dead poets network

but doesn't orange rhyme with courage?

You are my breath prayer. The moments between us are holy air.

Breath Prayer

Altair

Belle has big dreams for such a small town. Here, people fold themselves into paper cranes, cut away the edges that stick out, because they can’t imagine a sin worse than being unable to fit in. She pretends not to see the grief in the face of her father as he fails to meet the eyes and expectations of others. They have suffered deeper losses, but this still breaks him a little. Written words take her elsewhere, to a land of bigger graces, of thrills and the sort of love none of these boys – alcohol and bile and lies on their throats – could ever give her. If there ever was a place for running, this is it; dirt roads and frozen time. A pallet of colors and people and slurs that never change, don’t know how. A book of pages unturned. The popular kid wants her on his arm, but refuses to lend her an ear, and she has no part of herself to give to someone who will treat it recklessly. Belle wants more out of life than scraps. One day, she finds another kind of boy. He is a giant in glasses and leather, hands like claws, holding onto reality as if it’s about to slip away from beneath his towering, awkward figure. Belle kisses him an I’ll see you later, as he drops her off a month after graduation, and her father cries as they fill up her dorm. She loves them very much, but she has big dreams.

2/30

Snow White, dark-skinned and red-lipped, sweet as every dream mankind has ever had. She doesn’t know what to make of her beauty. This is all her stepmother has ever had, but perfection turns flawed with time, and it all feels a bit like cruelty. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, spills its truths into poison, distills its words in the blood of its victims. Nothing like a sacrifice to keep life where life does not belong, to create magic from tainted glass. Had there ever been a time when the queen could hear only her own voice? The child grew up wrong, my dear, in the shadows of being beautiful and ignored, beautiful and powerless to the designs of her mirror and her father and her country. She was a little girl, then a young lady, then a woman made to be a wife. No one there to sing her to sleep, but the monster on the wall, reflecting back her nightmares; it crawled into her mind, it grew branches, it grew thorns. The queen was very pretty, once, and that was all anyone wanted from her. Inside, the ugliness spread: the kingdom she wanted and the husband that she could barely wait to mourn, the daughter she had to destroy. Snow White sees a face look back at her, distorted by the hunt and the filth, by the thoughts in the mirror, and realizes that a crooked nose and a split lip, that scar across her cheekbone, might as well be her happy ending.

On Living: pt.2 (spun out)

Latterly, I feel like my soul is lost somewhere; I’m beginning to think that maybe,  it is not so bad after all.

He asks: Would you rather be touched tenderly or violently? And I start bleeding blue- Salt water blue, Brine in my veins. I want to ask for violent tenderness, for love like a fist closing around a throat […]

come home and tell me stories about every mythological creature you’ve seen in both dreams and the real. bring down your musty copies, dog eared books about folklore and witches, nature and love horror and trees. remember all the times you asked for stories and my hands were the paper i read from. you always had a knack for finding trouble you always asked for truths i wish i could unfurl before you. i wonder sometimes if you could’ve ever seen the lies resting behind my teeth or if there really was blood of a psychic in your veins. i’m still waiting for every star in my life to fall into place before i can take out the stitches around my heart so let’s let the embers cool before we rekindle another fire but let’s not stifle sparks that have done their time. come home so i can stop writing letters you turn into lining for the cupboards come home so i can shatter the glass between us come home from your hurts and harms i’m rusting waiting for you and hoping my heart is filled to the brim already

The Digesting

Your kisses are the reason I wake up every morning. Your smiles put me to sleep every night. You are the start and finish, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. You are my everything.

fever