Sometimes I’m Not Put Together. Sometimes I’m Not Pretty. Sometimes My Words Drip With The Crudeness

the thing is that childhood doesn't just end when you turn 18 or when you turn 21. it's going to end dozens of times over. your childhood pet will die. actors you loved in movies you watched as a kid will die. your grandparents will die, and then your parents will die. it's going to end dozens and dozens of times and all you can do is let it. all you can do is stand in the middle of the grocery store and stare at freezers full of microwave pizza because you've suddenly been seized by the memory of what it felt like to have a pizza party on the last day of school before summer break. which is another ending in and of itself

Joy Sullivan, from “Move to Oregon in July”, Instructions for Traveling West

my favourite sounds at 2am:

the soft buzz of the refrigerator downstairs

the steady hum of the a/c above my head

the faint rustle of the trees by my window*

*(my actual favourite sounds at 2am:

the softness off your exhale as you lay beside me

the rustling of my sheets as you turn toward me

the steady beating of your heart as you press your chest against mine.)

places i vape:

in public bathrooms

in airport corners

under my desk at work

beneath my hoodie

on mountaintops

on backyard chairs;

in my sleep, in my waking, in my dreams. beneath the clouds and the shadows. on the horizon and the stars and my aching soul.

(addiction presents as poetry, just ask bukowski)

Made this a while back at uni for a book project around Sylvia Plath the bell jar 🍓🫧🕸️

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantine and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat Proffessions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs where many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant loosing all the rest, and, as i sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Yena Sharma Purmasir - “When I’m Not There”

Write like a song. Or write like somebody else. Write about anything so long as it’s not yourself, and don’t worry, because it’ll still be about you. It all came from you, the potter who could never completely buff away her fingerprints from the clay. Write vaguely, don’t show your hand. 

But you do not want to do anything anymore. You want to lie in bed and watch the crane spin around the skyscraper outside your apartment, until its lights turn off and it rests for the night. You wonder if you were perhaps not built for love. You joke that you’re stupid, but the joke isn’t funny anymore when you tell it to yourself ten times a day. You are no longer funny, you have become Pierrot, a foolish fool. 

You passed a man with his shoe untied walking to his car downtown. You almost told him the news about his laces, but you imagined he’d feel dismayed so you let him pass you by. You want to stick in people’s memories the way they do in yours, but you don’t know how. Maybe next time you walk down the street you’ll untie your shoe and imagine that somebody noticed.

Joy Sullivan, “Want", Instructions for Traveling West

there’s an echoing in my bones telling me to

leave this place

and not return.

i can’t decide if it’s fear or fire.

my jaw clenches

and my teeth grit

and i can’t seem to stop the rope

from slipping, fraying.

my tether is escaping me

and is it fear or fire?

i need to know

before i decide.

do i leave this place?

this purpose and pay check?

do i slink away like a fox

in the night?

where’s the rope?

hello?

where’s the light?

hello?

can you hear me?

all I’ve every wanted is to be seen. i’m sick of fighting for it- and i refuse to shrink to fit into your periphery.