#escapril day 7

[raventropy]

You're sitting at the cafe table across from me.

Half of your hair is purple still. There's glitter on your eyes. There's glitter on mine, too, even though I hate doing it for anyone but you.

The drink between is is purple; so is the slice of cake. I always try to match things to you. I wonder if you notice.

You're reading the notes I left on your book. You're looking down at the pages. I'm looking at you. You have one hand holding the book open, and the other elbow on the table, hand propping up your chin.

Your lips are just slightly open. You're mouthing the words, but not making sound. I haven't kissed you yet, even though I want to. The week before, you let me put my fingers on your neck, your pulse showing your heart about to beat out of your chest.

[flugsvamp88]

portrait

(7/4/24)

a mirror is a portrait of another version of me something lingers from the past a life i have never lived or known where i didn’t fail or where i didn’t lose it all standing face to face with ‘i told you so’ in its finest form, my battered reflection

c.m

[clinksandgroans]

portrait

oil paint in thick dabs

cheeks dusted

pink. the slightest smile.

[angelus-a13]

skin

the jar leaks, how after it’s been so undisturbed all of this time neglected, the ink flows into my hand indigo hides my veins, so far below the surface streams of purple ink drip painting a crime scene not of my making from a letter, how are you to thinking of you cleaning my hands, stained lady macbeth sleepwalking stained all my thoughts are you purple smeared pages all my love x

[barelyevenwriting]

Day 7 Naked

He is forever leaving, in silence

Pulling pieces of normality

Into ragged cavities in his body,

Skin pulled tight and aching.

    He is always moving,

Hands wide open and lips stretched

Into a facsimile smile.

    He is a promise of a good time,

He's bare open and aching,

Always waiting for more and else

And never here to stay.

    He is broken open and uneven,

Inked skin and pierced laughter.

    He is forever more than he appears,

Always less in the waking hours

That pool sleepless hours

Into perfect promises and dreams.

    He walks in uneven steps,

Wishing for something to cut off the edge

Of words and remembrance.

    He is forgotten and alone,

Breaking into soundless laughter

Tired cries in the middle of the cacophony.

    He is naked and unbound,

Pulling lies to cover up the ugly side

Of promises that could never last.

    He is restless and hopeless,

Stuck in between two different thoughts.

    He is a promise of a bared past

Too tired for his hands to hold.

[circadeacademia]

Prompt: Bad Habit (Escapril Day 9)

A list of bad habits I possess:

• Profusely biting nails when the butterflies in my stomach transform back into caterpillars.

• Staying up late at night because my brain identifies as darkness.

• Not drinking enough water ever since I'm drowning with my head afloat.

• Slouching like an open first bracket as I struggle to keep the burden off my shoulder restrained.

• Being a woman and (not) utilising my uterus up to its full potential.

#1 confession : my nails often look like the map of sri lanka

They live at the mercy of my incisors, much like slapstick characters next to my mother's precise C-section. I destroy them with the same audacity like butterflies in my stomach go through retrogressive metamorphosis. At times, I think of ripping my torso open like a rotten tree and unleashing the apex predator inside.

So the next time I declaw myself, spare me as a creature of habit. Because maybe if I try, I can make it precise.

#2 confession : unbothered, hydrated and in my lane (?)

3 litres a day, I thought would be enough to just ‘live, laugh, love’ through life. But I'm 7 part saltwater and a pretend salmon. Some days, I also mimic a biblically accurate eye candy : sour & pre-saturated in brine.

Make it make sense, but it's not really my fault if I remind you of a fish, actively drowning while gasping for water.

#3 confession : this rusty old uterus will be my endgame

Bloody hell! innit? You should've seen their faces when I decided to keep the river flowing and leave the barren field for aesthetics. This old hag is in her main character era and will chew right through your nerve endings to prove so. Enough with the uterus talk you say, but old habits die hard.

On a side note, I could've lectured you about the ‘Y’ in audacity, but well, what would I know? I'm just a woman and a woman I stay.

— circadeacademia

[moonstruck-writing]

I look into the pond but I cannot see my reflection so I stay bent until the instructor considers we’ve looked enough to come back to the practice with a new finding but I sit down confused and empty they say if you change too fast you don’t have time to process the grief of losing your identity or the wonder of building a new one maybe the waters are too muddy from all the kicking and swimming trying to keep myself afloat while still going somewhere advancing towards a better me or better future but did anything have to improve? was it necessary? I cannot measure happiness so I have no way to know is it bad if I want to fall into the slumber of the unknown? rest knowing I don’t have to choose who to be so I can be myself

written for Escapril day 7 — portrait

@moonstruck-writing Do NOT repost or use my writing in any way Reblogging is okay

[salmonberrypj]

Escapril Day 7 - Portrait

-PJ

(Based on this one post about the speculative 2-for-1 POW portrait adventure).

[good-things-go-bad]

escapril day 7: portrait

[totaldarksublime]

escapril 2024 day 7: portrait

if the art speaks for itself,

why do we invest

in gilded, gaudy frames?

why not blutack the mona lisa

to the side of the louvre -

put it inside the weird glass triangle

in the front and let everyone

see it, unadorned?

i choose my words carefully, watch

my movements so that in any snapshot of my life

you would see me, carefree and smiling.

- JD

[wheatfieldspoet]

the stars, embroidered with your love

after Joy Priest and BTS

when i see stars in the night sky, i think of 7 boys surrounded by cellphone lights in an immense city stadium so far from home, singing in their mother language but speaking a borrowed one. i had been right there with them, through a laptop screen an ocean away.

it is 2018. i am just about to turn 24 and i’m trying to survive my quarter-life crisis. i’d never felt more lost in the world, never felt so disconnected from who i was. i watch kim namjoon, the leader, a boy my age, talk about love with his hand on his chest.

in front of 40 thousand people, and millions more watching around the world, he confesses to a lack of love for the self, something he thought he would need to work on until the day he died. and then came our love: a phenomenon that defined a new era.

it is a gross disservice to think that BTS is merely a cog in the system or fodder for a teenage girl’s blush. what simple pandering would expose the cracks in a mirror of loathing, record the trials and errors of patience, chronicle the mangled stages of recovery?

it is not easy to grow up— what more when you have an audience— but because i had witnessed them heal the inner child that was once buried, bring the young ghosts back to life all through love, i knew that i could, too.

much time has passed since then. the universe has expanded; the stars are farther apart. the fire in me has gone from wild in a forest to a wick in a cozy room. but love transcends distance and goes beyond measure. it keeps things alive.

— jade a.

escapril day 13: blush

@poetryorchard day 13: young ghosts

bonus prompt - pw.org: Inspired by Joy Priest’s poem When I See Stars in the Night Sky, write an ode to your favorite musician placing them in a specific moment in time.

additional footnotes below!

the title is a translated lyric from BTS’ song with coldplay, “my universe”

here is a quote from the moment that inspired the poem, for additional context:

“Through this ‘Love Yourself’ tour, I’m finding how to love myself. I didn’t know anything about loving myself, but you guys taught me—through your eyes, through your love, through your tweets, through your letters, through your everything. You guys taught me and inspired me how to love myself. And loving myself is my whole life goal until my death. And you know, what is loving myself? What is loving yourself? I don’t know. Who can define their own method and way of loving myself? It’s our mission to find our way to love ourselves.

It’s never intended, but it feels like I’m using you guys to love myself. So I want to say one thing: Please use me. Please use BTS to love yourselves. Because you taught me how to love myself every day.”

— Kim Namjoon of BTS Citi Field, New York 6 October 2018

[honiedcitrus]

a few days behind, but here's day 7 inspired by the following prompts:

escapril - skin

cgcprompts - write a pantoum, ghazal, or sonnet (does this qualify as a sonnet?)

this is something i've been wanting to write for a while but couldn't find the words for. still haven't really captured it, but i'm glad i'm finally finding some words.

[flugsvamp88]

skin

(7/4/23)

you are not your skin those marks and scars whatever happened is not to define you wholly you can pray to whatever god to change what it was that hurt you no holy symbol or sign from the heavens above could bring you peace so learn to heal hold on tighter to it that peace and light no longer suffocation

c.m

[alixx-black]

Night & Day Poetry Collection: Day 7

#Poetry #Collection - combining #Escapril poems with my #MentalHealthAwarness Poetry Initiative poems to tell my #burnout story.

MHAPI Prompt 7 / Night & Day Poetry Collection – Day 7 Day 7: invisible disability If you could live a day in my skin, you’d know I wasn’t making it up, and that “it’s just anxiety” is far from accurate enough: My disabilities are invisible. I have been to doctors who have ignored my symptoms and blamed all of my pain on the lies my brain makes up under the guise of GENERALIZED ANXIETY…

[oceansabove]

escapril day 7: portrait

i touch you like i’m painting a portrait of you, like i hope this lasts, your hair curling like a blackberry bramble in august, your eyes deep like winter rain. buttery sunshine through the blinds is the best lighting. i’ll bloom soft mulberry colors on your neck, sweet pink on your lips. i want you to live forever in my mind’s eye, however long we have, want you to know that someday this image will remain, indelible ink: you were here and it mattered and i care.

[barelyevenwriting]

Day 7 Chemical Reaction

It's a cocktail of dreams, 

And pauses. 

.

You know this. 

.

Two steps to the left,

 and the silence keeps on playing. 

.

"This is all we are," you say. 

Synapses and rehearsed dreaming,

Patterns snapping into place 

And memories woven out of electrical elation. 

.

"We are the sum of several parts," 

You tell yourself on dreary nights. 

Processes and pent-up divergence. 

.

Meaningless nothing. 

.

Turn right, then left

Go upward. 

Choose leave, then stay. 

.

"It is like dancing," She says, 

Thinking that she will catch your attention

Through simple little similes. 

.

She won't. 

You know this now.

.

Your mind is quiet but firing off

 a million and one ideas

Too tired to be articulated. 

.

Feelings and belonging washed up 

In a rush of excitement. 

.

This is all there is. 

Jaded but true. 

.

Choose stay, 

Linger and breathe in the cocktail of lies, 

Let it buzz over your fingertips, 

Flowing free in your veins. 

.

Choose leave, 

Trap the wire shut. 

Don't let it become all there is of your anger. 

.

Move upward, 

Ignore the senseless pull in your brain, 

That tells you here and this and there. 

.

Let happiness rush out through your breath.

.