13. purr

how citrus lingers from yesterday night like the ginger cat curled, purred at my feet

how dishes collect on the kitchen sink and second-nature second chance burn bright between glances

i got it wrong. i’m not hard to love, i have internalised every knife thrown against me. caught every bullet with my teeth and swallowed past the lump in my throat. the wounds have festered- scabbed over and i thought it was skin. i thought this is what i look like. it hurts to touch, the infection spreads. there might be someone underneath it all but i must dig her out. the bandages don’t stick but i keep trying. the salve burns but i keep trying. through gritted fucking teeth, scabbed hands and the tears…i keep trying.

out of the wind by Audre Lorde

i’m so horrodly undeserving of my fantastic family i don’t know how pr why i am so blessed. loving friends and the kindest most understanding family in the world. i feel like i bleed onto everything i touch. im afraid that i will suffocate the people around me with my unhappiness and my pain. i keep so much to myself and yet i tell them almost everything the depth of my misery knows no bounds and i feel like I’ve been digging for years.

Ain't nothin worse than being a hopeless romantic AND a lesbian

this year really was just like "well how many hot queer vampires CAN you be obsessed with" and then didn't wait for an answer even at all

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled (Lover Boys)” / James Crews, “15. (Fan Letter)”, The Book of What Stays

mathilda, mary shelley!! good god i’m feeling so much anger towards my father and that isn’t what (i suppose) the main takeaway from this book is and yet when i finished it i just felt so fucking angry at my dad.

(tw: mentions of suicidal thoughts.)

after the anger left, i felt like: you know when you play marco polo and you say marco and there’s no response and so you say marco again and you want to open your eyes because soemthing unsettling is happening in your chest so you say- hurriedly now- marco! with a lot more intensity and you feel like you should just open your eyes but then! a giggle “polo” and you were heard! you smile- laugh even! trying to return your breathing back to normal because for a second there you thought soemthing terrible happened but you weren’t sure if something had or hadn’t and opening your eyes would’ve soiled the game- i felt like those few seconds after someone saying polo! i felt heard. after so long of panicking in the dark with my eyes closed trying to blindly guide my way through suicidal tendencies and thoughts. i get you mathilda.

orpheus in spring by Jenny George

god won't give me a girlfriend because she knows how absolutely insufferable i'd become

spending so much of my time reading. in bed, on the sofa, on the tube anywhere!! i’m enjoying it. this year i’ve read so much (im on my 34th book of the year!!) and ive truly come to appreciate how much i think books heal me. i’m going through a really tough time at the moment depression has its claws firmly in my back but the books im reading feel like the strongest dose of antidepressants. ive always been a bookworm always had my nose in a book but now im starting to view it as a superpower.

“Something beyond language. I get frustrated this way so often. A photograph can say “This is what it was.” Language can only say “This is what it was like.””

— Hisham Matar, My Friends: A Novel (Random House, January 9, 2024)

another age by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

this is what i am struggling with at the moment. trying to allow my guilt to evolve into something that can make me a better person, how to stop berating myself for making a (painful) mistake that upset so many people.

Be mindful that your guilt is useless unless you allow it to evolve into something more meaningful […] Guilt is always a crossroad. It can be a gateway to consciousness, or we can obsess over what we have done, wallow in our guilt, use it as an excuse not to grow, and fixate on the idea that we deserve punishment rather than seeing our guilt as a signpost pointing us toward the true path.

Matthew Kelly (The Rocking Chair Prophet, pages 85, 85-86)

wanting is so ridiculously painful to me. i want to make new friends. i want to tell you how much i love you, i want you to come close and stick your small tiny wrist into my body and feel around my bloody organs. i want you to see the most benign, ugliest part of me so when you say “i love you too.” i can let myself believe it. that i want but in return: i am wanted.

No thoughts.

Only Jeane-Pierre Gibrat illustration of women.