all for you, love

a writing sideblog (main at wazlibs-and-winchesters)

[words-beyond-measure]

hmmm,,, lately i’ve been thinking about deleting this blog. it’s been hard for me to write in recent months, and i feel like keeping it open is just stressing me out. thank you for appreciating my words, and i hope they helped you. i’ll delete in about two weeks, so if there’s anything i’ve written that you want to hang on to, now is the time. i’ll still be active on my main @morkleek if you want to keep up with me.

[words-beyond-measure]

1. red light district

the street is dark, and that makes me nervous. i can still hear the ruckus in the distance: partygoers screaming, music booming, the faint electric buzz of neon signs suspended above sleazy bars. there’s no neon here, just a single flickering streetlight on an empty stretch of road. as i watch, stomach turning, the light goes on then off then on again.

a noise behind me makes me whirl, my keys leaping into my hand out of reflex,

but it’s just the creaking of a large metal door swinging open to reveal a long, pitch-black hallway.

if anything, i’m more terrified now than i was before.

music drifts faintly through the doorway, something slow and smooth. the streetlight blinks out again, and without it i can make out what lies at the end of the hallway. there’s another doorway there, but that door’s already open, so i can see where it leads: into a room with a soft crimson glow, filled with the silhouettes of dancers.

i take a deep breath and enter.

when i step into the red room, the first person i see is a tall, chocolate-skinned man with cornrows that reach his mid-back. he’s dressed in a silver suit, cigar in hand, standing right next to the doorway.

“welcome,” he says, his voice deep and gravelly. “state your purpose, girl.”

i will my hands to stop shaking. “i’m here to see the morningstar.”

he takes a long drag from his cigar and says, smoke billowing from his mouth, “you know how to get to the back room?”

“yeah,” i mumble. “she told me.”

he chuckles. “good luck with that one, girl. you’ll need it.”

i swallow the lump in my throat and walk past him into the crowd.

it’s insane.

i follow the instructions she gave me, but nothing’s quite prepared me for being offered a bag of powdered phoenix feathers, or for watching two werewolves at the bar pound shots of demon blood. a siren lies on the piano, clad in nothing but a skimpy red skirt and corset. everywhere around the dance floor, creatures of all kinds writhe and gyrate to her song. her voice is so warm i’m tempted to stop and listen, but then i remember what i’m here for, so i move on.

when i finally reach the back room, i hesitate for a full minute before knocking.

“just a moment,” a voice calls from inside, sweet as honey. i know it’s her in an instant.

i hear the tap of her high heels on the other side before she reaches the door and swings it open. “what-“

she freezes in her tracks, staring at me, and i stare right back.

gorgeous is an understatement. her outfit’s similar to the siren’s. her skirt covers barely anything, showing off her long legs, and the tight leather corset she wears is practically obscene. her lips are a striking red, and her chestnut curls cascade down her shoulders in ringlets and waves.

“hey, lucy,” i smile weakly, trying to remember how to breathe. “it’s, uh, me. jess from calculus-“

“you came,” she whispers, eyes wide.

a pair of giggling vampire men stumble past me, one of them accidentally jabbing me in the back as he passes. i trip, and suddenly i’m too close to lucy too close too close-

“holy shit,” she says, and then her hands are in my hair and my hands are on her waist and we’re kissing desperately, staggering back into the room as best we can.

“jess,” she gasps against my lips when we break the kiss. “jess, baby, close the door. close the fucking door.”

i close the door.

[words-beyond-measure]

CAGED BIRD

When you kiss her, your heart takes off. You can leave behind all the memories of fathers and brothers that hit you, of mothers that slammed the door in your face and sisters that don’t speak to you anymore. Drunk men in crumpled shirts mean nothing when her hand is in yours and she’s saying thank you but we’re not interested in being your playthings. Every time she meets your eyes, the world falls away and the bars fall away and you fall and you fall and you fly. She whispers her love into the hollows of your bones and suddenly you can see everything. You’re soaring across time and space and you see it all, oceans and forests and a future in which girls like you have never known captivity.

[words-beyond-measure]

prompt 4: write about a series of events in nonlinear order (from @inkstay)

she texts you one morning when the sun is just about to rise. there’s nothing but a picture of the sky, a horizon streaked with color, cotton-candy pinks and purples, clouds glowing golden. 

you: it’s beautiful

her: i know.

she calls you one night when the sky is dark and the moon hides herself from the face of the earth.

“help,” she sobs. “i can’t stop wanting to die.”

“i’ll be right there,” you say, and then you run until you can’t breathe.

you go out for dinner on a sunday evening, and she orders chocolate ice cream.

you haven’t seen her eat dessert in years.

“here,” you say, pushing your plate of pie towards her, “take some of mine too.”

you go out to a club for her twenty-third birthday, and by the time it’s midnight she’s dizzy-drunk-dancing with some guy she barely knows, mind blurred by five shots of whiskey on an empty stomach.

you drag her off the dance floor and take her home, even though you’re a little tipsy yourself.

as you’re staggering down the street, she’s talking, words slurred. you halt at a crosswalk but she keeps going. you have to grab her wrist to stop her.

neither of you remember it in the morning.

she gets a dog and a cat and a haircut. she gets a therapist and medication and a boyfriend. she gets better.

she gets more and more tired as the months drag on, gets sick, gets hit, gets more scars every day.

she calls you just to gush about the good things in life. you smile as she rants about blueberries and art museums and calculus.

she asks what’s going on in your life.

“oh, nothing,” you say, grinning wide. “everything’s good now. everything’s okay.”

it’s three in the morning and she texts you again.

her: thank you for keeping me alive.

when she says “i love you”, it no longer sounds like goodbye.

[thesuburbanghosts]

january

1. bloodied tulips   2. the silence just wants to have a conversation  3. lonelism 4. god-possessed  5. half-burnt boy 6. the crow asleep on your chest

[words-beyond-measure]

1. but at least i’m pretty. 2. is what it said before it drank me down. 3. ink-cage, burnt ends of matches- run, child, run, this is all you have. 4. fire in my throat, steel rage, make me dagger. give me the razor and i’ll steer my own ship home. 5. he’s already ash from the inside and i can’t hold him in my hands. 6. you cannot breathe without waking her; this, too, you will lose.

[words-beyond-measure]

i want to go away until i’m gone.

i’m so close to dying that i can taste rust every time i open my mouth, that headlights on

highways sing lullabies to me, that i’m already ghost enough to swallow razorblades without

bleeding; what do i do to get rid of this blankness, this yawning black hole? the

viper coiled around the base of my spine is opening its mouth wider, wider,

waiting to swallow me whole. how can i fill this empty? when i sleep i wake up

tired, when i breathe the wind just rushes through the hollow shell of my chest as if my

lungs have already blown away, when i cry or laugh there is nothing, nothing- please,

i’m begging you, just let me disappear.

- f a d i n g // n.k.l.

"i want to go away until i’m gone”- here and away by neil hilborn

[words-beyond-measure]

egg roll fried rice dog meat daughter smart smart so smart do my homework rice rice rice rice rice rice race race race, model minority. good girl, so good, so good, so gook, so go home just go home go back to your country made in china china china ching chong chang chung-

see, nobody ever told me how cruel children could be. how when i was twelve they shoved the word “yellow” down my throat until i choked. how they found the chink in my armor, in my skin, in my eyes. how i was chink, chink, ching chong all the way through. the lilt of my grandmother’s accent ridiculed, my lunch jeered at, my pride torn to pieces by middle-school hands. to this day i cannot look my neighbor in the eye.

and nobody ever told me how cruel i could be. how i refused to bring lo mein for lunch and bought ham sandwiches instead. how i spent half of the lunar new year on my phone. how my father mentioned my grades dropping and i snapped, “god, you’re so goddamn asian,” like the word was dirty, cursed- and maybe it was. maybe just maybe if i’d been white things would be different, if i could scrub away this gook, flush the disease from my body, this poisoned blood, these ancestral bones-

and yet here i am, chink and proud. free of that bittermelon cage, free of the rot that slurs always left in my lungs. come for me, i’ll be waiting. with the taste of my auntie’s fish on my tongue, i’ll be waiting.

rice rice rice rice rice rice rise rise rise, thunder throat viper tooth lion heart daughter.

[inkstay]

December 2017 prompts

From now on you’ll be getting the new prompts a bit early. This way you can write while you wait for the magazine to be published. Everything else stays the same: Write a short story, poem or anything that inspires you based on one of these prompts and tag it with #inkstay. Make it clear somewhere in the post that it is written for one of the December prompts if you want your work to appear in the magazine.

Prompts of the month 1# - Write about the light of your life 2# - There is a boy who can walk through stories 3# - Describe your music library 4# - What kind of ruler would you be? 5# - Compare the feeling of giving a gift to the feeling of receiving one 6# - Write a poem using tags you’ve used in the past 7# - Describe being hopeful 8# - Write about the differences between someone now and who they were five years ago 9# - Write a poem using a statistic that caught your eye 10# - Write about something you’ve accomplished that went unnoticed

Word prompts 1# - obliterate 2# - memory, grey 3# - wine, stone, laughter 4# - proximity 5# - big, paper 6# - word, blood, pen 7# - archetype 8# - story, voice 9# - petty, loud, water 10# - valiant, apathy, sword, feeling

[words-beyond-measure]

five years ago she thought she wouldn’t make it.

she tells me this at three in the morning on her living room floor, surrounded by the remains of our blanket fort. there’s moonlight flooding in through the window, and even though it casts the right side of her face in shadow, i can tell she’s crying by the trembling of her shoulders.

i felt like i was on the edge, she whispers, like i was about to fall or walk into the path of a car or something. like death was waiting for me already and it was up to me to let go.

i don’t have anything to say.

she looks up at me with tears streaming down her cheeks and there’s nothing i can do but wrap her in a blanket and hold her until the shaking passes.

but you lived, i tell her, my lips pressed to her forehead. you lived.

[words-beyond-measure]

briar rose

prick my finger with a fucking spindle. god, i want it to sting, to burn. i wanna know there’s poison racing through my blood, fire in my veins. somebody scorch me. i don’t care what it takes, just get me out of this goddamn tower before i throw myself into the thorns. i want to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep and never wake up.

[wlwzine]

the first time i see her, all i can think is oh shit, i’m screwed.

she’s got this leather jacket and these long, slender legs in tight jeans, black boots thudding on the ground with every step she takes. her hair is shiny and dark, piled up in a bun at the crown of her head, but these little wisps come free and fall around her face. she’s all cherry lips and high cheekbones and oh shit oh shit oh shit.

“hi,” she says. goddess, my mind shouts. “i’m your new seatmate.”

“hi,” i say, trying to catch my breath. “nice to meet you.”

my heart pounds against my ribs as she puts her backpack down, crosses her legs, and grins at me.

“did you hear we’re doing shakespeare?” she asks.

there’s blood rushing in my ears and fire in my veins. something in my chest is burning, burning.

i smile at her, a little shakily. “i love shakespeare.”

///

we read the tempest in terrible accents and every time she laughs i fall a little harder. i make puns under my breath in class and the corner of her mouth quirks up, like a secret, my secret.

but i don’t want secrets.

i want to race her up the stairs until we burst onto the roof, so high that we can see the whole city. i want to make her feel the way she makes me feel, like my heart is so full it could burst. i want her. i want her so much that it’s torture to sit there, right by her side, and not touch her but i know i can’t. she’s the best thing i’ve ever called mine and i can’t lose her.

so i wait.

we get our copies of beowulf and the first thing she does is turn to me and ask, “want to hear it in my prospero voice?”

“i love your prospero voice,” i tell her, and i mean i love you.

but i wait.

///

over spring break we take a road trip. we drive to the beach in her dad’s old convertible, bright and shiny and fire-engine red.

we’re singing along with the radio, badly, with the wind in our faces and the whole highway stretching ahead of us. when she throws her head back and laughs at the sky, i feel myself fly.

she falls asleep somewhere between jersey and delaware. her hand rests softly by her side, palm up.

i look at it and think, what if.

under the stars and the moon, on that long stretch of road, something explodes in me. fireworks, sparks, ignition. turn the key. new chapter.

i take my right hand off the wheel and entwine my fingers with hers.

she mumbles in her sleep and rolls towards me, cheek pressed up against the leather of the seat.

i clutch her hand tighter and drive on.

///

we spend our days by the ocean, goofing off in the water and tossing a frisbee around. later, we go out on the beach again, this time to lie on our backs and stare at the glittering expanse of the night. she points out ursa major and i show her the moon rabbit. when she takes my hand to guide me to orion, my heart leaps into my throat and stays there, fluttering desperately.

when we’re done with that, we ask each other questions. they start off easy: what’s your favorite color (hers is purple), what’s your favorite book (harry potter) why do you like plum cobbler so much (mom’s specialty).

but then they get harder. first kiss. first crush. first love.

i tell her the story of my one and only  boyfriend, who fits all three of those categories, and how we decided to split two months before summer of senior year.

“and then what?” she asks when i finish. “what did you do?”

“well,” i reply, “i came here. i met you.”

///

she’s quiet on the way home.

i ask her what’s wrong but she avoids the question. her lips are pressed tightly together and i want her to smile so badly. i put the radio on, but she doesn’t sing.

i book us a hotel room in maryland for the night. she says she can drive if i’m too tired, but i sit her down on the bed and tell her i know she’s not fine, but we can talk about it. we can always talk about it.

she takes a deep breath, looks at the ground, and says, “i never wanted a boyfriend.”

“okay.”

“i like girls.”

“me too.”

she looks up at me, uncomprehending. “no, like, i like girls. in a gay way.”

the rush of euphoria leaves me lightheaded. “i like you in a gay way,” i say, and then i kiss her.

///

when we get back, everything is different but the same. we still make awful jokes and read the iliad in stupid voices, but i know her coffee order now. we walk into class hand in hand, and i kiss her whenever i can.

“i love you,” i tell her one day at random. she’s just proofreading my essay, but the words spring to my lips like water from a fountain, and the truth of them has seeped into my bones.

“love you more,” she says almost absently. “this looks fine. want to go for a run?”

we make it up onto the roof at seven, panting from the exertion.

“stairs are hell,” i wheeze.

she laughs, and immediately the burn in my thighs is worth it. “no shit.”

we watch the sun’s dying rays glimmer off the water, her head on my shoulder, our elbows linked.

then the lights of the city blink to life, and as the moon rises, i kiss her. under the light of a hundred constellations, a thousand stars, a million miles of sky, i kiss her.

[words-beyond-measure]

this is what dying feels like. my blood has already turned to ash. love, i am rotting, maybe always have been, as if my heart is a cellar that breeds disease. as if this castle of old bones is crumbling to dust.

[words-beyond-measure]

I loveee your writings

thank you so much! that really means a lot to me.

[words-beyond-measure]

i’ll write myself to death. i’ll run myself into the ground because i don’t care don’t care don’t care just. let me have this. i can do it. i can stay up until three in the morning on a school night knowing i’ll regret it. i can type until my hands cramp. i can fuck myself up as much as i want because this body, this mind is mine, and you, you great and glorious thing, you cannot take it from me. i’m going to bleed the words from my heart, drain it all dry, tear myself apart because i can. oh cruel world, you cannot have this. you can have bombs and guns and slurs but not this, never this. in the end i’m the one who sinks the knife in. you don’t get to break me, i do. i’ll drive myself into the dust before you can and i’ll leave something beautiful behind.

-on self-harm

[words-beyond-measure]

so this is what they mean when they say ‘liminal space’, this little moment tucked in the space between three and four a.m. here in this place with these people and this song playing, i think i’ll remember this feeling in the morning even if i don’t remember the scene. i think i have forgotten my own name. how strange it is, to feel so small yet so crucial at the same time. how odd, to be aware of my own existence, to feel myself present and separate. neither here nor there, empty nor full, broken nor whole, happy nor sad. torn between laughing and crying and doing nothing at all.

this is what they mean when they say ‘liminal space’, but there is still no word for the ache in my chest, this love and this pain and this longing that screams future future future.

i close my eyes as she laughs and embrace the feeling, wrap my heart around its edges, soft and jagged as messily torn paper. this which speaks of being young and thrown into a world that does not want you but here you are, so strangely tender. this which speaks of city lights and summer winds and the soft shine of ink as it dries, of singing at the river and dancing in the moonlight and loving this place, this earth that never wanted you but you can’t help falling.

i keep the ache, its lightness and heaviness. i whisper to it yes, yes, soon. the future is soon. i know the word now. divine. i don’t believe in god but this is praying.

[words-beyond-measure]

oh, to be kinder, to let go of the anger i have held in loose fists at the ready. i was so tired by the end of it all. the fighting made me cold, made me stone, made me the blade of a knife in the hands of a little girl. i spent so long staring at the wall and waiting to feel something. when you left i didn’t speak for days.

the world was cruel then, pushed me into a corner. i could feel your fingers on my wrists, digging plum bruises into the skin, your breath on my neck like a wolf panting over its prey. mine mine mine. you were a ghost and you followed me until i couldn’t breathe without tasting blood.

but little by little i came into the sun. i went stargazing. i bought coffees with cute packaging. i snuggled up in warm blankets and petted dogs and danced by myself when no one was watching. little by little i taught myself how to love again, how to keep honey on my tongue and softness in my shoulders. little by little i learned that there are good things on this planet we call home, like cat videos and blueberries and music. i tried to be better, to wash away the person you made of me. little by little i pieced myself back together.

today the sky is bright and blue. the trees smell sweet. i see a little girl fall and skin her knee and i don’t think of you, i think of the way my mother bandaged my hurts when i was young. i see a couple kissing and i don’t think of you, i think of my cousin’s wedding. i see myself in the mirror and i don’t think of you, i think of me. i look at myself and think mine mine mine. i can hear myself laugh again and it sounds real and i think this is worth living for, think i am getting better.

[words-beyond-measure]

today the next generation leaves for the very first time. today they watch their parents waving until their figures become small and disappear, steam obscuring the crowd on the platform. today they go off to school to learn about their parents, the survivors, and the heroes buried on the grounds, on the beach, beneath rubble and ash.

and while they’re there, they will learn how to live for those who died, like their parents had to nineteen years ago. they will learn that the world is never safe, not really, and that wars are never easily stopped but they are stopped all the same. they will learn about battles upon battles upon battles, and they’ll cry sometimes, and so will their professors. but they will learn to fall in love-- with magic, with life, and maybe with each other.

and they’ll learn about hermione granger and ron weasley, about neville longbottom and luna lovegood, about ginny weasley and draco malfoy. about albus dumbledore and minerva mcgonagall, about severus snape and remus lupin, about sirius black and alastor moody. about the ones who died, and the ones who didn’t, and the ones who are stuck somewhere in between.

and they will learn about him-- harry potter, the chosen one, the boy who lived. they’ll follow him through his adventures, gasping in awe when they hear about the philosopher’s stone, the chamber of secrets, the azkaban escapee.

when professor longbottom gets a question about killing nagini, he’ll look down and say it was the hardest thing he’d ever done; when the headmistress gets a question about what fred weasley was like in school, she’ll smile sadly and say he was the happiest boy she’d ever met; and when harry potter comes in to talk, scorpius malfoy will ask him if he has nightmares, and he’ll close his eyes and say, ‘every night’.

they’ll read about the mess of the war and the bodies left behind, about unforgivable curses and secrets and lies. they’ll write essays on peter pettigrew and hazard guesses as to why he did what he did. they’ll all know the incantations for shield charms and patronuses, because their parents whisper them in their sleep at night, brandishing a wand that broke nineteen years ago.

but they will never learn about us.

we, the readers, who walked beside harry in his happiest days and his darkest nights. who played quidditch with him, who cried and raged with him, who lived the war with him. we were there the whole time, cheering him on, wanting to find our own magic, to defeat our voldemort.

and we are still here. we never left.

today the next generation leaves for the very first time, and today a child will open a book and read, ‘mr. and mrs. dursley of number four, privet drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.’

and in that moment, they’ll learn to fall in love.

[words-beyond-measure]

are we a nation of states? what’s the state of our nation? // n.k.l.