grace brooks

I hear the call of the click beetle; sound— in the rafters, in the cupboard, its spine snapping like a matchstick: a big, black thumb against the window of fate.

I light a candle, spill salt in a circle. The flame gutters; the beetle knocks again.

Somewhere an herb jar rattles, a broom tilts toward the door.

It is not death exactly— more the shuffle of cards, the brush of unseen skirts.

The sound carries the weight of a spell half-spoken, a secret deciding if it wants to love you or undo you.

I cup my hands around the silence when the clicking stops.

In that hush the air feels heavy, as if every cupboard, every bottle, every omen in the dark kitchen were waiting—

— @bloomingobsidian

ahh thank you so much!! and congrats on starting to share your work - it can feel weird, but definitely worth it.

I pull inspiration from a mix of memory, sensory overload, late-night spirals, and things I can't name but feel buzzing under my skin.

The heat doesn’t break. It breeds— a slow, sweating animal curled behind your neck, wormed into your fingers.

Around us. In us. Clothes, and sheets, and midsummer breath. All blood-metal and salt: a storm that never quite arrives.

The town pool glistens in chlorine, and sweat, and piss. A baptism of concrete; we go anyway, mouths open, hoping to swallow something cooler. Something softer than burning.

Only our hair surrenders; white-hot straw. Skin peels in long strips off shoulders and backs— proof we survived, or maybe didn’t.

We learn early: pain is a season, and we call it summer.

The older girls roast themselves, oiled and crisp, all cocoa butter and foil reflectors— meat on a spit, blistering into women before they understand the cost.

Arms flung wide, ribs sharp as fence wire, burning, burning, burning into someone (anyone) else.

Across the water, boys ignite into something meaner, all sweat and rage— fireworks and gas leaks, thick smoke talking.

They dare us to look, and we do. (God help us, we do.)

Outside is loud. Inside is worse.

We press our faces to kitchen tile, crying quietly, like dogs.

(No one asks. No one wants to know what lives in us.)

So the yelling starts early— not cruel, just bone-deep tiredness.

Mothers wash dishes. Fathers slump into couches, lit by flickering scoreboards, unblinking.

And still— and still— and still— us: dripping swimsuits and sunburned shoulders. Too-hungry eyes.

We roam.

Popsicles melting down elbows, tar-coated feet, mosquito-bitten, tired of our own want.

We invent games. Invent rules. Invent violence.

Someone always bleeds. We cheer, because it’s the only thing that feels real.

The heat makes it worse. The heat makes it honest.

Lilies bloom along the off-ramp— that same sweet orange, the same quiet warning we never take.

We think nothing will change.

We are right, until it does.

You licked the salt from my fingers like it meant something holy. I wanted to believe you— that devotion could be so simple, so wet-nosed and immediate.

But really, you were just curious. Maybe hungry.

Maybe nothing at all.

The moon broke across your eye like a soft egg, and I didn’t know whether to cry or offer it a bruise.

You were small, then— smaller than the word belonging when whispered at night. Love, still padded and clumsy, came tumbling out of you before either of us had time to decide if it was welcome.

What did you know of devotion then?

I didn’t teach you. You arrived already speaking in tail-wags and sighs, the language before language— insisting: I am here. You are mine. Let the rest burn.

We curled like quotation marks around nothing, the sentence too shy to arrive. Your claws tapped the hardwood in a rhythm I nearly understood: what are we, what are we, what are we—

But the air stayed quiet, as it always does when someone is trying too hard to listen.

You chased my shadow as if it owed you something tender. You slept on my sweater like it was a promise. I watched you dreaming of running through wide, impossible fields— places even I had never been.

And I—I hated how gentle I became, how carefully I folded my solitude around you.

Don’t look at me like that.

Like I’m yours. Like you’ve made a home of my absence.

It’s unsettling.

It’s unwise.

And worst of all, it’s working.

I went down alone where the grasses breathed like animals. Nothing had a name there— only mouths, only heat coiled beneath the roots.

They said not to wait in that place. But I did. I’ve always loved what watches without blinking. And there is a silence that wants me fed to it.

In every dream I’m the offering— the one who walks in without a lantern, who lies down willingly on the stone with no altar.

I have never begged. Only watched the teeth open like petals and called it spring.

There’s a way to hold still that invites the strike. You learn it young.

It is not suffering, if you choose it. It is not love, either— but it’s close.

I miss something I cannot name again.

It leans in doorways. It brushes past

like the hem of a forgotten god.

It does not speak, but I remember.

I want to go home

to something that doesn’t exist—

a place before the shape of place,

before the first cradle broke into wood.

Does anyone have a gun?

No.

But there is silence heavy as iron.

There is the stillness before the heart speaks.

And I am waiting,

like a window waits

for the storm it once dreamed of.

blinking in neon.

he pours. i drift.

and somewhere, a god

tries on my skin &

You were light once, a thing like breath, a prayer whispered soft into a world too loud.

Before hunger; before the silence spoke your name, you were the sun; bright, but never burning.

You didn’t know what it cost to live, how fragile the skin was between grace and hunger; how close the edge, when all you want is to belong.

Still, you search the sky, your hands stretched wide, reaching for something you can never touch.

You are always becoming what you cannot grasp: a thousand dreams dancing in the dark like soft echos of yourself.

Holding on— letting the wind carry you where it will, finding peace in the way you bend and rise, like a tree with roots deep in knowing.

And even as you reach for what you cannot see, you learn the weight of knowing nothing but the movement, the pull of simply being, and in that, you are whole.

You were never meant to ration delight.

You are a vessel of hunger, yes— but also of flavor, of color, of the small holy act of a peach in sunlight.

Let your clothes fall over you like memory— tailored to the truth of your becoming, not merely stitched to hide your form.

You are not here to endure. You are here to bloom, to touch soft things, to call joy by its name without apology.

This life— let it be more than breath and motion. Let it be yours.

You thought the path would end.
But it didn’t. It kept moving
beyond the trees,
past the field
where nothing grew last year.

What did you expect—
a gate,
a voice from the clouds?

Even silence
has its own direction.

You were not lost,
only unwilling
to walk without knowing
what you were walking toward.

Still, you walked.

Because something in you—
small, persistent—
wanted
to believe
in the shape of the journey.

Even as the sky emptied. 
Even as the road
became dust.
And then nothing but your own footsteps
disappearing behind you.

the light overhead flickers like it’s thinking.
the pan hisses like a secret i forgot to keep.
i have salt in the grooves of my fingerprint
and nobody is watching me—
(which is holy)

somewhere, someone older
would do this all better.

would know what spice makes bitterness
feel like depth,
not mistake.

but tonight—
it’s just me,
the burnt smell of trying,
and these small green heads
splitting open in my hands
like promises
i haven’t yet made.

and that is
a kind of forever.

it’s yours forever—

so you think

I’ll forget the way

your name sits on my skin

like a secret

only my body knows?

endings never truly end,

after all;

not when something

lingers in the quiet

afterwards,

in the silence

we can’t fill,

in the look we never quite

took back.

how foolish we are

to think time

could ever erase

what was meant to stay

where the light used to be,

soft

and still,

and ever present—

the shadow of all things

we could never

let go of.