Lingering Twilight

I thought forgiveness would feel like warmth like some soft ending where everything made sense

But it didn't come like that

It came as silence carefully built brick by brick inside my chest

You used to live there in the corners of my thoughts in the reflex of my apologies in the way I shrank before I even knew I was doing it

And for a long time I called that love or loyalty or something I was supposed to endure

But time has a way of stripping names off things until only the truth is left

What you did was not love

And what I survived was not meant to be normal

Forgiveness arrived slowly not as mercy toward you but as mercy toward me

It looked like waking up and not checking the past for permission to breathe like hearing your name and feeling nothing tighten in my body

Not anger not fear just distance

Clean unclaimed

I don't rewrite what happened I don't soften its edges I don't turn it into something it wasn't

I just stop carrying it forward like it belongs in my hands

You do not get to follow me anymore not into my quiet not into my future not into the parts of me that learned how to stand upright again

Forgiveness is not a door reopening

Dust to dust,

A dagger sits

Below my pillow.

No one expects

Such an angel

To set the world ablaze.

And when you were refused love

From silver spoon,

You learned to lick it

From knives.

Yet you gained a craving for blood

Good Tuesday to you, Tumblr. Today, we’re featuring some of the people creating breathtaking images of landscape, flora, and fauna. Reblog to add your own nature photography blog—let’s see if we can get a good reblog chain going 🌝

Beautiful botanicals by @boohwanj:

Mornings in pastel by @dpcphotography:

@swedishlandscapes takes truly breathtaking images of—you guessed it—Swedish landscapes:

@gon-iii captures botanical close-ups:

Golden hour grasses by @stephaniedolen:

Pink pastoral by @kylebonallo​:

Kyoto’s gardens by @harimayasukeroku:

It’s all film, no editing with @alifeingrain:

@alexmurison​ photographs his hikes to the high places—and the friends he meets along the way: