“What was she like? I’ve waited my entire life to be asked that question. God. What was she like? She was beautiful. She tasted like the ocean and smelled like clementines. She wore peach lipstick and brown mascara. On Sundays she would fill the bathtub with roses and milk. When it was spring and the air felt raw against your skin, she would wake herself up at three in the morning and smoke cigarettes in the balcony. When I gave her roses on some date she gave them to a homeless man on the way to the restaurant. She wore dirty sneakers with the words “peace” written in red sharpie and a white dress that hugged her wide hips to my mothers 58th birthday party. The one where ladies asked what she was studying and she replied Art History. She was in Pre-Med at the top university in New York City. She said things like “we don’t open the mail on Tuesdays” and “let’s tell the barista you’ve just found out you’re cured from cancer”. When her mother would call begging her to come to church she would send her poems about how birds on the telephone line are her religion. She only liked walking around the city if it rained. What was she like? She went to train stations because she thought the homeless man playing the violin was the best concert she’d ever find. I often asked her what she thought of me. Her laugh was like honey. When I took her to my gallery opening she invited her taxi driver. She had the moon tattooed on her inner thigh. She spelled the words “infinity” onto the crook of my neck. I remember once she took a photograph of an elderly man speaking to his wife at her gravestone. She called me on the way home: “Well what were you doing at the cemetery?” I asked. “Robert,” She’d said, “Don’t ask such absurd questions.” What was she like? I woke up alone some mornings. Her suitcase would be scattered and she screamed because she couldn’t pay the gas bill. Our lights would turn off. What was she like? She’d light candles in every single corner of the house. She would read these big books written by Russian authors who didn’t know the difference between love and lust. “Oh,” She once said, “And you do?” I laughed. I was so in love with her. The curves of her hip. The smooth tint of her back. Her eyebrows. Her smile. How her eyes were green sea’s I saw in travel brochures. What was she like? She was the type of person to write you love poetry and bake pies and convince you that 4:50 AM was the best time of day. What is she like? And this is the part where my throat will burn and I’ll scratch my collar bones because how much it hurts, “Why don’t you ask him” I’ll say. Why don’t you ask him”
— I’m sorry it had to end like this
.
!crush alert!
for the first time in a while you fantasize about a summer love.
it’s the early parts of the summer and it’s europe so it doesn’t faze you. the heat of course. but she’s panting and puffing and you find it adorable.
and so when you’re talking to your friend and you steal glances from her and catch her looking at you, maybe your heart does skip a beat. you feel a little happier, and there’s a skip in your step.
for the first time in a while it feels like someone gets you.
so what if you’ve known each other for 2 weeks and most of that time was spent with other people.
she looks and feels like summer. her dark red brown hair, her frilly thin strapped floral dress in the green green park with flowers blooming all over, her listening intently to your monologue on petrichor and how you find kaalboishakhis beautiful… it’s all too much. too much for you. you fantasize about death and love and love and death and between tossing on each side of the bed you get tired at one point and fall asleep. and its the same cycle the next day.
but like i said, you’ve felt truly understood in a long while with her. between talking politics and admiring how her eyes sparkle when speaking about Lenin, between wanting to ask her on a real date and slapping yourself internally because… she’s just a baby, how your own internal moralistic castles are crumbling at your own feet and you hate yourself for it, between her telling you how your whole perjury doesn’t make sense and that she’d rather date someone who’s 21 than 17 and a part of you is screaming that it is weird weird weird….
but she’s so damn smart, funny, earnest and.. adorable, you want to meet her again and again and again.
glass, irony and good, anne carson // margaret atwood // enough, suzanne buffam // ? // in conversation: kathleen turner, david marchese // haunted womanhood, heather havrilesky // where to begin, sue zhao // the stream of life, clarice lisepector
@/coffee-cosmos // ? // blasted, sarah kane // ? // henry and june, anais nin // ? // a poem for haruko, june jordan // cassandra: a novel and four essays, christa wolf // a little life, hanya yanagihara
lately
living ebbs and flows into consciousness as you wait for it to end.
you suddenly want to love so badly that it makes you not want to leave. and with every person you’re walking beside, the dream gets a little more distant, and it gets clearer why there’s never been someone, anyone to begin with.
and it’s beautiful for a few moments. people and their stories. they seem like fairytales. people with their stories and lives where you don’t fit in.
you scratch on your skin to feel mortal. you scratch till the skin breaks and there’s blood. you feel like you belong somewhere, however hackneyed this version of reality has been.
and on the momentary blurs - near the metro line or on a speeding car, you resist the urge to jump then and there. you think about all the promises you’ve kept and failed to fulfil. there has been nothing more you’ve hated than the mass of flesh and bones on the mirror. and all the rejections. from schools. companies. people. hospitals. they only show why. you’ve never had a place anywhere, truly.
so you cut deeper till you can’t and you sit and stare blankly. because you’re at your wit’s end and yet you can’t find a way to leave easily.
Bulbul (2020)
And remember, democrats don’t want to give you universal healthcare either, so no more lesser evil bullshit!
It’s a shame more people don’t shoot politicians, they’re not nearly scared enough for their life to work for the people!!
Democrats won’t even push for universal healthcare in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century. They’re definitely not going to now that it’s “over.”
they should invent a way to reconnect with old friends that doesnt feel like eating a pile of dirt in front of god
“it’s so funny how you remember that” i remember Everything. unless i forget
i think of my lifeless body as sleep lulls me over and over.
i think of trying. trying. over and over. i think of wishing. over and over. it’s like a drug induced haze that grips me. the same spiral of thoughts. like dominos. they fall and fall and it ends the same way. my lifeless body devoid of all expectations and disappointments. just me in a dark abyss of failure. floating in promises under a sky of million different lightbulbs.
i wish i could take my life that easily. i fantasize of decapitating my own self. tearing myself apart. piece by piece. pulling each vein. taking out each tendon. severing every nerve. it’s like distancing myself from everything mortal i have. everything that grounds me to things i wish i could control and i break down because i can’t.
i’ve tried a million different ways to feel wanted. loved. it’s always the same few lines. like a refrain.
i want to escape this requiem of failed attempts. so bad you don’t even know.