quiet little things

“maybe it was uncustomary to think so but you’ve never been more beautiful than when fragments...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:32:06 -0500

“maybe it was uncustomary to think so but you’ve never been more beautiful than when fragments of pain fell in liquid form, glimmering with the bitter kind of mourning that comes with every level of heartbreak.”

(looseleaf-paper)

I’ve learned this isn’t just another case of lust. I know this is love. I want the world...

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 22:40:06 -0500

I’ve learned this isn’t just another case of lust. I know this is love. I want the world to know this is love, but I can’t bring myself to tell anyone anything because I can’t seem to find the right words that would do you justice. Words that would make me feel good enough for you and for us to be true. I need to spend a day with you and your smile before before I bite off more than I can chew. I need to hold back the confessions of obsessions that have made my feelings only explicable with the cheesiest lines about love. More thought has to be put behind what I say about you, just in case I end up with you.

(anonymous)

(she was, she really was-) blocked like nothing blocks nothing dinner plate eyes chipped-tender eyes...

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 22:18:06 -0500

(she was, she really was-)

blocked like nothing blocks nothing

dinner plate eyes chipped-tender eyes

eyes scraped by forks by

spades

too many people fed off you

shoveled into you with their

spoons:

pestles.

-

you’re the plate, porcelain,

stained deep with scars slight

(save for those few that i noted

on sight.)

(engildthenight)

“Have you ever heard anyone convincingly explain why they’re drawn to beautiful...

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:59:05 -0500

“Have you ever heard anyone convincingly explain why they’re drawn to beautiful things?”

I think a lot about the depression on your chest between your lungs but more than that I think about my hand gently pressed against it, fingertips sloping down to the palm in such a curved motion that math would retract, taken aback. That is not what I want to talk about, though. In May we had pouring rain and water would collect in the dimples of your collar bones, I know this because I always felt the damp remnants of mist-carried streetlights and a washed away city - and how so. Shuffled between a sheet and a duvet and a sheet would be moisture on my eyelashes from trekking across your skin and understanding how nature works, in her quiet ways, by how she treated you at night. It was well, incomparable to my backhand sweeps attempting to cleanse you of debris and dust and particles which you argued should be fossilized on shoulders. And so, with that, when you creaked the door closed I would position myself comfortably on the bed, leaning in and streaking my eyes across your contours to read about your day. I learned from you by the language of your creases, for we all know how they form from particular movements, and your movements would carry a misplaced longing which I found so familiar in the sidewalk cracks of my youth. And the hammocks, dreamed of having them in a treehouse, now sway below your eyes, steady and holding onto each figure that has entered and left your life.

I am renouncing myself from you.

I cannot tell you that my hand fits perfectly onto your backbone when you slouch forwards into me, but I can tell you that looming in the pocket behind my ear will be a declaration of isolation.

I am not saying this to hinder you. It’s just that, well, the beauty you bear can mark a palm in uninviting ways. The hesitating breath of each blink you offered would thunder through teeth valleys. I want to use these hands for good, and you were never convincing.

(fistedlanguage)

When I Fell Asleep Beside You When I fell asleep beside you, bare, with the salt from your body...

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:44:05 -0500

When I Fell Asleep Beside You

When I fell asleep
beside you, bare,
with the salt from
your body still
on my tongue

in the indigo depths
of early morning,
feeling the movements
of your lungs through
the mattress and

watching the last
wisps of smoke from
the forest fire that
burned itself out
escape through your
barely-open door,

a little piece of
my heart unfurled.

(fuckbitchesgetmonet)

i remember when we were twelve and your mom died and you stood outside your house day and night....

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 21:14:05 -0500

i remember when we were twelve and your mom died and you stood outside your house day and night. you’d call to me in broken english, through broken windows and broken teeth but the spindles on my bike spun mad, and loud, and fast. and everything spun mad and loud and fast until the night i was sixteen at the park and his words were thursday morning garbage cans that lined our neighborhood and his actions were pain. and i could picture your face for the first time in years. and you stood there in the dark, out the window, and on the floor, piecing together the bits of your broken home. i’m eighteen and our eyes meet sometimes, through the dredge of quarter life stench. i wonder. i muse. i follow the cracks down the road away from your driveway to that place near the cliff. and it’s summer again in ‘99. we’re hitting switches and scraping knees and it’s okay to miss my mom. it’s okay to spill the milk in the mornings and cry in the dark. but now all the bits of yourself you’ve purged are dripping down the stairs of the grade school and pooling near the mud. and sirens are flaring while your eyes glaze. will you remember me?

(stillweak)

I closed the curtain last night, You water drinker you, you were in my horoscope for a month and a...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:41:06 -0500

I closed the curtain last night,
You water drinker you, you were in my horoscope
for a month and a half and my tarot reading this morning.
You water drinker you, I wept like a child when you pressed your
lips to my forehead and like a woman when you cupped my face
and moved me,
but you, I am discarded and you,
you water drinker you
I closed the curtain last night

(maidenunmade)

“Keep your chin up,” he said, with that sweet voice of his while my eyes were glazed...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:21:05 -0500

“Keep your chin up,” he said, with that sweet voice of his while my eyes were glazed over and my thoughts were ticking away into the darkness. “And stop pulling on your hair,” he added, as he slowly lifted my chin up with his hand and gently pulled my hand away from my hair. He kept staring at me with those sweet, sad eyes of his, and I realized that he has been killing the demon that lies within my heart and mind all along.

But those eyes, those sad, sad eyes; they made me wish that I had known this in the first place.

(tararosetoes)

Palmistry doesn’t cover it the way a cliche could, but for my sake and yours, lets explore the...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 17:01:06 -0500

Palmistry doesn’t cover it the way a cliche could, but for my sake and yours, lets explore the concept that maybe even for a minute, a poorly stitched together heart line might mean something more than what it seems. Because like all the spiderwebs we walk through and the loose strings that brush against soft places behind my bruised knees, a misread line either drawn in the sand or read from my palm is enough to catch me off guard with enough force on an already upside down week— enough to doubt what is, what could be, what I can only assume isn’t true.

Faith in the unknown can only be just that; faith. But the unknown that is made unknowable also makes its own infidelity behind inscrutable lines.

(awarew0lf)

I remember my hands were trembling with fear the first time I told you my big, dark secret. That my...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:41:05 -0500

I remember my hands were trembling with fear the first time I told you my big, dark secret. That my body was a canvas, a razorblade my paintbrush, and the blood pouring from my veins was the mountains and valleys. Leaning against the frame of my bed, intoxicated by the bitter smell of metal and blood, I waited for your reply; terrified. It felt like someone had ripped out a piece of my soul, the really dirty, stained with horror part and held it up for all the world to see, to mock at with cruel insensitivity. Minutes seemed to drag on for hours as I sat there clenching my fists like prison bars strangling my heart with fear and shame, just listening for that settle vibration of my phone, ringing with either acceptance or rejection. And then the moment came, that beautiful yet terrifying, sweet like honey moment when I read your words telling me that I was worth so much more than late nights of trying to escape from the darkness nipping at my feet and the demons clawing at my skin. Tears streamed down by freckled cheeks like raindrops rolling off wilted leaves as I slowly began to realize that I had nothing else to hide; not from you, not from us.

Suddenly in that moment of vulnerability and fear, my soul felt the precious warmth of freedom, and it was you. Only you.

Like the darkness as it meets the dawn after a night of terror and trial, you were my morning burning relentlessly with radiance and revival.

You were my sunrise.

(bravedandelions)

I’ll live. its not the end of the world, its not even close. when im older im going to barley...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:16:06 -0500

I’ll live. its not the end of the world, its not even close.
when im older im going to barley remember you,
you weren’t even a bump in my life, you were a small, tiny fraction.
hardly important at all.
but i do miss you, i wish i could hang out with you and make you smile.
i thought you were pretty cool you know, when you kissed me i didnt get butterflies
but i figured those things come with time.
I thought i’d have summer to get closer to you
so i could have my stomach filled with every insect every time we’d kiss.
but time is out for you and me. the clock is out of batteries
and im not going to the fucking store to buy more.
this is it, next time you reach out for me im not gonna be there.
will i reply? possibly, my curiosity for what could happen will kill me,
but i like to think i’ll see your name on my phone screen and
all ill do is close it and wait for another fraction to come into my life.
hopefully this time she’ll be a whole number.

(anonymous)

Sinners That night we stumble as we walk, slightly intoxicated by the alcohol in our body. We laid...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:01:06 -0500

Sinners

That night we stumble as we walk, slightly intoxicated by the alcohol in our body. We laid side by side on the beach, the breeze blowing against our face, grasping sand in our hand and watching it slip between our fingers. The silence was surprisingly comforting and reassuring. I moved an inch closer, barely touching, and then another, trying to breach the gap between us but yet afraid to come off as too strong. Inch by inch, bit by bit, I could almost taste your scent now; a weird fusion of smoke and sweat and cologne, something which I oddly love. I traced my finger along the curve of your body, slow with intention. You laid there motionless and paralysed. You may not have realized, but your body went stiff, and your face was cracking, comical to read. I was enjoying every moment of it, taking the lead, trying so hard not to smile at how silly you look. I was in control, though you kept up with my game thereafter. You moved in, your lips touching mine, and now it was my turn to go stiff, even then I was still pretty sure that something in me leaped.

This very moment is the beginning of a grave mistake, consequences too huge for us to bear. But if something that is so wrong feels so right, so natural, so bittersweet, is it still as wrong? I do not know. I see what is coming, but I do not know how to stop. Do I even want to stop?

You are my experimental game. You are my toy for distraction. You are what I always want, something I could not have. With you it deadend my ache of disappointment, and the sinking feeling of emptyness. With you I feel taken care of, my problems on your shoulder. With you I feel you see me. This is a game that would end, but it is a fair game; Because we are making use of each other.

That night I went home, your scent still on me, sand stuck in my hair, pretending it was just me and you, pretending she doesn’t exist.

(chasgwindmills)

You leave a bittersweet taste in my mouth that feels eternally here. Like finding a beautiful secret...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:36:06 -0500

You leave a bittersweet taste in my mouth that feels eternally here. Like finding a beautiful secret hiding spot and making if your own, crafted out of true love and imagination, putting your whole effort and heart into it to make it magical. Then you realize this place was never your own, but belongs to the trifling city you live in. They tear it down it down, destroy its beauty, build something overly modern and static. It was yours and it was beautiful. You still remember its beauty, even though what has destroyed it, replaced it, is horrible and unknown to you. You remember the joy and magic this place gave you and your heart is burst open with pain and sadness because it was destroyed. That’s how you feel to me, how your love feels to me. I still remember every beautiful thing about you, even your flaws. I remember the efforts you took, above and beyond, to make me smile, to show your love. I too, put my efforts and heart into making our love work. Slowly, you began to fad away and your efforts did too. I didn’t fully see what was happening, like the warm fading handprint left on a winter window. I tried to fight, I tried so hard. I realized we hit rock bottom, that we had fallen, and I was willing to stand up again for our love, for you, for me, for us. It only made you turn away faster. I wish you wouldn’t blame me. I became the person I became because I was scared. I was scared because I saw your eyes become vacant, eyes that could no longer see. I was scared because your hands no longer held mine with a tight grip of true love. They lied there, limp, alone. I became the person I became because I didn’t know of any other way to keep fighting. I thought if I showed you I was upset, you would comfort me, show your love for me, prove to me that you still cared…like you used to do. All I got in return were words with no meaning, half-hearted kisses and hugs, and a boy who didn’t want to fight for love. I was hurt, wounded, broken. I was broken like the free bird who crashes into a window’s reflection when they believe they are flying into a plethora of lush green leaves and flowers, only to find that it was fake all along. You are the bittersweet window reflection that I flew into, hoping to find something sweet, something good, left to be made broken, to be disappointed. I still love you, with my broken wings and ripped-out heart. And I forgive you for all the blame you placed on me, for making me feel like the culprit when I know deep in your gray heart you know you share the blame, too. Even if you push me to the edges of the Earth, hoping I will fall off to the dark abyss of the open lonely space, I will still love you. Maybe one day you will know this, realize this. I can hope, I can dream. I can hope and I can dream with the big broken heart of mine that you once cared for. Maybe by then, I will have healed and you will have returned. Maybe by then you can love and care for me again and maybe you will be willing to fight. Maybe. Maybe.

(littleashtree)

If someone asked me a month ago what the best day of my life was so far, I would probably sigh and...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 15:15:05 -0500

If someone asked me a month ago what the best day of my life was so far, I would probably sigh and grow very quiet, cracking my knuckles and avoiding their gaze. If I was in the proper mood for spilling my heart, I would tell them about the day we woke up early and drove around town aimlessly, stopping at random yard sales and listening to the newly christened “our song” on repeat. It was a joke; a hip hop song about how easy it is to get with girls when you’re famous. The song had nothing to do with us and when you first played it for me, I hated it. But somehow it turned into our song and then I couldn’t get enough. By the end of the day, I had the lyrics memorized and wanted to keep screaming them with you until our lungs shattered.

That afternoon, we went back to your house and continued our mission of memorizing every inch of each other. When we got dressed, I tried to wear your clothes but you said no because then what would people think? It was before you were completely comfortable with the idea of sex. So I put on my own clothes and that night, we went to a local venue and listened to music. That’s the part where my memory fails me because all I can hear is our song playing over and over.

I have spent a long time curled up in the comfort of knowing days like these can happen. I have spent four years wondering what you would say if I mentioned it to you, knowing you would have forgotten by now and knowing that would sting sharper than when you broke my heart.

This summer, I stopped spooning with memories and learned how to live. Now, the best day of my life has nothing to do with you. I went skinny dipping in a thunderstorm with two beautiful people. I saw the way my body looked against the sky, which was the dull grey shade of tornado watch, and loved myself more than I ever did while you were memorizing me.

You are still a part of my life and last Friday, we traveled to a town where no one knew we were once in love, so we silently pretended we still were; parking the car in the shadows while we waited for the music to start in the bar. You mentioned how you always wanted to find one hip hop song that I liked and then you remembered When You Wasn’t Famous and laughed. I found enough courage to remind you of that day, trying to keep the details from sounding rehearsed, creating pauses long enough to sound like I was just remembering now. You got distracted halfway through. “I’m sorry. What did you say? Then we went to a show?”

“Yeah. We went to a show.” I stared ahead, something resembling sadness in my eyes.

You were waiting for an interesting story, the reason that I was telling you about it. “We went to a show?”

“We went to a show.”

I thought it was going to hurt, but it didn’t.

(accidentalnonfiction)

I talk to you every day, but the words I really want to say keep colliding against my teeth, behind...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:51:05 -0500

I talk to you every day, but the words I really want to say keep colliding against my teeth, behind clamped lips, like fireflies trapped in a jar; it won’t be long now until my mouth starts to glow with the light of earnest words left unsaid—No, it’s not true, you can’t possibly miss me more than I miss you, I need you here, I’m falling apart without your arms around me, I want you, I want you, please be true.

(anonymous)

i watched you in the dark as salty tears stained your cheeks and my heart broke a thousand times...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:31:06 -0500

i watched you in the dark as salty tears stained your cheeks and my heart broke a thousand times over. words are not enough sometimes but my foolish mouth gets the best of me. sometimes all we need is human contact to make the pain subside for at least a moment or two. although my inhibitions took over, my intentions were in the right place. i often wonder why bad things happen to good people. i’m peeling pigments of skin in hopes to find the answer running through veins but i’m just feeling raw. i’m looking under woobly feet and behind shaking hands but coming up empty. maybe it’s the howling wind and the hooded faces walking five paces faster than we’d prefer. maybe it’s these cold months tragically dragging on leaving our hearts vacant and our skin tender. but i don’t know. i don’t know.

if discovering yourself is what this place is all about, why do i feel like i’m losing who i am?

(stephaniemill)

Surrendering is better than relentlessness. I feel lied to. For a time, I felt weak. But only the...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:11:05 -0500

Surrendering is better than relentlessness. I feel lied to. For a time, I felt weak. But only the strong surrender; only the strong admit when they are done. Only the strong say sorry; only the strong admit their wrongs. I just wish I’d have gotten the chance to say sorry. But instead I got the chance to finally give up. And now I’ve found happiness in other ways that I never thought I’d find elsewhere. And now I have grown through painful catharsis. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

(notesofadirtyoldboy)

I wish that I could see your face now and again, see how you are doing. I still remember the exact...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:48:05 -0500

I wish that I could see your face now and again, see how you are doing. I still remember the exact tremble of your voice as you told me that you didn’t know what you were doing anymore. I didn’t feel it then—the world was at my fingertips, you knew it and I did too—but now I am feeling it.

And for one brief glimmer of time, I told you that I was sorry, that I wanted you to know that I understand, that I knew we were bad for each other then. But it’s now been more than a year since I heard that tremble and, more than ever, I want to know that you’re safe, that you’re happy, that you think of me, that you miss me, that you wouldn’t mind seeing where things went from wherever they left off.

But time, as we both know, changes things, manipulates the way that we hope for things. So in an electronic postcard, I will send you my good tidings and will wait anxiously for the same from you. Because that’s where things are now and where they will pick up from where they left off.

It doesn’t change the fact that I’m still, without any doubt, sorry.

(passive-aggressive-positivity)

those quiet days when i wish i were as small as a bird to fit through every crevice of your body and...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:30:05 -0500

those quiet days when i wish i were as small as a bird to fit through every crevice of your body and of your bones.  took me years to simplify an ankle’s curve, how particular would it be if my feet planted on that slope  perched with closed wings, only still; to tap into the bray of each creaking weary such as an absent feather upon my back

and it is known (we all know) how skin peels  we all know how the scooping of our bodies, of our land rest in our palms.  we do not know how to cradle the upturned hair beneath our yellow bellies and gaze below  the tip of a nose to the callus sole.

(fistedlanguage)

“If you were a tree, what tree would you be?” Two bodies tangled together on the grass,...

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:08:05 -0500

“If you were a tree, what tree would you be?”

Two bodies tangled together on the grass, looking up at the trees and thinking about the bittersweetness of it all. He talked about how trees are worth more than humans to him. They do so much to be cut down, to go back into the earth like our bodies, but at least they do good for the soil. On their time above ground, they were a home and they fed many. I talked about the nightmare of envisioning my father under the ground, the process of decomposition taking away his eyes like mine, a thought straight from W. W. Jacobs.

“Hmm.”

I would be like that tree, I said. I looked over to a red tree among all the green. I would be in a field, a meadow, all by myself. I would be a secret gem, a safe haven.

“That sounds like you.” Two bodies tangled together on the grass. I listened to his heartbeat. “I’d be an old oak in the front yard of a beautiful family’s home. The kids would climb up my trunk, using my bark as rungs, and there would be a tire swing hanging from my branches and they would love me so much until the night the storm would come, when lightening would hit me. The family would hate me because I fell on their car, killing the father. But I would always love them.”

I like the bittersweetness of life. I think I felt love for him in this moment.

He holds me like I am all he has in the world, he makes me dizzy like no other, I let his fingers explore, we hold hands, I have a cut on my lip from him, he tells me fears, I accept his flaws, and he makes me happy. He is going into the seminary in the fall.

Sometimes you think towards the future and you edit your heart with your mind, but I’m at a point in my life where I’m between the past and the future, wedged exactly in the middle, allowing the present to overtake me, the messiness, the youthfulness, the beauty of it all.

(whistlers)