Inside the Terrarium

so we fall asleep in the dead dead summer heat

two bodies curled like question marks, your skin

warm and smoky against my cheek & the july flame

is still burning outside, kissing the horizon, staring

through our window, whispering across the floor

and up the side of our mattress, and i close my eyes

and pull your question mark body closer to mine and

feel your heartbeat beneath my hand and your heat

and the sun turning my eyelids red red red until the

flame turns to embers and then to ash and so july

ends in the dark.

I don’t like my voice; full of cracked bones and nerves unfit for purpose,

Wild untruths and wilder honesty, the alcohol slur of every moan and sharp hiss, a tarantella melody of my youthfulness,

My unlovelyness,

A dread touch of a hand on my shoulder dipping to the place my waist rests beside my spine, shucked off to the beat of a song I don’t know the name of,

Spun between arms of friends-not-lovers, barricading naked skin and bad ideas,

In this post, a faerie is asking for ‘your’ name. The way he is wording it, however, and the accompanying beckoning motion, makes it seem as though he is asking for you to physically hand your name over. Which, because of how some faeries operate, he is.

In this instance, saying your name aloud to the fae would be literally giving your name over to him, the exact consequences of which are left up to the imagination–usually, a fae even knowing your name gives it some measure of power over you, but giving something your name would likely let it completely take over your life.

Too many white lies and white lines

///

Turn the halo into a gold collar. 

Shrink it down into a ring or bracelet. 

Turn it into a gold septum. 

let’s go back to the beach and pretend it’s just the sugar we’re craving. it’s just seabreeze leaving us starved for warmth.

this shouldn’t be so hard. but nothing I’ve ever written could feet neatly into a white square and radiate beauty. I like macabre. I like viscera. I swallow my own blood and bile and I wear scars on my skin. were the classics not messy, ugly affairs? didn’t Silvia breathe death and stick her head in an oven? didn’t Virginia wade into the water because the oxygen was burning up her lungs. what happened to the darkness. what happened to 2008 when our skin was open for wounds and we were waving knives like it was trendy.

look. I don’t want to glamourise the black mood of my soul but it’s the only one I have, scar tissue and nightmare and needles to the nerves in the brain. sometimes I am darker than a black hole and I am far hungrier. I wish I could take the sunlight into myself and be pretty in perfect doses but what I do is spill haphazardly across the page. I’m dependant on gaba and I like to drink gin.

violent things trade off my discord

mistakes from either my gentle heart

or shattered bones

ii

birds take off from the mountain ledges

fragile and fearless

and i compare all my bruises

to falling or flight

iii

i cut my leg on the razor in the shower this morning

blood and water and steam;

i guess good things don’t come to people with feathers sticking from their spine