larksheaven

[larksheaven]

[larksheaven]

"Beautiful Losers", Leonard Cohen

[larksheaven]

rainier in bloom

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- A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Becky Chambers // kagonekoshiro

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x

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[larksheaven]

i feel totally normal about this and the scope of my desire is completely average

[larksheaven]

Mihail Sebastian, Women (trans. Phillip Ó Ceallaigh)

[Text ID: "September has arrived, lovely in its weakening light."]

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This is how I originally wrote it. One of those that starts as a poem and then begs to be a song. I posted a fragment of this on tumblr a while back, but here’s the initial piece in its entirety 🤍

[larksheaven]

Ocean Vuong, The Weight of Our Living: On Hope, Fire Escapes, and Visible Desperation

[larksheaven]

i am trying to be happy. i am in a tin bath pouring cups and cups filled with the things i love most all over myself as if they will saturate me, and maybe if i pour enough i will become them.

what a beautiful thought, to become the things you love. to not peer around the edges and see the grime, the rust. to be pure and radiant and everywhere. to not be falling apart beneath the pressure of your sell by date.

i am splashing my face with love and i am taking care of myself. i shower. i eat. i sleep. it’s enough. it is enough for me. i need it to be enough.

there’s a hole in my heart that looks a little like yours did, except mine can’t be fixed so instead i stuff handfuls of flowers in there, poppies and daisies and sunflower petals and forget me nots. i don’t touch the carnations. because they are your favorite. and i am not trying to heal you anymore.

i seal it with wax and a kiss and i clutch my hands over it and i pray; not to any god, but for my broken body to fix my broken soul again. i think i have overstayed my welcome. it’s time for me to go now. i’m taking my flowers with me.

[larksheaven]

– K

[larksheaven]

i don’t really know if the apps will help me find love but i use them anyway. i go into a state of shock when i see people looking for love, vulnerability out on a platter. i do not want these people to get hurt. maybe this is because i don’t want to get hurt myself. hurt like my worst part of 2021. hurt like well maybe i should just work on myself and finding friends that actually like me for a while. that’s been a task. i have two, really. a side effect of moving forward is all your dead weight just kind of. flings itself off. you end up a lot less heavy when there’s less weighing on your mind. but you also feel like, hey, it was nice to have more people, for a while. things always look prettier when you’re looking at them in the rear view.

i think i don’t want to be someone’s beacon, but instead the waves they swim in. gently holding them, allowing themselves to push gently against me to get where they want to go. ever encapsulating their lives just a little. not too much. i’ve learned too much of anything isn’t good for you. i want to be someone’s waves and i want them to be my waves, too. we can swim in each other at whatever pace we want. give and take instead of just bleeding myself dry.

i bleach my hair and i get new jewelry and i go to pottery on saturdays. this is my life. i drive myself to the park and i sit there. i go on dates. it’s nice. then i come home to myself and i lie in bed and i can’t shake the feeling that im not doing enough. everyone in pottery class is older than me and most are married. i don’t know what 20 somethings are meant to be doing, like. where are they all? i see them in grocery stores and concert lines, and i want in on this secret club i can’t seem to find. i’ve not yet plucked up the courage to go to a gay bar but i could, and for now that’s enough.

i washed you out of my life as much as i could, wringing out a white dress drenched in black ink. i don’t look like the person you used to love; i walk differently, im happier. on a more material basis, i’ve changed too. i’ve got a new purse and i wear skirts. honest to god fucking skirts. and what’s insane is that i actually like it. i’m scraping out crevices in my life and trying to squeeze inside. trying to hold myself instead of onto you. i’m trying to, overall, just be less angry. i think i would move faster if i was less angry. but that doesn’t stop me moving. and painting my nails all the colors of the goddamn rainbow, and changing my room with a million things you’ll never see. it’s like, you had me, 2.0. and now i’m more like 3.0, aiming for 4. and i know that that’s not really how life works but it also helps me cope, to remember you’ll never see this me, you’ll never know her. you don’t know about the green jewelry dish i made that sits next to me on the nightstand and you don’t know the color of my lips when i’m hoping they’ll get kissed. the girl you loved does not exist anymore. there’s a peace to that, i think.

i don’t want to be desperate but i think i am, though. i cyber stalked two girls i met at a concert because we talked for twenty minutes and we laughed and so i saw a life in which we could be friends, but the follow request is still pending. so far the friend counter is still at two. i went on a date with a girl and didn’t feel the spark which, whatever, that’s what casual dating is, right? and i said maybe we could be friends, and she said fine, and then she ghosted. which, fair enough, but she did say it was all good. but then again i know that people just say things. i do it all the time. i still don’t really know if im the dickhead in that situation, but i mean. come on. it was one date.

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some days you really do have to just find and wrench one tiny thing from the world w the determination of a hog digging out truffles and make it your anchor. raindrops on a window. smell of the bakery in the supermarket. single defiant tuft of grass between the cracks on the pavement. etc. hold it all w equally grubby and defiant hands.

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in october, i dye my hair red like the blood that trickled through it years ago. i think they thought i’d look prettier with a crown of thorns.

sacrifice, they told me. not a word more or less. the gods would feed on my flesh and make me my own prometheus. i suppose it’s better than the crows. at least my flesh isn’t pinned open for eternity. they told me they’d make it quick. slice through me like a hot knife through butter. let me spill out and i’d feel everything so quickly until i didn’t feel a thing.

how angry do i have to make them before they take me off this crucifix? how hard must i work before they decide this is too honorable of a death, sharp like knives in my legs and my arms that bite like my teeth in an underripe apple. maybe i fell closer to the tree than i thought. maybe i never even fell at all.

this house i stand in, once in flames now is frozen over

and the girl i forgot to save years ago died here and now she lives only in me

slouched in the curved seat of my memory

i wonder now; was this the ice i was under all along? i see it now, brighter than ever like the moon that i couldn’t let myself look to that night. maybe this house was always frozen. maybe i have always been drowning.

will you come and swim in the darkness with me?

the water is so lovely

but don’t kick your feet too much

there are bodies in the water

and sometimes

they move

[larksheaven]

all my poems are about people leaving. i dig into my chest and inside there’s only unspooled, knotted twine where you’d expect flesh. you can pull all you like but i’m still made of it, it still rots me from the inside out. pulling makes the mess worse. i think about consuming people about as much as i think about saving them, and i don’t think about saving them nearly as much as i’ve thought about being saved.

the thing is, i would like to have been good to somebody, to have credit in some form. if only someone could write about me, to say that in their darkness, i was a candle. but there is only my own darkness and it swallows me whole. the only light; the dwindling shine of my eyes until i finally eclipsed myself.

fine, i say, like an act of defiance. i will be the poet. but who to write about but myself? nobody pulled me out. nobody cut away at the strings. i got sly smiles and i told you sos and two lungs full of water as they waved me goodbye from above.

it sure would be nice to have someone write a poem about me, for once. everyone i’ve ever loved has left in some form. i’d like to say i was the one who helped, who invited you to the table when you sat alone, who pulled you away from the group when they were laughing at you. i, your closest friend; i, your confidant.

but it was me, all along. me with the tray in my mind, me with the tired eyes, me dragging my feet as i walked over hot coal for so long that it just… stopped burning. i almost liked my darkness. the thing about darkness is that you can’t see if people are there for you or not. you can just cling to your knees and shiver.

i think i’m growing tired of writing poems about people leaving. i think i’d like to stay; to not be as angry anymore. if nobody else stays for me, then at least i can. i’m sure i can find a way to write about me for a little longer. after all, i am the girl that saved her.

[larksheaven]

"What if my friends secretly hate me?" What if they pray for you before bed? What if they hear a song come on and it makes them immediately think of you? What if when times are hard for them, they close their eyes and think of the memories they've shared with you? What if they study your face closely to see how you're feeling? What if they listen to your stories? What if they smile when you text them first? What if