#feminine love

[prettypeppermint]

swan song.

for t. shelby. a continuation of 'the gift of silence. (how sweet the sound)'

Sacrifice was your greatest gift. It clung to your name like a drawn bowstring, pregnant with prospective yet surmounting to nothing. You gave to your family until their deaths pried your outstretched palms away; you gave to your future self through tired feet and hard-earned sweat. Now, you've given to Thomas Shelby. Your very own love language.

You would give just about anything to take it all back.

He was kissing you--tasting you. He was asking for more and more of you every day through his longing gaze and patient fingers. You hated making him wait for something unattainable.

He wanted you a certain way--pliant, moldable. Soft.

He wanted you only to take from you. He wanted to collect you piece by piece.

A giver and a God.

"Tell me," he muttered into your mouth, tasting the way your thoughts grew sour on your lips. He read you in a way not kindled through love but through years of hardened business.

You pulled away half-heartedly. Your mind wrapped around him and you needed air.

"Say you love me," you ordered, staring into the core of his glacier-capped irises. There was no hope--no apprehension. You've digested every unspoken word already. You knew.

He peered down at you through his heavy line of lashes. "What--are my acts of service not enough?" he said lowly, an air of an insatiated euphemism in his voice.

A swell.

A silence.

An atonement.

"I love you." His finger traced a lock of hair into the canyon of your ear.

"I don't believe you."

A scoff seared through his teeth--a breath through the cornice of his lips.

"I've been thinking recently. During the day; during the night"--you began walking aimlessly around his office, fingering book spines and swiping the dust off of ledges--"during that ungodly hour before work. And thank God I have, because now I know you've been lying to me."

Thomas analyzed you--dissected every syllable. He listened.

"When you look into my eyes, I see nothing but her in yours."

It always goes back to Grace.

The lack of pain in your voice irked him on a deep, almost irrational level.

"At first I was hurt--confused. But now"--you circled back to him--"now, I feel nothing. I am nothing." You waited for him to interject despite knowing he never would. Sometimes, you were too painfully clear of his character; of just how much control he had over you; of how many ways he could hurt you while protecting you--love you while losing you.

"Then I realized: I'd rather be yours than nothing. Isn't it sad--a lass like me? Maybe I should first learn how it feels to be my own--to know every crease of my skin and grow comfortable in my flesh how you've grown so comfortable in mine."

The man you loved, whom you had sacrificed for one final time.

Your muscles yearned to reunite with him, but you held your arms to your sides in protest. "Thomas Shelby, you love me how a man should, but not how a woman should feel loved."

And now you'll spend the rest of your life chasing a notion--a concept--made only somewhat tangible by a man who could give you no more than all of him. Now you'll lose yourself searching for someone to search for you. Now you'll see him in all the men who fail in forgivable ways and love kindly.

A piece of him you will keep; a piece of you he will throw away. Until the next.

"You love me," he states, seemingly unphased. "And I love you."

"You don't know what love is, Thomas. How could you, when you've never loved anyone more than they've loved you?

"That's the ultimate testament of the caliber of a man's heart. It was never me, Thomas. It's her name you whisper in your sleep. Hear it. Accept it. Remember my voice saying it. Cling to it for the rest of your goddamn life so you never tell another woman you love her again."

For the first time, he noticed, you sounded defeated.

For the first time, he saw the vices of Birmingham shade your rural clarity.

Your voice sounded different without the usual fight in it; it revealed the exhaustion you forced down with cigarettes every morning and night. Suddenly the violet shadows under your eyes introduced themselves. Suddenly you looked 5 kilograms emaciated.

It was then that you became another woman in Thomas Shelby's life. You were no longer of the Kilkee coast or the sweetened countryside. You were ruined, and now you were just like the rest.

No girl who ever got tangled up in Shelby business ever makes it to London.

A swell.

A silence.

An empty impenitence.

"Goodbye, Thomas."

While he waited for you to fight for him, you once more decided to give.

Twice more, he took from you.

You wanted to feel his warmth against your lips once more. You had suddenly wished you'd savored your last kiss. "I hate what you've made me," you whispered.

He hated how the words sounded--how they tainted your tongue.

"You hate what you've become for me," he corrected.

You gave him a lonely, far-off stare, as if you were looking straight through him. He knew he had lost you.

You ignored his previous remark: "I hate how you made me think it was safe to fall in love with you."

You hadn't realized your eyes had welled up with an undeniable glaze until you felt a drop of glass wetness fall from your cheek. "I hate how you've turned me into another one of your women."

When Thomas didn't move, or walk closer to you, or even soften at your unraveling, you felt sour all over. Suddenly, you wanted it to hurt.

"No one has ever loved me in my entire life," you said to yourself, almost inaudibly. It sounded so ridiculously girlish and naive, unlike anything he had ever heard you say before.

A swell.

A painful one in the grit of your heart.

You felt heavy as you slowly turned and left his office.

†

He found you passed out in the chapel, your chest sprawled across the altar, your palms still clasped together in weak prayer. A mistiness clung to your eyelashes. He was once again reminded how much he loved how you looked in your sleep: like a soft lull of the shore had washed over you and cured a light peace into your soul.

He stood over you, counting your breaths and watching your lungs expand with life just to expel it. You smelled of ash and rosaries and beeswax. A tear rolled over the apples of your cheek and onto the peak of your nose.

"Silly girl," he rasped lowly before sitting on the floor and pulling your limp form into the cradle of his chest. His palm met the crown of your head to pull you further into his weight, his other hand hooking around the lonely bend of your waist. He felt his shirt seep with moisture, and he knew you were awake.

"She was a piece of my past I can't go back to take away," he said, his chin resting atop your head, voice bitter yet smooth like coffee on a good day, "But if any part of her had led me to you, I wouldn't go back to change a moment of it even if I could."

Your shoulders shuddered silently, and your sobs permeated directly through his chest and into his heart. He always knew just what to say, to the point it scared you.

"Give it time," said Thomas, petting your head in rhythm with your heart, "Give it time."

While you gave, he invested. He invested in all the times you've chipped away at yourself for him, and he kept them in his heart until the next time he would use them--like a business transaction.

But could you blame him for loving you how he knows best?

To understand his love was more than enough. Yet, your consistent upturned and empty palms rendered you greedy.

He collects your wet cheeks between his hands and brings you to look up at him. In his eyes, you saw the end of a road.

Was this all there was? Maybe so.

"Let's get married. Right here, right now"--he swiped his thumb across the slick of your undereye--"That way you'll be mine to keep. No more goodbyes."

You felt the Lord's eyes on your kneeling form. An odd feeling of shame and acceptance washed over you and clogged your chest.

It was then that you knew: loving Thomas Shelby was never going to be beautiful. It wasn't simple or painless or any of the things love should be. And it would never be the same kind of love that it was yesterday.

But what could you do? What could you do if you loved him nonetheless?

If you would always be loved how broken women are loved?

x.

[haggishlyhagging]

Maternal love was not only the first kind of love. For many millennia it was the only kind. When woman, after she had tamed man, extended her love for her children to include their father, then perhaps man began to learn for the first time what love was. At least he learned to appreciate and be grateful for woman's love, even though he was not emotionally equipped to return it in kind. Eventually he came to depend on woman's love as one of the basic necessities of life. Yet she is still trying to teach him what love really is. For, as Reik points out, when men speak of "love" they are really talking about "scrotal frenzy."

-Elizabeth Gould Davis, The First Sex

[dsfender]

i love barbie . its so beautiful and its way of having an impact on so many women is so beautiful to watch . in a world dominated by men , having a community where you know everyone will understand you its such a heartwarming feeling.. and that community is formed by all of the women on this earth . no matter of the age : young , teenage , adult , middle aged or old , there’s pure beauty in our feminine hearts and its a blessing to be gifted with . barbie portrayed these aspects in such grace and delicateness that it reached everyone’s hearts . greta is such an inspiration for so many people and she deserves it . shes a beautiful, strong , smart , hardworking and observant woman with such power in her words , acts and works . she never disappoints. with this movie , the little girl’s heart in me , that watched barbie and the diamond castle every night wishing she was alexa or liana , healed . my heart is healed. with closing my childhood heart so suddenly when entering teenage-hood i needed my wounds to be taken care of without even realising. and my healing is all because of feminine care and love . i respect , adore , thank and LOVE all of the women on this earth. YOU DESERVE THE WORLD . be whoever you want to be , you CAN do it !!!!!!!! thank you barbie 🩷♥️

[daughterofchaosstuff]

done healing my inner child. next up is my inner teen. her highness demands a sword.

[bambiali]

[litaesthete]

hearts in trees ♡

[kawaikonan]

How is it controversial? Why can’t a woman choose to be a mother? Not everyone wants to be baddass bitch out there, some just want to nourish and nurture, grow in love. That’s it.

Controversial but I wanna be a mother

[ozempicdoll]

[malkhola]

[baddiesource]

@indialove

[prettypeppermint]

His gift to man.

Whereas men can slip away from judgment by refraining to engage, women must constantly be in the act of doing. We must say the things as universally accepted as biblical text. We must create fruit from seed and reap nothing from our bodies--our fields. We must stay lush but not ripe, loved but not overdone, respected but not rotten. We must never take more than we give. We must donate, not sell. We must offer, not pitch. We must be lovers of others but just enough to leave room for dessert in our own bellies. We are the golden wheats of the field, the workers of our land. To be plowed and sickled and to eventually return to the earth where we rot into our own bones. Because even in death we must return what was never ours.

And we must never be aware of it.

We are what men can never be. That is the power of the feminine vice.

x.

[foreverrryourssss]

✊🏾Black American Culture

[fromheavensent]

　　 ˚ 　　　 . ✧　　 　　˚ 　　　 . ✧　　 　　˚ 　　　 .

October will be filled with joy.

October will be filled with love.

October will be filled with trust.

October will be filled with peace.

October will be filled with miracles.

October will be filled with clarity.

October will be filled with blessings.

[daughterofchaosstuff]

The intimacy of “How did you know that?”

“because I know you.”

[urloveangel]

[maxiglow]

stop ignoring yourself. fix your posture, get a fresh haircut, drink water, take care of your skin, eat food that gives you energy, declutter your space, take time to rest, workout, do mindful meditation, fix your sleep schedule. when you feel/look good, you do good. invest in yourself, put the effort you deserve.