Day two of Nano down, and I have done the wordses! I'm enjoying my blorbos, and making them feel sad.
But I am restless, and want to write some more improvised things this month, too. So as long as I'll have the spoons for it, I'll try to write some drabbles along the way (guided by nosebleedclub's monthly prompts). So here's one.
I like this belittling voice that came out, I might write more of him.
story begins (100 words)
Hello?
That is how it starts, one word stumbling over the threshold. You arrive way before the everyone else. I suspect you are perpetually early, that the thought of being late makes your little tummy ache.
Is this…
Yes yes, I assure you.
You nod, take a seat, proceed to squirm. Your discomfort is delicious, I have to say.
I let the silence in the auditorium brew to perfection, then as if it doesn’t matter—
Name?
Uhm. Tim Harford. Sir.
Look at you. Can’t even introduce yourself without turning all red.
This is probably already the moment I choose you.
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do you know what makes me a little sad? finding out that a fellow writer's tumblr doesn't exist anymore.
but i take comfort in the words that they have gifted us, and in my imaginings i see them still writing: a verse on a diner napkin, a jumble of lines on a crumpled receipt, a whisper of words to a stray animal in their neighbourhood.
may your creation echo, little worker. may it shimmer against the sun.
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bittersweet is the place
where we rest our sore feet
after dancing all night
with a bottle of
serotonin,
oxytocin,
endorphins,
dopamine
risky and raw
on your cousin’s kitchen floor,
a place where
your hands find its way
to the arch of my back,
with you whispering,
“I can’t breathe”,
only for me to catch you smiling.
bittersweet is how
you tell me you admire
everything about me
in between
inhales and exhales,
sounding like a drunk person
eager to have the next sip.
bittersweet is when
that bottle is empty
and all that’s left
of the bottles are wines and whiskeys
and more nightcaps to sip out,
what we both do not want
to take away–
like the night
and the memories combined
and the love that grew bitter
and sour
like the colors of wine.
bittersweet is when you love me
and i love you
and we still couldn’t be together.
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there’s a scar that extends over my body- long, lithe, endless.
it starts its journey from the back of my neck, right where my hairline ends and branches into two lines; one creeps up my face and cracks my skull in two and one slithers down my collarbone. my head still hurts, sometimes. i shake a bottle with no label and pills fall into my hand: white, pink, grey, blue. i swallow them dry.
the one down my collarbone has tapering ends- a ghostly white weed that has taken root in my chest, one that can never be plucked out. i smooth my hand over it and linger over a particularly nasty bump right where my heart beats. the clumsy stitches holding my wound together left a phantom pain behind. time has healed the wound to a mere scar but the pain, ever the loving old friend, drops by to say hi now and then.
i don’t like bitter things. it doesn’t sit well with the metal on my tongue and yet, that’s all i taste in the delicacies i’m being served by my beloved. maybe it’s yet another thing i’ve started to make up. or maybe, it’s the sight of the bleeding wound of yours that’s poisoning everything that touches my tongue.
the wound, it’s fresh and a horror to look at. you are white as a sheet, shaking, shaking and oh, i remember that. i remember that. i remember the only colour i used to see back then: an endless, cruel, grey.
i can see colours now. food on my tongue tastes like something. but i look at your blood and feel something akin to longing, to hunger. jealousy feels sour at first- like a candy made wrong- and then simmers down to a slow, unbearable bitterness. i assess the sight, committing every fold of the disfigured skin to memory, and ask, “how does it feel?”
“painful.”
the sudden image of my viscera spilling out of my gaping stomach fills my head. i blink and press my palm on my torso. it’s intact. i raise a glass of water to my lips and wash away the bitterness.
sometimes, when i’m laughing and giddy with happiness, it hits me. i am suddenly five and in a crowd full of strangers who are pushing and pulling and happy and feel that awful, disgusting desperation well up in me as i beg, “i wanna go home.” but i am not five and there is no crowd and i am wearing pajamas in my house and you are here and lord, i still want to go home.
“let me tend to it.”
you smile and extend your hurt with trusting eyes. shame tastes like stale milk and yet, i drink the barrel dry.
this scar of mine, it travels down my thighs and winds itself around my ankles, shackling them. i touch the raised skin, contemplative. it feels like seconds and ages ago at the same time, that fateful day i picked my skin apart, pushed my bones back all wrong and stitched it back together. i don’t bleed, not anymore. wrong has become my right and there’s nothing wrong with that.
this body of mine, it has never known what it meant to rest, what it meant to not bleed. i stand in front of the mirror and stare. the scar is long, lithe, endless. i can never finish mapping all the crevices of my body it hides in. home, for so long, was walls painted grey and endless nights and the embrace of my empty bed. it was brittle bones and trembling fingers and the anvil on my chest. and i think that’s what you call home too, now.
after stuffing my organs back in my body and stitching myself up for years filled solely with nights, holding myself together feels more natural than breathing. i see blues and purples and pinks now. my ribs are cracked open and filled with a garden of dandelions. i sleep and i wake up and my smile doesn’t waver. it’s new. it’s terrifying.
maybe, i’ve never known what a home is. today, my bones are strong and my heart is light and i find that it’s okay, it’s wonderful, it’s stellar to be alright. “i wanna go home” i think and with a start realise i can build one now. i think i would paint its walls a hundred different colours. it will be horrible. it will be mine.
“that looks painful,” i say, and mean it, “let me take care of it.”
you do. i wash your wounds with cold water and dry them with care. i press my lips over the patched-up skin and tell you it’ll heal, that it always does. you don’t believe me but that’s okay. i wouldn’t have, either. for now, i’ll cut some apple slices and try not to nick myself. the only way i know how to peel an apple is the way my father did: careful and slow, in an awfully clumsy way that ended up scraping more flesh than peel off the fruit.
we eat apples and you count my scars. they look like lightning, you say, and ask me how the thunder sounded. loud, i say and you hold my face like you could have shielded me from it. you didn’t, but it’s okay. we’re here now.
wounds scar. they heal. we will paint our walls yellow first- yellow like the sun, my garden of dandelions, your smile. in the warmth of our home with our bodies pressed together, the thunder won’t be so loud.
(for @nosebleedclub's january #18 prompt)
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15
Broken glass and bloody roses, I've worn
Sharp and savvy both beauty and disgrace
My halo has cracked and my wings are torn
These years weighing so heavy on my face
A chasm, a canyon, another fall
I pirouette toward another bright fire
A siren singing, I follow its call
This might be heaven or might be my pyre
A broken clock glaring angry at me
This time wasted has not made me wise
I still keep looking but I cannot see
If it is rebirth or just my demise?
I plant these flowers, they never last
We both just wilt on a bed of the past
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