Vanilla, Citrus & Wreckage

I write mainly prose poetry and post random things in-between.

In my 30s, been on tumblr for a really long time. If you recognize my username and wonder why this page looks different, I decided to focus on sharing more of my personal content.

Bare with me as I rediscover me.

xo

Tags:

Spilled ink for poetry/writings

Me for my face

I don't want the masked version.

Give me your rawest truth,

the one that you’re afraid to show everyone,

and the parts that even scares you.

Strip down to your bones,

let me see the darkest sides of you.

Spit it in my face,

I want to consume your depravity,

your delusions,

and your insanity too.

We can share the same demons.

Wrap ourselves in velvet,

and in time we will devour one another,

l’ve come to think of our inner wounds as "items."

The type of weight that occasionally sits in our chest.

Sometimes it sits heavy.

Heavier than most of us would like to admit.

It could look like a quiet memory carefully folded and placed in an unlabelled folder, sitting in the corner of our mind.

The type of folder we almost forget exists, tucked away in a cabinet you haven’t opened in years.

Until one day, you decide to clean a drawer from it and rediscover the folder.

It has accumulated layers of dust that disperses into the air once disturbed, causing you to choke.

The little dust particles become additional items that shape us, nestled beside the memory we kept inside that folder.

Like the forbidden fruit,

You were my greatest temptation.

I wanted to know if you tasted as delectable as you spoke.

Charming, alluring and every beautiful thing in between.

You smiled at me.

I let you in.

Now your hands are covered in my blood.

Is that what you wanted,

Pigments from my yesterday.

I hope you never stop haunting,

For I cannot imagine a life where,

I remembered you asked me if you could stay awake until I fell asleep

Those words spoken softened beneath my ribcage

You said you wanted to hear the shift of my breathing slow

Feel my heart rate steady against your chest

You cradled my body and my soul

It felt loving

You were kind

You had the patience that only love gives a person

Except you weren’t in love

Only in lust

The only person that was loving anyone in this

Your attention came with conditions

I wasn’t aware at the time You spoke like new constellations Painted night skies with ribbons of ink

Peered inside of my soul with rose-tinted glasses

It was only half of the truth

You challenged me to pour my thoughts into you I could hear my voice for the first time in your art

I re-read every line You wrote with intention

In the end, I could not write about light without the hint of the dark

You were frightened by me

My whole truth is this: there is no dark without light.

I often reflect on how I was raised

A daughter to an immigrant and refugee, planting roots in an unfamiliar land

Navigating a small town that felt like it was all out of place

Their first winter, touching snow for the first time

The children at school teased as I didn't know the words to certain things

They laughed, hated the smell of what I ate

I only wanted to fit in

It was thoughtless, the way I treated my own blood

They just let me be the way that I was

We were trying our best

Each of us, partially misunderstood

I didn't belong then

I still don't belong now,

Creating new habits feels strange

Building new familiarity wasn’t something I planned

Little steps

Grabbing one rung on a ladder at a time

But fuck,

I’m still terrified

The anxiety that often consumes me

Keeps me here in the stillness

Would it be too much if I asked you to come and get me?

Like a small child stuck halfway into doing a backflip on a jungle gym

Please help

The smoke from the recent wildfires blended with the usual pollution

Clung to my hair and filled my lungs

The sky was engulfed in hues of orange and swirls of grey

I hate the hustle of this city

It moves too quickly

It’s unforgiving

I feel insignificant

Putting on an outfit I don’t like

Faking a smile I rehearsed too many times

Catering to rich men to earn enough to barely survive

By the time I get home,

the exhaustion weighs heavy

All I can do is surround myself with my own silence

I talk a lot of shit about this place

It probably doesn’t deserve half the things I say

I know one day when I look back,

I know you’re asleep but can I call you?

Can I hear you breathing for a few minutes?

Just so the voices in my head will leave me alone for a while.

I know you’re over me.

You don’t love me, but can you just pretend that you still do.

Just for tonight.

I talked to a colleague yesterday. He lost his son and father- in-law three years ago.

I remember hearing the news. It’s the kind of tragedy that steals all language.

His son, barely 21, drowned while trying to save a dog that was being swept down a rapid river in Montana. His father-in-law drowned in attempting to save him.

Yesterday was the first time I noticed that he was able to tell me a story with excitement. The way I smiled back at him to let him know how proud I was of him, it was the first time in 3 years where I've seen a spark of healing.

He didn’t know that watching him heal was the first time I realized I hadn’t even begun to heal myself.

I have lost so many loved ones that somewhere along the way I forgot to grieve and kept a graveyard of people I love in my mind.

He called it being stuck in a state of static and I finally realized that’s how I’ve been living. In a smokescreen that I’ve put up for so many years that I didn’t even attempt to heal.

So what does grief look like?