inkskinned

[inkskinned]

i. probably the most wild thing - and this is true - was that she tried to break up with me using Chat-GPT.

ii. we hadn't ever seen eye-to-eye about this issue. i am flatly and annoyingly anti-bot. my entire thing is creativity and the empathy of the human spirit. communication should be about connection, not distortion through the lens of AI. otherwise: what is the fucking point.

iii. i am steadfastly loyal in all my personal relationships - to a genuine fault. that fault will become clear to both of us shortly. sometimes when you love someone, you give them the benefit of the doubt; even when you doubt that you benefit.

iv. however. i used to academically cheat a lot. i had all the sad-kid excuses you could possibly want - unsafe home, untreated severe ADHD, bullied at school. i skipped most of my classes, to the point that the truancy officer knew me personally. sometimes i stand on top of my own high-horse policy of why would you use AI? and then i see the hoofbeats i left behind me. didn't i copy homework? didn't i just sparknotes the reading? didn't i write multiple essays just using wiki as my main resource?

v. she started using AI for her job. admittedly it is a tedious, annoying job. the first steps, slippery-slope style, were uses of AI that seemed minimal - checking two documents for minor changes. reading over drafts for conciseness. the kind of thing that pushes but does not bend what "using AI" constitutes as.

vi. for the record; i stopped cheating in college. i instead became the kind of person that other people copied off of. once i'd moved out of the unsafe housing (and was free of bullies), i dedicated myself to my work with a passion my teachers called "honestly a bit much." but isn't it tempting, as an adult? why the hell should i write another cover letter for another position that's being read by AI?

vii. AI became the centerpiece of how she finished all of her writing, the way i had warned her about. the argument was pretty explosive. at that point i'd learned to be scared of her anyway - of ever having a different opinion. i tried to talk about how my own work has probably been skimmed. how it is destroying artists. i asked - how can you do this to the environment? after all - for years, she'd been vegan.

viii. there's no ethical consumption under capitalism anyway. and the world is falling apart. and everyone else does it. i keep hearing - it's here to stay, get used to it. and hell, maybe i'm that guy. sometimes i think of the panic people had when we invented GPS or tablets. how all the adults said it's going to make people stupid. maybe i am paranoid about the decline of civilization because every technological advance always does that to a generation.

ix. her job switched AI programs and she admitted to me that she couldn't really do it anymore. the new AI wasn't trained, wasn't as comprehensive. and she couldn't return to something she'd been doing for five uninterrupted years; that it was like relearning a language that used to be her mother tongue.

x. i don't know exactly when she started using Chat as her therapist. when exactly she started feeding Chat information about me. when she started answering my text messages with the famous unspaced-dash. i have my suspicions. i would have never known for certain, except that one night she opened her laptop to play a movie - and there it was. her chat prompt about me, and our relationship, and how we needed to break up. she said you weren't supposed to see that. i sat there and thought i am going to get dumped by a robot.

xi. the irony of it. i am a poet. before you ask - her final message to me had a "particular" structure to it. i still have no idea who said it. but then again: is there ever really a gap between master and puppet?

[inkskinned]

something about how censorship and capitalism are so closely intertwined. that the slow push of right-wing conservative ideals are closely mirrored by corporate rebranding. how fast fashion restyles "femininity" into ever-more-modest aesthetics. how sydney sweeney can say my jeans are blue in a re-formatting of an advertisement that originally featured a child; but meanwhile corporations are halting DEI initiatives in their tracks.

but okay. i can't say fuck in my instagram poetry, that's fine. it always bothers me when a content creator changes their closed captions to a different word - HOH/deaf communities aren't composed of infants, and can read a swear word without fainting. but you have to censor if you don't want to get shadowbanned.

can't make a video about a person who is being violent, abusive. but the president of the united states can literally say whatever he wants, forever. you can't even really say that you think the president is a pedophile - pedophile is a word that the AI will flag.

marx wrote about how capitalism alienates us from ourselves and from others. social media continues to enhance that alienation, and now there is another layer happening - one where The Corporation gets to decide how we talk/think/interact. (don't even fucking get me started on how tumblr loves to see trans people as a threat.)

books are getting published that include the "word" unalive. this gives you a strange disassociation for a moment; feeling like 1984 exists in the real life. is this for maximum profit? but also - who could possibly be seeking out a book where violence takes place but is also the type of person who does not want to name the violence? is that even a significant portion of society - someone who wants to read the hunger games but, like, without all the child killing and anti-capitalist critique. or maybe, who knows. that fucking post about how disco elysium should be about a witch.

you watch as the late night show gets cancelled because god forbid anyone critique The Corporation. in the past year, you've watched media slowly back down from "making a stand" into bland everybody-wins gruel. you've watched plenty of corporations switch from saying (in rainbow font) "we'll always protect our FAMILY" to saying, "we value differences, but you're not a right fit for our team". in job interviews, HR is forced to talk around their policy, not wanting to specifically say identity. it's eerie.

one of the first rules of resisting fascism is "do not obey in advance."

and what is the next step anyway? will ticketmaster stop selling tickets for concerts that use swear words? will mastercard no longer cover art sales for any form of nudity, regardless of the context? god forbid there be violence in your violent video games. god forbid a person interacts with anything, ever, that might make them uncomfortable in any small way.

it reminds me of how the rest of life has also become less colorful (literally). how you need to keep your car pristine and undamaged with no bumper stickers, what if you resell it. how you'll never afford a house, so your apartment is a palatable resell-value grey. how you don't even own the tv you enjoy.

it's just - it's not enough that capitalism controls what i eat and where i go and what i do. these days, the terrible white & bloated body of capitalism is shoving his hands down my throat and holding my tongue. i need to be a brand, somehow. i, as a person existing on this site, need to reflect the brand ideals of this site.

they need to make a buck off of me, somehow.

[inkskinned]

this is so special and precious and incredible :) by pure happenstance, it's also a very full-circle moment for me. when i was first writing BABM, parts of it were handwritten. i wrote it in a notebook while sobbing about my dead cat.

lately i've been going through a Rough Time. being an author on the internet means other people can see all your Rough Times spread out in little leaflets. i am okay with this often; i hope the mirror i hold up gives you some shape of comfort. maybe that is selfish, but there is a certain grace and community i feel when someone says i hear you, i see you, i am like you, infinitely. i feel very honored any time someone enjoys my work; it is a miracle to be a part of your lives. it is an impossibility on a scale i cannot fathom.

people often wax about how books are magic - and they are! i often read 2-5 a week, a voracious reader since i was in elementary. but being a writer - and yes, i'm including you, every internet poet and fanfic author and every person saying i'm not really a writer but - it is such a strange and lonely thing. we spend hours hunched over our desks, playing with imaginary dolls in our heads. we have almost no control on how you, the reader will see or understand the thing. when we say the curtains are blue, sure we have our reasons - but we see a different set of curtains, a different blue. the story will always change, because it belongs to you. by writing, we make something that never really belongs to us. it's collaborative; it has to be read in order to exist. and we don't get to experience you reading it. that's a gift for your own brain and your own imagination.

and sometimes there is a little moment like this. and someone has written down lines that used to be in my handwriting, and i think - this is such a beautiful, small world. some part of my heart is holding you all right now, and i hope you know - for me, this is an incredible blessing.

I read Body's A Bad Monster by Rowan Perez

And I started annotating books this year in a journal. This is how it turned out:)

I genuinely feel like I wanted to write every single line in this book. They are a phenomenal writer and a brilliant story teller, and I think (from never having a conversation with them apart from their poems and prose) a wonderful person, who deserves all the warmth the world has to offer.

I took a page out of their book (aha) and blacked out the things I wrote that were Wildly personal for the internet. Over six months later and I simultaneously have talked about this book for two hours straight yet still don't have the words. @inkskinned you are the ship and the lighthouse and the tremulous sea and the navigator with a cool spyglass looking for the break in the horizon. Or whatever. :)

[inkskinned]

every time this little thing i wrote speaks to someone - it about bowls me over. i love u. keep going.

comic based on text post by the lovely @inkskinned

[inkskinned]

more than the cottage-core wlw, it was also that you found women fucking hot. the way that sweat slid down their back or how they held their pens or how their throat looked while they swallowed. not just the chaste pastel image: you wanted to fuck women, to have her on the floor or in your hotel bed. your hands in her hair, your knees spread. you wanted to taste her, to wash her off you in the morning, to hear her moans coaxed upwards. her hands grasping sheets and her cheeks turning pink and going for hours until she loses the ability to walk or talk or think.

they paint such a nice pretty image of it. it bothers you how men tell you it's hot. that it is an entire category on pornhub.

it is hot, but not in the way they think. you wanted it different. you wanted to hear her say your name like she was trying to swallow a shriek. you wanted to have her teeth in your throat. you wanted to feel her hips rock against your fingertips.

it was hot for the ways she was real, the grasp of her nails and the laughter and her body soft beneath you. the gentle gasp and the uneven stutter and the way she rolled you over. hair and claws and a bruise forming on your collarbone.

it was hot because she was yours and you were hers in that moment. and the way she had you - there was nothing dainty about it.

[inkskinned]

it took me 964 applications. i've been counting, but not well. i don't always add every quick-apply to the spreadsheet. this one was five rounds of interviews. saying my elevator pitch like a parrot, peppy and happy. for a long time, i didn't hear anything from them. i thought it was the same as always - they say where did we find you, seem excited, then ghost me. i had sent three follow-up emails hi, just checking in! excited for this opportunity!

i have a master's degree and over 10 years of work in the industry. i've worked 5 jobs at once. i have worked hard and i tried hard my entire life, no matter how burnt out i got or whatever else happened to me. i am the representation of the american dream.

but i'm not a good fit for an entry-level job, i guess, so i get told a lot we just don't think you're be happy. but they fill other positions internally, instead saying - well, there was another candidate who had 6 more days of experience. if i'm lucky, i get this sad little email back from the recruiter, all saying the same thing: we liked you, but we went with another option, good luck job hunting. that is - if i'm lucky, and they even communicate at all with me.

what a waste of fucking time. i've been counting interviews - i am a fucking master total of 42 fucking hours. can you fucking believe. i would have made rent if they'd fucking paid me.

and now nobody does remote, even though this is a job that for the last five years has been remote-completely. now they are paying 14 an hour for a job that used to be 33.50. now they are saying we are looking for rockstars and mean we don't give you health insurance. "we need someone motivated and a little crazy" translates to you will have one day of PTO annually. every job board filled with the same AI-generated bullshit of "our values/join our family/Make Waves With Us". they need to be constantly growing. who knows if they're genuinely hiring.

sometimes i want to write did you know i saved a life once into the cover letter. sometimes i want to put a little secret in there, a little short story about how when i was a kid i used to dream of speaking to my plants. i have the same six conversations with people and answer the same eight questions. sometimes at the end they'll throw something in there that's completely irrelevant. what is my go-to belting song (and yes, they say, there is a wrong answer). what animal would i turn into. what's the most reactive element i've had direct contact with. do i know how to lift an elephant.

964 feels like a nice number, somehow round and pleasing. sometimes i have nightmares where the spreadsheet grows arms and strangles me to death. i saw an old friend in one of these recently; he said the earth will end and you'll still be applying until you run out of breath. 964 is a lot of time to spend filling out an application on a site that doesn't load properly and just steals my information.

one time in desperation i applied for a supermarket position. just anything to make the ends meet, good lord, i'd take anything. i was rejected from it. i'm not, like, proud. i'd take anything so i can afford to live again. and meanwhile, god! our fucking president!

i can't think about it without shaking. i had to beg for help. i paid my own way through college - i have been working (under the table) since i was 12.

nine hundred and sixty-four. and finally! something! and here's the fucking thing: i had to turn it down because it's in your city. how pathetic to think that 2 months ago, i would have agreed to move out to DC, my hands in your hair. my life splashed on your sheets. how pathetic that 2 months ago, you said you wanted me. 964 fucking jobs later, and how pathetic! i can't say yes because my life is entirely different. holy shit.

it's just hell. because god fucking protect you if you have a breakup or a mental breakdown or health issues or need your meds. you can try for a year and still hear fucking nothing from the job market. i have no idea how many times i've said i give up and i still fucking kept doing it. every moment like sandpaper against a raw wound. lowering and lowering my expectations. watching my savings dwindle to nothing. thank you for submitting your application!

back into the frying pan. over and over again.

[inkskinned]

Hi I'm really shy to say this but I love your writing and I feel weirdly connected to what you're going through right now. I've been reading your work for years now and I wish there was some way to support you through this. You've supported so many of us. Sending love from AUS

i love you all so much :) i'm always deeply sorry when people can relate to my writing - but i'm glad it can give you any small thing. i hope you all know that every message like this - i tend to keep them rather than responding, because i look at them often :)

if you do want to support me, consider a donation that helps me pay rent or purchasing a poem for $15 :)

so much of being a person is reinvention. i am picking up a little needle and i am resewing myself back together. one day i hope to be a poet that writes only of loam and honey. in the meantime, in the murk - i walk with you all. we might as well sing, after all, if we're gonna get dirty.

[inkskinned]

so when i was little, my dad would put on records any time we had to deep-clean the house. it's how i was introduced to the song roxanne.

i was like, maybe 5. "why is she putting on a red light?" i thought perhaps it was about the game "red light green light", which i enjoyed quite a bit because i was quick and small, and also i was prone to violence. maybe sting and the police wanted to run very fast and roxanne kept calling "red light" like the one kid in my kindergarten class who played the game wrong.

this is not what the song is about. add to this a fact that will become a problem later in my life (lesbian, nonbinary, etc) - my family is deeply catholic. my father (deacon, conservative, staring at a 5 year old) i guess sort of panicked because he said: "you know bug lights? and how they're blue?"

i was aware of this. some lights kill bugs but all lights were married to bugs, in my estimation of things. some marriages just end in killing, which i had learned from sneakily watching murder, she wrote.

he tried to explain that the red light is a bug-light, but just a different type. as an adult, i think he was mostly joking.

as a child, i immediately accepted this. this explained the pain in the man's voice. critically, reader, the understanding i had? they had written a song about roxanne, who is a bug. i would sing along and feel great empathy for this terribly suicidal roxanne bug, RIP.

anyway the answer to your question (how long) is: like a lot longer than you'd think. i watched moulin rougue for the first time and thought to myself: now hang on a second.

[inkskinned]

she and i got a little drunk and shittalked, mostly about you and how badly you hurt me. at one point she forced a mock-sober face and pointed to me. "okay. would you ever take 'em back though?"

the look on my face was probably closer to a pigsnout, because she burst out laughing. between chuckles she said, "i've literally never seen a human face make a question mark before, damn."

i held up my hands in surrender. "don't you dare manifest anything like that for me." i didn't know the answer and i didn't want to think about it. some days i hope i never see you again. some days i craft long, terrible speeches; trying to figure out what i could say to make you understand. sometimes i think hell no and sometimes - well if you got therapy and -

i picked a bug off my thigh. sometimes i picture dying like a fruitfly, great-gatsby-style in a giant pool of apple cider vinegar (with, of course, a coulee of dish soap). just to be so tiny, and dying surrounded by having. "i kind of think fruitflies are like tantalus," i said aloud. i poured myself another glass of the boxed white.

"you ever just give up on fishing a bug out of your drink and decide - fuck it, let's just eat the fly?" she held up her hand and i shoved the box clumsily over.

at once, we both said, "that counts as free protein."

we were splayed on the floor, akimbo around her coffee table. i pushed over onto my stomach, kicking my legs like a kid. "once i googled it and did you know bugs have fiber in them? bugs."

"okay, but." she took a little sip. her finger went back up into the air. "would you rather - feel the breakup slowly; even slower than like we have to feel things... like, maybe we could get it down to, what, 5 minutes a day. but then you don't feel anything the rest of the day. but! you have those 5 minutes for a long time."

"oh no. not the emotional klarna lay away payment style."

"i'm still paying off my chipotle," she said, grinning, "but no hang on - or! would you rather..."

"or would i rather?"

she squinted a little then, considering. "would you rather feel all of it, all at once, for like, 3 straight days. or however long it takes." she tapped her lip. "see, when i started this, i first thought i'd do that one, but i can just time things right to be really drunk any time i have those 5 emotionally-charged minutes. plus then i can just move along with my day."

i feel you all the time. your absence so strange and vital. it is so random, is the thing - i'll be fine one moment; and the next i feel as if i got punched. "well, how bad are the 3 bad days?"

she raised her eyebrows. "so bad, dude. i'm talking panic attack, sobbing, oscar performance. like you can't eat or sleep or breathe."

i gave a little sad laugh. "i kind of already did that, and i'm still..." i didn't like how i made the room feel so i tried to re-navigate. "but if it's worse than that? like it's all of it? i don't know, i could survive it, probably. i'd just need to take a long weekend off work."

"if you survive it," she said. "which like. my last breakup - yeah, i don't know. i would have loved to save time by getting over him immediately, because you know i was still -"

"don't talk to me about connor i will get angry. because why was he breadcrumbing you during his own wedding." too late, i was already mad about that again. "and no offense, girl, but you know the part that really fucking gets me about all of that emotional-fucking-manipulation is -"

at once, we both said the end of my sentence: "- he wasn't even good at it." both of us tipped our heads back and laughed in the same way, and then laughed again just because of how it had occurred, pawing sort of drunkenly at each other's hands for a formal handshake.

i sat back. a fruitfly landed on the edge of my glass. i watched her little body tremble. "i don't know," i said honestly. i felt a little bit like crying, or maybe it was a hiccup. i gestured at my body. "i worry i'll never really be over it. how do i even calculate the size of grief." i took a breath. "i worry that there's so much. what if i'm - like in the real world, even - what if i'm 'paying it off' forever?"

she looked up at me, and for a moment i felt the weight and love of our entire friendship - years and years of this massive thing we built together. it was like the walls had turned to foxfur. she held her hand out again, and i took it. she was so warm and beautiful, like stained glass.

"i have good credit," she said, "and when you finally run out of savings, my love? i'll put my card down instead."

[inkskinned]

“My hands are covered in dead skin.”

[inkskinned]

NOT to be romantic but yeah my friends are the treasure i found along the way. fuck it, sure, friendship is magic; i've sat down at a table and felt at home and i don't even know what a "home" is. half of them are necromancers anyway. they found me half-dead and they put their hands to my inert body and moved my limbs and said it's okay. it sucks. but we'll both get up again.

[inkskinned]

despite pages of poems and the entire book i wrote you - you only ever wrote me two songs. the first has the lyric coming up on 7.13, the date we first started really flirting. it's been three years from then, and my life has been utterly ruined. we haven't spoken in a month. i oscillate between being a wreck and being wildly, manically happy. i go long periods without thinking of you - and then i keep myself up, tortured by memories.

i think it's important to note we had been friends for years first. that i had learned to trust you, to think better of you. that you knew who i was - and you still fucking broke me. you knew all the ways i had worked to be okay with myself. all my independence, my hobbies. you could have left me alone, is the thing. you could have let me just keep fucking living.

i keep writing paragraphs on paragraphs about what you did, what you said - who you were. how it escalated so slowly. how i am still scared to admit the truth of things, fearing your response. you taught me that fear. it's only been a month, but still - already, how strange to think of who i was while i was with you. that was a husk-girl, cowering, servile. i can't believe let you in my fucking house.

three weeks before you discarded me; you took me ring shopping. you would tell me so many times i was the love of your life, someone that you "couldn't live without."

the last thing you sent me was that second song - a new one, finally. it's about how i'll never get what i want. about how miserable the idea of a life with me is.

my mother was furious. i had to call her - i was sobbing on the floor of my bathroom about it. She knows it kills me that i can't have kids, i said, breathless, silver and shaking with anguish, Why would she make a fucking song about how sad that is.

you know her, and you know how gentle and forgiving she is. how rare her anger is. her response was slow, deliberate. sweetheart, she said, she can write any song she wants. i know my girl. you are going to write a book instead.

i hiccupped a laugh, but she was still talking. she dropped her voice low, almost scraping through the phone and onto the floor with me. it was a strange tone, almost like feeling a storm coming when there's nowhere safe to be.

i want you to rip her apart, she said. do you think you can you do that for me?

[inkskinned]

so we were in the car and the rain was coming down so hard that the nissan in front of us put on the hazard lights and i started wiggling and said it’s a disco! and wanted to put on abba but alex was right - i have too much spread across the hearth right now & i would have crashed us both (and the dog) into the guardrail. these days every time we go up to maine i get a little bit more bored of it. i’ve been thinking a little too hard about the plan i have, which is to say that i’m in therapy once a week, and love kate more than i love a gun. we were on the road for 5 hours which wasn’t long enough to cover either of our whole histories, but it was long enough for both of us to admit how bad it got. i cried about what happened to them, which is funny because i laughed when it was my turn to say that yeah so that’s how i broke my arm. everyone around us was almost invisible in the thunderstorm except the yellow winking lights flashing on&off and some anonymous folk song was playing. a few times in the ride i found the music i’d put on to be inappropriate but didn’t have another idea for what to exchange it with. everyone i know and love is turning 30 and i’m living in a tiny apartment that doesn’t see the sun and my windshield wiper needs to be replaced and i don’t think i’m going to buy the gun but i’ll let you know if that changes.

we threw the party after i picked the woman’s teeth off the floor and i hadn’t washed my hands enough afterward, even though the bartender let me behind to the hot sink and good soap. people stepped around her while she pooled down the stairs and got blood on my phone. for a moment when she asked me to open the camera so she could see the damage, it was me and her in a strange, over-bright selfie, and i thought - oh fuck, she kind of looks like me. i think i should have probably called an ambulance after her fall, but it would have been hard getting her into the back of the truck. 3 hours after i play king’s cup with 3 other people and i feel way too old for the whole thing, like we’re all doing some kind of theater. 24 hours beforehand, we’d sat at the same table and it had been perfect, loose and friendly and a little overexcited.

we all groan when we get up from the couch. alex and i are considering buying a house. the woman who fell was wearing the same color as i was and she was probably in her mid-40’s and her husband at first said she’s always doing this and then when she opened her mouth we found out she’d bitten through her tongue when she slammed her head on the railing. i kept telling everyone - it’s actually not the blood? it’s that i am terrified of a future where someone just watches me fall and then lets a stranger pick me up.

and it’s like, not that bad. I tell myself that in the shower, on the phone, in traffic, rushing through life without ever knowing why the hell I’m rushing. It’s not like there’s a destination at the end of this path; I’m not on any sort of time crunch. But I’m throwing back shots in someone’s backyard and telling everyone at this party how it’s fine, really, I came to terms with it a long time ago. I made my peace, they made their choice, and by the way, could you turn up the music? I just love this song, it reminds me of the summer I turned 18. All glitter and sugar-sweet lies that dripped from her tongue. But I’m closer to 30 than I am to 17 and damn, where did the time go?

you laughed at something Britt said and I watched your eyes crinkle at the edges. The road trip from six years ago when I came home plays out in my mind- she stopped the car and told me to get the hell out and I wandered unfamiliar streets for hours- and I’m thinking about the way the bottle broke, shards of glass smashing out against the concrete, slipping through my hands the first time I heard her say “yeah, she’s kind of crazy, but at least the lonely is gone.” and I know, I know, I know things have changed, but I’m standing here in a gale begging for answers. If we’re all just looking for a hand to hold, I’m still reaching for yours. I haven’t bought the gun yet but it’s on my mind about thirty percent of the time. I’m still thinking about an exit plan and at this point, I’m not even sad anymore, I’m just tired of living with this dead weight.

There's still scars on my knees from childhood scrapes and sometimes I wonder, if this is the skin I've been wearing this whole time, who am I underneath it? I'm watching my hands do the work they've done every morning for the past two years and I guess what I'm saying is, I don't know the difference between love and muscle memory. I do the dishes and the laundry and I pick up the dirty socks and I wonder if my love is the same- not there because I want it, but because it's my job, and if the muscles in my hands remember how to work with a confidence I don't feel… what does the muscle of my heart remember?

//a collab with @inkskinned

[inkskinned]

~ Wikipedia page: Broken Heart | @scriptastra | @inkskinned | @detailed-devilish-soul | @moxrglory | @bebs-art-gallery | @metamorphesque ~

[inkskinned]

i. when i was 19 and in a very hetero relationship, i fell in love with Andrea Gibson.

ii. we were poor so i was going to community college and also working a full-time job. i was miserable. the nicest thing that happened to me during that time was that someone bought me a free coffee. i had been sobbing in the corner of the library. she said you look like you needed help. i was so sad at the time that i was looking for "the sign". almost like a mantra, i'd say things like if there's a nice sunset, i won't kill myself tomorrow.

iii. you know, in all that time, i never wanted anything. the idea of desire was so foreign to me that i couldn't conceptualize a favorite color. what is want in the voidspace?

iv. andrea was the first, is the thing. i found their work on button poetry. i watched a poem once and then twice and then sat back and thought to myself - what i had been writing was not poetry, it was reaction. what andrea was writing was poetry. i knew it had to be, because it burst inside of me. i looked down and a hole had torn open. there was nothing for it. i put my hands inside the wound and started to pull.

v. it was slam poetry and then pretentious poetry and then esoteric poetry and then the black mountain poets and then tender buttons and then back to slam again and then back to the classics and theory and the academic shit and then finally thank-god understanding started dawning and then upwards into contemporaries and inwards into why aren't i writing something real and then realizing i never understood anything then crying about three syllables that don't sound right and then sunning myself outside of the emily dickinson house and then back to slam and back to the roots of it and backwards into -

vi. and the joy! holy fuck i wish i could tell you about it. on the back of ink came life. it was community and safety and pushing limits. it was saying oh yeah no i'm gay and oh shit i'm nonbinary. it was a cliche; life like a map just exploding. because i knew - i had my thing. wherever i went, so too would come writing.

vii. on saturday i reached 7,700 poems on here. i made myself a gin and tonic to celebrate. i have been writing seriously, almost-every-day, sometimes multiple times a day - for over 10 years. i started this, became this - because i saw someone stand on stage and say something i knew to be poetry.

viii. andrea died today, july 14th, 2025, at the age of 49.

ix. i will never have the words for what they gave me.

[inkskinned]

btw as someone who practically journals her entire life in the tags i just want to say. to the tag-readers out there. i love you. i worship you. i am kissing you passionately thru every hashtag MWAH

[inkskinned]

when you love someone again - when you find the one - i hope you treat her better than you ever treated me. i hope she wakes up in a peaceful house, that she dances to your guitar, that she gets all the good sides of you. i hope you've changed.

i used to sob to myself in the shower - what if you are capable of treating me better. i hated the idea that it was me. that you could snap me over one knee, but that someone else would deserve to be treated like royalty. some kind of contempt you held specifically for me, despite the ways i had endlessly supported you. i kept hoping you could finally be the person i'd fallen in love with. the idea of you. the version you kept promising you'd grow into, eventually.

these days i hope - for her sake - that you're different. i hope she never feels the way i felt. i hope she never wakes up scared, never goes to bed trembling with anger. i hope her life is glorious. i hope you treat her right. i hope you actually listen in therapy, that you self-reflect, that you told everyone the truth. i hope you never talk to her the way you talked to me.

i hope you finally learned something.