coldfeetonthekitchenfloor

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

Three days in arms. Your voice breaking through darkness, breaking through song, low and gentle, bright and full of laughter. Tattooed blue, your shoulder right down to the wrist, its’ workings, intricate, bird boned. Lips so gentle I have to concentrate to feel them through all these barriers I try and fail to hold up.

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

"How do you write such realistic dialogue-" I TALK TO MYSELF. I TALK TO MYSELF AND I PRETEND I AM THE ONE SAYING THE LINE. LIKE SANITY IS SLOWLY SLIPPING FROM BETWEEN MY FINGERS WITH EVERY MEASLY WORD THEY TYPE OUT. THAT IS HOW.

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

The composition of butterfly wings, how if you hold me too tightly you’ll break the flutters in my flight pattern. You handle me too much and I’ll crumble into powder. I don’t like being in peoples fists, it’s hard to breathe through the gaps of grip. Don’t smother the flames of me by holding too tight. I thrive off freedom and floating air currents and enough space in the sky to hear my own voice. Let me be quiet, there’s a million whirling thoughts in here that I need to decipher before I put sound to. Let me be, let me be, and all that I am will fall like music around you.

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

Creation Ritual

[1] You start writing, first thing in the morning, on the balcony, drinking mushroom tea. Sit up straight. 1 page minimum. Or write until you start crying. You sense apprehension and that's when you must keep going. You feel the fear and do it anyway. The fear of being seen too clearly. You are learning to love your unoccupied time.

[2] A page of writing is not enough. How to turn it into something tangible? You work within the rules in order deform them slightly. They will find this refreshing. If it made you cry then it will make somebody else cry. But they need a little encouragement. To build rapport before they let you in the door. Something familiar followed by something entirely new.

[3] And now is the time to read, reflect. Look up at the clouds for a while. How does the new information feel? Maybe go out into the street. What does this new world look like? Test out your hypothesis. Not just whether it's true or false, but how? And why?

[4] Once internalised, you must write again. This time from a place of deep understanding. If it changed your life then it will change somebody else's life. Not every thread will reach this point. But the ones that do, they have longevity. Ideas are cheap, but real solutions linger.

[5] Now it's your choice, do you want to share it with the world? Do you want them to be better too? At the cost of your vulnerability? Your ego? Your pride? The truth is, it doesn't exist until you let it free, to enter into a relationship with the world. Until then, it's just another secret part of you.

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

oh god please give me more purple prose. every genre book release these days seems to be written by someone who thinks that the function of words is to act as a sort of informative alt text for the comic book or streaming service original series they are clearly picturing in their mind

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

So for over a month and a half I’ve been told in my Creative writing MA class that my writing is too poetic and abstract to work in the form of a novel and that I need to simplify my meanings and sentences. I did as I was told and lost all interest in writing if I have to write in the same style that every other novelist does. Today I received this note from a classmate and didn’t realise how much I needed to hear it. Don’t change your art just because other people don’t get it. Don’t change your style to fit in with everyone else. It’s your story not theirs.

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

Before, something in me was small,

a quiet library sush.

Soul, but under snow.

Mutilated shades of mourning lows.

A dance, a fragile golden girl in death’s arms.

But this is after.

This is after and it feels full of sentiment.

Bottom lip greedy now for all you did to make the laughter.

This is after and I’m not someone borrowed, forgiveness hollowed.

Deep damnation to take another breath because I might remember how to be awake with a little more peace.

My soul answers the dizzy brink of echoes: the room full of darkness is closed for at least

a little while now.

After. I learn the worlds between bodies, you and me alone.

Chest full of honey-comb.

To find my days, one thing, one phrase, I’ll be the one that stays.

After, and my head no longer going against its law; of my heart.

My life, pulled apart

but with you.

6/30 prompt— Write about something that has changed. Contrast before and after

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

Doing some stuff over here if you want to take a look :)

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

The breaking up of dull life, your dramatics, golden silk in my touches, your laugh, touched just a little by the depths of your sadness, hidden. The rage in you simmering, converted into sighs, my last attempt at using my hands, fingers slipping away from your grasp. The smell of your hair haunting me in different places for a week, your lips mouthing lyrics, mouthing poetry, the importance of words in lonely places. The look you give me as the door shuts. Being ok with moments of feeling that don’t last.

You don’t ever expect a sunset to admire you back, but sometimes, for a little while, you let yourself hope.

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

“I’m waiting for you to come back. If you were a season you’d be autumn and all its leaving. You should know that you can’t be all those colours and then just disappear on people like that. It hurts to look at empty branches. You sent your eyes somewhere else and I miss them. I’m sorry, it’s just I lose pieces of me when you’re not around. I’m sorry, I’m trying so hard to be selfless. I’m sorry it’s just that I can’t wait and look at empty skies if the sun won’t look at me.”

—

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

Something new under the sun

I take you to the edge with me, but I know you’ve been going on your own anyway. There’s not many of us who can never get rid of the need to dive down into the depths, who are always searching for a way back in once we’re dry and above ground. I know we both know the craving, the same pull to be submerged and floating in a bottomless ocean of more.

The only way to reach it is to hold a hand when the clocks take time and turn it liminal. So to bask in it, to drink it all in, is to turn to you and ask unspoken questions with open souled eyes until the sun comes up. And we’ve probably drunk too much but the panic in me to give up the night and the panic in you to lose seconds of any day means neither of us can think about resting our heads.

You squeeze me lemons and layer me in love and I choke on the way my heart sighs out in finally. Because you’re someone who will run to the end of the earth with me, even when everyone says it’s too dangerous. You’re one of the rarities that will step, toes off the edge, looking at the beauty that each others body holds within.

In the fragile light I tease you to ease some of the weight, the morning sun turning your eyes a forest green and your heart inside out. Truth and honesty falling in melodies from you like bird song.

There are too many metaphors to layer you in and before me, you lay out all these parts of me I hadn’t noticed.

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

Her hands wrap rainbow flags into your curls, and she keeps appearing and disappearing into the crowd like the music can’t quite decide where to take her. The pride wraps its hands around your throat because it’s overflowing from your friends and their smiles. Later on she grins at you when you try to make her laugh and it’s a life jacket made of helium. Fresh air is the promise as she calls your name, her hands on your face and lips on your mouth no air and all surprise before your exhale of surrender. You hear from somewhere ah ok there you go, and you don’t know if it’s some kind of relief inside you or a friend playing Cupid. Through all her confidence, you don’t even realise that you’re leading until you realise that now she’s not. The glitter falls at a touch. Speckled freckles over her nose matching ones you’d stuck across your cheeks. She’s all flickering wide eyes, green, blue, gold, awake in a way that startles something dormant in you. A stranger whose passion for life rubs off on you the way pieces of you will stay with her. A first. When she says, goodbye, I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again, it feels right, is some kind of impression of freedom that stays on your skin. Goodbyes are getting easier these days, are losing their dark edge. And I hope after all that is said and done, she finds glitter in her hair, 3 days later, and smiles with pride.

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

💖

❤️

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

For if my kissing you caused so much pain

I won’t hurt you by kissing you again

-Catullus

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

If you don’t feel anything you miss everything if you don’t feel anything you miss everything

[coldfeetonthekitchenfloor]

The walk of shame or bus of shame has nothing to do with shame when she had held you whilst you slept. When the tingle of her lips is still tucked into your bottom one, when the taste of her skin is still on your tongue. It has nothing to do with shame when you still have her voice in your ears, teasing once she took some barriers down, breathless as she showed you your worth. It should be called the cocky confidence of the day after, the spring in your step when you’re filled with someone else’s wanting. It should be called learning the echoes of a heartbeat you’ve never heard before. Something in the name of the smirk that pulls at your face when someone asks about it. It should be named after not the expecting but the wanting, the anticipation before the touch, the enlightenment when the touch turns out to be easy. When you touch her and she wants it and that very fact blows your brains out. It should be named after the darting of her eyes until suddenly they were still, dark and melting and searching, the indecisiveness of dancing with her face so close, the split second when you know you’re gonna give it to her. It should be called the way you feel the sun on your face, warming the pavements under foot between her place and yours, the Russian voices that floated through her flat walls and into your dreams, after being sated even if you’re a little tired. Gentle, tough, hidden and open all at once. Hearing how her friend would love you even more if they’d heard that, how now you’re thinking about being loved by more people in association. It should be named chance and wondering and how do I navigate this from here on? The relaxation of acting solely on impulse and needs and not needing to know anything more than what her laundry smells like in the borrowed shirt you took home.