karkaroff:

Actors are pretty liars, I say as I paint my lips and get into costume, and that is why I’ve been lying to you this whole time.

Even though I never told you that except in my mind, because I am still a liar.

Untruths untangle themselves from the mess of my mind and create a barricade to my heart, and you shattered it through like a clean stroke from a lightsaber. The swift slice of your silence as you didn’t call, didn’t text, and I forgot to pick up the phone. Haven’t we always been like this? Haven’t our eyes, blue with brutality, always shattered each other’s souls?

But we are art, and art makes you feel something. And that is why words are still dripping from my pen even when our relationship has lost blood like a pen loses ink. Losing, losing, lost.

In my mind, you are probably both meaner and kinder than you really are. You say you like my singing voice, over and over, a broken record, as sleep slips from my fingertips. Your shoulder is where my head goes when the thoughts inside it are too heavy to hold without support, your laughter light when the day ends in darkness and I need to see.

The truth is that you are human, and you burn cold like the stars while your fingers burn hot from drawing, sketching mango-shaped heads and dazzling eyes that are too pretty to be human.

(like you, that one time the classroom lights were dim and you was a galaxy and I felt something like the possibility of a kiss for less than a second)

But I am an actor. I live in untruths and pretty lies, and the fact that you might miss me is nothing more than closed curtains before a show begins. I see nothing but a lie, and I see nothing but your eyes when I miss you and your warm arms around my shoulder in the shape of friendship.

I am an actor, and I keep playing this role in my mind long after the show has closed.

– i don’t want to miss you II @bookwrms

i wanted to write

about the woman the neurodivergent the poc the Muslim the lgbtq+ the disabled the abused the wonders of the world to me

and the only words i could think of were things i had already heard

about how passionate and important these people are and how courageous the privileged are both for speaking up

and then all the thoughts were stuck in my brain as i wondered what side i was on as i look inside myself and feel human

and i realized

the only thing i could write.

was a love letter.

dear activist,

in my mind there is a city. in some parts are my ugly, my terror, my fear, my unfounded misogyny and internalized racism, the abuse, the questioning, the extreme.

but then i see you.

you are the skyscraper in my mind.

once you were a home. maybe a little unsteady but something i could come back to every now and then. a friend that i hold dear to my heart. or a park that i could rest with. but as i grow older and have this responsibility thrust upon me as so many of the above wonders i see you. and i know when i open my eyes many activists are not so popular, so known, activism resides in many hearts even if i can’t see them. all of these hearts have a space in my skyscraper.

i was someone who needed to realize saying i love you casually is okay, to date i have never said “i love you” directly to my family. i was someone who went to the school in my city and taught myself to get back up and wandered around to the libraries and that is how i learned to love to learn. how i learned that which i already knew to be human. for that i thank you.

now a skyscraper to an activist - the comparison makes no sense, i know. but i  saw you when i went home, i dreamed of visiting when i fell asleep, i walked around and felt your shadow surround me, i was told your history in a droning lecture.

you are my center in this unstable land. my safe haven in a place of unrest. my elegance in my awkward uncomfortable skin. my ever changing wonderland.

the height comes with a price, i know. but feeling this ever blooming tower in my city of love pushes my shoulders back up. holds my head high when i am low. redesigns who i am and what i will do.

many that i know are not so affected. in truth, they may even find the activists in their heads to be frightening. but i have accepted you, and i ask that you find love in this heart. this is to you, my dear people of color, my strong proud lgbt friend, my feminist role model, my unwilling fighters. and to the activists on the other side, i cannot say the same as of now because i am not so strong, but my love is not meant to be contained. it is free, and for that, i love the activist.

this is a truth, raw and stinging, left in the pockets of history. in today’s world it is in charlottesville. across the continent. in our homes, in our urban centers, in our media, in our lands and in our waters. it grows as i grow, moves as i move, hurts as i hurt, shines as i shine.

and it is also, always and always, ever timeless.

Dear John (Green),
You wrote an entire essay online about how groundbreaking it is
for a teenage girl
to kiss a teenage boy in a tragic movie about being white and pretty and dying.

Meanwhile, the only times I see girls like me
getting kissed on screen is when they’re being felt up by some old man in a tragic movie about being
colored and poor and abused.

Brown teenage girls do not get love stories like the movies,
even though we are taught straight from the womb that
we are no more than curves and wild fight that still shines in our eyes after the white boy kisses us in secret,
after the white boy does not want to be seen with us in front of his friends.
Because we’ll always bring drama and bitterness,
with our loud voices
and attitude,
until we are finally broken
on the night something is slipped into our drinks,
or we’re evicted from our house,
or we lose the basketball game,
or a family member climbs on top of us,
and wraps the silver screen around our bodies like butcher’s paper
for the meat
that we have been portrayed as
since birth.

No, we do not get Shakespeare quoted to us,
instead we become the bitter narrative,
the comfort to the suburban parent,
thank goodness their little girl is the one with the “nice young man,”
and not the one getting her teeth knocked out by the “thug”,
and why does Hollywood only
find colored girls palatable when they are hardened by the world,
to the point where we see them as grown women?

You want groundbreaking story telling?
Write about a girl with brown skin
who is so filled with joy,
each one of her breaths is like tasting cinnamon,
and she lightens even the darkest moments.
Write about a hijabi girl,
who is so empowered,
that she can convince a generation of young women of every shade
that we don’t need to kiss a boy first
to feel in charge of ourselves.
Write about a Latina girl,
who is so in love with life that she tiptoes on the heads of her problems.

Portray colored girls as soft,
as naive,
as quickly,
as teenage girls in love,
because we deserve a narrative as sweet
as diverse
and as powerful
as we are.

Please do not
believe them
when they say
that you are weak,
just because
you are in tears.

Do not believe
them when
they say
you can’t,
just because
they never
saw you
secretly trying.

Please do not
let their words
sink deeper
inside your head
when all they mean
is to bring you
lower than them.

i know.

i know, that so often at night it feels ugly. clawing at your throat, tears threatening to fall, fires burning up your thoughts.

the night breaks you, and tears at you until you blink and see stars.

night is a reflection of that total darkness. the sleeplessness has you tossing and turning and its like a river churning up your emotions and

sometimes its so much that it takes effort to slip away into sleep

they have a word for it.

its called insomnia.

but from one message to a messenger i tell you that when you are starting to heal here’s how you will know.

the night will be different.

yes, i know.

i know, that most days you still threaten to tip over, unable to rid yourself of demons until early morning arrives, battling the illness with no strength but the drops you have left.

but some nights you get so used to it that it starts to feel beautiful.  

than when you stay up, and you turn to your phone to start that nightly ritual of i cant sleep so why try at all, and then you put it down for the routine attempts to sleep peacefully, the night will surround you like a blanket. no longer a monster but an old friend. no longer a terror but a pet curled up at your side. a companion to loneliness.

and i know (how i know) how easy it is to confuse this with a dull acceptance of your harm. that staying up is just a habit, you should do it, its a part of you, nothing to be done.

its just that for a reveur i only remember my dreams when im awake. when at night i can let go of other things and just stare into the darkness. that after a long cry if i smile the sky twinkles back. no longer an enemy, but a passing dream as if i can drink the night for an antidote to my pain. and one day i might heal enough and every night could be my one last time and soon i will be done and ill move on but for now

oh for now

for now i can take this and wrap it around my body and feel like a queen for now.

spring;
golden light spilling  from the heavens.
the flowers blossoming,
the air heady with perfume.

she sat in the fields,
flowers nestled between her palms,
and from her pretty lips, tumbled,
the music of the stars.

that’s when she fell:
princes of darkness,
came to take, came to save,
their beautiful princess.

palaces made of broken dreams,
haunting choruses,
a place where the crescent moon sat
her wicked edges gleaming.

and when she was found,
when the sunlight untangled her lashes, and blue skies kissed her cheeks once more,
did she miss the darkness?

or did it feel like a curse,
a nightmare tailored in satin and lace,
where she was not a princess but a queen
of hell?

just when they thought she’d withered,
she bloomed,
and with her,
all the forgotten blossoms
of the universe.

Persephone; she held the flowers, and to the touches of hell they did not wither | o.l

for @tcrtarus, you sent me words that bloomed in the dark, now I will send you words that will blossom only for you. 

(via scheuyler)

I miss you

I miss the sound of your laugh—carefree and light,
Like a favorite song I hadn’t heard in awhile.

I miss your smile, beaming brighter than a thousand suns…
Lighting up the darkest of places,
Infectious in its intensity

I miss the feel of your lips on mine
Perfect and full

I miss it
The way the moment I ventured to kiss you
A match lit in a methane filled room
The intensity with which you’d grab me

Hungry
As if you’d been craving me
All this time that we were apart…

I miss dancing with you
Alone together in a crowded room
The music mesmerizing
Our bodies moving in perfect synchronization
Swaying to the beat
Every nerve ending ablaze
Electricity crackling between us

I miss the way you looked at me that night
Your eyes never leaving mine
Two lost souls seeking the North Star
Existing in an eclipse
And discovering, for the first time,
The moon again.

I miss the way we made everything feel like an adventure
I miss the way we made everything brand new

I miss the peace you brought me
Like a warm fire on a cold day
Like coming home…

Your existence a ray of hope
That I might not be alone in this world.

Soothing my fears
Of a future unknown
Of a future alone.

in the pool in the backyard in the moonlight, our pale bodies pretending to be something other than scar tissue in bad light. something less like a bruise and more like poem.

i ask you what heaven is when it is too dark to see our eyes and you don’t say my name once. you don’t touch me but i bleed anyway. i pluck all my feathers on the full moon and let them go without looking. we both pretend i’m not naked.

now it’s winter and every almost drowning makes me remember. every bruise still spells your name.