𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐄𝐑𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐄.

i know you’re listening, all brittle veins as distilled within your bones of bricks and mortars. the weight of these lesions does not change regardless of the passing hours. in which i have grown sanity through living vicariously in the body that does not feel like mine; in which i have grown vanity through killing precariously with the hands that do not feel too kind. they are the sinners, i’d say, but in my prayers as i tuck them in your silt, please do not be too gentle. i know we all want penitentiary humdrum, as humane, as mundane as our minds tend to veer, but aren’t we all just too fragile to receive them? i know you’re listening, so as you hear my denting the beads of this scattered rosary, my nails leaving crescent marks... the syncopated systoles and diastoles of my heart might beg for forgiveness, but truly, let me know if you think i really want it. sincerely, shin soohyun.

preamble: it has been a while, i know. as of august 24th in the year flashing past us due to the pandemic, the denouement of this character commences. he used to be infernalkai, as you might have noticed, and this is rosé with a multitude of sobriquets you have known me as prior to this. i’m not seeking redemptions through this account, simply wishing to reunite with the writing style and muse that i’ve loved dearly since his genesis in 2013. if i followed you, and you happen to clash with me prior, please do know that i’m here to rekindle my connections with the people i came across during my days playing him. it means that if you believe i’ve not changed enough, and that our collision could not be abraded, feel free to block me when i follow you. no hard feelings. 

that being said, i know many of your accounts have been archived or inactive considering just how long it has been since all of us were actively roleplaying, but as aforementioned, i’m here for the nostalgia too, so please do let me know if you’re still active and want to write again! i’ll cherish this new path together with you. for newer followers and passersby, hello, hope you come here to stay and write with me as well. soohyun is still the old guy he was, with all the misery since i love my angst, but in advance, if you’re mobile here are the links: rule / skin / silt. my writing is messy at best, and it will spiral downwards from here on, so brace yourself if you wish to thread with me. i appreciate your stopping by! have a good morning / afternoon / evening wherever you are.

richard siken sentence starters.

quotes are all taken from various poems out of richard siken’s poetry book crush.  feel free to change pronouns if needed.

tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.

tell me we’ll never get used to it.

there are so many things i’m not allowed to tell you.

i swallow your heart and it crawls right out of my mouth.

i want it back now, baby. i want it back.

i’m sorry. we know how it works. the world is no longer mysterious.

that’s a nice touch.

i like him and i want to be like him.

i’m sure you remember, i was on the phone with you, sweetheart.

history repeats itself.

there are many names in history, but none of them are ours.

you could drown in those eyes.

but damn if there isn’t anything sexier than a slender boy with a handgun, a fast car, a bottle of pills.

sorry about the blood in your mouth. i wish it was mine.

i couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but i wore his jacket for the longest time.

you wanted happiness, i can’t blame you for that, and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy but tell me you love this, tell me you’re not miserable.

there is no way to make this story interesting.

i want to tell you this story without having to confess anything, without having to say that i ran out into the street to prove something.

tell me we’re dead and i’ll love you even more.

you will be alone always and then you will die.

i’m sorry i came to your party and seduced you and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.

who am i? i’m just a writer. i write things down.

i take it back.

here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.

you still get to be the hero.

what more do you want?

love, for you, is larger than the usual romantic love. it’s like a religion. it’s terrifying.

no one will ever want to sleep with you.

you know that recently we have had our difficulties and there are many things i want to ask you.

you had not expected this.

walk a mile in my shoes.

a man takes his sadness down to the river and throws it in the river but then he’s still left with the river.

you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.

hush, my sweet. these tornadoes are for you.

that sounds overly valorous.

do you love yourself?

i don’t have to answer that.

you wanted more.

i had a dream about you.

there’s nowhere to go. there’s nowhere to go.

in these dreams it’s always you: the boy in the sweatshirt, the boy on the bridge, the boy who always keeps me from jumping off the bridge.

will you love me even more when i’m dead?

you didn’t show up. i kept waiting.

i swallowed crushed ice pretending it was glass and you’re dead.

i don’t really blame you for being dead but you can’t have your sweater back.

you can sleep now, you said. you can sleep now. you said that. i had a dream where you said that. thanks for saying that. you weren’t supposed to.

hello darling, welcome home.

please keep him safe.

i just don’t want to die anymore.

you want to die for love, you always have.

you didn’t think you’d feel this way.

you saved my life. i owe you, i owe you everything.

please, just for one night, will you lie down next to me, we can leave our clothes on, we can stay all buttoned up.

you’re all i ever wanted and worth dying for, too.

drive into that tree, drive off the embankment. ______, make something happen.

we are not dirty.

you keep singing along to that song i hate. stop singing.

here is the sink to wash away the blood.

this is not harmless. you are not breathing.

turn the page back to where it begins: where did the childhood lie, between the nooks of his teeth or the columns of his throat? lies travelled fast, after all, from skin to skin, flesh to flesh. rot. wither. clasped his own neck so tightly he embossed fingerprints ( it’s called suicide, deicide ). he couldn’t breathe. flash. he couldn’t sleep. flash. which one preceded the other? flash. don’t know, don’t care. not when his insides were burning with the weight of tragedies. and it talked in whispers that lacerated, and flash:

        i.

it might’ve been printed out on the newspaper. headline of the day: a mother shot. church yard. siren songs. he recalls screaming so hard, voice riddled with obscure sorrows. faded in memories: how umma rested in ripped peace, how appa nailed shut in the coffin. with umma, he died, deader. he lost both in one day; how does it feel, to relive this moment of truth?

                                                                            ii.

the answer is always in the tipping point, like an occipital fracture that almost ended his life but never quite it. then again, physical wounds healed. mental wounds, however, remained. welcome to the boyhood graveyard.

                                    iii.

talk about being barbaric. talk about how junghoon smashed his ribcage to get a hold of his heart, claws sinking. blood dripping like pomegranate juice, seeping into the skin to stain it with irreversible oaths of breaking. he loved the boy in ways that he didn’t understand and had his heart returned to him, not in the form of a fist wrapped in blood, but in a drained crumple coloured in residual, feverish daydreams. drained, drained, drained. talk about how junghoon kicked the dust of his pulverised bones until the particles were lost in the late night hurricane. talk about how he grew another set of bones, this time dislocated.

               talk about being undone. unwound. it blossomed in his hollow body.

it took soohyun years to reach the complete state of being used to being abandoned. it took soohyun a multitude of instances to reach the ultimate understandings that people who promised not to leave would eventually do.

it only took him a splice of a second to remind him of the first who did it.

memory cuts into the corners of his mind. he sees blood when he closes his eyes. he sees blood when he opens them to know that junghoon is there. that the warmth of calloused fingers pressed against his palm isn’t a fabricated illusion from his past.

                               talk about the boy who swallowed his lights and fled.

talk about the boy, talk about his being here. talk about his being here after four years.

his own words sink into his marrows. it did not feel true until his voice reverberated in the room. he wanted junghoon to stay. in his life, in his heart. ( talk about a walk to forget. )

junghoon wanted to stay, too. soohyun lifts his gaze, from their brushing skin to junghoon’s face, noting the sharp of his cheekbones and the curvatures of his lips. he wanted to stay, too. what matters: he didn’t. a smile splinters his lips, but the words vanish before it makes its descent into his mouth.

junghoon couldn’t stay. there is no explanation that trails after, just beats of silence that lingers too many seconds too long for soohyun’s liking. protests burn on the edge of his tongue, but he doesn’t deliver it. there is only so much part of his flesh that he’s willing to expose to someone who left. vulnerability contained in questions and remarks should remain unsaid for now.

this reminds soohyun of how it was effortless for junghoon to rip his skin to shreds, his flesh a layer inked with texts to read. maybe it’s still like this now. maybe he’s still an open book. maybe he’s still vulnerable without words.

               he doesn’t talk. none of them do.

silence shatters at the sound of the soft, hitched inhale. he doesn’t look, eyes fixated back on their hands. junghoon is vulnerable without words.

talk about being open. the sight of junghoon holding back his tears is gentle. how he squeezes junghoon’s fingers to comfort him is visceral. it’s almost nostalgic. it’s almost nostalgic in the way that there is a storm brewing in his stomach at the sight of junghoon’s vulnerability. there are some things that even years could not change. not even the tides of care that junghoon chooses to display.

then there are some thing that years could change. he looks up just in time to spot the bruise on junghoon’s neck. talk about a beast. talk about being savage. it feels like the monsters in soohyun’s head has chosen to manifest themselves into reality and sunk their merciless teeth into the expanse of junghoon’s neck.

splinters rest at the base of his belly, previously made of something fuller, something whole. talk about the gossamer of childhood memories littered with innocence.

he parts his lips, question hanging heavy on his tongue. he’s about to ask when junghoon speaks first, telling him to talk.

the razor sharp words are inevitable, like the petrichor that blooms during summer drizzles. it’s still the resentments, holding his head underwater. talk about his first love. talk about how it savored the flames in him. talk about how it became forest fire within. talk about how it died down, leaving nothing but fumes and ashes in its wake.

with this much burden on his shoulders, it almost feels like everyday is an arms race, and he’s battling against himself. sometimes, in the portrait, there’s zero. bruised, beaten. black and blue. they don’t linger, but it certainly feels like they do. he can feel their ghosts creeping, crawling on his skin. perhaps they’re the afterthoughts: the traumas that become nothing but personal poltergeists. he thinks in metrics that don’t coexist with reality; no, not in the ways that they should. he’s no longer the hybrid theory, a mixture between a boy and a beast. it’s been leaning towards the latter as of late, with his overgrown figurative teeth becoming stalactites. and so, he sheds the skin of his alter ego, stepping more into shin soohyun even when the body feels more like a flask more often than not.

tonight, the city is no longer familiar. its arteries spread before him, he feels more vulnerable than ever even when he’s equipped with weapons too many, strapped and hidden underneath his casual clothes. there’s no such thing as being too paranoid when you’ve died too many times, but tonight, he expects it to be rather calm. doesn’t know if it matters, though, what he thinks, because as accurate as his senses can be, he’s not a soothsayer. heads towards the bar with measured steps, claiming a seat that relatively obscures him in the shadow. with this metabolism, substance is futile, but he asks for a glass after another anyway, sloshing himself in the cusp of warmth that lasts for a moment’s fractions. trailing down his system, the burn is nothing but an illusionary tale of liberation from reality.