illicitly i spoke

he’s standing in the shadow of the doorway and he asks, “you ready?”

tell you the truth, i was far from ready. always far from ready. but i said, “yes,” anyway, eagerly and brightly, because i wanted him to smile at me, i wanted him to love me. he said, “good,” but did neither and instead turns away, letting the darkness mask his face. (never count on ski masks, he’d say, instead rely on the tricks of light and shadow. they will be your friend when no others will.)

i say, “cardiff, if i die…” he’s always like this. cold. quiet.

but today he turns to me with a slight expression of reassurance on his face — rare — and says, “you won’t.”

(“but if i do?”

“you won’t.”)

11:34 pm • 23 February 2012

“writing is catharsis.”

— but not love.

11:13 pm • 23 February 2012

lot’s wife.

salt and sand, of pillars and melancholy;
carve in grace notes, centuries’ longing caught red-
handed. you’ll see, love is but fleeting, broken.
wise men have spoken;

i remain so unimpressed. pithy is the
thought it conquers, though weary — he is right in
saying she was beautiful for looking back.
better than nothing.

8:46 pm • 7 October 2011

the glory days are over. just you and i, now.

even if i could

write my love for you in tongues

so eloquently

nothing could encompass the

sheer beauty of your love.

3:14 pm • 27 July 2011 • 5 notes

lololol what was i thinking when i wrote half this stuff

I MAINTAIN THAT MY SAPPHICS ARE RATHER GOOD, THOUGH. if you (aka anna) read anything, it should be the sapphics:

1

2

3

10:58 pm • 26 April 2011

l’espirit de l’escalier.

You promised to take me to the park but you never came.

This morning at 4am the sun still hadn’t come out yet and I was looking at a spread of tarot cards. I flipped one from the deck – ten of swords. The card face shows a man face-down in the grass ten swords stabbed through his back. I shuddered.

What if the ghosts come for me?

Years later this might be one of those “ha-ha” stories, one of those we look back upon and think it’s oh-so-funny because of the cruel workings of fate. Or not, because I know I’ll never see you again and that it was your own cruelty that caused it all. You’re sick and manipulative and I don’t know what the hell goes on through your mind and yesterday you told me you loved me and you’ll take me to the park in the morning but you never came.

And I won’t say that I die without you by my side, but goddammit did I think that you were the one. Last night we made so much love there wasn’t any left in the world, not for the orphaned children, not for the lambs slaughtered at daybreak, not for the dying and deceased. You told me you loved me and you’d take me to the park tomorrow and then you took off the cross you always wear around your neck and went to the bathroom. I lay down in bed, content, unaware that you’d never come back.

The cross sat on my dresser for a long time, glimmering like the sun under the lamplight, but I must remind myself, I must remind myself, all that glitters is not gold. I took it up in my hands, kissed it, and fell asleep. In the morning it had fallen under the bed, perhaps, but I could not find it anymore, and neither could I find you.

I waited around for hours. What did you mean by “morning?” This morning? The next morning? The morning after that? The morning you’d finally tell me for a second time that –?

But you didn’t come back, not even for the cross you kept so dedicatedly around your neck. When night finally fell upon my shoulders I sat alone on my bed and the ghosts wrapped their arms around me in one large ectoplasmic huddle.

You looked a bit cold, they tell me.

I smile. Thanks, I say.

We stayed huddled the entire night.

Years from now I will earn the courage to call you up and beat you down. I will say to your face that your cruelty never did anyone any good, look at you now old decrepit and lonely and I’m still as gleaming as I was from day one. I’ll tell you that I was deluded into loving you, and that yes, I fell into all kinds of deep holes, but I’m kind and kindness gets you people to extend their hands in times of need. And hell, I survived, fuck you, I survived.

Years from now I will stand up for me and face the music. But for now I stare at the forlorn phone hoping for the strength to move my arms but I can’t.

9:10 pm • 3 January 2011

from psyche to eros (with love).

nothing brought you back. not the rainstorms, even

cries of roaring gorges fell deaf upon your

ears. why, gods must shout and revel in relish -

laughing in aeternum et ultra. bitter.

waiting in folly.

12:35 am • 18 December 2010 • 3 notes