#like every poem i ever write

[joysandroses]

under the warm blanket of your love I'll keep my flaws hidden

I won't let you enter my heart for the knowledge there is forbidden

an extract from my poem

[daisychainsandbowties]

…

[abnormalpsychology]

thrilling sequel to my poll from back in January

[creatediana]

"Lines Written Hastily on Someone Else's Desk" - a poem written 3/27/2024

I have to sneak into your desk— I've calculated every risk— I have to test out all your pens and blot out with them my chagrins. I have an urge for every ink— for every mark I make I rank the color and the thickness.—In my rainbow correspondent brain this is the peak of knowledge—yes, the summit of my study's bliss. I snoop and steal to these fair ends— my paper keeps exotic winds.

[beliscary]

need to see pre-confession pining mess dion intensely & obliviously mooning after terence arghhhh

[graveyarrdshift]

the damage rupi kaur has done to modern poetry is making me feel sick

[eerna]

sometimes I take Millennium from my shelf and thumb through it and just. take in how amazing everyone involved with that zine did. and how lucky I am to be doing Night Divining with so many of those talented people. fandom is great yall

[brothersonahotelbed]

writing is stupid bc to me if im not grieving or seething or overflowing with love for a particular person or thing then i never feel compelled to write and in times like this i feel empty bc im not writing but i dont have anything to write about

[not-poignant]

Unnecessary throwback, I just reread The Wind that Cuts the Night AGAIN (one of my faves) and I think about this every time i do, are there any authors or books in particular that influence your writing style? Because the vibes are impeccable in this fic and it’s something that makes me wonder about any inspiration you may have had <3

Hi anon!

I have read literally thousands of books, and I think every single one of them - especially the ones I've loved - have all influenced my writing style a little. From non-fiction to fiction.

There's definitely no single writer I want to emulate, because I pretty much never find exactly what I want to read out there. It's more like I find moments, and then I think 'oh I want to make a reader feel the way this writer made me feel right now' but that doesn't necessarily mean I want to write in their style? Or if it does, it will still be influenced by all the other things that have influenced me in the past.

*thinks* I've read so many authors it's almost impossible to single out the ones I love the most re: writing style, but here's a few: Ursula K. Le Guin, dgalerab on AO3, Robin Hobb (though I feel like I've aged out of her writing now), CS Pacat, Suzanne Clarke, Bill Bryson, Robert Holdstock, Mark Z. Danielewski, Asumiko Nakamura, Andrea Gibson, Martha Wells (particularly re: Murderbot), Hinako Takanaga, Chuuya Nakahara, John Fowles, Orson Scott Card (for all that he's a bigot homophobic dickhead), Sarah Monette / Katherine Addison, Alan Ball, Mike Schur, Brian Jacques, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Dan Harmon, Randall Jarrell, Thomas Harris, Yana Toboso, Ono Natsume, Kim Dare, Moto Hagio, Scott Heim, Gerald Durrell, Tanith Lee, George Mackay Brown, early Lyn Gala, early Sidney Bell, early Roan Parrish, Ann-Marie MacDonald, William Goldman, a bunch of classic authors and poets that we don't have time for, Tamora Pierce, Philip Pullman, and like...more fic authors I'm forgetting, lol.

(There's a mix in here, including fic writers, poets, essayists, scriptwriters and novelists).

(Also I am under no illusions that I am anywhere as good as any of these writers, they're just the ones whose styles really inspire me. Except I know I'm missing like 100 others and that's going to annoy me, lmao, I am okay with being mediocre, when I have this greatness to aspire to).

(For all the people who've ever asked me to rec some stuff, there you go, there's the list sdalkfjas).

(For anyone who thinks my writing is good, all I can say is read broadly, widely, across genres, across mediums, it's the best way to improve what you do. Though I'm mad as fuck that the list doesn't have more POC in it. I need to read far more broadly).

(Anon I'm SO glad you enjoy that fic! It was such an indulgent little story :D)

[crossbackpoke-check]

"This extra space next to me belongs to you. I know where I end now. I won't get lost." -- shoot me (metaphorically) and leave me for dead (metaphorically) why won't you. To make this about Dylan and maybe it's about Connor, maybe it's about Brinksy, maybe it's about any journeyman in the NHL. My brain screamed Chris Driedger and his memorable (to me) Players' Tribune article:

And how can you mention Dylan and Zach (Za-ach, the way Dylan says it) without me having a breakdown about them? You simply can't. And for the younger dudes, maybe it's a little Bords/Briss, not yet steady in The Show, a little bit of distance, a summer that tries to erase and make up all the memories they've made separately... and then a blurry insta story in Vegas. Just like old times but somewhere else. Maybe it's not the same bed, maybe it's not the same set of forks, but maybe it's the principle of the thing.

Anyway, goodbye. Sorry for this, your tag walls make me break out in imagined scenarios.

Much love. xxx

please never be sorry for sending me messages <3 i love reading them i love getting them i think they’re beautiful and i love them i’m!!!!! [🥹💕🦋🫧✨💘😭 <- the best approximation of what my heart is doing]

ok NOW i am taking this step by step because every narrative here kicked me straight in the knees (metaphorically) i am w e e p i n g (literally): i knew tangentially about chris driedger going to seattle but i had never read his players’ tribune love letter to seattle & all i can say is oh. oh. and with the part about trains delayed but still being right on time—

sometimes a dream is a truth your heart knows long before you do. the space that the city and the team made for him (“you’d be the only guy on the team”)🗣️🗣️🗣️ !!! but the way that chris talks about needing to put in the work & leo not letting him quit,,, that’s chris filling up the teakettle with twice as much water, crowding one side of the bed (falling asleep against a bus window dreaming), becoming unburdened by the idea of not being their guy, not having the fallback being their draft pick to content and settle himself with. that’s chris betting on a future. that’s the train coming down the tracks, right on time.

(i am feeling unhinged about it)

SECOND. i know i was the one that said zach and dylan to start so technically i brought this on myself but also i have been ktfo by the mere mention of the way that dylan says zach’s name different from everyone else, stealing an extra breath, stealing as much time as he can get with him, which reminded me of a poem i just read:

The Need Is So Great, Jim Moore

^^^dylan still in love with zach even as he’s leaving, can feel himself losing him, and taking every sliver of the love in his smile that he can get. even if he knows zach doesn’t still feel the same way he’s drawing out the long goodbye & saying i love you in a thousand ways without ever saying it out loud (“i have been asking for a time but in ways that have no words” because he doesn’t want to ask too much, to ask for love) in the hope that zach will say it back OKAY I’M LEAVING i can’t do this

that was a lie because THREE. “maybe it’s the principle of the thing” please insert the most ungodly screech how could you just (lovingly) come in straight with the steel chair and bean me upside the head with that l i n e i think this story has the potential for such tragedy in it but also the most tender domestic longing because bords & briss have known each other for a long time (i think) and guys do sometimes lose themselves when they first get to the nhl.

it’s a big scene, you’re with big name guys, you’re finally doing the thing you always dreamed about, you’re no longer necessarily the best because everyone’s the best, you’re not sure how you fit in, you can get lost in the glitz and the glamor of it but you can also literally get lost in it, the slog of the season and getting caught up and down between teams and leagues and endless airports and buses and travel and ice rinks, losing your phone (accidental) and having new people hound you for quotes and fame and connection so you lose your phone (on purpose) and i think where i’m trying to go is: this could play out as the tragedy of borde going to the california coastline and briss shipping off to the vegas strip and both of them getting a little lost.

maybe there’s someone else, maybe i am steadfastly not thinking about “a summer that tries to erase and make up all the memories they've made separately” as either a summer of them pretending things are ok after a year of barely speaking and now being completely different people they never were before OR a summer of them trying to pretend like they can forget about each other because maybe they didn’t think their relationship was the same thing, is all, when they were or weren’t together. maybe it’s nobody’s fault but for the fact that they were scared and tired and lonely trying to make it in the big times and didn’t know how to show it. and then borde shows up with takeout and plastic forks in vegas and it’s december and nothing like winter in ann arbor and still they fill up all the empty spaces in each other with the things they didn’t know they’d miss until they were gone and this is the real thing, not whatever they were trying too hard to be, to recreate their own nostalgia for the love in their memories. it’s the principle of the thing, is all, to always be true to the love they have right now & not what they think it should be.

sorry that i wrote you kind of an essay of an answer but i had so so so many thoughts because your ask was so lovely so thank you for sending it to me (you are always welcome to!! i love your imagined scenarios!!! cannot even explain how much!!!) & thank you for taking the time to read my walls of tags :))) <3

[bossyball]

You know when you realize your childhood was actually worse than you thought?

[autistic-shaiapouf]

Question for u, have you listened to Malice Mizer?? Because I swear their music is so incredibly fitting for Pouf, I feel like he’d love a lot of their songs but I could see au revoir and gardenia being among his favorites :]

The "I want to sleep in your arms" line in au revoir but every time it repeats he says it just a little louder until he's screaming

Also,, the outfits in the video giving me the mental image of glam rock pouf

[raedas]

5, 9, and 14 if u please :D

5. do you have a favourite film soundtrack?

not one thats coming to mind right now unfortunately </3 only one i can think of is sound of music but i think thats mostly just bc i love sound of music so !!!

9. are you an organized person, generally?

KINDDD of. kind of. im not ridiculously messy but im also not super organized So. shrugs.

14. what is your opinion on poetry?

literally everything ever is poetry forever and ever. to me

[madridpnw]

@nighttime-nightingale

You ever just realized how lucky you are that you did that weird thing that led to you being friends with the people you are friends with?

[oceansabove]

augh the power of seeing specific people out and about to unsettle me is simply unfair

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.