#I wrote a poem last night for the first time in a month I think

[crybaby-bkg]

asking nerd Bakugou to give you a ‘pearl necklace’ and he starts grumbling about you tryna drain him dry but instead of pulling out his cock, he pulls out his phone to actually search for a pearl necklace </3

and to both his surprise and embarrassment, his phone is quickly tossed away in favor of you showing him what you’re actually asking for. he’s not mad though—not when you end up looking so pretty covered in white, grinning, and asking for another necklace <3

[helpallthenamesaretaken]

so :D i wrote my first ever fanfic because i was intrigued and want to know if i could do it. i hope you like it :)) i nerded out way too much on this one so spare me pls be kind!

description: set during the battle of manhattan, tlo. slightly canon divergent. lot of percy angst. tw: su!cidal thoughts. percys pov. percabeth being cute. based on the poem 'stopping by the woods on a snowy evening' by robert frost :)

Miles to Go Before I Sleep- A PJO Fanfiction

I couldn't sleep that night. I paced the room for two hours until late night as if there was something terrible was going to happen. I was worried sick--about Annabeth, about the war, about everything. At midnight, moonlight streamed through the hotel window as I sat, almost lifelessly on the bed, staring into nothing. Suddenly, I heard a creak in the door, and I was about to snatch riptide before I heard a whisper, "Percy? You awake?"

In the shadows, I saw the familiar figure of Grover, tired after a long day of attending to the satyrs. He sat down next to me on the bed, and we both stared at the wall in comfortable silence. For a moment, I could almost close my eyes and imagine that we were 12 year olds at Yancy again. "The Apollo kids are seeing you through the hotel surveillance cameras. They sent me to ask you to sleep" "Since you're the only one right now who I'll listen to?" ".....yep"

While Grover rambled something about him being my unofficial mom right now, I looked at my bedside table, and there it was. Pandora's Jar. Man, I wished the stupid thing would stop following me around, and right now, it wasn't the best time for me to want to resist opening it. Unfortunately, Grover read my emotions. "You want to open it, don't you?"

The question, which had always been on the back of my mind, really stung now that it was said out loud. I think Grover could see I was breaking down a little on the inside, and wrapped me in an awkward hug. "I-I do," it came spilling out of my mouth, my voice cracking. "It just feels like the Fates are giving me an opportunity instead of a challenge. I feel like everything around me is falling apart. I'm not good at handling war. If I give up to Kronos, he'd kill me, as long as I'd make him promise he wouldn't hurt you guys. It's just easier. It's better for everyone else" My eyes felt wet, and I pulled away quickly. Grover looked so lost, I immediately felt bad for making him worry about me. "Go to sleep, Percy," he said in a painful tone, as if I was a delusional grandpa who had gotten loose from the nursing home bed. Before I could say anything, he pulled out his reedpipes. Before I could protest, he started playing soft, sweet music and before I knew it, I was asleep.

In my dream, I was sitting with Annabeth in the strawberry field, while she had a book in her lap. Annabeth was smiling, her hair glinting in the sunlight. She was okay. We were okay. It was a sunny day and all the campers were having fun. I remembered this day; this conversation had happened two months before the war. Woah. That felt so far away.

"I finally found the greek version of this poem!" she said excited, her eyes sparkling, which gave me butterflies. "This poem is really famous for the last four lines, wait-wait, I'll read it out to you" She picked it up. "So the English version of these lines are: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep" I bumped her shoulder with mine. "Ok, nerd...what's the point?"

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "It basically means that the poet wanted to die and found death a beautiful easy way out, but he realised he still had a duty in his life and that he still had a long way before his time to go, isn't that so poetic?" "I guess. You're better at this than me"

This didn't happen that day, but she opened her arms, as if about to hug me, probably due to Grover's magical reedpipe music, and for a second I felt elated that life felt livable again, before the ground opened up before she could, and I fell into endless darkness.

I woke up, shaking. I felt like I had been given a sweater in the cold before it got snatched away, leaving me back in the freezing winter. Grover was gone. I wanted to go back to sleep. I wanted things to be alright again. I wanted to see Annabeth happy and nerdy as usual and hug her. But sunlight streamed in through the window, and I forced myself out of the bed and went up the stairs to where Annabeth was.

When I walked up to her in the chair, my heart broke again. She looked so different from the dream. Her eyes were weakly staring at the view, she was shivering and her face was still a little gray. "Hey" she said. I checked up on her, talking to her about her health, which was slowly getting better, thankfully, but it didn't stop me from feeling guilty.

As I stared at her hopelessly, Pandora's Jar appeared on the table next to her. Annabeth studied my face. "We should put it in a place where it stays there"

I nodded my head in agreement. I took the jar gingerly in my hands. I looked out into the view from above. The whole city was in my sight. I saw demigods rebuilding the mortal's homes, some of which were damaged after the day's fight. I saw Nico rejoining a skeleton from his army's bones, with Will hovering curiously from a distance. "Is that a coccyx ?" "Gesundheit" If I died, he'd be the prophecy kid. I saw two tired aphrodite girls staring at a broken mirror, as if wondering where their life (and skin) started to break. I needed to keep them going. I needed to survive, I couldn't let them down. I needed to give them what they were fighting for. They were fighting for me. All my depression would have to wait for another day.

"It must be annoying," Annabeth said. "Don't you ever just want to open it?"

"Nah," I gave her my bravest smile, as I carried the jar to the door, where I would give it to be locked in a storage locker in the hotel. "I have promises to keep; and miles to go before I sleep"

[charlidos]

I keep writing Viggorli fanfiction in my head, sometimes with a little help from Viggo's poetry. I think Viggo uses his art and poetry to express himself, but of course no one but him can know what he was thinking when writing it. But I can imagine. And I wish to imagine he wrote some of them thinking of Orlando. I'm sure my imaginations and theories are only new to me.

As with the O+H painting, the poems which are dated from the time frame of filming LotR (1999-2002) can reasonably be considered to be quite influenced by everything Viggo experienced while in New Zealand. He spent 18 months+ there, after all. For this reason, I read his poem Communion imagining he was also under the heavy influence of love for his elf boy. And to me, it reads like a very romantic but also very wistful poem. So this story would be labeled "friends to lovers, angst".

In my view, at least two sort of objective facts, support my not-very objective theory that Orlando is the unamed object of desire, namely Viggo's choice of words:

"Bloom of compassion" - the most obvious (too obvious even? - or hiding in plain sight?) - it's a common enough word, sure, but in this context, during this period of Viggo's life, is it really a coincidence? It seems to stand out like a neon sign: BLOOM. It's difficult to unsee.

"Anglican doorway" - "Anglican" mostly refers to "Church of England" or the Anglican communion as a whole. But it can also be another way of saying that something is English. And so it can be read as "English doorway", if you wish. Regardless, it certainly leads your thoughts towards England. Furthermore, Orlando was brought up in the Church of England (and born in Canterbury, the place of origin for the church, no less), while Viggo has no known connection to any religion really. It's perhaps not as obvious as bloom, but it's still quite a significant choice of word. Again, in this context, at this time, when we know Viggo spent so much of his time with Orlando.

Here's my interpretation of Viggo's Communion:

we've left shore somehow become the friends of early theory close enough to speak desire and pain of absence of mistakes we'd make given the chance.

The two are described as friends, who have become closer, intimate in words and thoughts. Sharing secrets, fears, feelings. Bordering on something more.

each smile returned makes harder avoiding dreams that see us lying in the early evening curtain shadows, skin safe against skin. bloom of compassion respect for moments eyes lock turns forever into one more veil that falls away

He seems to be having thoughts of them becoming lovers, the veil of "just friends" falling away. But it seems to be still just a dream, a hope. It's such a beautiful image: the two of them, together, intimate, safe. And that "bloom of compassion", maybe V just wanted to get the word in...

this after seeing you last night, first time smelling you with permission: shoulders to wonder openly at as carefully kissed as those arms waited impossibly on. they've held me now and your breath down my back sent away the night air that had me shaking in the unlit anglican doorway.

But seems they've already been intimate, maybe just a first kiss, a lingering touch, holding each other. The "smelling you with permission" implies he's smelled O without permission before. Sneaking a little sniff when in close contact. Inhaling the sweet scent of a beloved friend. If we accept "anglican" as a reference to O, then what is this unlit doorway? Is it just an image of being allowed inside O's private space? And why is it unlit? As in Orlando being from that church, but not believing in its god? Or an opening into this other person which is difficult to find, maybe not fully opened to him.

are we ruined for finding our faces fit and want to know more about morning? is friendship cancelled if we can't call each other anymore in amnesia, invite ourselves to last glances under suspicious clocks telling us when we've had enough?

A worry that sex will ruin their friendship, implying it's not clear what their relationship should be, even after crossing that line. I love that phrase "finding our faces fit", it's both funny and beautiful; finding that when they kiss, they felt a sense of belonging. And that they probably don't want to stop. I'm not sure if he also worries about other people seeing, finding out, being in the public eye. And he worries that they won't be able to talk like they did before, as friends.

your steady hands cradling my grateful skull: were you taking in my face to save an image you've rarely allowed yourself after leaving that cold alcove? am i a photograph you gaze at in moments of weakness?

Again, he seems to feel this relationship only exists in private, in bed. Maybe implying that O regards it as a weakness, these feelings. This part could also be read as if it's him looking back, when the relationship is over, or changed, distanced, wondering if O thinks of him.

you ordered me off my knees into your arms. wasn't to beg that i knelt; only to see you once from below.

The image of V on his knees could both be a sexual thing, but it could also be about worship; that he wants to be on his knees to adore O. But it's also a part of the poem's religious theme; you usually kneel while taking the communion. You kneel to pray.

tried to say something that filled my mouth and longed to rest in your ear. don't dare write it down for fear it'll become words, just words.

The relationship seems fragile, filled with fear of loss. Like he can't say everything he wants to, afraid it'll lead to it ending. There's so much desire and longing, but also so much despair of the relationship being so brittle, that it can fall apart at any time.

Once I read it this way, like with that painting, I can't see anything else. Maybe it's just coincidences, maybe it's just something from inside Viggo's brain (and not connected to reality), maybe it can be read in many other ways. But since my brain is warped, I can only read it like this.

[breaniebree]

Here's a little hint at the first 6 epilogues...

Many of them occur at the same time and time jump lots in each chapter so not everything is in chronological order.

31 - Hinny Epilogue One:

Molly looked slightly put out by this before she turned her gaze on Harry and Ginny.  “And what about you two?  Two years you’ve just celebrated and what have you to show for it?”

Ginny bit her lip before she exchanged a look with Harry.  “Actually, Mum, Harry and I do have some news to share.”

Molly shrieked, jumping up from the table.  “Oh my goodness!  I knew it!  I knew it!  I’m so happy!  Oh, Ginny!”

Ginny was pulled into her mother’s arms before she could say anything otherwise and squeezed tightly.  “Mum!”

“Oh, Ginny, you’re going to be such a good mum!  I just know you two are going to have boy!  I can feel it!”  Molly exclaimed, tightening her grip on her daughter.

Harry cleared his throat.  “Erm, Molly, we —”

“—and you!”  Molly said, throwing her arms around Harry.  “A baby!  This calls for a celebration!”

“MUM!”  Ginny shouted, making Molly turn to look at her.  “I’m not pregnant.”

Molly’s face fell.  “Not pregnant?  What do you mean by telling me that you are!”

“I didn’t,” Ginny said.  “I said that we had some news to share.”

32 - Luna Epilogue...

“I don’t like him,” Harry said again, crossing his arms in front of his chest.  “She was bloody starkers when he met her, Gin!  This bloke is dodgy, I can feel it!  I don’t like him.”

“You do, actually,” Ginny said, her eyes twinkling.  “In fact you like him very much.”  At Harry’s look, she smiled.  “His name is Rolf Scamander.”

“Rolf Sc — bloody hell,” Harry grumbled.

“He’s very nice, Harry,” Luna said.  “We’ve been together most of the last two and half months.  He makes me laugh and he’s kind.  When he kisses me, I feel things that I’ve never felt before and he doesn’t seem to mind that I need a lot of foreplay to make me come.  In fact, he rather enjoys spending time between my legs.  Ginny, one night I came five times.”

Ginny chuckled.  “He’s definitely a keeper.”

“Erm, sure,��� Harry said, the back of his neck reddening.  “I’ll leave you two to talk more.”  He stood up and walked over to kiss Luna’s cheek.  “If he hurts you, I’ll kill him.”

Luna gave Harry an amused look.  “You know I can take care of myself, right?”

“Just pass it on,” Harry said, kissing her cheek again.  “No one messes with you or they answer to me.”

“He gives me the best orgasms, I’m going to keep him for a bit.”

“Er, right,” Harry said. 

33 - Theo Epilogue One...

"Theo, will you —”

"YES!"

Sebastian's lips curved.  "You didn't even let me ask you.”

"Right, sorry," Theo said. "Try again.”

"Will you —”

“YES!"  he squealed, biting his bottom lip.  “Sorry.  One more time, l'll be quiet, I swear.”

Sebastian beamed at him.  "Will you marry —“

"YES!"  Theo shouted, falling to his knees in front of Sebastian to kiss him.  "A million times yes!!”

Sebastian kissed him back fervently.  "You know, I had a plan here.  I didn't even get to show you the ring.”

Theo kissed him, speaking in between more kisses.  "Don't care.  More kissing.”

34 - Romione Epilogue One...

Ron waved his mum off.  “Nothing much, Mum, except for one thing — I’m calling for a vote.  I think we can all agree that I’m the Weasley who gave the most romantic proposal ever, right?”

Fred snorted.  “Pretty sure that’s a lie.  No way was ickle Ronnikins the most romantic.”

“Nothing from you,” Ron said.  “You haven’t even proposed to your girlfriend.”

Fred stuck his tongue out at his brother.  “Git.”

“I don’t know,” Ginny said, smiling at her husband.  “Harry set up a romantic picnic before we went for a fly on his broom.  Then he wrote me a cheesy poem while he proposed during the sunset.  That’s definitely up there for mad romance.”

Ron waved her off.  “Yeah, yeah, Harry’s a contender!  But I definitely beat out Percy!”

“I thought the ring in the champagne glass was very classy,” Percy said, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“It was,” Audrey said, tapping her husband’s cheek.  “He took me out to a romantic dinner and told me how much he loved me.  It was perfect.”

“I don’t know,” George said.  “I think I win, I mean, I got Ange to propose to me.”

Angelina laughed.  “And it worked for us, but I wouldn’t exactly call it romantic, George.”

George gasped.  “How dare you!  You even gave me this gawdy ring!”  he exclaimed, wiggling his hand with the pirate ring on his finger.

Angelina picked up his other hand, the one that held his gold wedding band.  “I love this one more.”

He grinned.  “I’m a kept man and I like it.”

“Wait,” Ginny said, holding up her hands.  “Ron keeps going on about how he had the most romantic proposal, but I don’t think we’ve even heard how he proposed.”

“What’s important, Ginny, is that I win!”  Ron declared.

35 - Hinny Epilogue Two...

Harry kissed the top of her head.  “Gin, if this is what you want, you know that I’m going to support you.  You don’t have to work at all if you don’t want to.”

“I know,” Ginny said, tracing her fingertips into the groove of his abs.  “I think maybe I’d like to do something else eventually, but I think that when it gets closer, I’ll think more about it.  I just want to spend more time with our children and enjoy them, you know?”

Harry kissed the top of her head.  “Whatever you want to do.”

Ginny’s fingers trailed a bit lower to squeeze him.  “Then after I retire, maybe we can try for that magical number four?”

“Yeah?”  he asked, a little breathlessly.  “One more baby?”

“One more,” Ginny agreed.  “I think four is the perfect number, don’t you?”

Her thumb brushed under the head of his cock and his breath hitched.  “Yeah, that sounds perfect.  Let’s try for another girl.  Two and two, you know?”

Ginny smiled, slowly kissing her way down his chest.  She dragged her tongue over him, sneaking a look at him under her lashes.  “After I retire.”

“Deal,” he murmured and then her mouth wrapped around him and Harry watched her in awe, falling more in love with her all over again.

36 - Blaise Epilogue...

“I don’t even want to get married,” Blaise insisted.  “I’m working my dream job.  I have more money than I even know what to do with.  I can buy whatever clothes I want, travel wherever I want, and bloody shag whomever I bloody want… why would I want to settle down?  Seems boring.”

Theo sighed.  “One of these days, Blaise Zabini, some witch is going to turn her nose up at you and you won’t know what to do about it.”

Blaise laughed.  “Please.  I’m everyone’s fantasy.”

Sebastian snorted.  “His ego’s still working just fine, I see.”

Blaise grinned.  “And you two love me for it.”

“Well, instead of your ego, can we talk about our plan for Paris?”  Sebastian asked.

Theo pouted.  “It’s not fair that you both get to go to Paris and I have to stay here.”

“You have to work,” Sebastian told him. 

“And we’ll be working,” Blaise cut in.  “You and your team are taking over all of the investigation, am I right?”

“Yes,” Sebastian said.  “D, J, and I will keep track of it all and let you know what we find.  You’re only defending Lavigne, correct?”

“Yeah, but from what I’ve heard, it’s causing a rift in the Ministry.”

“And then some,” Sebastian agreed.  “My team is heading there tomorrow afternoon and as soon as know something, I’ll touch base.”

“Appreciate it,” Blaise told him.  “Now, let’s chat about what kind of outrageous gift we can get Draco before I head off to Paris to shag my way around the city.”

Theo turned to look at his husband.  “Why do we keep inviting him over?”

“Because you love him, baby.”

Theo wrinkled his nose.  “It’s bloody inconvenient that that’s true.”

Blaise laughed and clinked his wine glass with Theo’s.  “I’ll drink to that.”

_________

Epilogues 37-41 are still only partially finished as I've been procrastinating. LOL

[monetka228]

I was rewatching PnF and wrote some hcs about Heinz/Charlene. Idk why, but I love them sm. Can’t stop thinking about those babies

So, here they are. Enjoy.

Charlene loves all kinds of shiny things, so Heinz often pampered her with gifts of white gold and diamonds, because the company paid him a lot of money + his inventions, which now serve humanity, brought him extra money every month.

Charlene likes indoor plants, but does not like to take care of them. This annoys Heinz, but he still waters her flowers and pots.

Heinz took maternity leave and took care of their daughter while Charlene was at work.

Charlene is allergic to fur, so they got a sphynx. It always slept between Heinz and Charlene like a baby.

When Charlene had painful periods, Heinz stroked her belly and gave her various treats to make her feel better.

Charlene always covered her husband with a blanket when he fell asleep at his desk and scolded him for the gigantic amount of coffee he drank.

Heinz always hugged her whenever he could. He wanted to feel her touch and hold her close to him.

Heinz's love language: touches, words. Charlene's love language: actions, gifts.

Charlene likes to buy him flowers when she gets home late from work. She likes to watch his reactions.

Charlene often sends him intimate photos of herself when on business trips. Heinz then writes a one-meter poem about how flawless and beautiful her body is.

Heinz was her ideal of male beauty.

Charlene liked his German accent, which later disappeared due to life in the United States.

Charlene wakes up first. She strokes his head and kisses him a few times, then gets up and cleans up the mess left in the bed last night. Then she goes to the kitchen and leaves him a breakfast of eggs and fried vegetables and juices that she made herself. Also leaves a note with her lipstick on it and says how much she loves him and goes to work.

After the divorce, Charlene still uses the perfume that Heinz gave her because: "This perfume reminds me of you."

Back in college, Charlene developed a habit of covering her mouth with her hand to stifle her moans. And when Heinz was pleasing her, she covered her mouth again, but Heinz jerked her hand sharply and said: “Don’t do this. I want to hear how good I make you feel.''

Heinz was constantly playfully pinching her, squeezing her, lifting her sweater a little so that her skin could be seen. He liked to touch her and wanted to feel closeness not only emotionally, but also physically, although he preferred relationships where partners are close in spirit.

Heinz is afraid of mice. Charlene was the one who nailed them, muttering, "All men are big babies!", while Heinz was trembling in fear.

The scientist liked to read her something about biology. Charlene herself didn't study it much at school and found it boring, but she listened anyway because she liked hearing his voice.

When Vanessa was little and slept in another room at night, Heinz was afraid to touch his wife, get alone have sex with her. He was afraid that his daughter would hear and run into the room. When he himself was a goldfinch, he heard strange noises from his parents in the room and ran to check. He’d rather not check...

Charlene had black hair for a while. Heinz dyed it himself.

Heinz's favorite pastime was lying on Charlene's chest and listening to her steady heartbeat. Every time she said she could hear and feel his breathing, he felt goosebumps. She also often whispered cute things in his ear that made him melt.

Charlene loved it when Heinz hugged her from behind and kissed her neck and shoulders.

Charlene kept frowning as Heinz leaned in to kiss her after smoking a cigarette. He would then go brush his teeth and chew some iced peppermint gum to kill the stench and kiss her.

Charlene can play double bass and piano, and Heinz knows a few chords on guitar and violin. She often played the piano, and he sat and admired the smooth movements of her fingers, which so skillfully ran over the keys, creating a pleasant melody and a beautiful picture of pacification on her face. She also taught him to play several pieces: "Dog's Waltz" and "Rosehip". They even played an ensemble.

[asterrrrion]

Alright so part two of my explaining BSD french authors:

Arthur Rimbaud !

This is the boy. Looks young, right ? That's cause he's seventeen in this. (Funnily enough, he's exactly the same age as Verlaine's wife. Verlaine, though, is 27 at the time they meet. Yeah, I wasn't kidding when I said he was a piece of shit.)

Rimbaud is kind of THE poet of teenage rebellion. He was born in 1854, under Napoleon III to place him back in his historical context. He wrote quite a bit in opposition to Napoleon, actually.

His father is absent at first, and then not here at all later. He has... A complex and complicated relationship with his mother. He gave her a disrespectful nickname, she was seen hitting him several times (although at the time that's hardly surprising...), but at the same time when he asked her to go see him in London (at a time where the trip was very expensive, and she'd never left France in her life before that) she came, and his sister described him then as "the happiest I'd ever seen him". She's often seen as the source of his inner anger and rebellion.

What he hates for sure, though, was living in his house, with his family, and especially in his hometown, Charleville, which he despises.

He's especially known for having fled his house a lot, as in several times a year, for several days every time, walking during the day and sleeping on the road during the night. His most famous poem, "Ma bohème" (unstranslatable title because "bohème" is a french concept, but it basically means living your life day after day, in communion with nature and/or your dreams, often with an artistic dimension and no money whatsoever - also has travel connotations because it derives from "bohemian"), actually talks solely about that.

He wrote from his fifteenth to his nineteenth birthday, and was - still is - seen as a genius, being one of the most influential french poets ever despite having written for only four years. He was famous for being uncontrollable, and it translates back to his style : he took extremely traditional forms and changed their rules. (Which weirdly enough actually kinda fits with Rimbaud's ability ??)

If we ever have a Baudelaire in BSD, know that his character will probably look up to him, seeing as Rimbaud is usually seen as continuing Baudelaire's legacy of completely revolutionising french poetry. His two most famous books are "A Season in Hell" and "Illuminations", his last one. His literary movement is symbolism, invented by Baudelaire, characterized by melancholy and an attraction to the ethereal and mysterious. Rimbaud himself thinks that "the poet must search and describe the unknown" and, well, too bad if he sacrifices his sanity. He's also one of the first after Baudelaire to write prose poems.

He stopped writing, forever, at twenty, after the Verlaine fiasco. Actually, he wrote "Illuminations" directly after, then gave it to Verlaine so that he could get it published instead of doing it himself.

That's where his life gets really weird. He tries to learn seven different skills and languages while traveling everywhere, fails, his sister dies and he shaves his head for her funeral, is forced into the military to fight in Java, then deserts, gets hired on a boat on his way back and becomes a sailor, then tries to get hired in the American Navy, doesn't get any answer, goes in a circus then a factory, and all of that while traveling everywhere in the world in the space of about three years.

Nobody knows where he was for the nine months after that - and during all of this, everyone who knows him is hoping that he gets back to writing poetry - and then he goes home to help his brother with his farm before leaving, AGAIN. He walks from France to Italy, then gets in a boat to Alexandria, where he works in a construction project to manage the workers. This keeps going for about eleven more years, so I can't list everything this guy did : we'd need a whole ass novel.

He stays in Northern Africa for almost the rest of his life, although he travels quite a lot in that region and never stops moving. In France, he's still as famous as he was at 17, and several eulogies are written for him without his knowledge. We can also note that he does weapon trafficking, for a very short period, at some point. He writes to his family that he's "bored", of all things. He's described by the people he meets then as "smart, sarcastic, not very talkative, never talking about his past".

He then dies in Marseille, in his thirties, from cancer in his leg.

I'm gonna be honest : I don't like his BSD characterization. Rimbaud's a wild card, a chaotic teenager, as an author. I also ! Hate ! That he's Verlaine's mentor. But that'll be the next part, where I'll talk of IRL Rimbaud and Verlaine.

Previous and future parts are in the #IrlBSDFr tag.

[the0nlyallison]

Vent pt 2 because there's more I forgot about

I'm also not allowed to have my phone in my room at night so when I'm really sad I don't have anything to distract me.

I'm always thinking of the last time I saw my grandpa.. we went to my grandparents house to clean (my grandma's camera was making her see things that weren't there and she couldn't do any cleaning because of how bad she was). We were rushing to get out of their house to go home so I didn't get to hug my grandpa, I just waved... I can see so clearly his smile as he wanted at me.

I also remember things of my grandma's death. One day I was sitting in the living room at our old house and she wasn't waking up. My mom being a nurse, I asked her a lot of what was happening. Then it hit me that maybe my grandma's gasps were her trying to talk so I cried and my mom was trying to comfort me... I saw my dog stand on his hind legs to look at her, his first time acknowledging her. So I knew.... The next day I was at color guard practice. Mid practice I knew something was wrong. This terrible feeling came over me. It was so bad I was going to vomit. I was going to leave but I stayed. The time that happened was at 2:45, the same time she died.

I also think of how I got bullied. Freshman year me and this girl were best friends and we'd do best friend things lol we'd link arms, kids each other's cheek, etc and people then started calling us gay. I didn't really care about that because we both knew it wasn't true... Then it got worse. They started saying I was finding her in the bathroom. By the beginning of sophomore year it died down. At the end of sophomore year I had got with this dude and he wanted to meet me in the locker room so I told my color guard team I was going to the bathroom. He wanted to give each other head so we argued the entire time because I wasn't ready. My name got called on the announcements. I went to the group, told them I just had really bad period cramps, and continued. I found out the next day someone in the group started going around saying I was fingering myself and I had a breakdown in front of my history teacher and my classmates saw it. I didn't care. I could just remember me telling and screening and crying telling my teacher how much I wanted to kill myself when it was happening during freshman year and how I couldn't take it anymore after my grandma and grandpa.

I think about my biological mother too. About or last interaction. We barely talked. We talked twice. She asked me what I was listening to (Bon Jovi of course) and at the very end she said I was getting tall. There's things I won't ever forget about her. The last interaction I had and another, where it was my birthday party at my mamaws (her mom) house and she asked me when my birthday was. Being her first child, being my birthday party, I was pissed and everyone knew it. Drugs lol

And my biological dad. Why didn't he change after she died? I wanted him to get better. I wrote a poem for him. He was supposed to get better. I'll remember two encounters with him. A few years ago my baby nephew was really sick so my and my mom went to take care of the rest of my brother's kids. My other brother and my biological father went there and I ignored him the entire time. Before he left he came over, gave me a hug and a candy bar and said "happy birthday." Keep in mind this was in December and my birthday is in October. The second encounter was much recent, a couple months ago. We were in the drive through of Tim Hortons and I people watch lol so I was looking out the car window and saw a homeless man walking wearing pajama pants, so my brain automatically named him Pajama Pants. Another guy was walking farther down behind him. I heard my mom go "oh God there's [name] Allison don't look." I waited til both guys were gone and asked which one he was... He was Pajama Pants.

Every night I wanna cry about it but I can't. I'm too scared to. If my parents see me crying then I'm forced to tell them what's happening. I can't just tell them to leave me alone and that I need space.

I just miss how everything was before. I miss my friends. I miss my grandma and grandpa. I miss everything.

[madeofmosaic]

'the desire to you' a.k.a. i wrote a poem about my ex, cuz she gave me too much trauma

I get over stuff too quickly.

or maybe I never get over anything.

it might take only a night, maybe a few days, perhaps it’ll haunt me on a specific day for a few months.

maybe I only get over it while I’m dreaming.

possibly it’ll come to my mind a few years later, but I’d be over it by then.

would it ever be the same with you?

only a distant memory in my head.

or maybe a way too close one.

but why is the only thing I can’t put behind me is you?

maybe the past you still walks alongside me.

I might have forgotten the way you talk, the sound of your voice.

I wonder if I could still recognize it out of other 100 voices.

the feeling of your lips on mine is long forgotten.

long forgotten and hated, but sometimes I wish I could remember your taste.

I wouldn’t be able to read your body language any more,

nor notice the patterns in your speech.

maybe I was never able to.

I don’t think I’d be able to recognize your room or the way you dress.

perhaps I’m the only one who can’t move on.

I wonder if I looked into your closet, would I find my hoodie at the back of it.

or did you throw it out?

it took me courage, but I threw out yours after maybe a year of you giving it to me.

it was always at the back of the closet and at the back of my mind, along with you.

even though I forgot a lot, there’s quite a few I can remember.

they’re too golden to me to forget.

I’ll never forget the way you acted, sometimes so sweet yet sometimes so distant.

makes me think you never loved me.

maybe all the times you bought me things, said kind words and send cute videos were all part of a façade.

I want to know why would you do this to someone.

perhaps I was too naïve,

to be with you twice.

perhaps we were both young and stupid and so desperate to love someone.

although you loved so much people, you ran out of love to give to me.

maybe I just gave more love than you needed,

and you gave love a lot less than I needed.

ware the kisses you gave me when we weren’t even together a joke to you?

did you use me for your own satisfaction?

do you too wish that I’ve never sat next to you at lunch on that day?

you were the first and possibly the last person I’ve ever loved.

I can’t decide that if I could ever change the outcome of all this,

would my desire to feel your love again,

over power my hatred towards you?

[rockpapertheodore]

So last month i wrote this little short horror story? poem? thing [link], and that night i had tried to record a narration for it as well but, well

the whole breakdown that led me to write the diddly darn thing also made me too burnt out and exhausted to fix anything when i realized that the recording had corrupted during, and it had become very clear that i was fuckin brainroasted and couldn't handle reading words on my screen or trying to make things with my voice and brain.

SO i was thinking about that today when i remembered that i had actually saved the file instead of deleting it. I was positive. Found it, listened to it, went "oh shit i rly had something going with this" and clipped the first minute thirty out of it because it was rly good

But! This is the text of that minute-thirty and i have the whole of it linked at the top.

You are so exhausted. It's your day off and the bag of trash by the door needs to go out. You've worked seven days in a row because of the variable weekly schedules lining up badly. Two shifts in a row became doubles because of a nocallnoshow new hire on their fourth day. The trash needs to go out to the road tonight. Your step tracker shows you've walked 47 miles over the past week. You are so exhausted. There's a second bag of trash now. You only had a morning shift today, which left an entire afternoon to almost have fun with your friends online. None were on when you got home, so you fell into a hole watching weird niche interest videos and doomscrolling while waiting for someone to get on. You realize what time it is, and persuade yourself to take the trash out to the road with the promise of getting high. You forget that trash pickup was this morning. You are so exhausted.

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Playing the Best Version of Myself

I’m not intending to permanently turn this blog series into a “Sophie listens to podcasts and talks about the Starcruiser” thing, but… this week I found myself once again listening to a podcast episode about Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. It was The No Proscenium Podcast this time, and the episode was titled “Last Call at the Sublight Lounge.” One of the panelists, Kathryn, said the following about Halcyon passengers:

“I believe that a lot of the people on the ship were roleplaying that idealized version of themselves… Maybe you’re braver, bolder, more confident, more willing to stand up for what you believe in. Maybe it’s a version of yourself that you want to wish into being, but you’ve never had a chance to articulate it before.”

Funnily enough, this wasn’t the first time I’ve heard someone express this idea about the Starcruiser. On the final night of the show, I met up with a bunch of the performers after closing time. Emotions were running high, understandably, but a lot of those emotions were positive. There was so much love and gratitude in that space – for each other, and for what we had created and accomplished. Everyone kept talking about how much we’d grown because of the Starcruiser. Late in the evening, one of the performers attributed that growth to how we’d created a space where everyone who participated, everyone who came to play, could come be “the best version of yourself” – and playing as the best version of yourself changes you forever.

It gave me pause, when that performer said it, and I’m thinking about it further after hearing Kathryn bring it up again – because when I entered the Starcruiser as a guest, I didn’t think I was playing the best or idealized version of myself. I fully intended to not be myself. Sophie Katz knew too much about the Halcyon and its characters. I spent six months running around that ship, making sure that everyone else knew everything they needed to know about where to be, why they were there, and what to do while they were there. The beats of the whole two-day show are imprinted on my brain. So I thought that in order to have fun, and to avoid ruining anyone else’s fun with metagaming, I had to separate my guest-self from my writer-self.

Shira Alderaani Khesed was a character I made up almost two years ago. I wrote a poem about the destruction of Alderaan in Star Wars, and afterwards I fleshed out the character behind that first-person perspective. She was a woman without a homeworld, the daughter of Alderaanians who just happened to be off planet on their honeymoon when the Empire destroyed their lives. And as far as I could tell before my voyage, playing Shira would be about as far from acting as my real self as I could get without outright sacrificing my morals. Shira was a mechanic; she’d never had the good fortune to be able to pursue art as a career. She was cynical and cowardly, weighed down by the trauma she’d inherited and unable to imagine a better future – in direct contrast to my real-world optimism. She didn’t have a family or community to support her; her late parents kept her intentionally ignorant of her culture, believing that would protect her from her people’s genocide – unlike my real-life parents, wonderful and alive, who raised me to take pride in my culture. I wouldn’t have called Shira my ideal self; I certainly wouldn’t wish to be her or live her life!

I thought I’d successfully separated my real self from my Starcruiser-self.

But the performers on my voyage were quick to prove me wrong.

I mentioned last week that some of the performers dropped hints that they knew me. Gaya said I looked familiar. Raithe said he knew I understood what was going on better than anyone. Lenka outright added a bit to my backstory, saying she remembered how I helped repair the ship before this voyage.

There’s another example of this that I should mention now.

Captain Keevan’s path did not cross much with mine, but at one point late on the first day, I was standing with a friend in the lower concourse when the captain came out of the dining room. She approached us and asked how we were doing, mentioning she’d heard that I’d had some issues with Sammie the mechanic. I responded in character, explaining that Sammie had asked me to do something that I wasn’t comfortable with (lying to First Order Stormtroopers, which from Shira’s cautious-and-cynical point of view was a good way to get killed).

The captain told me that I shouldn’t have to do anything that made me feel uncomfortable or unsafe. Half joking, I looked at my friend and said, “Does that mean telling my friends to not sing anti-First Order fight songs?” (Which, yes, is another thing that happened. Video evidence here. Sophie loved that scene; Shira did not.)

“Well,” said Captain Keevan, “something like that could be a useful distraction, at times. I find that some people work well on the front lines, and their actions make it possible for others to do the important work they need to do in the background.”

“I do well in the background,” I said.

And she smiled and replied, “And I know you’re good at keeping things on schedule.”

As she walked away, I realized something about Shira. I’d thought that by making her a mechanic, I was making her unlike me. I’m not a hands-on hard-science building-things sort of person. I’d even been a bit nervous that someone might ask me something technical that I wouldn’t be able to answer.

But as Lenka had pointed out, as a mechanic, Shira was someone who had helped prepare the ship for this voyage. And as Captain Keevan had pointed out, Shira was someone who worked well in the background, supporting the people who were visible on the front lines.

In other words, Shira was the me I aspire to be, as a professional creative writer – not the person in the spotlight, but the person who makes it possible for other people to do well in the spotlight. The person who builds the world, who takes care of the details in the background, and who, if I’m doing my job right, goes unnoticed. You don’t notice a mechanic unless something breaks; when things go smoothly, you praise the captain. Similarly, you don’t notice a writer unless the dialogue is bad; when shows make you laugh and cry, you praise the actors and directors. That’s how it is. That’s the space I work well in and take pride in. Sure, I want people to know what I can do, and I want to get credit when I do a good job – so that I can continue to do this work that I love and make a living with it. I don’t dream about being a big flashy hero with crowds chanting my name. I want to be quietly essential.

I realized that Shira had an opportunity here – to learn to be that quiet, essential background player.

And as the show progressed, moments kept coming up that developed her story in that direction. When Lt. Croy ordered that a restraining bolt be put on beloved droid SK-620, Shira whispered to Sammie that he needed to go through it, despite the boos of the crowd, to keep the ship safe. The next day, Shira helped lure Lt. Croy and the stormtroopers downstairs to give Lenka and Saja Fen a chance to rescue SK. During the heist, Shira didn’t get one of the many “noisy distraction” jobs; instead, Raithe secretly passed Shira the gem, and she stood far away from the action, quietly keeping it safe while Captain Keevan ordered Raithe to turn out his pockets. Moment by moment, act by act, decision by decision, Shira was learning how much of an impact she could have on the galaxy from the background, even if – perhaps even because – most people didn’t know she was there doing the work that needed to be done.

Everything culminated in a scene that caught me off guard just as much in reality as in character. Shira wound up in the middle of the atrium, with a whole crowd of people’s eyes on her, telling Lt. Croy a series of objectively terrible lies.

It would be impossible for me to exaggerate how uncomfortable I am with improv. I’m fine with public speaking – I’m honestly pretty good at it – but I always prepare a lot in advance. If you’ve ever heard me say something cool, it’s because I spent at least ten minutes beforehand planning it out. I did not plan for this moment. And so, in that moment, even though I objectively knew that no real-world harm would come to me, my fear and Shira’s were one and the same. All I wanted to do was run away.

But I didn’t run away. I kept talking – babbling, really – because I had to keep Croy’s attention on me, so he wouldn’t turn around and see Raithe sneaking up to the mezzanine to steal the coaxium. Because that’s what Shira would have done, after everything she’d been through on that ship. She would play her part. She would make it possible for other people to do the more obviously important and visible job. And, as soon as the job was done and it was safe to do so, she would run away… straight towards Raithe, who promptly handed her the suitcase of coaxium. He knew he could trust her with it.

And me? I want to be trusted. I want to be someone that people can rely on. I may not literally want to be Shira Alderaani Khesed, but I want to have the kind of impact she had on the story unfolding around her, just by being me, hard at work in the background. Building worlds, preparing experiences, and keeping everyone around me on schedule. Relied on and appreciated by the people who matter most. Quietly essential to a life-changing experience, and given the chance to be so again, and again, and again. That’s the best version of me.

You wanna know the best part? Those two days I spent as Shira was not the only chance I had to be that best version of me. I now understand that the role that Shira played on the Halcyon was the role I played with Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser. I see it now more clearly than ever before. We don’t often get the chance to see ourselves so clearly, and I am so grateful to this cast for helping me see. They gave me such a gift. They gave everyone who set foot on that ship the gift of getting to be – and to learn that we are – our best selves.

I know what I can do for others – for a creative team, for an audience, for the world. I want nothing more than to do it again, and again, and again.

Let’s do it again, together.

[starlitwishforu]

青玉案 · 元夕 - 辛弃疾 english translation (and notes!)

ok well. all this chinese poetry posting has put me on a bit of a translation high so i wanted to share my most recent translation project, which i actually just finished recording and uploading yesterday after two whole months of waffling. the poem itself is SO fucking cute but SO hard to translate and i'm honestly very proud that i stuck with it to the end. it instantly became one of my top favourites the very first time i heard it so i hope other people can also find some joy from it!

here is the original:

青玉案 · 元夕

【宋】 辛弃疾

东风夜放花千树，更吹落、星如雨。宝马雕车香满路。凤箫声动，玉壶光转，一夜鱼龙舞。

蛾儿雪柳黄金缕，笑语盈盈暗香去。众里寻他千百度，蓦然回首，那人却在 灯火阑珊处。

and here is my translation:

Qing Yu An: Lantern Festival at Dusk

by Xin Qiji

Fireworks blossom beneath the touch of evening's eastern breeze; flurrying as they fall, sparks shower like stars. Prancing steeds pull chiseled carriages, sweeping fragrance across the path. The xiao’s decadent notes adrift, the jadelike light’s prismatic shift; the dragon-fish dance as the night-hours pass.

Combs shining in their hair, golden, silver, silken sway; sweet perfume and tinkling mirth linger in their wake. My searching gaze is futile as I scan the thronging crowds; at last I turn, and you are there, in the quiet dark of evening wane.

translation notes beneath the cut! there is a LOT, be warned!

translation notes:

so to start from the very top, let's first introduce the title 青玉案 · 元夕.

青玉案 (pinyin: Qing Yu An, lit. the matter of the verdant jade) is actually the name of a 宋词排名 (song cipaiming, song dynasty poetic/musical form). just as shakespeare wrote sonnets and basho wrote haiku, so the poets of the song dynasty wrote, among hundreds of other forms with fun names like this, Qing Yu An poems.

each 词排名 had a set number of characters per line, set rules for its tone patterns, and even came with its own tune. maybe a better western parallel would be twinkle twinkle little star, which uses the same tune as the alphabet song and baa baa black sheep.

the end result is that there are many titles under the heading of Qing Yu An, and even, according to chatgpt, another 青玉案 · 元夕.

anyway, this one by Xin Qiji, the most famous one, is titled 元夕 (yuanxi); 元 refers to 元宵节 (yuanxiaojie), the lantern festival held on the fifteenth day of the lunar new year which marks the end of the spring festival/chinese new year, and 夕 is dusk. hence a very naturally poetic name, lantern festival at dusk.

before i get into the text of the poem, i want to note that i often sacrifice rhythm/rhyme for precision of meaning. i ✨artistically✨ speed up/slow down some syllables while recording to preserve some sense of metre lol, but it does read quite awkwardly on paper. i'm a very inexpert student and have a lot to improve on!

ok so! line by line!

东风夜放花千树

--is a literally genius pun. it transliterates as: the east wind in the evening blows open the flowers of a thousand trees. very spring, right? haha spring festival get it.

however! its a chinese celebration, so what will there definitely be? fireworks 😎 and it just so happens that one word for "setting off fireworks" in chinese is 放烟花 (fang yanhua). yep, that's the same 花, which means flowers, but when combined with 烟 (smoke), it becomes a "fire-flower" 🎆!!

it's also the same 放, which in the context of actual flowers means the opening of petals, but in the phrase 放烟花 means to set off (the fireworks).

together, this line evokes both the blooming of the spring flowers under the eastern breeze* and the blooming of a thousand fireworks in the evening sky.

*spring comes from the east ofc; this is folklore and not science i think but lends to the spring-ness of the line

更吹落，星如雨

this one is pretty straightforward. lit. blown through the air by aforementioned wind, falling like a rain shower of stars.

宝马雕车香满路

oh boy. when i tell you my mom (who is my chinese teacher) and i got in several petty arguments over baomadiaoche...

so 宝马 (baoma) are just well-bred horses, prize steeds with a pedigree. a 雕车 (diaoche) (lit. carved chariot) is a very expensive carriage carved with lots of intricate decorations. in other words, these ppl are RICH.

however, it was difficult to convey the sheer decadence of 宝马雕车 without either using a miles worth of syllables or entirely losing the original cultural context. carved was too direct and ugly to hear besides, etched was not elite enough, sculpted conveyed entirely the wrong image... also, for some reason, "proud" to describe steeds was vetoed for being inaccurate???? hence the arguments.

in this scenario, the final word choice really is a matter of the least bad option.

at the same time, the second half of this line 香满路 (lit. fragrance fills the path) implies movement: the carriage is passing by, leaving the fragrance of rich people perfume in its wake. for the sake of syllables, i shifted that movement to the fragrance part of this line. i also like that this evokes a high-headed noble sweeping elegantly through the crowds.

overall, this line adds to the picture of a decadent, bustling market street during the most joyous celebration of the year.

凤箫声动，玉壶光转，一夜鱼龙舞

lit. the notes of the phoenix xiao (chinese recorder) move, jade gourd light shimmers, the fish dragons dance all night.

chinese ppl, ok, use two motifs to describe the beauty and virtue of every artistic thing ever: phoenix and jade. phoenix xiao means NOTHING. it's like virtuous xiao. jade gourd is a little harder; some say it's the moon, some say it's the lanterns. jade and light put together kinda implies moon anyway, so i just sidestepped the problem entirely.

as for 鱼龙 (lit. fish dragons), theyre a type of dragon lantern which supposedly has some characteristic of a fish. they are puppet-danced on sticks - dragon dancing, the classic. my mom and i both had a vivid image of this dragon-lantern-dancing, but we couldn't find it ANYWHERE. if anyone knows the right search query to pull this up, please lmk how to tame 谷大哥*. anyway, i left the lanterns implied because idk how the fuck to explain this whole thing in four syllables.

*lit. big bro google. its funnier in chinese

蛾儿雪柳黄金缕

this is the line that, when i finally bothered to properly research it, made everything about this translation click into place. these are all hair decorations. 蛾儿 (lit. li'l moth) are silk moths, 雪柳 (lit. snow willow) are silver tassels, and 黄金缕 (lit. yellow-golden cords) are gold cords lmao. hence golden silver silken sway, which was SO satisfying to come up with.

笑语盈盈暗香去

lit. laughing speech tinkles and faint fragrance goes by. this one is also fairly straightforward. 去 means to go, so we specifically want the image of a group of giggly teenage girls fading into the crowd.

众里寻他千百度。蓦然回首，那人却在 灯火阑珊处。

and finally we reach the most famous line, the 千古名句 (qiangumingju) - iconic line of a thousand histories!

lit. within the crowd, searching for him* in a thousand hundred directions; suddenly the head turns, it turns out that person is standing in the darkness where the lights have gone out.

*"him" is highly debated. 他, used in modern chinese like the pronoun "he", was historically a catchall pronoun for people of any gender. iirc, 她 for "she", and the gendered distinction, was only introduced when china started integrating to the west. in this line, 他 could be the teen girl that just passed by, or her beau. whichever way, one is the searcher, the other is the searched. i chose here to sidestep this by using i and you bc fuck gender.

anyway, when the searcher's head turns - even this bit had to be suitably poetic, a nightmare - they find their lover in the 灯火阑珊处.

灯火阑珊处 this phrase refers to a very specific image. imagine, in the early hours of the morning, a dwindling market street; the stands are closing one by one, lights winking out, leaving a gentle blanket of dark and calm behind. it is the quiet after the rain, the breath after the shout; it is the sigh of closing your front door at the end of the night. it's not the absence or complete lack of light, but rather the exit of it. a place of that just-left-behind dark is a 灯火阑珊处.

this sentence gave me so much grief and i am so proud to have done it even just a little bit of justice.

so after all that, the scene described by this poem is something like this: a lively late-night market street. people from many walks of life fill the path, celebrating the lantern festival, the turn of a new year and coming of spring, a riotous party of light and noise and joy. as the night slips into the sixteenth, the market begins winding down, stalls closing and lights winking out. amongst the teeming crowds ambling their way home, a young person searches for the their lover from whom they were separated; on some sudden instinct, they turn, to find their lover already looking back from the darkness of the fading festival, gaze caught in the divide between light and dark, wake and sleep: a quiet young love on the edge of spring, something fresh and new.

if anyone made it to this point, thank you and i hope this was an interesting read! please feel free to add comments questions and observations!! i would love to discuss at any level with someone other than my mom and chinese poetry truly is one of my passions even when it makes me want to kill, so i'm always down to talk. :] <3

[shhh-secret-time]

Seasons Change to Something Cold

"Run away, run away and let go; you're carrying too much. You'll break under all the weight."

Prologue

It started when he was ten. Or maybe before that, and he just can't really seem to remember, but does anyone when they open their eyes for the first time? Waking up to a world that greets you with dim colors, colors that seem to fade in and out like the seasons. But if you're anything like he is, then colors don't pop like they should. Everything is dull like a filter over his eyes he can't peel off. Maybe that was a common way to describe it, but there had to be a reason why so many people said the same thing.

Dull. That word popped up so much that it was starting to lose its weight. Even he had to admit he used it too many times in his songs or the little poems he secretly wrote in the back of his warped composition notebook. But how else was he supposed to describe it? Why fix something that's not broken, right?

It started when he was sixteen. Cheap whiskey and crumbled cigarettes coursing through his body; hazy nights lost in the bottom of some backwashed alcohol. Waking up in the back of his truck with a few missed calls from his mother or sister, never his father, wondering where he was and if he was safe. That's when the texts asking him if he was alright turned into ones telling him to get his shit together.

Or maybe it started with the farm. Screaming matches between his father getting louder and louder he swore someone in town was bound to hear them. Where the bags under his eyes got heavier and his mind got louder, so loud that even his music couldn't drown out the thoughts. Some nights it was lying on the floor of the bathroom trying not to vomit the cheap gas station food as it battled the alcohol in his stomach. Some nights it was him curled up in bed trying to find a reason to get up and do anything besides doom scrolling on his phone.

What he would have given to just go outside with his friends and get the rush of doing something. Anything. Instead of watching some stranger on his phone, do it. Like he was trying to squeeze that feeling out of the little box in his hands. Instead of sunlight, he'd settle for the screen's light in a dark room. His only saving grace was his guitar and his poetry. It felt like the only thing that got him through it some days. That’s when the fog would lift, and the seasons would change into something warmer. Where he'd pick his pen and create, his addiction turning into creation. The guitar strings digging into his fingertips would ground him and bring the color back for a little bit.

It started last month. He finally pulled himself out of bed. Talked to someone outside of class or one of the million parties he showed up to. It was Michael, someone he hadn't put merit in since middle school, the two sitting behind the school wasting time and probably years off his lifespan with a cigarette. Michael was the only one he really showed any of his poetry too, the two sitting in silence as he flipped through the book. Smoke billowing from his lips catching the light of the early sun and disappearing up into the clouds.

"It's good. Maybe a little rough around certain parts, but I get what you're trying to say." Michael pulled the cigarette from his lips and in between his fingers, giving it a new home. He was getting at praising the things around him, something that he grew into when he hit his senior year.

He didn't say anything as he rolled the cigarette between his lips, focusing on the burn in the back of his throat. He didn't need it to be good. He just needed it...to be heard. Maybe he didn't believe Michael really understood what he was trying to say, but it felt good to hear.

"I think you need to talk to someone though." He turned towards the taller man as he stood up using his cane. The silver tip tapping the ground wordlessly asking him to take a step back and give him space.

"I didn't realize you cared." His joke falls flat.

Michael doesn't laugh. Doesn't give him that pity laugh or nervous chuckle others do when he tries to deflect. Not that the goth was known for his laughter to begin with. He liked that about him. He was real.

What he didn't like was the way the curly haired man stared him down and silently took another puff of his cigarette. It made his skin crawl as the silence crept back over the two, but it wasn't the one he liked. The kind of silence where two friends could just bask in each other's presence, the warmth of their bodies reminding each other that they were there. He hadn't had that kind of silence with anyone in a long time, but he felt something like that when Michael was reading his work.

"Stan. I'm not the type to give you a lecture, preach to you about how it gets better." Michael breaks the tension when he's decided Stan's had enough, "I don't make pretty speeches, so I'll just come out and say it. Get help, talk to someone about what's going on in your head."

Stan's jaw shifts as he blows smoke from his nose, his eyes immediately shooting towards the ground. "I didn't say I needed your advice. I just wanted you to read what I wrote." He grumbles.

"I don't care what you want. I do care about you though, as much as I can." Michael responds with a bored expression like the venom in Stan's tone didn't even touch him.

"What's that supposed to mean? Am I that hard to care about?"

"Sometimes, but it's not because I don't like you honestly. You're one of the few that don't drain me." Michael pauses in between snuffing the light out of his cigarette on the brick wall behind him, being careful not to put it out on some of the artwork. "It's because it's like you don't want people to care."

Stan scoffs and rolls his eyes; he's not taking pulls from his cigarette anymore so he can feel the wind brushing against his lips. The cold nipping against his skin reminding him that it's here. The seasons are changing again.

"At least that's what I got from your writing, now if I'm looking too much into it than that's that." Michael taps his cane against the dirty stone, brushing away some crumpled-up newspaper as he limps over towards him. "You could always tell me I'm wrong."

God does Stan want to, to tell him to shut up and to stop talking. The embarrassing memory of him losing his cool in middle school flooding back into his mind, he squeezes his eyes shut to try and blink the thought away. The thoughts clawing at his lips trying to push themselves out.

".... When I graduate, I'm leaving South Park. I'm getting out of this hellhole and finding another one to call my own." Stan looks up from his feet at him as he speaks, "I might not find anything but it's better than wishing I did. Find something Stan, do something instead of wishing you could." Michael goes to walk past him like he didn't just pierce through any wall Stan tried to put up, maybe his poetry got too much across.

Find something.

Fuck that. He didn't have the energy or the time to deal with that.

"Here." Michael presses a worn-out looking card in his palm. Stan looks down at the creases where it was folded and unfolded over and over again.

Some therapist's business card looked like a woman's name if Stan had to guess, the address and phone number written in small text. His brows furrow together, and suddenly everything feels too heavy again. He feels too tired to walk back to class or even try and eat lunch with his friends.

"Do it or don't, I can't control you, but I don't waste my energy on people I don't care about. I can just hope you'll be here when I come back one day."

And that was the last thing Michael ever said to him, the last time he smelled the clover cigarettes in the air. The last time he ever showed his writing to someone. Rumors floating around school that he just packed a bag and left in his hand me down car he got from his mother. He didn't even wait for the school year to be over he left exactly how Stan thought he would.

Now it starts here. With him staring out the window, wondering what exactly it was that Michael was going to find out there. Stan presses his lips into the palm of his hand, hiding behind the fingerless gloves. The card tucked away in his worn-out brown jacket with his other hand, palming the card repeatedly bending it over and over.

Prologue | 1 | 2

[queenlucythevaliant]

When Lucy returned to school for the spring term, Peter sent a war poem. It dropped from the crease of his letter into her lap, as unexpected as a firebomb.

“On Receiving News of War,” the title read, and Lucy’s heart lurched. She was sixteen and Peter was twenty-one. The war had ended three years ago and he had only been a British soldier for a matter of months before he was discharged. Now, this poem came: words from the Last Lot, the 1914 war. Lucy picked up the loose page and read.

ON RECEIVING NEWS OF THE WAR

Snow is a strange white word;

No ice or frost

Have asked of bud or bird

For Winter's cost.

Yet ice and frost and snow

From earth to sky

This Summer land doth know,

No man knows why.

She looked up in shock. What did Peter mean in sending this? Was it only that it made him think of their first days in Narnia, white and frozen under the White Witch’s curse? He could not have missed the title. Lucy worried her lip between her teeth, considering. Her brother did not often use words idly.

Red fangs have torn His face.

God's blood is shed.

He mourns from His lone place

His children dead.

O! ancient crimson curse!

Corrode, consume.

Give back this universe

Its pristine bloom.

Oh. Yes, alright. That made a certain kind of sense. And there, at the bottom of the page, was a single line writ in Peter’s hand. “Variations on a theme,” he had written, “only I’m not yet certain what theme it is. Do you have an idea?”

Several, in fact. Lucy’s mind lit up in an instant, all a-whirl with memory and typology. She wasn’t a child any longer, and in small bits her many battles came back to her. Peter, she was sure, remembered even more of Narnia’s wars.

Yet Lucy remembered the ice of Lantern Waste on the first day as though no time had passed at all. She remembered the crimson of Aslan’s blood. She remembered the thaw. In her mind, those things had nothing and everything to do with Britain’s last war. Nothing: the two worlds were as different as King Arthur and Winston Churchill. Everything: because maybe Arthur and Churchill were not so different after all.

That night, after a trip to the library and with a book of poetry on her desk, Lucy composed her reply. “Another variation,” she wrote, and carefully copied out the lines.  

All the dead kings came to me

At Rosnaree, where I was dreaming,

A few stars glimmered through the morn,

And down the thorn the dews were streaming.

And every dead king had a story

Of ancient glory, sweetly told.

It was too early for the lark,

But the starry dark had tints of gold.

The poem was called “The Dead Kings.” Peter was not dead, but Lune was and Cor was. Caspian was. It was easy to imagine them appearing in the trenches and whispering their stories into the ears of British soldiers.

“Caspian would have liked the notion, I think,” Lucy said thoughtfully.

Peter leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Yes. Come to think of it, I rather like it myself. If I were the dead king, I mean.”

“It’s strange—I think these were meant to be sad poems, the way they were written. The world unwillingly cursed and the ancient kings dead. Yet when you apply it to Narnia, I don’t think it’s terribly sad at all. Maybe a little melancholy, but hopeful too. Like I know something that the poet doesn’t.”

“You do know something that the poet doesn’t,” answered Peter.

“I mean about war and dying and all. It’s all so distant for me, you know? And yet I often suspect that I know secrets that some men who actually fought couldn’t guess at. The hopeless men, maybe. In Narnia it was all more beautiful. Having lived there elevates even war and death, in this world.”

“We were, both of us, soldiers once.”

Lucy nodded.

“How about this one, then?” Peter shoved his book across the table, nearly upending the cream along the way.

The drab street stares to see them row on row

On the high tram-tops, singing like the lark.

Too careless-gay for courage, singing they go

Into the dark.

“Simple,” said Lucy. “Singing on the way to war is courage. Singing in the dark is just about the bravest thing a person can do. Just because these boys go into the battle without knowing what it’s really like doesn’t make them any less brave for going, or for singing.”

“You would know,” her brother smiled fondly.

With tin whistles, mouth-organs, any noise,

They pipe the way to glory and the grave;

Foolish and young, the gay and golden boys

Love cannot save...

“It makes me think of Susan,” Peter murmured.

“I can see that. Our love cannot save her, only Aslan’s.” Lucy frowned thoughtfully.

“No, no—I mean I wonder if that’s how Susan thinks of us: foolish children still playing games where singing in the dark means anything at all. Gay and golden, but naïve and careless by the same token. Too caught up in notions of courage and glory to realize that we live in a world where good people die.”

“Oh Peter, you don’t really think?”

“She told me once she’s afraid that we’ll never grow up, did you know? I wondered if she meant that we would always be like children, or if she worried we might die young. Sometimes I still wonder.”

“It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world,” said Lucy. “To always be child-like, or even to die young. Not by half.”

Peter snorted. “You might not mind dying young, but I’d certainly mind it. You’re my little sister, Lu. If you die young, it means I’ve done something wrong.”

“Well of course I’d mind! There are so many things I mean to do once I’m grown up. But I’ve always thought—ever since Father Christmas handed me that dagger—that I might. As long as I died for something, it wouldn’t bother me. I think I could be a rather good martyr.” She winked across the table.

“Don’t you dare. If Aslan has short lives in mind for either of us, we’ll drink what we’re given. In the meantime, let’s both of us focus on growing up well.”

The next week, Lucy went with Marjorie Preston to the mail room. It was Marjorie’s birthday and she was expecting a parcel from home, but Lucy was also privately hoping for another letter from Peter.

An abundance of riches awaited Marjorie: an enormous box that the two of them had to lift together. Thus, Lucy tucked Peter’s letter under one of the box’s flaps as they carried it, and it was Marjorie who tore open the envelope when they reached the dormitories.

“What in the world is this?” Marjorie exclaimed, waving a poem under Lucy’s nose. Lucy snatched it away and hungrily read the words, considering how this variation fit Peter’s theme. Then, she noticed that Marjorie was still beside her, tapping her foot impatiently.

“My brother sends me war poems,” Lucy explained hurriedly.

“That’s strange.”

“Do you think so?” Lucy considered. “Well, no matter.”

WAR GIRLS (here Peter had added “& VALIANT QUEENS”)

Strong, sensible, and fit,

     They're out to show their grit,

   And tackle jobs with energy and knack.

     No longer caged and penned up,

     They're going to keep their end up

   Till the khaki soldier boys come marching back.

"Does he mean you?" asked Marjorie, wrinkling her nose.

Lucy laughed, but didn't dispute it. She went to fetch some paper and a pen.

On they went for the next several months, passing poems back and forth in their letters. Some of them were hopeful and some despairing, some sad, some darkly funny. It was a dialogue in a war that Peter scarcely remembered, and Lucy even less. In time, Tennyson and others from before the Last Lot worked their way in. Even Shakespeare made an appearance with several selections from the Henriad. Spring lurched into summer which tumbled into fall. Peter turned twenty-two in August and Lucy was seventeen in November.

Then, at dinner at Professor Digory’s house one night, the specter of a Narnian king appeared before them. Before they left, Peter found the poem he was thinking of in the Professor’s study and gave it to Lucy.

Horror of wounds and anger at the foe,

And loss of things desired; all these must pass.

We are the happy legion, for we know

Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass.

“Does it feel different this time?” he asked once she had read it.

“Yes,” replied his sister, “and no. It feels obscurely like it did the night Aslan died. Like something is hanging over us.”

“I think this is the end,” Peter said bluntly. “He said we wouldn’t ever go back to Narnia, yet here we are. It feels like the end. Do you remember what it was like the night before a battle?”

“Yes. I didn’t before, but I do now. Like we had to gather up everything inside ourselves and name it. Fear and courage, love and memory.”

Peter sighed. “We ought to get going. There might be ice on the roads tonight.”

Lucy went into the closet and fetched her coat. Peter followed, moving a fraction slower than usual.

“Peter?” Peter turned and looked at Lucy, who was standing in the doorway with her fur-trimmed collar turned up around her throat. “It was a good poem, Peter. The right poem. Time’s but a golden wind that shakes the grass…”

Golden. Golden like Aslan’s mane, which they both so dearly longed to touch once more. Lucy tossed the poem round and round in her mind all that evening.

Before he and Edmund left for London, Lucy slipped an envelope into Peter’s pocket. “Read it on the train,” she told him.

Peter nodded. “I have one for you too.”

It was the last conversation they shared in the Shadowlands, though neither knew it at the time.

When Lucy unfolded her poem, she recognized the words. It was her favorite war-poem, which she’d first sent to Peter months ago when their correspondence had begun.

Sombre the night is:

And, though we have our lives, we know

What sinister threat lurks there.

But hark! Joy—joy—strange joy.

Lo! Heights of night ringing with unseen larks:

Music showering on our upturned listening faces.

It almost made her want to giggle, how well Peter knew her. Lucy thought of him and Edmund together in London; she ached for Susan, who had chosen not to join her siblings in their last battle for Narnia. She breathed in deep and thought of music on the way to war.

Death could drop from the dark

As easily as song—

But song only dropped,

Like a blind man's dreams on the sand

By dangerous tides;

Like a girl's gold hair, for she dreams no ruin lies there,

Or her songs where a lion hides.

That last couplet was wrong. Peter had changed it. The poem ended with, A girl’s dark hair and kisses where a serpent hides, but Peter had written gold and lion instead.

When Peter unfolded his own poem on the train, he found only a single stanza, annotated on nearly every line.

It didn’t pass— (His will be done) it didn’t pass-  (His will be done)

It didn’t pass from me.

I drank it when we met the gas  (His will be done)

Beyond Gethsemane! (His will be done)

The train halted and the whistle blew. Peter shook Edmund awake beside him, and together they went to unbury the rings.

 .

 Poems referenced: “On Receiving News of the War,” Isaac Rosenberg; “The Dead Kings,” Francis Ledwidge; “Joining the Colours,” Katharine Tynan; “War Girls,” Jessie Pope; “Absolution,” Siegfried Sassoon; “Returning, We Hear Larks,” Isaac Rosenberg; “Gethsemane,” Rudyard Kipling

[kingpippthe2nd]

This is going to be a Neil Gaiman appreciation post. Not because I think, the internet needs another person babbling on about how good an author Neil is. There is enough of those. This one is purely egotistical, because I have too many words rattling in my head, and they want out. So, settle in and let me tell you a story. I promise, it will make sense in the end. Or go read something interesting. I’m not your parent. 

I used to read a lot as a kid. The library in my town was open on two afternoons each week: Tuesday and Thursday. So, every Tuesday I would go there with my stack of read books, swap them for a smaller stack of books, which I would devour in the next two days, return them on Thursday, leave with a bigger stack and so on and so on. I couldn’t read enough. I loved disappearing into all the different worlds, all the different adventures. I was the kind of kid, that would read until the middle of the night, illuminated by a flashlight, be exhausted all day in school, just to go home and do it all again.  

I don’t know when this changed, exactly. Only that it did. Something about growing up took away the wonder of printed words. Or wonder in general.  

I remember telling my therapist a year or so ago how I remember being able to see so much beauty in the world. How the tiniest thing could spark so much joy in me. Make me imagine entire worlds. And how I couldn’t find this kind of joy anymore. How I felt that something in me was irrevocably broken. She reassured me, that this was normal. All part of growing up. Childlike wonder at the world is not for adults to have. Never have the words a therapist felt so fundamentally wrong. I was heartbroken leaving that session. My worst fears had become true: I’d never find that joy again. 

Over the years, I never lost my love of stories. I started listening to audiobooks, a form of media which I used to despise. Why listen to a book when you can read it? Hold it? Smell it?  I watched movies and series and listened to podcasts. But I didn’t really read. I had lost the patience for them. Don’t get me wrong: I still loved my books. I have some beautiful editions of my favourite books that I loved showing off to people. I bought new books as well. New stories. And I told myself I’d get around to reading them soon. But I never did. 

I used to write a lot, too as a kid. I wrote diaries, though I never kept up with them for long. I wrote short stories and even started writing a book, which was not very good and is now lost forever. I wrote loads of poems. One of them I wrote sitting on a roof in a night gown while the full moon shone behind the church tower. I still have that one. It isn’t half bad. But I stopped writing years ago. It left me, when I left the books. 

Some years ago, my partner at the time introduced me to a new book. Theyread it aloud to me in the evenings. It was called “Neverwhere” by a man I had never heard of: Neil Gaiman. I fell immediately in love with the story and the writing and the characters. Soon enough I owned all the Neil Gaiman audiobooks I could find and listened to them ravenously.  

Within the last year I have tried to read four books. I finished one of them. Not a big one. And it took me multiple months. I had to force myself to finish it, even though I loved the story and the writing. The other three I abandoned halfway through, feeling terribly about myself and my apparent inability to read. 

And then Amazon Prime released season two of Good Omens and I found myself swept up in a maelstrom of emotions and hype and fan theories. I started reading fan fictions for the first time in my life. Long ones too. I started telling anyone and everyone about how much I loved and missed the show. About how genius a writer Neil Gaiman was. How I had loved his way with words and worlds for such a long time and that he was my favourite author. 

A week ago, I had a realisation: I had never actually read a Neil Gaiman book. I���ve had them read to me. I’ve listened to hours and hours of audiobooks. But I had never ever actually sat myself down and read a book by my favourite author with my own eyes. Held it. Smelt it.  

So, I picked up one of the “I’ll get around to it books” from a stack on my hallway book shelf and started reading. A little thing called “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”. I finished it within three days. I read it on my way to and from work. One night, I walked all the way from the tram stop to my flat whilst continuing to read, phone flashlight in hand, so the darkness wouldn't steal the story away from me.  

And as I finally looked up from on the pages again and looked around, something else happened. It was as if the words had given my mind a little nudge. The world was spinning slightly differently. And all over sudden I could see the world as I had as a kid. There are more colours now. Everything is a bit more sparkly, more magical. I can taste stories on the wind, see them in the early morning sunshine. I have ideas rattling in my head that need writing down for the first time in what feels like forever. Ideas for short stories, for poems. Maybe even for a book.

I can’t even begin to express how thankful I am to Neil for giving me back something, I knew I had lost forever. Because childlike wonder at the world is not for adults to have. With nothing but his words printed on paper he remade the way I see the world. If that isn’t some kind of magic, then I don’t know what could be. And who wants to be an adult anyway.

[fezwearingjellybananas]

Tag Game: Writing Patterns

Rules: List the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there’s a pattern.

Tagged by @squireofgeekdom thank you! This seems fun. It's all going to be Writer's Month fills (I'll exclude the poem though)

It was dark, inside the Speed Force. (Alone)

Something was wrong with Barry. He was acting strange, had been ever since Caitlin had picked him up from home. And he was standing too close. (Black Out)

Weather Wizard had actually managed to trap him. (Weather Wizard's Worst Plan Yet)

There were wires missing. Barry had put this together yesterday and now there were wires missing. (Twist of Time)

Even with his powers dampened, Barry could probably have found a way to escape if he was on his own. (Reunite)

Eobard held the hoodie close, breathing it in. (Prize)

I feel I should start this story with it was a dark and stormy night. (The Mystery Lantern)

“When you couldn’t phase,” Cisco said softly. “I… For a moment, I…” (Different)

Cisco seemed right at home on the stage. (Undercover)

“Are we sure putting four speedsters in a car is a good idea?” Eddie asked. (Road Trip)

I think the pattern is the opening tends to be shorter lines rather than full long paragraphs- number 2 with its three whole sentences is the longest opening, most of these are just one sentence paragraphs- though these are all Writer's Month fills, so they are all shorter fics written quite quickly which probably has an influence, I don't know if that pattern would stay the same if I compared these with longer fics and the no deadline to work to shorter fics that I often write. I wouldn't be surprised if most tend to start quite quickly though, especially with shorter fics.

Almost all of them mention a character within the first line, so maybe that feels like prioritising establishing characters over establishing setting? I suppose there's also some influence there of- with the exception of number 7- all these are set within the canon setting (even if they get labelled canon divergent AUs) and because it's fic there's an assumption the reader is probably already familiar with the setting and the characters, so maybe don't need as much.

7 is a full AU, so there's a little more on setting that comes later, but it's the third fic in the Barriscowest Sherlock Holmes AU, so there is some that's still skipped over because I wrote it in a different fic. Its main inspiration being the Sherlock Holmes books is also why it does feel different to write, it's the only time I write in first person, I usually use third person limited, and I do try and write them to attempt to feel like someone who grew up in the Victorian era is writing them (though actually, they're probably being written somewhen between the late 30s and early 50s, because they're Iris- and Cisco- going back and writing everything down again for their grandchildren to have the whole story instead of just the parts everyone knows about).

Tagging @kitkatt0430 @goldheartedchaoticdisaster @shrinkthisviolet @angst-is-love-angst-is-life if you'd like!

[fantasykim]

Writing sprint

“Hey, can I ask a weird question?” she asked, I nodded for her to continue. “Did you ever have a crush on me? Ya know, back in highschool?” 

I looked down at my hands, picking at the last bits of nail polish and chewing the inside of my cheek. I wonder if I had been obvious about it, or if she was only realizing in hindsight. Or maybe she was just curious. I had always been out and proud since before we met. And she only just came out to me. Makes sense she might ask a question like this.

I took in a deep breath and held it in for a moment before responding with a small, sheepish smile. “Yeah… I did.” 

At first I had just thought she was the coolest person I’d ever met. I traded in my leggings and skirts for jeans after a few months of knowing her. When she wore a bandana in her hair, so did I. Sometimes we would match colors by accident. Those days made me smile brighter.

I watched every show she mentioned, and listened to every song she quoted. Just to understand her better. So I could relate, and talk about whatever she wanted to talk about. 

She cared about me in a way no one ever had before, and it touched me in ways I’d never understood until meeting her. And I fell for her. Hard and fast. She was my everything. I couldn’t go a day without talking about her, to her, thinking about her. 

Her arsenal of bracelets and rings made me look into jewelry. And I bought her a necklace. One day I asked her what piece of her jewelry she loved most, and I prayed she would say the yin that hung around her neck, that matched the yang hanging from mine. And when she did I had to hide my smile.

I told her secrets I’d never shared before. She didn’t judge me on my low days, instead she lifted me up. And I did the same for her. We made sure we had at least half of the same classes each year of highschool. And her mother never asked if I was coming over anymore because she knew the answer was yes.

I was so in love with her. 

But she was straight. So I dated other girls, tried to pretend I wasn’t. But I only got hurt in the process.

Maybe I hid behind those relationships, for fear of her realizing I loved her.  Had it not worked? Had she seen through it all? The only problem was even though she wasn’t straight anymore, I still couldn’t have her.

“When did you stop?” she asked with a smug smile. “Having a crush on me, I mean.” she knew she was beautiful. She was the most confident girl I’d ever met. And I’m so lucky it rubbed off on me in our highschool years.

When I got too low and it started to drag her down, I thought I had lost her as a friend. But I didn’t stop loving her then. When we got into a huge fight junior year, and didn’t talk for a month. I thought it was all over. But my heart still ached for her then. When I tried a little to hard to get her to be around me and she was annoyed, I feared I had scared her away. But we stayed best friends.

When she called her other good friend a ‘best friend’ it sent a dagger through my heart. But I know more than most people that you can have more than one best friend. But sometimes I stayed awake at night, wondering if she thought of me as a best friend, or if it was only one sided like my love. I simply couldn’t stand the thought.

I wrote essays on how much she meant to me, letters she would never read. Epic poems of how deep my love ran through my veins, all of it for her, but she would never know. Because what if it was too much. What if that was what made her turn her back on me?

What if offering to turn out friendship into a relationship was the straw that broke the camel's back. Something we could never come back from.

I couldn’t take that chance.

I opened our texts and typed it out hundreds of times, only to abuse the backspace key into wanting a divorce with me. When I ever did say something sweet to her, she would always laugh it off and brush it aside. So instead of letting each other know we valued the other, we called each other names with big smiles.

I still tell her basically everything. But I have a feeling it’s not the same for her. And I wonder when the rift between us came to be. Are we more fragile now? Were we stronger before?

I’m scared of what my words can do, and how I can never take them back. But i’ve waited long enough. I’ve waisted so much time already. I’ll never move on if I don't know how she feels about me in return.

When did I stop liking her?

I chuckled softly and bit my lip. Then slowly lift my eyes to meet hers.

“I never did.”