[writerbrenna]

you look at her like she’s the best you never had, and you know if she would see you the same you could be everything, everything and anything she ever wanted, because she tells you.

she tells you all about how she wants a strong man to sweep her off her feet, and you think of your own muscles and how they yearn to hold her safe. she tells you about how she wants a mystery, and you think of all the things you’ve never told her. she tells you she wants to know the world, and you think of how world weary you are, but of how you would show her the world if you could, how you wish to take her hand and explore together.

you look at her, watch her take herself apart, watch her bare herself to the mirror, to you, and you pray to whatever gods may be listening that she finds someone who sees her the same way you do, that loves her the same way you do, who she can love in all the ways she doesn’t love you.

[writerbrenna]

companion pieces 🔥

[writerbrenna]

there’s a girl standing behind you with her hands around your neck. you see her reflection for a moment and she looks like you; a little younger, but a little older, and yet enturely you. she has her hands wrapped around your neck and you see her reflection just for a moment and she’s drowning you. standing behind you, pushing you into the water and the water stings your eyes, fills your mouth, and  it tastes like tears, your tears, and she’s drowning you in the million tears you’ve shed. she’s younger than you by 15, 10, 5 years but she’s older by 20, 30, 40. she’s you, and you breathe in the tears that suffocate, that drown, that are killing you and you wonder what you did to her, know the options are limitless, but you try to taste the tears to pinpoint the moment, the word, the action, the choice, that brought you two here, her standing behind you, with your own hands wrapped around her neck, drowning you both.

[writerbrenna]

you two have been here before, but neither of you say it. this song and dance is oh so familiar— a million lives spent waiting for each other, finding each other— never the same but for a few pieces.

the first—you always love him. the how and the why always changing, shifting,  he usually loves you too. not always, sometimes not how you love him, and he rarely admits it.

the second—you’re never happy for long. even when you love him and he loves you, it never lasts, always ends, sometimes tasting of copper and bullets, sometimes of salt and tears, and always heartbreak. you both know it won’t last— sometimes it drives you to move too fast, sometimes you never move at all, the dance becomes a standoff, you part ways too soon, too many things left unsaid.

the third—you always try. it’s unspoken, you’ve been here before, you’ve met a million times before in a million different ways, but you smile like it’s the first and not the one million and first, and you know it never lasts long, that your happiness is fleeting if you can find it at all, but you love him and he loves you and so you always try.

[writerbrenna]

you've spent your life always in-between; not quite enough for your parents, your family, not quite enough for them to let you be your own person. you were always between families, between friends, never enough for anyone, never enough for yourself. so you began to collect things, hoping you could find yourself, build enough of yourself, to be someone. little keepsakes, in the form a letter from your parents, in the form of robes that say you belong somewhere, even if you don’t feel it, in the form of maybe one or two people who you cared for, even if you weren’t enough for them.

you made your way on your own, collecting keepsakes, collecting notes, and one-day collecting friends. a small family of your own. found and collected from all over, and they were enough, and you were enough. a collection of friends, a family, a keepsake in the form of a deck of cards, cards your parents believed in and you didn;t. not the coat, the coat wouldn’t fit your keepsake collection, wouldn’t fit you, your shoulders too small to carry its weight, to carry his weight. so you nestled the tarot cards in with the rest of them. next to a letter about a brother you’d never meet. one brother lost to a family that didn’t want you, another brother lost protecting the family that did, the family you found.

[writerbrenna]

day 2: brawl

there’s something about a brawl; about the adrenaline, the sweat dripping down your brow. the mind-numbing exhaustion, the deep satisfaction. you fight like you fuck; trading back and forth, it’s all a dance, a game. Meaningless, and yet so Meaningful.

blood dripping from your wounds, bruises on your knuckles. grinning at the prospect of a good old fashioned beawl. or a good old fashioned fuck. you fight and you hit and you kick and you scream, in pain or in ecstasy it’s all the same. and maybe one day you’ll stop fighting, and one day you’ll stop fucking and maybe one day you’ll learn to, get the chance to,

love instead.

[writerbrenna]

they gave you expectations, and at first you tried. you tried so hard to be the perfect daughter they never wanted, tried hard to go about and beyond, to exceed their unattainable expectations, and then you told them the truth:  you couldn’t do it. they knew you never would, never could, but the admission, the self-awareness of your own limitations,  you admitting that you could never, would never be enough, was the final nail in the coffin.

so you lied. you lied to your mother, to your father, you lied and told them you could meet their expectations after all, that you could win their blatantly unwinnable game, and they laughed and sighed, but let you play anyway, even knowing it was a lie. so you kept lying, to your customers, to your business partners, and they believed you. for the first time, someone believed you, believed in you, and well, that sets a precedent.

you would have lied to your friends if you had any, and then you did, you had a friend, and then two, and then many, and they felt like the family you never had. and still you lied.

and when lying wasn’t enough you tried to tell teh truth, not the whole truth, but a part. a little white lie, a little half truth. and they believed you but they didn’t. and you tried telling the truth again, and they didn’t. 

everyone has their expectations for you; some based on who they want you to be,  some based on who they know you to be. and it seems that truth or lie or truth, you can’t win, can’t exceed the bar even when it’s so low. and you think to yourself, that even though it wasn’t your fault, even though they drove you to lie,  forced you into this box of liar girl, this is the grave you dug, and you are sure to lie in it.

[writerbrenna]

creator tag meme

rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 favourite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc!) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2018. tag as many writers/artists/etc as you want (fan or original!) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

I was tagged by the lovely @red-hoods​ even tho tagging this blog is foolish

1. what makes a villain: this is really short but one of the first poems i wrote this year that i actually genuinely liked, and mostly because of the last two lines. fuck being abt jason todd i finally got to use those lines. its not the poem that made me make this blog public but if not for that one this would’ve done it

2. banshees: this ones just mood... i have a lot of feelings but i never know how to articulate them... i really loved how this came out... halloween was a really good time for my writing even though i got too busy to keep writing every day

3. retellings: i got really in my feelings about tsoa and i was also talking about different iterations in texts in my english class... i dunno i wrote this poem and it rly spoke to me thats all i got

4. to be a hero: this one was also vaguely about tsoa but i kept being off my shits with kesh about our ideas of heroism and the unfairness of it... having an english class on superheroes rly made me think and i was up at like 1am yelling abt it and writing this poem

5. demon deals: tbh idek if i think this one is particularly good but im happy with it... it was ambitious imo and it took me a bit... its def the longest poem ive written this year and i think i got the ominous vibes i was looking for down

idk who of you guys have already been tagged but im just gonna play it safe and go with @coolgirl & @thoragnorak & ig anyone else can say i tagged them if they want

[writerbrenna]

[writerbrenna]

i haven’t seen the snow in ten years. i have vague memories of being a child, sledding down hills, throwing snowballs, of my father cursing when the car couldn’t make it up hill.  i remember never being prepared for it— i always borrowed snowpants from my daycare.

one day i decided i hated snow. i hadn’t seen it in a while, and i decided it was inconvenient; too cold too wet, my dad didn’t like it. on the days it snows and didn’t stick, the buses wouldn’t run and i had to walk uphill. i decided i hated the snow and i didn’t see it for 10 years.

i walked to class in the snow today; it’s still cold, still inconvenient, but it made the world look so different, beautiful, but more than that: happy. it’s still cold and wet and a pain, but just for a moment, i felt the wonder i had as a child, felt the day old snow crunch beneath my boots,

and i realized i never hated snow as much as i wished i had, after not seeing it, for 10 years

[writerbrenna]

mixed signals

my message was clear, my commitment to it solid. i was exact with my thoughts, precise with my feelings. there was no confusion,  no conflicting statements. the only thing you mixed my message with, was your unfair expectations of me.

[writerbrenna]

it is not a house that is haunted but a person, it is not a ghost that torments, but ourselves; our memories our traumas our griefs, covered in a white sheet with only the eyes cut out, only the windows to the souls visible. it is not the ghost of some old woman who died, who whispers your name in the dark; it is the voice of someone you know. maybe someone you fear, or regret, or hate, someone who’s voice you don’t want to hear, so you pretend it is that of some unearthly being.  it is them that haunt your waking moments, not some ghost story. we disguise our ghosts to become more palatable, but our fears and hatreds fester, and haunt us to our bones,

[writerbrenna]

they call you a monster; you open your mouth to speak, and they cover their ears and grimace. they do not hear your words, merely white noise, a voice that only grates on nerves. they try to shut you up, shut you out, ignore your pain, ignore your grief. so you stopped using words, stopped trying to communicate; you shriek and scream and wail. they refuse to understand your pain, but you make damn sure they hear it.

(you grieve and they see a monster, but they have only ever seen that. you are a banshee now yes, but a woman—always a woman—first.)

[writerbrenna]

the air is crisp, the night dark but young; the fallen leaves give you away to your prey, so you hunt in plain sight. bodies writing on the dance floor, the smell of sweat and alcohol and humanity; the thrum of the music overtaken by the beat of a heart— no not one, all of them, beating in tandem.

you’ve spent the night at the bar, smiling pretty, red lipstick covering your blood stained lips. you see your opportunity, perfect prey heading out the door. you stalk out the door, following the scent of whiskey and blood, out into the night—your night—you don’t have to go far.

you find them in the alley; a big man, looming over a young girl. it’s over in a flash; he’s lying against the wall, she’s leaning against the wall, he’s in pain, she’s in shock. you brush back her bangs—her skin is colder than yours. you give her your jacket, kiss her forehead, find her a taxi home.

you inhale deeply; your prey smells of whiskey and smoke and fear. licking your lips you advance; you may feed on blood, but you are not the monster lurking in this night.

[writerbrenna]

they tell your story, some embellish, others tell it as it was, but the ending always remains the same: with you as the villain. no matter that he hurt you, he cheated on her by assaulting you. it wasn’t your fault but she blamed you. he let her, and together they wrote the stories about you, stripped your humanity from you. you wanted to be left alone, allowed them to spread harsh tales of you, of the ice queen with a gaze of stone, to keep others away. but still they came for you, men— always men— who wanted to tame the shrew, best the bitch, and slowly you crumbled. they killed you, slowly ruined you, your confidence, your sense of self, your thirst for life, and when you were beaten down, with no more fight in you, they hung your head on the wall: a trophy.

(medusa, your story has always been a tragedy, and yet they dared to write you as the villain.)

[writerbrenna]

they call you “hero” lightly— they don’t realize what it means to you. you always wanted to help people, to be a hero, but now you know the cost. you know the responsibility that rests on your shoulders, the fate of all these people in your hands. they call you a hero lightly— like you can handle the weight of the word, but even atlas can only bear so much, before he too begins to crumble.

[writerbrenna]

your feet follow along the path on their own. you know the way, you’ve created this path yourself; trudged through the underbrush in the in the dark, until the plants learned your routine, parted in preparation of your trek. you walk blindly in the dark, your feet leading you along. leaves and twigs crunch beneath your feet, there are probably rocks cutting into your bare soles but you’re too cold, too numb to feel it. and besides, a little extra blood is nothing to you at this point.

there’s rustling in the trees surrounding you, you do not stop. you cannot stop, you’ve come too far, spent too much to be here. you’ve made it to the spot, you recognize it even the dark. you walk forward, towards the circle you dug in the dirt; you’d dug in the night until your fingers bled, until you lost two nails and you wailed, but still you dug. you dug and days later you still couldn’t clean the dirt out from under your nails; couldn’t clean the dirt or the blood.

you keep walking and feel something under your foor, wet and sticky, you grimace. knowing it’s blood, just not yours, you continue on.

you find him against the tree where you left him, an old oak tree in the center of your circle, exactly where she told you to leave him. you see him in the moonlight, and your vision goes red and blurred— not sure if it’s from your anger, your hatred, or from when he hit you in the head (not for the first time). you approach and he starts struggling, starts crying, starts whimpering, starts begging you, “baby baby stop baby please baby i love you” (you know he doesn’t)

it grates on your nerves, he sounds like white noise. you taste copper and snot and realize the blur is from your tears, as you bring the knife down again and again and again until he stops, his lies stop, his breathing stops. and still, again and again and more and more, until a cold hand stops you, takes your hand in hers.

she whispers sweet nothings, smooths your hair, takes the knife. you know she’s a demon, a devil, that this sacrifice is for her, but she kisses away your tears, tenderly soothes your cuts and bruises, (some from the walk, most from him) and you feel safer in her arms than you ever did his.

you know she’s a demon, a devil, but you also know that not all devils are evil, and that not all evil comes from hell below.