What If I Told You It's All In Your Head And You're Not Drowning But Living, Instead?

— In the Future, Jay Hulme, in '100 Queer Poems, an anthology' (2022)

[text ID: I've forgotten what my face looks like / but can easily describe my spine. / The way it bends under pressure, / the way it curves, but will not break.]

And many, many valleys of sorrow and mountains of death.

Marina Tsvetaeva, from a diary entry featured in Earthly Signs Moscow Diaries, 1917-1922

The cold and the void have made me into a deadly concoction of shivering mess.

back from a vacation to the same spirals and work, home sweet home.

Anger bursts inside of me as fire crackers under the moonlight, with a cackle first and then a battle cry.

as the solitude comforts me,

the loneliness eats me up and

I let it.

kinda wanna leave. kinda wanna ghost everyone. kinda wanna rot under a blanket. kinda wanna feel loved. kinda wanna feel wanted. kinda wanna

On nights like this, I try to remember to be kinder to myself even if that kindness feels so wrong.

My childhood trauma didn't make me stronger. it made me a people pleaser. it made me forgive way too much. it made me not speak when i'm supposed to. it made me an extreme empath.

You stumble at my doorstep again

with the sly smile and sparkly eyes

that I fell in love with at once

and you pull me close

keep my heart in your warm hands

while you whisper our names together,

oh, how my heart just beats right of your hands.

I love you, with the pieces and mirrors

and blood and tears,

I love you with all my breaths and being.