Afterthoughts

patrickstumphead:

1.
                why didn’t I tell you that
                you were important to me
                before you had time to realise
                that I was no longer important to you

2.
                we never did watch that movie
                that we always wanted to see
                I ended up watching it on my own and
                feeling like I’d betrayed you in some way

3.
                did you think about me when you fell asleep
                mid-conversation - and did you ever figure out
                how much I worried when you didn’t reply?
                probably. You always told me how obvious I was.

wow this is fucking beautiful 

“

Forget the images you’ve learned to attach
To words like cock and clit,
Chest and breasts.
Break those words open
Like a paramedic cracking ribs
To pump blood through a failing heart.
Push your hands inside.
Get them messy.
Scratch new definitions on the bones.

Get rid of the old words altogether.
Make up new words.
Call it a click or a ditto.
Call it the sound he makes
When you brush your hand against it through his jeans,
When you can hear his heart knocking on the back of his teeth
And every cell in his body is breathing.
Make the arch of her back a language
Name the hollows of each of her vertebrae
When they catch pools of sweat
Like rainwater in a row of paper cups
Align your teeth with this alphabet of her spine
So every word is weighted with the salt of her.

When you peel layers of clothing from his skin
Do not act as though you are changing dressings on a trauma patient
Even though it’s highly likely that you are.
Do not ask if she’s “had the surgery.”
Do not tell him that the needlepoint bruises on his thighs look like they hurt
If you are being offered a body
That has already been laid upon an altar of surgical steel
A sacrifice to whatever gods govern bodies
That come with some assembly required
Whatever you do,
Do not say that the carefully sculpted landscape
Bordered by rocky ridges of scar tissue
Looks almost natural.

If she offers you breastbone
Aching to carve soft fruit from its branches
Though there may be more tissue in the lining of her bra
Than the flesh that rises to meet itLet her ripen in your hands.
Imagine if she’d lost those swells to cancer,
Diabetes,
A car accident instead of an accident of genetics
Would you think of her as less a woman then?
Then think of her as no less one now.

If he offers you a thumb-sized sprout of muscle
Reaching toward you when you kiss him
Like it wants to go deep enough inside you
To scratch his name on the bottom of your heart
Hold it as if it can-
In your hand, in your mouth
Inside the nest of your pelvic bones.
Though his skin may hardly do more than brush yours,
You will feel him deeper than you think.

Realize that bodies are only a fraction of who we are
They’re just oddly-shaped vessels for hearts
And honestly, they can barely contain us
We strain at their seams with every breath we take
We are all pulse and sweat,
Tissue and nerve ending
We are programmed to grope and fumble until we get it right.
Bodies have been learning each other forever.
It’s what bodies do.
They are grab bags of parts
And half the fun is figuring out
All the different ways we can fit them together;
All the different uses for hipbones and hands,
Tongues and teeth;
All the ways to car-crash our bodies beautiful.
But we could never forget how to use our hearts
Even if we tried.
That’s the important part.
Don’t worry about the bodies.
They’ve got this.

”

Gabe Moses, How to Make Love to a Trans* Person

“Now we’re finally here in person.
I taste pain and regret, in your sweat.”

Drake

I am switching places with the stones in your bones. My arms are heavy because and I can no longer hold you up. The blood in my veins runs laps and I double take every time a strike doesn’t run through smoothly. It’s rough to think of things this way. I guess everything fell apart a day ago when nothing came out right. 

Can you recall how dim the lighting was in the basement that night? I ran my fingers up and down my thighs in anxious habit. I was wearing the summer heat on my flesh. Though the ghosts kept me locked in my body, you kept me screaming to get out. Why have you made me feel that my frame is a prison? It’s not fair to place blame.

Last fall I broke my finger in your car door. You slammed the door shut in anger, you opened it in spite. I sat down on your passenger seat and it sighed a caution warning. You were steaming; I listened to the leather exhale. Calling me stupid, you looked to me for confirmation. As I reached for the door, you slammed it. It was official then, the way you broke me had made its way to the surface.

I used to count down the seconds until you got here. I also used to count down the seconds until you left. One night you never got here, so I never had to count at all.

electricity

being stoned and meditating to sigur ros > crying myself to sleep

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”

Vincent Van Gogh (via cosmicwolfchild)

alfaazkibarsaat:

I felt like destroying something beautiful.
So I took the delicate china of your voice
And shattered it across the floorboard of my memories
Held the neck of your smile
And choked it with the five-finger noose of my words
Puddled the beams of your laughter
in the palm of this pain and drenched it in my dark.

I felt like destroying something beautiful
So I loved you with the whole of my heart.

I haven’t washed my hair in a few days.

I wiped off all of my makeup.

People ask me what my eyebrows look like without makeup.

I tell them that’s something I wish to keep to myself.

I share my bare face with lovers as if it’s a privilege.

When having that lover in the first place is a privilege in itself.

I’m on call tomorrow.

I have a psychiatrist appointment at 12 and it’s 30 minutes away.

I have a psychologist appointment at 4 and it’s 30 minutes away.

I bought things at Michael’s today to make glitter jars.

I want to share them with you.

Especially when you’re around big crowds in small spaces.

Especially when it’s a bad day and you don’t want to get out of bed.

I wish I had a jar right now, my feelings won’t stop swarming around. 

strawberry vanilla candles smell so wonderful

and so do you

I love her like I loathe tomorrow
a broken smile
a sauntering denial

I love her like a confused mind
a spoken rhyme 
a bewildering crime

I love her like I don’t know how
and I want to show her
I’ll tell her now

I believe in the love I feel

though I’m not sure it is real

it overwhelms me

yet I love you still

“1.
I told you that I was a roadway of potholes, not safe to cross. You said nothing, showed up in my driveway wearing roller-skates.
2.
The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, “You will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I don’t know it’s coming.”
3.
Once, I got naked and danced around your bedroom, awkward and safe. You did the same. We held each other without hesitation and flailed lovely. This was vulnerability foreplay.
4.
The last eight times I told you I loved you, they sounded like apologies.
5.
You recorded me a CD of you repeating, “You are beautiful.” I listened to it until I no longer thought in my own voice.
6.
Into the half-empty phone line, I whispered, “We will wake up believing the worst in each other. We will spit shrapnel at each other’s hearts. The bruises will lodge somewhere we don’t know how to look for and I will still pretend I don’t know its coming.”
7.
You photographed my eyebrow shapes and turned them into flashcards: mood on one side, correct response on the other. You studied them until you knew when to stay silent.
8.
I bought you an entire bakery so that we could eat nothing but breakfast for a week. Breakfast, untainted by the day ahead, was when we still smiled at each other as if we meant it.
9.
I whispered, “I will latch on like a deadbolt to a door and tell you it is only because I want to protect you. Really, I’m afraid that without you I mean nothing.”
10.
I gave you a bouquet of plane tickets so I could practice the feeling of watching you leave.
11.
I picked you up from the airport limping. In your absence, I’d forgotten how to walk. When I collapsed at your feet, you refused to look at me until I learned to stand up without your help.
12.
Too scared to move, I stared while you set fire to your apartment – its walls decaying beyond repair, roaches invading the corpse of your bedroom. You tossed all the faulty appliances through the smoke out your window, screaming that you couldn’t handle choking on one more thing that wouldn’t just fix himself.
13.
I whispered, “We will each weed through the last year and try to spot the moment we began breaking. We will repel sprint away from each other. Your voice will take months to drain out from my ears. You will throw away your notebook of tally marks from each time you wondered if I was worth the work. The invisible bruises will finally surface and I will still pretend that I didn’t know it was coming.”
14.
The entire time, I was only pretending that I knew it was coming.”

A Sonnet of Invented Memories, by Miles Walser (via poetryelectric)