suffering-is-cute

[suffering-is-cute]

[suffering-is-cute]

a slow day still keeps its start tight,

tucked to its chest, 

swaddled within blankets patterned

with the stars 

in a newborn’s eyes

white summer thawed in sun’s salute of seeping rays

strips of lacy light in the mild warmth of bath water 

sizzling eggs in our pan

scrape of butter knife spreading yellow on crusted toast

you know my hopes

and I know your nightmares

and we live, anyway, without being hurt or afraid or crying or confused

we could list out all the sad things 

a receipt at the grocery store

and tally our purchases, the dent in the heart our wallet 

we could pack them in plastic 

bags named trauma and disorder and condition and circumstance 

instead I keep you close and happy

and we walk away

to grow an orchard of our own

to grow old

to grow and harvest and live

on the right terms

in our own land.

find us here,

shutting our eyes

against the pain

fingers in fingers

slotted together as how

lattices keep up a vine

slowly I find the courage to peek and see

that you have never lost your baby stars

they’re just falling now

twinkles in your laugh.

someday we will pass them on

and see them glow in another sweet day.

@melting-morning-blues

[suffering-is-cute]

and I shouldn’t know how/ the slap of skin sounds

when I balance my hand against my cheek

it almost looks warm

not thinking / just taking revenge

for all the things I’ve destroyed

reach up for the ball in the tree, don’t mind the thorns.

[suffering-is-cute]

but i carve your names into bones, so forgive me for being a starving beast. i only know how to bring you first pick of the prey i hunt, and sit back on my haunches, waiting for you to choose before i dine. but i am no good for you and you know this, too.

you are my littlest secret and loudest love.

[suffering-is-cute]

you are my littlest secret and loudest love.

[suffering-is-cute]

does anyone else just. fixate on a specific character and not able to consume media that doesn't include that character?

[suffering-is-cute]

oh, but you're so necessary to me. holding onto your hands, it's like we're the last people left in this world.

what is the way you love me?

it's raging for me,

when i can't find anything left to even mumble.

it's bracing me up when a storm is a-coming.

t's you, being there, even when it's clear that you're not enough to get me through where i am going.

it's you, desperately grounding me to this doomed love. you deem the imperfect worthy.

[suffering-is-cute]

cross posted on pinterest

[suffering-is-cute]

cross posted on pinterest

[suffering-is-cute]

cross posted on pinterest

[suffering-is-cute]

he asks me to mark up his pores with dark treacle. he wants the bruise of sugar to call in on his adrenaline, nipping incisors inching deeper forward into the territory of temple grounds. i bend over, cautiously, and land like a butterfly,

lips pressing adoration into his forehead.

he wants me to have him watch as i doctor his skin into obsolete lyrics of trickling molasses. he shyly begs for the blood to seep out where i place my mouth against him so i can feel him from the outside in. i take his hand in both of mine and stamp

lips against the back of that lovely hand, printing a lipstick signature for devotion.

he begs for me to start a slow parade of uninhibited syrup against his neck, where he is most tender, most vulnerable, most tempted. he asks me to set the briefly warming sunlight within the tussling tree bark out of the wood and out of the trunk, to make caskets for whiskey out of his distinctive taste.

i smile, instead, and let myself kiss his inner wrist where his pulse beats so high,

adorning his heart with the entirety of me.

for @nosebleedclub ‘s jan 25 prompt ‘syrupy’.

@catkin-morgs-kookaburralover

[suffering-is-cute]

since chinese new year is next month (Feb 10th) I figured I’d do a poll like this— it also indicates a tumblr age demographic so that’s always interesting

[suffering-is-cute]

everyday is a lot longer than you believe when you’re only beginning your journey on this planet of braggarts

mouths, wagging. tongues, opening. teeth, swallowing. tomorrow eats today and gives you cavities from the candied chest aches you snuggle down inside.

forcing eyelids down as blinds to make sure not a shred of cardboard light gets through the cracks. ceilings are GOOD. they stop you from becoming giant. when your feet leave tremors calling up,

dialing frantic aftershocks,

you wade into the sea wearing see-through grimy plastic boots

and hope in despair that somewhere is big enough to hold you, in the coldness of midnight’s silken and powerful tidal boundaries there will be an alien, isolating stretch of salty liquid space

welcoming you into your forever automatic tomb.

quite authentic, that. large enough to softly lie about home.

25. 01. 2024

@catkin-morgs-kookaburralover whenever’s good for you!

[suffering-is-cute]

please backstab me. by sufferingiscute 23. 01. 2024

and i tell myself no, i click open your profile, i check for what i know is empty, a bin without food, no leftovers, no nothing. i tell myself no, and i open the lid again. i say this time i will open the covers of a story that will not ignore me, that will reach back to me, and i waste what i have on bus trips to your neighbourhood, blowing a kiss good-bye, goodnight to all my spare change.

empty purse, beautiful love.

enthralling, useless, starvation, grumbling, unsatisfied, unfulfilled love.

all the same, love.

guilt. growling stomach that i try to stifle the sounds off every time we do happen to meet under the blistering sun, you waving cheerily.

how can i say that i do hate you? that i do, indeed, not really hate but resent you? that i am ready for you to make it easy? if you are going to leave for so long, then don't come back home.

you can't ignore me as you like anymore and you don't get to know that i am leaving you my share of my shoulders. i want to say this, i want to scream, but i only smile and make idle chatter about meaningless things until my time is up and pretend to love you. there is only a shell of you here. even if i hug it from night till noon, i cannot infuse it in warmth.

i will freeze over.

say this, i do. i also keep visiting the same place, getting off at the same empty apartment, clutching on to my leathery bag, walking around in circles, getting back onto the bus, hearing the whispered gossip of those sitting behind me, bearing the bus driver's pitiful glance like a shawl of shame, checking my phone.

maybe i should care less - it has occurred to me, but i know nothing better than i know burning, a candle wick soaking up every last drop of wax in an attempt to see you through the night, although you've long left the room. you think you can catch up, restore, recover, return. i say the least, the surface, the smallest truths, the easiest burdens. and i keep my secrets to myself where they will not fell you.

i was never an easy person to love! you ought to know this! if so, why did you split hairs, and decide that i was a manga you could pick up after a while, a few months after dropping it! i made myself difficult to love because i do not want to be left easily!

i lie again. or maybe this is my lie, and what i tell you is made truth. it's all subjective, the scarring. to me, it hurts to flex an arm, to you, there is only slight discolouration and i cannot see my own skin unless i crane my head over. call me faintly and i turn my head, i wish i could call myself busy and walk away, but i

am living poetry, which means i regret always the love that i hold up to the light like gold you can peer through and pressure myself to be love's full form again. then, i console myself with saying it is the right way. if it is right, where is my reward? seeking rewards in itself is foolish. love is not supposed to be an equivalent exchange.

so call me hungry, call me ugly, call me desperate, call me poverty. call me a deranged lover and call me pathetically ready to please. i will take any abuse i can, so blow me up enough that i break like a stretched balloon. set fire to my fuse and key me free to murder the breath in the sky like one of those fireworks you so dearly love.

CALL ME PAIN! call me ANGER! call me irreprehensible inconsequential inconsiderate nuisance! call me a night to be fled from a nightmare you shake away from call me shackles and binding and everything delightfully unremorseful!

Make me ugly, paint me black, so I can hate you! Blind me with no more half-enacted kindnesses, let me LIVE/leave.

please tell me softly, almost on shattered ears, to my startled eyes, that my stomach is distended. that I look disgusting this forward, hunched up like a ragcloth doll discarded at your green bin. admire my tear-streaked, dirt-stained face, the cheap way my mouth twists at the corners, the yellowing of teeth that have drunk too many teas of sweet sweet sugar. tip my chin up with your precise hands and deliver the deadly blow.

punch me. thrust me far. only leave no hope for me to hold out behind.

this is only my beginning. for now i am clothed in clothes of previous reincarnations, the fabric you wove for me on your loom. and these clothes are stained ripped shredded torn smeared delicate fragile ended. hold me up to the light and tread me under your heel saying that i am nothing of worth. then and only then will i be able to believe it is time badly spent and stand up again.

don't make me do it.

no matter what, don't make me do it myself.

every edge of the sea pleads you to let me out of this twisted carnival.

let me go is not enough.

drop me OFF the DAMNED OVERHEAD BRIDGE!

hey, I'm calling your name, so come be my villain.

please, I beg of you, be cruel to me.

[suffering-is-cute]

and you always seem to think that the heart's barrier

is just a thin shell hiding something golden and glowing within like a pearl

flowing fragrant.

if you can only prise it open,

smash through that rock sugar shell, you'll find the sun's breath easing in and out of your chest

but the hard honesty is, the shell is just an easily cracked halfway evening

once you've slammed your way through the thin convex curves, it's a broken eggshell and everything within is vacant.

sometimes, the house is just empty,

and no one's furnished it in preparation for you to live in,

because as hard as it is to answer like this,

not everyone wants you as a tenant.

and maybe you're tired of hearing that they don't want to take your meticulously prepared rent, your careful displays of concern.

you've learned from the start about the concept that love is hard to find

but still you think (and this angers me)

you think that this next heart may be different

imagine, you of mayhem, you force your entry into a heart filled with photos of another life

you will be an interloper if you do not learn to leave eggs alone

you are cracking an egg in the edge of the bowl and your head slowly faces down at an unnerving angle in

response to the sudden coldness of white fluid splashed at your feet

you take the thin shell, no matter, and treat it as if it was still fragile and precious despite the fact that it is broken and you seal it

with a thin coat of paint and dot polka dots on to make it an Easter egg

as if, if you try very hard and be very good, God might make your lost love rise again from the dead.

when will the love ever come back?

is it too changed to come back?

you have this challenge with yourself that if you can hold a conversation with the mirror without flinching, you will get to do whatever you want for a day.

and you've never won and never will.

because these weekends are your weakest moments, automated.

you've designed yourself to not die under duress, proud of not your survivability, but you call it a strength regardless because you have to live with needing to survive for the rest of your life.

and you can't ever sit straight again without fidgeting.

because you love the way the snow loves -

as much as it can before it melts. and because your love is drawing snowmen in the mist on your window at midnight, crouched up and making the stick hands hold the snowmen together in an embrace.

your love is reminiscing about days you'll never manage to hold properly.

you are property of your dreams. you can't help that they have a leash of you. sadly, you can never help that you still believe.

and you always seem to think that loving the bare bones of a place shows how uncomplicated you are, when actually, it's much more a testament to how you've sipped tea from chipped mugs stained with toothpaste

sitting on floorboards wide and thick with no furniture in sight, staring at the sky that surrounds you on every corner and inch.

you, alone in the room that is a house. you, running hands up rafters that are not burnished. you, trying to find things that comfort you and figure out a way to be happy in a place unprepared for you.

sometimes you are meant to take the cue and walk out of the life of someone who cannot love you, instead of

trying to make the best out of it.

why, what made you cry?

what did i say wrong this time?

[suffering-is-cute]

CUP

[suffering-is-cute]

they told me that i will achieve fame if not in life, then

posthumously. and i smile and tuck this within myself -

the honours come humourously at a time when you can no longer correct them,

because the world loves irony the way you love contact with a close friend.

am i loved because i am gone from you? because i am there when you need a set of mouths to speak your trauma away? because i am fragrant mouthwash?

mountaineering the truth. it is the same as stumbling in the blackness of blackberry raspberry cherry black beans. i take a fruit and squeeze everything plucked fresh out of it-

where is the freshwater when i need it, where the leaving air?

the light calls upon those who no longer see it. maybe as a reward for the sake of results you were no granted. perhaps God wanted me to remain with the elusive innocence of avoidance and unaffectedly away from the hearts of swaying man beneath whipping white paper fan.