“In A Shaky Voice, He Said: Bring Me Back To You, Or Bring Me Back To Myself. Don’t Leave Me Standing

something so quiet about his kiss, so secretive. his mouth wide open, swallowing truths and honey and hushed moans. hands that render me silent to everything, weak at the knees and falling head first into something so soft. something that’ll break my fall. passionate love that is not loud or arrogant. a love that beckons me towards it with little more than a whisper.

calling your lover "my lover" is the most TENDER and SOFT and HOMOEROTIC thing you can call them and we should do that more often as a society

salting wounds with poetry, and counting losses with a pen that’s run dry. tomorrow will be one year since you hurt me for the first time (oh how quickly time flies). and it angers me that everyone can still read your name in between these lines, that your pulse is still the rhythm of my poetry (and my life).

how casually you haunt me, old friend. i am no longer afraid of the memories you left on my skin (though i moved cities to escape them) so perhaps i can call this a year of growth. but is it really, when i spent months trying to fight the urge my bones had to rearrange themselves into a different woman?

the 29th was hot last year, and it is hot today too. but i’m not that girl who was complacent in her own destruction anymore, no. ive left the demolition site for good.

now, i kiss the girl i was and i thank her for staying alive, hold her and say that i’m proud she survived.

classycreeps

“They’re all angels.”

— Keanu Reeves when asked what type of girls he likes x

“Nemesis inhabited a dark paradise of her own making. She never held back. I loved her for her frightful hatred, her frightful love. I admired her stunning passion for revenge; the mercilessness in her eyes.”

— Lola Ridge, from To the Many; Collected Poems of Lola Ridge; “Hellish,”

I cup my hands around all the sweet things in the world to try and taste some form of optimism, some form of “it’ll be okay”. I’ve been feeling low and bogged down by all the hatred in the news. These days it feels like all the sweetness falls right between my fingertips, like sand. The world is such an overwhelming, cruel place that it’s awfully hard to remember the good things. The love, laughter and tiny mementos of goodness in everyday life fades under the screech of death, hate and pain. please hug your lover tighter today. please call your mother and believe her when she says it’ll all be alright. please remember that beautiful things still exist, even when the world is anything but.

every time I talk about my own abuse for the sake of justice or awareness, all the words punch the back of my throat, a heavy thumping that spills from my mouth like the ugly mess it was. it’s still so painful and emptying and numbing all at the same time. It feels like I spoil the conversation, that I’m being uncouth or impolite. my story has no place anywhere.

a glass just empty, full of unoccupied space. a head tangled with words. I’m still confused about the concept of justice. and love. and forgiveness. it just feels unfair. just feels so wrong to make my own body’s safety into a movement or a form of activism. I don’t want to be loud or strong or empowered, I just want to be safe.

this world, full of its misogyny and hatred towards women, doesn’t help. The vilification of victims in the media makes me feel even smaller. the internalisation of misogyny, undermining my own pain because of my body’s “crimes” doesn’t help either.

my voice sometimes doesn’t feel like my own. my body never feels like it belongs to me. all this activism and anger and pain and I still can’t shake the feeling.

I worry about other girls. I worry about their voices being stolen not only by their abusers, or society but also by themselves.

my lover read this and turned to kiss me, said, honey, heaven is anywhere where you are. told me he fell in love with me when I danced with him to frank sinatra in his living room after our first date, hips swaying and lips turned into a crescent moon. if there was ever a moment I wished to repeat, I swear this is the one. this is the one.

my bed for one feels so empty without you here. come over, let’s eat shitty chinese and watch bad tv (which is inherently never a bad idea). kiss me. let’s dance to frank sinatra. kiss me again. sleep next to me, tell me you’ll be here in the morning. tell me you’ll meet me in my dream tonight. kiss me again and again. and again.

Trigger warning:

I tried to end my life exactly a year ago today. I came dangerously close to dying, spent weeks in a hospital. my life completely changed. this morning I woke up early to a quiet world, save for some birds outside my window. I saw the night change to dusk turn to morning and couldn’t help but remember how I would’ve missed something so wonderful if I died. how I wouldn’t have seen the flashes of orange and gold and honey swirl and change in the sky. how the endless black turned to sunshine. how depression didn’t win.

coffee, the sunrise and the buildings awash in the light of a new morning all around me. how lovely is it to be alive. to experience all this busyness and splendour. how the clouds whisper good morning and the heavens themselves shine through each crack in the sky. how the sun calls my body to wake. how the birds tell me today is a new day and aren’t there just endless possibilities. the promise of a new sunrise makes me so glad I’m still alive.