the sand, wheeling tiny arms, as though momentum

and sheer force of will could propel her into the deepening twilight. She sees a shadow

against a palette of grey, reaches out, fingers straining towards smoke,

and falters, catching ink and salt

in empty hands and tangled hair, falling in slow motion

into arms you know won’t get there in time.

You know her like you know

how your sister makes her tea,

what time your father takes his nap. You

know her like you know

that moment, perched precariously, listening

to one perfect song, desperately searching the notes

for that poignant emotion--that familiar feeling

that soaks your soul--when you too are suddenly

reaching, only a toddler with a sieve at the beach,

not quite able to comprehend

the emptiness of your own wet footprints in the sand.

[whitebrickwalll]

Tip Toe

Somewhere, in a parallel universe, a clock is ticking.

The cool cotton of Spring sheets chafe against unshaven legs, and

from an open window night air drifts inside, stirring silky amber curls

with the heavy perfume of cedar wood and tarnished pewter.

The headlights of an errant car flood the room fleetingly

with light and sound, sharp shadows displaying brief histories

on the ceiling that her mother painted robin’s-egg blue last April.

Pennsylvania’s most exclusive art exhibit:

Restless Child, ink on plaster.

Silence hangs in the air, undisturbed by the soft rattling of bedtime lambies,

stretching endlessly on into emptiness of forgotten bedrooms,

in little stone houses with bright red front doors and

white-washed pergolas, and lilac trees dying outside bathroom windows.

One room--four green walls, two windows that face the street,

and a cream-colored princess bed--

Begins to feel as though it houses an entire life:

removed, on the opposite side of a clear, glass barrier:

a dollhouse replica, pristine in its confinement.

Excruciatingly alone.

Muffled voices: the low, warm murmur of a father,

waltzing with the amused lilt of a mother.

The door opens, and a light is flipped.

The spell is broken

and the girl is gone.

[whitebrickwalll]

Morpheus visits but never stays

Black silk soaked through with ink and gasoline

You are lilac, cyanide, lemonade

Murder my God and demand that I pray

Host all my voices, declare me their queen

Morpheus visits but never stays

Quoth she the raven, “fear led me astray,”

I buried my heart when your wrists bled green

You are lilac, cyanide, lemonade

When the magician has faded to gray

Titan Thanatos shall meet us between

Old Morpheus visits but never stays

Magnolias bloom to conclude each May

Thick in my veins necromancers’ vaccine

You are lilac, cyanide, lemonade

Set me on fire, set me free from her prey

Irrational death these voices obscene

Morpheus visits but never stays

You are lilac, cyanide, lemonade.

—villanelle

[whitebrickwalll]

Coreopsis

July 7th, the heat is brutal, my makeup bleeds like the colors of his popsicle

July 15th, the air is numb with cicada cries, my skin is ginger under an interrogation lamp sun.

July 27th, the day is good for sleeping, my lethargy’s paralytic poison renders these hours useless

July 30th, the light sparkles against Autumn’s skin, she is the color of maple butter melting

August 5th, the chimes on her front porch ring deeply like his laugh... Where is he?

August 11th, the community pool seems empty in the afternoon drought, he whispers through town tonight like the ghost of a kiss.

August 15th, in the morning a crow lurks in the shadows beneath my car; he leaves with Autumn at noon.

August 18th, my eyes burn with the ash and smoke of a beach bonfire. His gaze crackles like fading embers—I am engulfed in flame

August 22nd, teenage lust rears it’s ugly head in the shadows on the bay, his tongue tastes Autumn’s teeth while his eyes undress me at the crosswalk

August 26th, the desirous humidity envelopes me in the afternoon, penetrating my skin; I am soaking wet in the evening

August 27th, the sky feels close, he catches my wrist as I stalk past, the alley’s brick is cool, his fingertips are electric

August 28th, hot pavement burns my bare soles as I run, he brands me with his mouth—my neck, chest, stomach, bare trace of him.

August 29th, the night is cool and dusky, he discovers me there on the midnight sand, nylon slipping soft across my chest, the ocean silences our ecstasy

August 30th, a cold breeze blows in today, I see him downtown with Autumn on his lap. His hands find her curves, his eyes freeze my bones

August 31st, I wake to a summer storm in my bed, it leaves destruction to the east with Autumn on its tail.

September 8th, the storm is gone, but the air bears its brisk emptiness in this month’s mourning glory. Beside the ancient sycamore a weary leaf floats softly to the ground. My soul is weary too. Weary of falling, and more empty than even the air.

[whitebrickwalll]

“September 8th, the storm is gone, but the air bears its brisk emptiness in this month’s mourning glory. Beside the ancient sycamore a weary leaf floats softly to the ground. My soul is weary too. Weary of falling, and more empty than even the air.”

—black locust

[whitebrickwalll]

“August 31st, I wake to a summer storm in my bed, it leaves destruction to the east with Autumn on its tail.”

—synonymous with hurricane

[whitebrickwalll]

“August 30th, a cold breeze blows in today, I see him downtown with Autumn on his lap. His hands find her curves, his eyes freeze my bones.”

—skin and marrow