and the rest is rust and stardust

I don’t want to write poems about breaking anymore. I’m so sick of my words weaving knots into the fiber of a noose and polishing the clip of the anchor it’s tied to in a dull sleep, a heavy, hibernation light-years deep in a cold, black lake, tangled in seaweed.

Reeling it in, (sweating, grunting, bellowing) it doesn’t budge. I’m figuring out how to stand my ground too. I’m done putting my books down for people who don’t need me, (people who like me but not enough.) I’m done with rope burn.

I’ve been wearing my stringy hurt as a badge all winter and it grosses me out. I keep mistaking eyes for hands, smiles and laughs for a net to land in; this free-fall for an optical illusion.

Awake, my mind is vigilant. It’s quick and fierce to bat away any thought that might land, wheels down onto bits of you, but I can’t guard my sleeping brain.

In dreams my mind circles back to quiet-night, November coasting. Back to my fingers carving out shapes in the steam fog of your windshield, back to each dizzy morning where I searched my phone for a ‘Good Morning’ text that I never found- (you never sent one, I never asked. We were both without precedent.)

How do I exist if not in varying forms of unravel? What’s the point of collecting the words pumping through and out of me if not to cover, shield, and serve as armor when I have no skin? There’s so much more than you and your fingerprints or me and my kaleidoscope mind. Sometimes the best part is no part at all:

I want to write a poem about the silence: the thick, metal tangle of wires that coil in my head- they swear they’re waterproof but I’m still terrified to sweat.

I want to write a poem about the before: before the envelopes were opened, before the kisses felt cautionary, before I threw myself in the kiln- when I was shaped but not permanent, when I could still make corrections.

a manifesto of sorts. by Kiernan Norman.

SAY EVERYTHING YOU’RE NOT SUPOSSED TO SAY.

Bite down. Spill.

Dredge the truth up from your ribs.

If it makes someone uncomfortable,

you’re getting somewhere.

If it makes you flinch, you’re close.

If it makes you ache, press harder.

LOVE LIKE YOU’RE BURNING IN REAL TIME.

Love with your hands open,

a pocketful of matches,

no fear of third-degree consequences.

Let it ruin you. Let it rewire you.

Let it make you unbearable.

If it doesn’t change the shape of your mouth,

if it doesn’t show up in your dreams,

it wasn’t love—

just a joke that went on too long.

YOUR SUFFERING IS NOT CURRENCY

What you create from it is.

Blueprint grief.

Canonize longing.

Turn your past into poetry

and then charge admission.

TIME IS NOT REAL, BUT YOUR BONES DISAGREE.

You will feel the weight of years

in your joints.

You will remember things in your muscles

before your mind catches up.

A decade will pass,

and your skin will still tingle

at the memory of hands

that have long since vanished.

You are a clock made of flesh,

and time leaves fingerprints.

IF YOU MUST GO, LEAVE LIKE A COMET.

No quiet exits.

No slipping away unnoticed.

Let them watch as you burn through the sky.

Let them stare until their eyes ache.

Let them wish they had followed you.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

YOUR SOUL HAS A B-SIDE. PLAY IT LOUD.

The version of you that winks at the moon?

Real.

The one who writes letters

just to bury them under snow?

Real.

The one who flew to Vietnam

to live with a girl she met on 2010s Tumblr?

Also real.

You are a thousand lives,

and all of them are real.

GOD LIVES IN BATHROOM STALLS AND BUS STATIONS.

You will not find divinity in neat places.

You will find it in the drunk girl in the club bathroom,

telling you you’re beautiful.

In the way strangers help each other

at baggage claim.

In the way someone leans in, just slightly,

when they laugh.

Holiness is the street musician

playing for shadows.

Start praying to that.

THE ONES WHO LEAVE NEVER GET TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.

Let them wonder.

Let them rot in their own unknowing.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

Let them carry it

like a stone in their stomach.

THE DEAD STILL HEAR YOU. SPEAK ACCORDINGLY.

Your ancestors are listening.

Your ghosts are listening.

The version of you

who didn’t make it past that worst night—

she is listening.

Speak like you owe them something.

Because you do.

YOU ARE NOT A SUNDAY MORNING.

You are a Friday night

with blood in your mouth.

You are the reckoning,

the consequence,

the aftermath,

the mess they wake up to

and the ghost they dream about.

EVERY SETTING HAS A VERSION OF YOU STILL WALKING AROUND IN IT.

You are still twenty-four,

draping yourself around campus,

all short skirts and Adderall-eyes,

like you’re everybody’s daydream.

Still eighteen,

getting on the D.C. Metro with a book,

riding up and down the red line

just to pass the evening.

Still thirty-three,

kissing a face you’d been curious to taste

for ten years.

Still eleven,

jumping on the trampoline with your backpack,

waiting for the bus to come.

You are haunting yourself across time zones.

Be kind to the versions of you

who don’t know how the story ends yet.

EVERY SCAR ON YOUR BODY IS A SENTENCE IN A LANGUAGE YOU’RE STILL LEARNING.

Your skin is an unfinished poem.

Your bones are a form of punctuation.

Some wounds never fully close—

they just change their wording.

YOU HAVE LEFT YOURSELF IN PLACES YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO.

There is a version of you

still laughing at that one house party

where you lost your heels

but found a switchblade.

There is a version of you

still running down E 15th Street at 3 AM,

blinding rain, howling.

You are scattered across time

like loose change.

Do not try to gather yourself back up.

You were meant to be infinite.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN, GO DOWN IN FLAMES.

If they break your heart,

write them into legend.

If they leave you,

make sure they haunt themselves.

If you cry,

let it be in a ball gown,

mascara running down your face

like a Renaissance painting.

Do not suffer quietly.

Wreak havoc on your own mythology.

YOU ARE NOT A HALF-HEARTED THING.

Love like you’re starting a fire

in a dry field.

Love like it will be written about.

Love like you’re trying to leave a scar in history.

Slip between history’s fingers

like a well-kept secret.

Or better—

be the kind of catastrophe

they build monuments for.

PARTS OF YOU Will DIE IN BEDROOMS WHERE YOU WERE LEFT ON READ.

Parts of you will die

in cities that still call your name.

Parts of you will die

in the arms of people

who kissed you like they meant it

and lied.

And yet—

Their mother still asks about you.

You still feel their breath in your hair.

The love stayed—only they left.

YOU ARE A FAITH. ACT ACCORDINGLY.

Worship your own survival.

Build altars to the times

you almost didn’t make it.

Pray at the church of your own spine.

There is no church holier

than the space you take up.

Your body is a relic.

Your mind is a temple.

Your lungs are a sanctuary.

IF YOU MUST GO MISSING, MAKE IT A SPECTACLE.

Disappear into the night

wearing red lipstick and borrowed jewelry.

Slip through the cracks

like a motel vacancy sign at dawn—

Flickering.

Fading.

Gone.

Make them wonder if they imagined you.

Make them see your silhouette

in places you’ve never been.

Make them ask strangers,

“Did you see her?

Did she leave a note?”

IF YOU MUST RETURN, BURN THE BRIDGE BEHIND YOU.

The past is a country

where you do not have citizenship.

Stop applying for visas.

Stop sending postcards.

If you return,

take only your bones,

leave only an echo.

EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL HAUNT YOU. LOVE IT ANYWAY.

Your favorite books will betray you

by meaning different things as you age.

The songs you once danced to

will one day leave you breathless with grief.

Every person who ever touched your skin

left fingerprints under your ribs.

This is the price of having a body.

This is the price of believing in beauty.

Keep paying it.

a manifesto of sorts. by Kiernan Norman.

SAY EVERYTHING YOU’RE NOT SUPOSSED TO SAY.

Bite down. Spill.

Dredge the truth up from your ribs.

If it makes someone uncomfortable,

you’re getting somewhere.

If it makes you flinch, you’re close.

If it makes you ache, press harder.

LOVE LIKE YOU’RE BURNING IN REAL TIME.

Love with your hands open,

a pocketful of matches,

no fear of third-degree consequences.

Let it ruin you. Let it rewire you.

Let it make you unbearable.

If it doesn’t change the shape of your mouth,

if it doesn’t show up in your dreams,

it wasn’t love—

just a joke that went on too long.

YOUR SUFFERING IS NOT CURRENCY

What you create from it is.

Blueprint grief.

Canonize longing.

Turn your past into poetry

and then charge admission.

TIME IS NOT REAL, BUT YOUR BONES DISAGREE.

You will feel the weight of years

in your joints.

You will remember things in your muscles

before your mind catches up.

A decade will pass,

and your skin will still tingle

at the memory of hands

that have long since vanished.

You are a clock made of flesh,

and time leaves fingerprints.

IF YOU MUST GO, LEAVE LIKE A COMET.

No quiet exits.

No slipping away unnoticed.

Let them watch as you burn through the sky.

Let them stare until their eyes ache.

Let them wish they had followed you.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

YOUR SOUL HAS A B-SIDE. PLAY IT LOUD.

The version of you that winks at the moon?

Real.

The one who writes letters

just to bury them under snow?

Real.

The one who flew to Vietnam

to live with a girl she met on 2010s Tumblr?

Also real.

You are a thousand lives,

and all of them are real.

GOD LIVES IN BATHROOM STALLS AND BUS STATIONS.

You will not find divinity in neat places.

You will find it in the drunk girl in the club bathroom,

telling you you’re beautiful.

In the way strangers help each other

at baggage claim.

In the way someone leans in, just slightly,

when they laugh.

Holiness is the street musician

playing for shadows.

Start praying to that.

THE ONES WHO LEAVE NEVER GET TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.

Let them wonder.

Let them rot in their own unknowing.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

Let them carry it

like a stone in their stomach.

THE DEAD STILL HEAR YOU. SPEAK ACCORDINGLY.

Your ancestors are listening.

Your ghosts are listening.

The version of you

who didn’t make it past that worst night—

she is listening.

Speak like you owe them something.

Because you do.

YOU ARE NOT A SUNDAY MORNING.

You are a Friday night

with blood in your mouth.

You are the reckoning,

the consequence,

the aftermath,

the mess they wake up to

and the ghost they dream about.

EVERY SETTING HAS A VERSION OF YOU STILL WALKING AROUND IN IT.

You are still twenty-four,

draping yourself around campus,

all short skirts and Adderall-eyes,

like you’re everybody’s daydream.

Still eighteen,

getting on the D.C. Metro with a book,

riding up and down the red line

just to pass the evening.

Still thirty-three,

kissing a face you’d been curious to taste

for ten years.

Still eleven,

jumping on the trampoline with your backpack,

waiting for the bus to come.

You are haunting yourself across time zones.

Be kind to the versions of you

who don’t know how the story ends yet.

EVERY SCAR ON YOUR BODY IS A SENTENCE IN A LANGUAGE YOU’RE STILL LEARNING.

Your skin is an unfinished poem.

Your bones are a form of punctuation.

Some wounds never fully close—

they just change their wording.

YOU HAVE LEFT YOURSELF IN PLACES YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO.

There is a version of you

still laughing at that one house party

where you lost your heels

but found a switchblade.

There is a version of you

still running down E 15th Street at 3 AM,

blinding rain, howling.

You are scattered across time

like loose change.

Do not try to gather yourself back up.

You were meant to be infinite.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN, GO DOWN IN FLAMES.

If they break your heart,

write them into legend.

If they leave you,

make sure they haunt themselves.

If you cry,

let it be in a ball gown,

mascara running down your face

like a Renaissance painting.

Do not suffer quietly.

Wreak havoc on your own mythology.

YOU ARE NOT A HALF-HEARTED THING.

Love like you’re starting a fire

in a dry field.

Love like it will be written about.

Love like you’re trying to leave a scar in history.

Slip between history’s fingers

like a well-kept secret.

Or better—

be the kind of catastrophe

they build monuments for.

PARTS OF YOU Will DIE IN BEDROOMS WHERE YOU WERE LEFT ON READ.

Parts of you will die

in cities that still call your name.

Parts of you will die

in the arms of people

who kissed you like they meant it

and lied.

And yet—

Their mother still asks about you.

You still feel their breath in your hair.

The love stayed—only they left.

YOU ARE A FAITH. ACT ACCORDINGLY.

Worship your own survival.

Build altars to the times

you almost didn’t make it.

Pray at the church of your own spine.

There is no church holier

than the space you take up.

Your body is a relic.

Your mind is a temple.

Your lungs are a sanctuary.

IF YOU MUST GO MISSING, MAKE IT A SPECTACLE.

Disappear into the night

wearing red lipstick and borrowed jewelry.

Slip through the cracks

like a motel vacancy sign at dawn—

Flickering.

Fading.

Gone.

Make them wonder if they imagined you.

Make them see your silhouette

in places you’ve never been.

Make them ask strangers,

“Did you see her?

Did she leave a note?”

IF YOU MUST RETURN, BURN THE BRIDGE BEHIND YOU.

The past is a country

where you do not have citizenship.

Stop applying for visas.

Stop sending postcards.

If you return,

take only your bones,

leave only an echo.

EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL HAUNT YOU. LOVE IT ANYWAY.

Your favorite books will betray you

by meaning different things as you age.

The songs you once danced to

will one day leave you breathless with grief.

Every person who ever touched your skin

left fingerprints under your ribs.

This is the price of having a body.

This is the price of believing in beauty.

Keep paying it.

a manifesto of sorts. by Kiernan Norman.

SAY EVERYTHING YOU’RE NOT SUPOSSED TO SAY.

Bite down. Spill.

Dredge the truth up from your ribs.

If it makes someone uncomfortable,

you’re getting somewhere.

If it makes you flinch, you’re close.

If it makes you ache, press harder.

LOVE LIKE YOU’RE BURNING IN REAL TIME.

Love with your hands open,

a pocketful of matches,

no fear of third-degree consequences.

Let it ruin you. Let it rewire you.

Let it make you unbearable.

If it doesn’t change the shape of your mouth,

if it doesn’t show up in your dreams,

it wasn’t love—

just a joke that went on too long.

YOUR SUFFERING IS NOT CURRENCY

What you create from it is.

Blueprint grief.

Canonize longing.

Turn your past into poetry

and then charge admission.

TIME IS NOT REAL, BUT YOUR BONES DISAGREE.

You will feel the weight of years

in your joints.

You will remember things in your muscles

before your mind catches up.

A decade will pass,

and your skin will still tingle

at the memory of hands

that have long since vanished.

You are a clock made of flesh,

and time leaves fingerprints.

IF YOU MUST GO, LEAVE LIKE A COMET.

No quiet exits.

No slipping away unnoticed.

Let them watch as you burn through the sky.

Let them stare until their eyes ache.

Let them wish they had followed you.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

YOUR SOUL HAS A B-SIDE. PLAY IT LOUD.

The version of you that winks at the moon?

Real.

The one who writes letters

just to bury them under snow?

Real.

The one who flew to Vietnam

to live with a girl she met on 2010s Tumblr?

Also real.

You are a thousand lives,

and all of them are real.

GOD LIVES IN BATHROOM STALLS AND BUS STATIONS.

You will not find divinity in neat places.

You will find it in the drunk girl in the club bathroom,

telling you you’re beautiful.

In the way strangers help each other

at baggage claim.

In the way someone leans in, just slightly,

when they laugh.

Holiness is the street musician

playing for shadows.

Start praying to that.

THE ONES WHO LEAVE NEVER GET TO KNOW HOW THE STORY ENDS.

Let them wonder.

Let them rot in their own unknowing.

Let them wake up years later

with your name still in their mouth.

Let them carry it

like a stone in their stomach.

THE DEAD STILL HEAR YOU. SPEAK ACCORDINGLY.

Your ancestors are listening.

Your ghosts are listening.

The version of you

who didn’t make it past that worst night—

she is listening.

Speak like you owe them something.

Because you do.

YOU ARE NOT A SUNDAY MORNING.

You are a Friday night

with blood in your mouth.

You are the reckoning,

the consequence,

the aftermath,

the mess they wake up to

and the ghost they dream about.

EVERY SETTING HAS A VERSION OF YOU STILL WALKING AROUND IN IT.

You are still twenty-four,

draping yourself around campus,

all short skirts and Adderall-eyes,

like you’re everybody’s daydream.

Still eighteen,

getting on the D.C. Metro with a book,

riding up and down the red line

just to pass the evening.

Still thirty-three,

kissing a face you’d been curious to taste

for ten years.

Still eleven,

jumping on the trampoline with your backpack,

waiting for the bus to come.

You are haunting yourself across time zones.

Be kind to the versions of you

who don’t know how the story ends yet.

EVERY SCAR ON YOUR BODY IS A SENTENCE IN A LANGUAGE YOU’RE STILL LEARNING.

Your skin is an unfinished poem.

Your bones are a form of punctuation.

Some wounds never fully close—

they just change their wording.

YOU HAVE LEFT YOURSELF IN PLACES YOU WILL NEVER RETURN TO.

There is a version of you

still laughing at that one house party

where you lost your heels

but found a switchblade.

There is a version of you

still running down E 15th Street at 3 AM,

blinding rain, howling.

You are scattered across time

like loose change.

Do not try to gather yourself back up.

You were meant to be infinite.

IF YOU’RE GOING TO GO DOWN, GO DOWN IN FLAMES.

If they break your heart,

write them into legend.

If they leave you,

make sure they haunt themselves.

If you cry,

let it be in a ball gown,

mascara running down your face

like a Renaissance painting.

Do not suffer quietly.

Wreak havoc on your own mythology.

YOU ARE NOT A HALF-HEARTED THING.

Love like you’re starting a fire

in a dry field.

Love like it will be written about.

Love like you’re trying to leave a scar in history.

Slip between history’s fingers

like a well-kept secret.

Or better—

be the kind of catastrophe

they build monuments for.

PARTS OF YOU Will DIE IN BEDROOMS WHERE YOU WERE LEFT ON READ.

Parts of you will die

in cities that still call your name.

Parts of you will die

in the arms of people

who kissed you like they meant it

and lied.

And yet—

Their mother still asks about you.

You still feel their breath in your hair.

The love stayed—only they left.

YOU ARE A FAITH. ACT ACCORDINGLY.

Worship your own survival.

Build altars to the times

you almost didn’t make it.

Pray at the church of your own spine.

There is no church holier

than the space you take up.

Your body is a relic.

Your mind is a temple.

Your lungs are a sanctuary.

IF YOU MUST GO MISSING, MAKE IT A SPECTACLE.

Disappear into the night

wearing red lipstick and borrowed jewelry.

Slip through the cracks

like a motel vacancy sign at dawn—

Flickering.

Fading.

Gone.

Make them wonder if they imagined you.

Make them see your silhouette

in places you’ve never been.

Make them ask strangers,

“Did you see her?

Did she leave a note?”

IF YOU MUST RETURN, BURN THE BRIDGE BEHIND YOU.

The past is a country

where you do not have citizenship.

Stop applying for visas.

Stop sending postcards.

If you return,

take only your bones,

leave only an echo.

EVERYTHING YOU LOVE WILL HAUNT YOU. LOVE IT ANYWAY.

Your favorite books will betray you

by meaning different things as you age.

The songs you once danced to

will one day leave you breathless with grief.

Every person who ever touched your skin

left fingerprints under your ribs.

This is the price of having a body.

This is the price of believing in beauty.

Keep paying it.

We weren’t planted by gentle hands in soft plots with room to stretch our limbs and shield our eyes, nor to bud in peace and thrive and find identity in both our own bold blossoms and as a pulsing piece of the whole lavish garden.

We didn’t bloom because we erupted. We running-start-swan-dived into stale dirt and were too close from the very beginning. We didn’t sprout up straight; we snaked and lurked and left no bit of earth untouched by our vibrant, stencil weed fingers declaring ourselves alive.

By harvest we were tangled beyond repair. By harvest I didn’t know me from you, and I liked it.

To be so entwined is lovely but depends on a balance we could only begin to grasp. To expand but not uproot requires perfect synchronicity maybe not beyond our years but certainly beyond our maturity. We spread out our emotions like tarot cards on a towel in the grass, and reflected in your sunglasses I met the silent pieces of me. In colorful, grim drawings those quiet, ugly bits floated up veins and settled under ribs. They stayed silent. Until they began to scream.

And you and I — we didn’t have the words, not our own words that we earned and burned while stumbling across months and plains, tripping over potholes and finding our feet quicker each time. We had place-holder words we sang back and forth and splashed around and bathed in. The words we spoke were profound and cardboard. We were just reading lines, sharing identical scripts and an ache to be seen so deep and desperate it was sinful.

We shared the humid cling of regret, which hung heavy in stuck-air auditoriums; its beaded sweat echoed, rolling down spines and turning blood to sticky wax as we whispered in the corner about the things we could say aloud while our minds never left the things we wouldn’t dare.

We were mostly ill-equipped. We joked about hurricanes; We didn’t survive the first storm.

I want you to know you really hurt my feelings. I want you to know you’re the first guy I’ve given my feelings to hurt. I want you to know I was terrible towards the end. And I know that. But you gave up on me.

You gave up on me at the exact moment I was giving up on myself. Even as my tongue stung metallic and veins pulsed so hot and loud through my eardrums that I felt I would explode — it was clean. It was all remarkably clean and sterile. There were no explosions. No shattered plates, bloody knuckles, or blown-out voices that scratched and rose in time with the sun.

Just a quick slash of rope — an anchor cut loose and left to sink; our secrets were set free to rust over and collect algae. We were suddenly off the hook for any vulnerability we might have spilled on each other in our fits of laughter and hours of sleep. A deep sigh of relief. A deeper sigh of desolation.

The moment exists in sad yellow lighting that must have been added in retrospect. I tweaked the floor of my memory too: at that moment I was not wearing flip flops on linoleum — but sinking, slowly and barefoot, into chilly riverbed mud as it turned to ice.

I opened the door, and there you stood. You knew I had been crying, and I didn’t try to hide it; it was too exhausting — running on fumes.

And I did expect something from you, anything from you, that might dull the singed-dagger plunging stab to my chest with each breath I gulped and spat . I wanted anything that might reel me in from the cliffs edge where my thoughts had carried me on horseback.

But you had nothing. I watched your eyes glaze over my swollen lips and pinced, glassy eyes. You threw back the melted, Picasso-esque mask where my face once was, like a quick, sharp shot of warm whiskey. Careful to avoid eye contact you slipped “fuck this” under your breath and started to reach for my hand.

You started to, but then after a second suspended, you let your arm fall back to your body. Head lowered, jaw clenched and you turned and fled with a new heaviness pushing down on your posture. It looked painful and adult. It looked like you finally felt the weight of our season. And watching you go, I shrank in lighter and thicker because I felt it too.

We are not going to get a happy ending — not with each other and not right now. Maybe not ever. And that will have to do. (Though I will miss your hand in mine. I hope one day you’ll remember being tangled with me, and it will make you laugh before you cringe because I didn’t like to be alone.)

If I wanted to be alone, I would just go home.

-Kiernan Norman

— 𝐚 𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐥𝐨𝐫 𝐬𝐰𝐢𝐟𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭.

a/n: these aren't really dialogue prompts, they're mostly just inspirations, so i'll use them to come up with the concept, and won't have the characters actually say these lines. also, please try to stick to one prompt per request!

requests are open

i. Burn vanilla candles and ignore the scent of her perfume on your sheets.

ii. Listen I know she splits open your ribcage when she laughs and leaves you hollow. I know every part of you feels halved and chasms gape between the chambers in your heart and if you could just trace the crescent-moon curve of her lips you’d be whole again, but fill what is empty with chocolate covered strawberries and moonlight and scented candles. I know it’s not the same as her. I know.

iii. You make a thousand metaphors about her with things that can never really compare with her but search them out anyway. If she is every single star then buy a telescope and watch the universe burn miles away. If she is dark and heaves with all the heart of the sea go taste ocean water and feel the salt on your tongue. I know it seems like the world took all of the most beautiful parts of itself to make her, veins like rivers and laugh like birdsong and passion like the white desert sun but you can find these things, you can swim in deep rivers and sit and watch birds and feel sunlight on your skin. They won’t hold you like she could but they are beautiful.

iv. She makes you feel like shattered porcelain, doesn’t she? Like breaking over and over again, a thousand times and a thousand pieces. And you tell yourself that for her you could break endlessly, like waves that break themselves against the shore with yearning. For her, you tell yourself, anything. But pick up the pieces, maybe; you deserve to be whole.

When i die, I hope the blueprint of my soul stay behind that it doesn’t fall into abeyance nor stay as a work in progress in someone else’s hands…

In this life time, I traded it for a collection of long lost chances, and dreams that are brushed in passing

On a good day, I’m a hybrid of my family’s coping mechanisms..

On my worst.. i’m an abandoned painting a mixture of their insecurities Covered with the skin of a temptress

One that never feared speaking her mind yet, always ended up romanticized.

I carry the potential of growth with me wherever i go. A ladder I never bothered taking a single step on, favoring whatever stability i cultivated in my own bones

A hundred thousand words, six to seven hours wasted time; wasted love...

Ignorant, i saw all my chances hanging from the branches that grew from me.

thought they’re mine to harvest…

now I’m living in borrowed time, barely stable with one foot in this year While the other has gone ahead to the upcoming one…

so unlike me, to try and set roots…

I don’t really want to reflect, but if i have to guess then that’s just a reaction, a skill that I picked up to deal with all that i denied myself viciously until i broke and indulged taking no account of how alone i’ll feel carrying all that mess around to the next year

Disappointment ? I learned that it can look like every other feeling you know; if you were taught that you have the ability to be just another one of its definitions.

Growing up, my mother always told me: that the only thing she loves about being alive Is me…

I used to fear looking in the mirror, how ugly can love be ?

As ugly as wasted potential a voice answered me

The same voices that tried engraving in my mind that a woman must never be a disappointment

Yet I somehow am.

•••

•Quotes: Anaïs Nin/ Clementine von Radics/ Mahmoud Darwish/Clarice Lispector/ Anaïs Nin/Rainer Maria Rilke/Louisa May Alcott/Clarice Lispector/Susan Sontag

•Original context: Sinligh

•Art reference: