Like All Witnesses Of An Event Horizon, They Didn’t Know They Were Witnesses

We ended up in the same zoology lab for three semesters. Everyone said we were so cute, so textbook in love, dissecting tapeworms, frogs and crows. How cute, how in love, the way you always took up the scalpel. And how textbook it all seemed to me—you, holding what cuts helpless things open.

The professor joked that maybe he had done this before. The incisions were so clean, she couldn’t even tell where he had made a cut. Others would watch, but couldn’t see what it meant. I couldn’t blame them—it took me 14 months to learn the difference between being studied and being shadowed. He could be so patient. Most predators are.

Even my friends wouldn’t believe me when I said I couldn’t sense I was being cornered until my head hit the wall. But really, most prey can’t.

Everyone seemed so shocked, no one saw it coming. Honestly, most audiences don’t.

I did not escape with grace—Never praying, just limping, just another aimless host after the parasite, another legless frog, another broken crow, doomed to sink down choked, half-eating, half-eaten.

I know we respect freedom, but do we ever really know what some animals have to go through to earn it? Freedom is not always happy, not always safe. In it’s simplest form, freedom is what emerges from a perfect prison.

Like the snakes we watched molt in class, I eventually set fire to all the physical reminders           but it wasn’t until after I had buried myself in them that I lit the match. It felt so much like freedom usually does— flames burning to cover a deeper burning.

We didn’t learn about the phoenix in zoology; I didn’t know that as long as I was the one who started the fire, I could be reborn— Consumed, only to be unhanded.

Single Twilight, 2005 - Anne-Elizabeth Sobieski oil on canvas  |  source:

Portrait de Charlotta Fredrika von Fersen, née Sparre (1719-1795) (detail) Gustaf Lundberg

The Grand Canal, Venice (1899) Thomas Moran, oil on canvas

Portrait of a Lady (detail) oil on canvas Francois Boucher, 1760

the only thing that matters anymore

Tiny legs

Still Life With Flowers, Fruits, a Parrot and a Monkey Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer 1690

in hell everyone speaks in slam poetry voice

14/30

it's like you're asking me why i'm still hungry when there's a perfectly good uncooked hot dog in a plastic bag in the kitchen with my name on it.

i'm not saying that you're only as appealing as a soggy, unkosher hot dog in my fridge just because i thought we were friends;

i’m saying that you're as appealing as a cold, drug store brand hot dog because you look and sound like one right now.

it's like you're asking me why i don't want to lay down with a lion to keep warm.

i'm not saying that people are lions i'm saying that they're prepared to kill as soon as they are hungry enough.

For 49 days I’ve been playing this one stupid song in reverse— I think if I keep starting at the end, replaying my way forward to the start, I can eventually play it so far backwards that the song unplays itself like it was never even written to never be played again

Effy B, “12/30”

9/30

I tried to get as far away as possible from the person who was killing me, and for months it worked— I was safe. But yesterday I heard a noise and I thought it had to be them, that they were back, and I started crying as all the loose dirt I had dug out of fell back on top of me, and I couldn't breathe, I was so scared and it was crushing me. It turns out that the noise was just a noise. It turns out that I only have myself to be afraid of. It’s like that movie, where the killer is inside the house, so there’s no use in locking the doors.

7/30

my friend asks me why i dress like this some days skirt and curls some days baggy shirt and jeans, hoodie, flannel, beanie, piled high why do i need armor somedays? why do i still hide? my mom asks me why i never look her in the eye my brothers ask me why i never look them in the eye my father doesn't ask anything, doesn't say anything, because all he's ever given me was backhanded accident, too drunk one night to stand, denial, and his eyes. but no one thinks to ask why i've had to defend myself with just eyes, why i've had to clean the floor with my knees while i've had to empty whole houses, whole neighborhoods of my pain not just from walls but from the heater vents and drains i've had to tear up carpets where it sunk in deep and still no one asks me about my sleep or why i can't breathe in a quiet room or why i sit, 3 am, legs crossed, eyes wide out the window, cat-threatened, back arched, claws out, ears straight back why i don't need to hear it to know it i don't even need to see it i can smell it on any stranger who passes me without looking. how we both know what it's like to fear a wet moon, one that cries for it's own light to shine; the moon tired and sick of reflecting someone else's— and only at night, only in the dark

6/30

you came here almost every night since the night you broke what was already broken and then you punched a hole through my mirror. which means 1 year of codependent fistfuls of ativan-memories banging into each other at the knuckle and calling it love —in exchange for 7 lonely, miserable years of self discovery. you came here, all hush-night confessional, forgive me of my salted fingers and cathedral teeth, palms pressed tight like a knife to the throat, like you meant it, and deserved all 5 hail marys for it. you broke it after you said i broke it, after i broke it after i broke it first— just call me kindergarten stubborn then because i want to say "but you broke better." because you didnt just bark at the glass and dare it to tell the truth, you beat it bloody, picked up the skinny pieces of razor-edged despondency, made my bed with them and watched as i laid down in it.

By Effy B ( @parvosunda )

Pygmalion: I think you’re really special, just what my dreams are really made of.

Pygmalion and Galatea, Konstantin Makovsky (Russian, 1839-1915) / So Into You, Tamia

Note: And that cover by Childish Gambino amirite

hey so i’ve had an ig for a while and tbh it looks similar to my tumblr except it’s 100% my photography (i’ve shared on here a couple times) but if u want u can follow me 🍓(@okayfun)