lately i’ve been trying to leave pieces of myself wherever i go. i press flowers in between pages and make paper stars to leave on store shelves, stuff loaned textbooks with post-it notes of encouragement like they’re enough to solidify my place in the universe but nothing wants to stick. most of the time i feel washable, like the world could wring itself of me in one twist. i sign my name under poems and try to convince myself they’re my permanent record and it’s a performance act, a kind of necromancy i can’t get to work.

i’m getting desperate, these days. in three months i’ll be eighteen and i feel like i’m ten years old again, carving half the solar system into my desk with the point of my compass to make it mine. like i’m a hiker leaving markers on a tree, I WAS HERE in all caps with enough arrogance to think that someone will stop for it, that the bark won’t just cover it up again. i tried to make a list of things that last and couldn’t come up with anything, not even footprints left in concrete and not even tattoos, not even you. i still remember my childhood best friend’s landline but we haven’t spoken in years, so the list stays empty.

do you remember when you were a kid, no object permanence, like you would close your eyes for a second too long and everything would fill up with something new and bad and sharp and then you wouldn’t recognize the place where you were standing? some days i think that i’m grasping at things that don’t exist anymore. every time i go back to the playground i grew up on something about it is different; the merry-go-round was a hazard, i guess, but all i remember is being seven years old and spinning and spinning and spinning and thinking the world had learned how to move for the first time.

i’m so sick of renovations. for once i want something to stay. for once i want something of mine to be able to withstand anything, even flood and even fire, even heartbreak. even public safety warnings.

— u.a.

What are your favorite writing/literature/art blogs on tumblr? I’m looking for some to follow LL (I thought this would be the blog to ask since writing related?? Aaaaa??)

gskdhd ok, I'm still looking for more to follow too, but the blogs I know of rn that I would recommend are @excerptsfromjannah @afternoonpoetics and @yellowpoet

Would you ever write poetry?

i do actually!! i have a poetry account on insta which is @rainbow.graffiti and one here which is @excerptsfromjannah !!! thanks for the ask 🥰🥰

hey everyone! first of all, i want to thank everyone who’s followed me and kept up with my work. i posted a lot of stuff that kept me going through difficult times here, and i feel like there are pieces of my heart on this blog. that being said, i also don’t think this is working for where i want to go with both my writing and myself. so i decided to revamp my poetry blog. i’m still gonna leave this one here, but all my new work will be on @excerptsfromjannah ! please give that a follow if you want to read more of my poems! thank you <33

say the dream goes like this:

it’s august, and we are eighteen and unafraid of anything. in the dream we’re eating figs off the tree in your yard, sticky hands and soft, aching mouths and the kind of light without an end to it, and say in this one when you fall asleep with my head on your chest i say what i didn’t then. from your balcony we watch the lights go down over the city.

i drove to your house that day, you know. thought about what it felt like when you got into the passenger’s seat, your hair undone and your eyes like shining stars. i would’ve driven anywhere, if you’d asked me to. you and the world were endless. love was so easy, then—nothing to it. turn the key, hit the gas. it felt like this—

like lying next to you with the lights off, like our hands aren’t touching but we’re breathing in time. say this time i put my fingers through your hair. there’s nothing ahead of us, nothing behind. say the dream goes like this:

we jump, hand in hand, and we don’t hit the water. 

— u.a.

sometimes i wonder if we were always meant to be like this. paper children; your creases and tears and watercolor, my ink spots and missing pages. boys and girls lined up with open mouths stuffed with shark’s teeth and aching chests full of sunlight, looking for god in the margins of each other.

look, if i were better at this i would learn to peel the hurricane from your skin, give it back to the sky. the world would shudder from the weight of it, but you and i would turn the lights down in the living room and dance until we remember how to breathe. you would give me pressed flowers and i would give you poetry. you would say, i know your heart, and it is mine, and we would be violet-colored for each other and ourselves and no one else.

i am tired of reckonings, alright? i want a beginning so soft the hummingbirds envy us. i want to leave these echoes and their snarling mouths behind, find a place where grief never gets a name and we can laugh until the air is golden and the stars are singing.

we have nothing now but the wire through our chests. i am my father’s daughter and you are the sun, and we have nothing now but fingers laced together and thunderstorms in our throats and dreams clutched in split-knuckled fists. oh, we have nothing but each other and the cadence of our heartbeats, but if we let it, that could be enough to carry us home.

— u.a.

here’s the moment i keep coming back to: 4:42 on a thursday afternoon. we’re waiting for someone to take us home and carving out a space for ourselves in an empty school building the librarian behind her desk, watching us play connect four red and gold chips split between us. this is where the universe pauses for a breath— where i’m allowed to take in all of you: we’re listening to broadway music and i’m focusing on the crinkle in between your brows and my love is spilling all over the table. i think i found something divine there, 4:42 on a thursday afternoon. someone’s coming to take us home soon but your ankle is pressed against mine and time is gentle here, lets us pretend that we’ll be sixteen and in love forever. somewhere outside, your mom pulls into the parking lot. in a moment your phone will buzz and we will pour red and gold chips back into their box and i will carefully, achingly unstitch myself from you. for now, though, the light is golden and whole. we are creating something permanent inside of something fleeting, and lover, here is where we learn the taste of holiness— an empty school building, 4:42 on a thursday afternoon playing connect four and making heaven out of pieces of a board game.

— u.a.

— the apocalypse will end, and it will still be spring. | u.a.

Tell it again, that story— How the universe built you from its spare parts How you were born with your head full of untold stories And your veins filled with the stars that the constellations forgot about. Tell me how you were made with small hands and bright eyes and a smile that always rose a little higher on one side, How the color of your skin and the slope of your nose and the curl of your hair told the tales of the people who came before you How you were born with one foot in two different worlds, a bridge, Or maybe a wishbone. Tell me how you were made to be sunlight and a storm, A quiet hurricane, the air after a lightning strike Tell me how you always loved with every one of your atoms and How you wrote your sadness into stars and tell me— Tell me how the gods tried to make you into Icarus and Calypso and Orpheus and Juliet and you said 'No. I will not be your tragedy. I will not let you cover me in ash just to show the world what ruin looks like.'

an excerpt from a letter from someone you will be, someday | u.a.

In the beginning, there is Heaven, and there is Earth, and there are two hearts together. You are somewhere in between the sea and the sky; your toes touching the mountaintops, your fingertips just barely brushing against the clouds. You are there to watch the stars fall from space, to watch the continents break and shift, to watch civilizations rise and fall and rise again and through it all, you are together. Maybe Rome crumbles. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe Pompeii turns to ash, maybe it lives. Here is what is sure: your fingers stay intertwined. Your eyes stay locked upon each other; the laughter between you is still music, the words you share are scripture. Maybe the world falls to storm, or maybe it falls to fire. But here is what is sure: your love stays. In the end, there is Heaven, and there is Earth, and there are two hearts together. Maybe you are immortal, and you can take your time. Maybe you are fleeting, and you should live every day like it’s your last. But here is what is sure: here, now, and forever, you are infinite.

u.a.

one; your hands are not for touching; keep them to yourself. curl them into fists and let your fingertips burn circles in your palms, dig crescents into the skin on your thighs and your hips. when your touch is like fire, control the blaze.

two; leave four feet of space between you and her. that way she won’t taste the gunpowder lingering on your breath, won’t feel the heat that surrounds you. that way, you will minimize your casualties. keep her outside of your blast radius.

three; leave the door open. give the smoke a way to escape, or it will curl inside of your lungs and turn them dark and half-dead, like everything else about you. at least open a fucking window. 

four; close your eyes. maybe the flames won’t burn so bright if there’s no one to watch.

— there are rules to being this volatile, my love. | u.a.

when you leave, it’s still sunny outside. the sky doesn’t cry for us. the sky doesn’t care. our end is too quiet for the stars to hear, too soft to make the universe listen. it’s not beautiful or tragic or whatever i tried to write it into. it’s just fucking sad. 

— we’re not shakespeare. we never were. | u.a.