i talk about tearing flesh from an arm with my teeth and you stare at me in horror like you haven't tasted blood before. i talk about being crushed like a small animal on a fast lane and you ask me how it's humanly possible of me to cling to the stone of the sidewalk the way i do. my mother could skin her hands at the sink and it would still not rid her from the truth that is that she has fed me her body and that she is convict to the manslaughter of her child.

quick question: how does one write about their mother without mentioning their mother? mine is a fortune teller. she tells me in the dead of the night while i am on the kitchen floor with the boning knife in one hand and and a towel in the other that i will never be loved right. that i will never find real love. that i will always suffer if i look for it.

mother knows best.

she tells me she destroyed herself for me and that i am selfish and cruel for not destroying myself for her. she begs me to be beautiful. she begs me to be the daughter she wanted to have. my friend tells me on the swing on a beautiful springtime evening that i am selfish and cruel for devouring every little piece of every damn thing that has ever tasted like love to me. and when i go home in the evening, my mother looks at me like she did the night she told me she wishes she'd killed me when i was a child. i tell everyone i am starving. my mother tells me she told me so.

i stare at the red in the ball of spit i hawked onto the bathroom floor. i retouch the scars on my thighs. i hack away at my hair with the big crafting scissors. i pray to god that i will wake up tomorrow beautiful and loveable. i wake up the same way. my mother tells me to never come back when i step out to leave for work. i tell her i am trying my best but nothing is working. she tells me she told me so. she tells me she's glad to see me in pain because i deserve it.

maybe i do deserve it.

i visit a clothing store and step into the fitting room just to see the way i am reflected back and forth in the front-and-back mirrors. i look and i see a morbid, mangled ruin the greatest what-could-have-been of all time. and by that i mean, i see a million possibilities in one. all the girls i could have been. and at the very center, where the image gets so small it's blurry and barely visible maybe i am beautiful. maybe i am loveable. maybe i find real love and maybe i don't suffer for it.

maybe i am the daughter my mother wanted.

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

suffering and religion

(references coming soon)

On codependent friendships and their inevitable demise.

V.E. Schwab, A Conjuring of Light // Sally Rooney, Normal People // Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe // Isaac Fellman, Dead Collections // Elliott Smith, Waltz #2 (XO) // Mitski, Why Didn't You Stop Me? // one of our last conversations.

It took me days of spiraling over the fact “what did I do wrong?” “Where did I lack?” “When will I be enough ?” And many other such questions to realise people can LIKE something and still not WANT it. People can WANT something and still not MAKE THE EFFORTS to get it. So it’s okay to not have the guy who you thought for a moment loved you , it’s okay to not have some things because with people it’s always a two way effort. Even when you give your 99percent to have them , there will still be 1 percent effort of them just saying yes to have them. So let it go, you have a lot waiting ahead for you. If you won’t move you’ll never discover those. So STOP MARINATING IN YOUR WHAT IF’s , and SHOULD’VE’s.

"I remained too stunned to think; and it was not until I began to think, that I began fully to know how wrecked I was, and how the ship in which I had sailed was gone to pieces."

- Pip, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

i am a rabid animal lurking in the woods, and you are the smoke that pours from the mouth of a rifle. the last remnant of my existence, before i am dead and dragged away / the smell of you. i can be a bleeding wound in the hide of a beast, and you can be the snow that stains red. the colour of something alive when you rip it open. the colour of love.

i am not a good thing / i get on my knees and beg you for things like the devil begs a believer to sin. i wish you would stick a blade in me and carve me up. i wish you would wear claws on your nails and tear me up like i am sand and you are looking for something buried beneath my skin. i wish i could pour your scent into my lungs and survive.

you made me feel something once and i have been searching for it in you ever since. maybe if you get a handgun and gut me with the barrel, i would feel it again. you can stab me and fall back when i say nothing. i’ll clean the scrapes on your skin with brandy and kiss the gauze a blotted sunset-red before i lay it over the wound. if we were stranded on a desert island, i would cut my thigh in two for you to eat.

consume me. destroy me. make me feel something again. i’m running out of ideas.

or maybe i just need to lay my head on your shoulder in a dark place with distant lights throwing delicate shadows over the slants of your face again. maybe i just need soft music, smooth-handed heat and blood in my mouth, and i will know that i am surrendering myself the right way.

be the bullet that shatters my clavicle. be the incense that burns in the realm beyond death. be the grip on my ankles / drag me into the void and tell me nothing’s gonna hurt me while you do it. say it to me. mon cœur qui bat, toi.

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena // Alain de Botton, Essays in Love // Eden Robinson, "Writing Prompts for the Broken-Hearted" // Chloe Liese, Always Only You // Anne Carson and Euripides, An Oresteia // Two—Sleeping At Last // Studio Bones, SK8 the Infinity // Trista Mateer, "is it okay to say this?" // @moodylilac // D. H. Lawrence, "The Rainbow"

“I love you.”

★☆☆☆☆

“If you take two steps away from me, I'll take three steps towards you. If you take one step, two steps forward, I'll be here waiting.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Thomas was glowering. "You cannot make me stay here." "I can," Alastair said with feeling. "I will. I shall sit on you if necessary."

How do I make what happened between us gentle? How do I make one of the most annihilating moments of my life less violent? Others might think there was verbal or emotional abuse involved but truth being the lack of words and emotions is what made it catastrophic. It’s very difficult to explain how in the beginning all we had were words and your eyes that spoke to mine, and in the end it was just the yearning that was coherent but the reality that you had in your mind clouded your eyes. We never spoke again, never in a way that felt like there was comprehension involved , it was just my begging for you against your reality that you were stoic about. I hope when you come back you see the destruction your lack caused. And if you don’t come back I hope you realise how much power you hold.

“𝔩𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔞𝔴 𝔍𝔢𝔰𝔲𝔰 𝔪𝔬𝔳𝔢 𝔣𝔯𝔬𝔪 𝔱𝔯𝔢𝔢 𝔱𝔬 𝔱𝔯𝔢𝔢 𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔟𝔞𝔠𝔨 𝔬𝔣 𝔥𝔦𝔰 𝔪𝔦𝔫𝔡, 𝔞 𝔴𝔦𝔩𝔡 𝔯𝔞𝔤𝔤𝔢𝔡 𝔣𝔦𝔤𝔲𝔯𝔢 𝔪𝔬𝔱𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔥𝔦𝔪 𝔱𝔬 𝔱𝔲𝔯𝔫 𝔞𝔯𝔬𝔲𝔫𝔡 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔠𝔬𝔪𝔢 𝔬𝔣𝔣 𝔦𝔫𝔱𝔬 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔡𝔞𝔯𝔨 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔥𝔢 𝔪𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱 𝔟𝔢 𝔴𝔞𝔩𝔨𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔬𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔴𝔞𝔱𝔢𝔯 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔫𝔬𝔱 𝔨𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔦𝔱 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔱𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔰𝔲𝔡𝔡𝔢𝔫𝔩𝔶 𝔨𝔫𝔬𝔴 𝔦𝔱 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔡𝔯𝔬𝔴𝔫."

- 𝐟𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐨'𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐫. (𝟏𝟗𝟓𝟐). 'wise blood: a novel’

“… it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name.”

— Atticus Finch, To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

(I’m reading it for the first time. Such an amazing book.)