- .. -- . -.- . . .--. . .-.

A man surely understands the ocean is never not nervous.

[winesvein]

If anything is eternal it is the fleetingness of summer.

Lit like sparklers in a child's hands, except this is my blood and my being -- to come alive for a moment, bursting from my own chest like fireworks.

For a meteoric minute, I am the spark, and the roar, a culminant star. In the very next, I am vanishing with the gunsmoke.

—Kali, queen of summer

[winesvein]

What would I not give? To hold you. To show you all that I am-- imperfect, unfinished, unpolished, rough, harsh, soft for none, before you. And by Juno, that the lover in me may still live, that she may still be filled with deep, unflinching desire--an ocean, restless, godless, restless for someone who knows how to dive.

Temperance, temperance, beloved. I am not allowed to want, to hold on. I devour everything I touch, become its rot, its ruin-- God is dead and his head rests upon my lap. My fingers thread through his hair.

Oh to be split, split, split, shattered beyond recognition, unraveled, belonging to one, and naught else. Oh to be seen, seen, seen, chosen, beyond reason, eternal, amaranth lovely, starbound.

—Kali

[winesvein]

Neither of us were built for this--not from the beginning, anyway. I want you to come to find refuge in my arms the way I find solace in your presence, but temperance rests her chin on my shoulder, snakes her arms around my waist.

I behold you like diamond, like choice silver. I place my eyes on the pommel of your saber before you go off to battle, to war with the things you choose to carry alone, the things that refine the armor around your riverwater heart.

—Kali

[winesvein]

i. i abhor the time it takes anything to develop. the film of this lifetime, the heart of everything. my pride captures me with an old kodak. i don't recognise the woman in the lens-- she's yesterday, and i am one foot in tomorrow today.

ii. i am the spark, and the roar, and the culminant star, not the quiet, not the tame. my beloved calls me the sun, personified: too great to settle (down, for less).

iii. yea, the things i desire are ordinary: don't cage me don't cage me don't cage me, see me for me for me for me, run with me, barefoot, through the loam, and the silt, with the atlantic at our calves, the tradewinds through our hair, and in our sails, wild wild wild like the heartbeat in my chest.

iv. falling in love has always looked like teeth and bones, and unravelling in ways you can only come undone when you are seen. and i mean seen. i look in the mirror and cradle every version of me as a mother, a sister, a firstborn, gently.

v. even the little things consume me like a summer bonfire. i burn i burn i burn and i rise again and again and again. no one has ever looked back for me because i have always been the one at the helm, hands gripping too tightly. no one has ever looked back for me because i have always been the one to rescue myself.

vi. softness is a foreigner who overstayed. softness is the hands on the small of my back. softness is the phone calls, and the texts, and the people who show up for someone who is still just a girl, who still catches herself thinking about how to disappear without a ripple in the lake.

—Kali, bite me.

[winesvein]

i abhor the time it takes anything to develop. the film of this lifetime, the heart of everything. i am the spark, and the roar, and the culminant star, not the quiet, not the tame. my beloved calls me the sun, personified: too great to settle, too brilliant to be snuffed out by any ordinary means (don't cage me don't cage me don't cage me). freedom to me means living with the privilege to run barefoot through the loam and the silt with the atlantic at my calves, the tradewinds through my hair, and in my sails. unbridled. falling in love looks like teeth, and bones, and unraveling in ways you can only come undone when you are seen without fear, or judgment, and only pure desire to merge souls. even the little things consume me like a summer bonfire. i burn i burn i burn and i rise again and again and again.

—Kali

[winesvein]

my love my love my love i bare my heart and beg you to see witness me that i am imperfect that the bones in my hands are gnarled not from holding onto things and people but from reaching reaching reaching for stars something to believe in for god has forsaken this temple and told me that she is within me so that i am compelled instead to run with my mouth open under the storm tongue asking to be kissed by rain and lightning wild untamed wild feral and unlike your lovers before please do not seek to cage me

—Kali

[winesvein]

I don't remember learning how to love you. One day your footsteps simply make you known to me as your shadow crosses the hall. We are in the foyer and I am growing wings at my heels, because running means being there sooner, means more minutes that I will not spend trembling before the moon, asking her if you're well. In another eternity, I am braiding your hair, you are peeling fruit because you want us both to eat well. In this one, we're on the line, you're at the shop, asking if I want anything, knowing that we're two thousand miles apart. Black tea, honey, us in the same city like our youth again. Even for a moment.

—Kali, al-Ākhirah

[winesvein]

And I wanted to say "if you found yourself on fire," but I've never known how to put one out. My first steps were on the hot coals of the fireside, and my lovers have all beheld me like the sun-- a woman aflame, aflame.

—Kali, sunburn

[winesvein]

Broody November, how your lips taste of warm spice and black tea, no milk, no sugar, and yet I drink like a woman ripe with biblical gluttony. Yes, this must have been what manna felt like upon the tongue, what it must have felt like to stand atop the mountains and know any god.

—Kali, layers

[winesvein]

Sunlight spills into the room-- everything becomes golden, illuminated raw honey. Baba says I was named with this radiance in mind, with this sweetness in thought. I do not know that I am as radiant or honeyed as my true name promises. Instead I am built strong, resilient, like the honeycomb. Instead my blood runs hot, molten, like the sun. I am not anything my forebears thought I should be and I am still fighting to simply be me.

—Kali

[winesvein]

Nails in my skin and I am trying to claw claw claw myself out from under it. I am desperate to molt, perhaps earlier than I should, forced ripe, bleeding. No, I would not let the little girl in me ever witness an unbecoming, an undoing. I would cradle her in my arms and tell her that she is the starsea. I would kiss her eyes and promise her god's head.

—Kali

[winesvein]

Delusion is the way I find you in the warmth radiating from the teacup in my hands. I am reminded of what it's like to have your ribs interwoven with someone's so closely, heartbeats become indistinguishable.

—Kali

[winesvein]

Someone calls it loneliness; I call it temperance, penance even. My mother's hands are the coldest thing I have ever known, and my own hands are rough and weatherbeaten from holding on, desperately. God is a woman and I carry half of her blood, praying for her to forgive me, forgive me, forgive me that I am not who she dreamed and wished I should be.

—Kali

[scandal0cious]

queer ladies who like to read hmu

(but actually it's a very cute little place i've worked very hard on and would love to create a community of women/enbies/whoever that love to read wlw literature 🥺) (we can read books and drink tea together or something) (unhinged queers may bring energy drink of choice in lieu of tea)

Check out the sapphic library 🌙 community on Discord – hang out with 32 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

[winesvein]

Speak my name. Like a hymn, like a prayer. I am no god, no queen, no evil, no fiend, only a woman, a body of divine fears.

—Kali

[winesvein]

May arrives gently; she's perfumed like Aphrodite's gardens. I shouldn't still wonder after anyone who thought I wasn't enough. Spring is slowly becoming Summer and I should be on the rooftops, waltzing with my lover under Diana's gaze. I should be in my own arms, greedy, greedy, greedy, greedy, greedy, desperately greedy with myself.

—Kali

[winesvein]

I tell him I want to sink my teeth into him. I mean to say that I want to know what he thinks about at two in the afternoon, when he's just living. I mean to say that I want to be made part of that world, his world, ours ours ours--I want to make it ours.

The greedy heart of me is kept on a tight leash. Temperance, temperance my beloved. When I love, I love for a lifetime, and I have learned that sometimes, it's only my lifetime.

I fear doing this again again again. I fear what we could become, be.

—Kali