Benjamin Alire Sáenz, "To The Desert"

thinking about why horatio keeps calling hamlet “my lord” even though it’s so clear that hamlet respects horatio as an equal. it’s not out of propriety, because hamlet tells him that he doesn’t have to do it. horatio would follow hamlet into hell without a second thought, and the only thing that stops him from doing so in the end is hamlet’s word. he’s too loyal to ever disobey even hamlet’s slightest wish. so if hamlet wants them to speak like equals, why does this remain? i think it’s a term of endearment more than anything. because horatio’s love is devotion. he is hamlet’s, forever and always. maybe “my lord” is the closest he can get to “mine”. again and again and again i am yours and you are mine, every time that they speak. you are miserable, you are desperate, you are constantly in doubt. you are mine. you are banished, you are a murderer, you are dead. i am yours. horatio reveres hamlet. he can’t help it. he also loves him. he can’t help that either. so, it’s my lord. his respect with his possession. because horatio knows that there are pieces of hamlet that are his alone - to carry, to love, to live with when he’s gone. it’s a reminder that horatio is hamlet’s, yes, but also a reminder that hamlet, despite it all, is his.

SOMETHING CLAWS OUT FROM THE CENTER OF YOU, THE FOUNTAIN OF PHILOSOPHY NESTLED IN THE SUPERIOR VENA CAVA BLEEDS SHARP AND SICKLY. FLECHETTES OF PUTRID SERRATED BONE LIKE THE JAVELINS OF SOME FETID GREEK HERO CONDEMNED TO THE PATHETIC CLOACA OF HISTORY. BREATHE. DIE. REPEAT.

ONE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER MORNING THE CRACKS WILL HAVE HEALED AND THE TROJANS WILL STAY INSIDE YOUR WOODEN EQUINE BELLY WHERE IT IS SAFE AND DARK WHERE THEY WILL SPOIL INTO GENTLE OBLIVION, FERMENTING SWORD AND BONE INTO GRIT AND SLUDGE. IT WILL STAY LIKE THAT FOREVER. IT WILL.

"WILL IT EVER BE SOFT?" SOMETHING CRAWLS UP YOUR BACK. VERTEBRAE TWITCH INWARD, BENDING AND SNAPPING TO RECOIL LIKE WHEN YOU WERE BURNED WITH THE CURLING IRON. "YES." IT WHISPERS, "TENDER. LIKE A VIRGIN. LIKE VEAL."

these tags are so funnyyyy

Alois Hans Schramm - Arkadien (detail)

Inspired by @myuni-moon, @willowedwisteria, @lovelornobsessions, @versadies <3333

Death has cast her gaze on your wretched body.

Each puff of breath you take burns in your tired lungs, your legs long since unable to carry you any further. You were so tired but you still—

You still wanted to live.

A choked sob catches in your throat, raw and painful. Your hands scrabble over stone and dirt and snow, desperate for anything but that useless, pathetic hope is crushed into a hundred pieces when a foot pressed down, hard, on your thin wrist.

Xiao's golden eyes peer at you with just a twinge of pity but you don't want his pity, you want his mercy. Mercy from a painful death and from the hatred you'd been a recipient to ever since you found yourself in Genshin Impact, wonder and excitement all but lost when someone wearing your face declared you an imposter and demanded your head on a platter.

Cracked lips fall open, a gasp tearing from your chest like tearing flesh off bones. Your tears blur his face into another unrecognisable person, ready to be your judge, jury and executioner for a crime uncommitted yet blamed all the same on you.

Hands, golden lined and colder than Dragonspine itself clasp around your neck faster than you can sob out more pathetic pleas. You swear you can feel Zhongli bending the bones from his grip alone, your windpipe slowly, achingly giving way under his fingers yet it doesn't compare to the sheer pain you feel at the hatred in his eyes when he stares down at you.

Only a sick gurgle escaped past your lips, just as ugly as what you've become.

"Thank you, darlings," the monster wearing your skin finally appears in all their splendid glory and followed by more "loyal acolytes", smiling so serenely you would've thrown up what little food you'd eaten had it not been for your current predicament. "Still not going to repent? To ask for my frogiveness? To shed this shameful skin of yours?"

This skin is mine! You want to shriek. You want to claw at their eyes and their stolen body to see if behind it all was blood and bone or just an empty abyss. This skin is mine!

"Xiao?"

His attention is immediately on them, even the pity now long gone. You are still staring at Zhongli's eyes and it feels as though the sun itself has turned its back on your. "Yes, your excellency? What can this lowly servant do for you?"

Your monstrous twin sighs, as though they feel genuinely bad. Lies, lies, lies, liar—

"Kill them for me. Make their last breath be a scream."

Zhongli's hands falls away and you are not even granted the privilege of one breath before Xiao's spear— the one you gave him— is lodged deep in your stomach.

You scream just as the beast wearing your flesh demanded— your scream is liquid horror; it is a sound deep from the corners of the abyss where monsters lurk and the sun doesn't shine; your scream lets him— lets everyone— know that by cutting you, they are cutting themselves; lets them know that that true sound is one that can be found within them, yet by their own hands they've blackened every vision oh happiness and joy you could have shown them.

Golden ichor covers the ground, your bruised body, your hands. You cough it up your raw throat and beyond the haze of painpainpain, you feel even more hands descend on your writhing body. They plea and beg and grovel to you and even beyond that, there is another shriek but you can no longer tell if it is your or somebody else's.

You meet Xiao's golden eyes, and they stare at you in muted horror and regret. You want to laugh but all you do is choke on even more blood as you're picked, as a maelstorm of healing hydro and anemo surrounds you.

Death has cast her gaze on your wretched body, yet she turns away from you all the same.

SPECIFIC SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

Soundtracks to Mahmoud Darwish's poetry

Summer mornings in the charming scenery of northern Italy.

Twilight but the vampires are dressed like in The Matrix.

Orchestra at the gates of hell.

Half a corpse, half a God

All time ever does is pass

and all you ever do is remember.

He reminds me of a comfortable sweater that you pull on, knowing it will keep you warm every time.