My Lover Read This And Turned To Kiss Me, Said, Honey, Heaven Is Anywhere Where You Are. Told Me He Fell

JAMEELA JAMIL by Chantal Anderson for The New York Times (2019)

oh you’re lovely at being the victim, aren’t you? pout your lips and say that you never knew what you did to me. held me like i meant something to you. broken glass jaw, splintered ash and telephone calls. oh how silly i am, oh how naive.

lavender kisses, sunshine eyes and tight hugs. heaven takes the shape of a boy with blonde hair, long legs and clumsy words. he’s got a smile as soft as his heart. smells like cinnamon and sugar. he’s so sweet in and out and i can’t think about him and not smile, can’t write about him without blushing. his name next to mine still makes my heart skip a beat.

see, I turn silent during sex. my voice buries itself in my throat like a messy bloodclot. how could I be anything other than passive anyway? anything other than silent? my abuser carries my voice around like his souvenir, has split my body in two and took one half with him. left me with skin I don’t recognise, a body that still mistakes warmth for war. i turn silent during sex. let his hands paint orchids on my neck, let his fingers climb up me in search of my secrets, let his body into mine until I have nowhere to put the bad memories. this body isn’t mine. I don’t think it ever will be.

HUNTER SCHAFER for Givenchy at Paris Fashion Week 2019

for someone that feels empty a lot of the time, I’m sure able to give and give and give. it’s my nastiest and most damaging habit. maybe that’s why I have such a fascination with sandcastles and other temporary things, the way I commit all my time to a couple of fleeting moments. strange that I can always feel the storm before it hits, the way the air sticks to my body like ghosts. don’t I lose love like eyelashes. don’t I hold love like a hoarder. this little light lady is all smoke and no flame.

just to be clear, you can do this too

trigger warning: self harm

it’s been a year since I last hurt myself, an addiction that took all my willpower to overcome. I know I can fashion words into something beautiful but there was nothing pretty about all that self-hatred, all that anger, loss and pain. all that pain coiled in my stomach, gnawing at me from the inside. there was absolutely nothing beautiful about scarring a body that works so hard to keep going. I can’t make this beautiful or romantic or wistful. but it’s over now. I can breathe. I just want to let that fact be.

cherry picking things to smile about this summer. I need these things to keep going. all this love, food, films, songs...I grin, take big bites until I have a mouthful of sweetness. things are bad again. I’m tired and sad and slow all over again. everything that used to be colourful is grey and dark, depression is the fog that covers everything. but it’ll get better. I know it. with all this love and art and music, I’ll feel alive again.

tag yourself: autumnal/halloween edition 🥀♡

ghost maiden~ ♡ a castle shrouded in mist, playing chopin’s nocturnes by candlelight, early morning walks across frosty meadows, a white victorian nightdress with a wilting lily of the valley bouquet, bewailing the day you were abandoned at the altar, the ‘giselle’ ballet, tear-stained love letters thrown from the tower or into the icy lake...

19th century vampire~ ♡ attending the opera in a moth-eaten velvet gown and lace gloves, a cursive-inscribed first edition of ‘carmilla’ from your first lover, hosting elaborate feasts for the local nobility but only drinking red wine, a dusty french boudoir of old treasures: vintage glass bottles of perfume and antique art, reminiscing with byron and wilde...

forest-born witch~ ♡ mushroom picking at night, a cat-shaped familiar composed of shadow (named circe), singing in latin to our lady the moon or hekate, velvet spell bags of herbs and tumbled smoky crystals, casting off one’s earthly form to step through the incense veil into the world of spirits, a cauldron of stewed apples and blackberries for teatime (guests include the grimm and medea)...

academic-turned-detective~ ♡ ancient ink-blotted manuscripts of homer’s odyssey, solving a century-old murder mystery, pearl buttoned blouses and shabby oxfords, wandering a cemetery with hot cider or cinnamon cocoa, haunting gloomy chapels on rainy afternoons, melting wax to seal a hand inked letter to an old friend...

angel of sweet death~ ♡ a lovely-hearted heartbreaker, worn out ballerina slippers and a black silk slip (with a cashmere cardigan for the evening), ‘girl’s night’: black and white horror films and devil’s food cake, tying a velvet ribbon to a tree branch as to not get lost in the enchanted forest, follower of lana del rey and stevie nicks, weeping tiny black pearls and coughing up dried rose petals...