Mickey

"The Little Red String”

I cut my little red string

without knowing

who stood on the other side.

I did not care.

That thread had become a tether,

tight around the ribs,

pulling me toward places

I never chose to go.

With every day

it tangled itself deeper,

knotted through my hands,

my throat,

my steps.

So I took scissors to it.

Snipped thread by thread,

small severings,

careful violence.

I watched the color fade

with every cut,

its bright insistence

bleeding into nothing.

Now I have a black string

dragging softly behind me.

It does not yank.

It does not command.

It does not pretend

to know my destiny better than I do.

It follows where I lead.

And for the first time,

what was once a leash

has become something gentler,

something chosen.

I decide where that little string goes now.

Whatever waits at the other end

i suck ass at stylized cartoon drawings so i guess this is my art style now.

people talk about realism like it’s the final boss of art but nobody warns you how hard it is to LEAVE realism.

my brain sees a face and immediately starts calculating bone structure, planes, reflected light, anatomy, and skin tones.

then i sit down to draw something stylized and suddenly i’m like

“okay but where is the zygomatic arch”

NO. BAD ARTIST.

GO DRAW THE LITTLE CARTOON MAN.

i am actively trying to unlearn details. this is somehow harder than learning them.

i know where every shadow on a face goes, but ask me to draw a simple cartoon character from memory and suddenly i’m fighting for my life.

Happy birthday dazai!

he used to wonder if he’d live to see tomorrow.

One person sees drowning.

Another sees peace.

One person sees an ending.

Another sees the first moment they’ve been able to breathe in years.

This comic is about waking up from a dream and realizing you’ll never know what would have happened if you’d stayed a little longer.

Maybe that’s the tragedy of it.

We weren’t talking about the same place.

The nightmare wasn’t the water.

The nightmare was waking up.

🎪🌹 Vesper Bloom 🔔

Vesper Bloom is a 15-year-old demiboy clown who once performed fire acts in a traveling circus. During a show, their act was sabotaged, causing a fire that killed everyone in the circus except them. Unable to let go of the guilt, Vesper remains trapped within the abandoned circus, convinced the tragedy was their fault.

Flowers bloom wherever they walk, but wilt when touched by their hands. The bells sewn into their costume contain the souls of the performers lost in the fire. To everyone else, the bells ring with screams of agony. To Vesper, they sound like applause from their beloved audience.

Beautiful, charming, and deeply unsettling, Vesper hides crushing grief behind theatrical enthusiasm and fragmented, dreamlike speech. As their guilt grows, the circus decays around them. Only by learning to forgive themself and release the souls trapped within the bells can the circus bloom again.

“My beloved audience… why do you look so frightened?”

Roses mixed with blood,daisies soaked in tears.

Vines crawl from my mouth,

my lungs, my eyes, my ears.

Loving you meant drowning

in my own poetic fate,

while you fell for me

one hundred petals too late.

Orchids root themselves

deep inside my lungs,

suffocating all the words

I never dared to say.

All of this could have been spared

by something so painfully small,

some foolish little love potion,

some mercy after all.

Now blood fills my lungs,

while vines play along my ribs,

and tulips bloom softly

across the ruin of my face.

The garden of ache

settles into grace,

and your face is the last thing

to pass through my mind

before the daffodils set.

And when flowers grow

through the marrow of my bones,

I think maybe then

I’ll finally be beautiful.

Hydrangeas settle in my eyes

as I choke on all I feel,

and with petals in my throat,

We all carry our own books,

adding chapters as we go,

reading our stories aloud

to anyone willing to listen.

Some of us count the pages we have left.

Some dread the number.

Some grow impatient,

fingers hovering at the corner,

tempted to skip ahead

just to reach the end faster.

And still,

we steal glances into other people’s books,

selfish and careless,

judging the shaky illustrations,

the crooked lines,

the clumsy wording,

the bent and weathered pages

as if damage makes a story less worthy.

We do not realize

how easily our words

can turn someone’s dread into impatience,

how cruelty can make them restless

for an ending

they were never meant to rush toward.

So I ask you this:

pay attention to each page.

Sit a little longer with the words.

Read them carefully.

Let them mean something.

Because there is so much story

before the final line,

so much living

before the quiet words