#perignotus

Love tumblr, a functioning website

B-99 // accepting. 

       he laughed !  ━━perhaps genuinely amused by her statement.  humor fell in way of his usual coy remarks, and though his smile was still snide, he was grinning regardless. ❛ nice to know that i’m not the only one with the weird kinks or whatever, y’know? ❜

varian: 

AMAN TAKES HIS SADNESS & THROWS IT AWAY  /  BUT THEN HE’S STILL LEFT WITHHIS HANDS.

aman puts his sadness in  /  the cracked ice  /  he falls into, searching for his brother. a mantakes his sadness down  /  to the train tracks,  /  leavesit tied up  /  before the approaching light. him meaning you ?  yes. 

only she keeps saying this :  awake  /  beside the fire; under the harsh sun  /  filtered through molting trees  /  greg fifteen feet behind you  /  singing. where does all this sadness  /  come from ?  she wants to know.

“ who are you talking about ?  ”   you ask, every time, of this roundabout allegory.  “ me ?  ”

you dream of drowning and wake  /  choking, spluttering, trying to tear  /  the water from your lungs, so drenched in sweat  /  you could have been submerged. the racket wakes  /  your brother, wakes beatrice, and they don’t know how to calm you down. you walk upstream, watch  /  the boats on the water, rub your parched teeth with parched  / tongue, try to teach yourself  /  not to fear the current. but while greg strips and splashes, you dangle your bare feet from an outcropping  /  and squeeze shut your eyes.

she pries too close and then you answer her, and then  /  you open up your heart, because you’ve never had anyone to talk to  /  before. talk about you so she doesn’t have to talk about her, so she doesn’t have to think about  /  herself. she figures you out the way nobody’s ever done before, and maybe you figure her out a little, too. 

so forgive me, dear poet, for skipping over the part where you weep over your brother’s tree until you can’t anymore, where you raze the trunk with your borrowed axe, where you outwit the beast of the dark and he grants you one last wish , /  where the world only lets one of you  /  go home. where you leave the axe in the snow, leave the empty hollow where your brother once fit inside a tree trunk. walk away from the light, while behind you, the beast roars,  /  and the forest roars  /  with him. you carry that roar with you, the screaming voices of the souls transfigured into edelwood  /  and burned.

no matter how you travel, you see  /  that fire, see his eyes  /  burning in the shadows of the forest.

let me skip the part where you wander  /  like you said you never wanted to, where you say goodbye, beatrice, goodbye  /  greg, and let go of both of their hands. maybe forever.

“ me ?  ”   you ask  /  the empty air.

you take a turn in pottsfield, imagine  /  dying there, rising  /  there, dancing and laughing and being part of something  /  like you never were before. only you find the place  /  barren, its pumpkins gone to rot, the charades of its inhabitants  /  torn asunder. you find enoch’s may-pole  /  body, hollow now, and only one thing alive  /  in all this ruin. and you find him, small and black, one of your brother’s  /  old cats. he tells you  /  sing-song  /  to get out while you can  /  like he  /  got out, or better. tells you :  find a place that suits you, and bed down. it’s winter.

and how can you not think, it should have been  /  me ?  and resent your brother ?  and resent yourself, for thinking it ?  how can you keep from missing him, or restrain from kicking trees  /  like a child, when you remember watching him  /  playing in the lawn  /  from the porch steps, both your backpacks beside you as you waited for the bus. how can you keep his singing voice  /  out of the wind ?

you think about it  /  now, at the doorstep, where you raise your hand to knock  /  and then don’t. the forest looms behind you,  /  godless. inside someone is singing, a lonely melody in operatic tones. and then the door  /  opens, a girl with a basket on her hip brushing past you, so similar  /  to beatrice, your beatrice. you weren’t meaning to end up  /  here, but you can’t seem to find  /  any of the places you found with your brother,  /  except this one.

and besides, you want to be somewhere you don’t have to think about  /  being a brother without  /  a brother. you want one night to stave off his voice, saying  /  i beat the beast. the voice saying, look, wirt, so full of pride. and the beast, the trickster god of the unknown, the wish-stealer, watching on.

you sit beside her on the stairs,  /  creek roaring outside  /  dark water  /  dark woods  /  dark corners of the house, the clamour from the bottom of the stairs  /  from the attic  /  almost a silence.  

“ who are you  /  talking about ?  ”  you ask, ice-crack  /  lips, fingers /  burning from the winter outside, shivering  /  despite the thick coat,  /  the gloves. it is cold enough outside, you think, to kill you. you want to say,  /  make me a place to rest your head, make me  /  a place you could almost call home, take her hands  /  so you don’t have to look  /  at your own. take her hands  /  so she doesn’t have to look at hers, so cold in your grasp  /  you shiver  /  despite the chill that crept up in you the moment you promised your brother  /  his freedom, and watched him go into it. and the two of you now in this godless forest, you and beatrice, winter falling to bitter  /  spring, ice  /  on all the eddies, frost sticking to the windows.

but you are just a boy, a ruined  /  boy, and this is not your space and she  /  is not your girl  /  and this life  /  is only yours because you chose it. because if you remember yourself at the bottom  /  of the river  /  you are not breathing.

this could be a story where they pull you  /  from the frozen lake. this could be your graveyard.

so it is your turn. this is storytelling, beautiful poet, and you know how to do this.

you say,  “ a girl takes her sadness and turns it into a bird, and then she’s still left with the sky. ”

a girl faces every day as something to  /  face, something to struggle  /  through. a girl doesn’t smile as much as she used to, and she didn’t used to  /  smile. you notice these  /  things. you visit and she doesn’t know how to breathe, with all these  /  cold bodies.

she bends over, pressing her hands to her temples  /  or her ears, the thick fabric of her dress shifting. you touch her back.

a girl makes her sadness  /  a wet rag in her mouth,  /  screams  /  and screams. and here you are, this space not yours  /  and too much hers  /  to bear, unable to quell  /  the jealousy.

a man takes his sadness to the river and falls in  /  after it, dreams of fingers finding  /  wet grass, pulling him into the mud, imagines searchlights  /  his brother’s voice, whispering  /  i’m here  /  because for so long he wasn’t  /  here.

you are a boy without a brother and she is a girl with a family, human and bustling out of sight at the bottom of the stairs  /  in the attic  /  and where does that leave you but  /  with the same sins you started with ?

and somewhere, your body  /  pulled  /  from the river, as pale as beatrice’s hands now. somewhere your brother in the cemetery, over the garden  /  wall, and the dirt  /  thrown over your casket, holding your mother’s hands.

a man takes his sadness and throws it away  /  but then he’s still left with his hands.

her thin hands in yours, and you  /  rubbing your thumbs over her freckles. you raise her hands to your lips  /  and blow on them. the wild, lawless forest presses in all around you. you could drown in this place,  /  still,  /  and perhaps you will.

❛ sometimes babies will point at me in public and i don’t care for that shit at all. it’s like     ,     stop snitchin’ mother fucker. ❜