#lyd havens

[startrippings]

Lyd Havens, 'I only misgender myself when Fleetwood Mac comes on'

[schuylerpeck]

I’m so happy to announce the launch of my newest work, The Ghosts’ Share of Rent! Please join me to welcome this book into the world and grab a (free!) ticket to the virtual event, hosted by Party Trick Press and with an introductory reading by Lyd Havens. There will be poems & antique photos & laughs & lots of love. Add to the fun and dress in a different era! (I will be!!) Grab your tickets here and find more info on my Instagram.

instagram: hiitssky

[crowtrobotx]

You're into poetry as I noticed, and I loved the one you wrote for Karl a lot, something I'm regretting being a ghost reader of and eventually not giving an actual feedback. Anyways that was not my point haha

What are your favourite poets and poems if you have any?

Oh thank you so much! I appreciate the compliment all the same. 🤗

I have a deep fondness for Mary Oliver - “Wild Geese” is of course my favorite of hers. She was born/raised in the same area as I was, so a lot of her stuff really resonates with me. E. E. Cummings (“[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]”), Richard Siken (“Scheherazade”), Ada Limón (“Lies About Sea Creatures”), Audre Lorde (“Recreation”), Trista Mateer (“I Swear Somewhere This Works”), Neil Hilborn (“Our Numbered Days”), Caitlin Conlon (“I Didn’t Want to Cry Over This”), Blythe Baird (“Theories About The Universe”), Joy Harjo (“Eagle Poem”), Lyd Havens (“The act of loving myself is also an act of becoming”) and Ocean Vuong (“Torso of Air”) are other favorites of mine!!

That was… far too many lol I am so sorry. There’s so many more and I am always happy to share with anyone - I never grew out of my teenage angsty poetry phase and I’m all the better for it.

[heartmagician]

Person who wrote this poem here (I picked such a bad time to forget to put my name on this lol)—it is wild to me that this poem is still getting consistent notes after 5 years, & has as many notes as it does. I’m gonna tell you the truth, I’m in a pretty dire financial situation where I have no idea how I’m going to feed or transport myself for the next week, when I finally get paid at my new job. And the thought of even a tenth of the people who liked or reblogged this sending me 1-5 bucks… I can’t comprehend it. And it’s not gonna happen. But if you do like this poem, & have a couple bucks floating around—

V*nm0: Lyd-Havens

C4sh-pp & P-yP4l: LydHavens

I know times are hard for so many of us, & the shame engrained in me about asking for help is kicking & screaming rn. It has been for the last like, two months (& beyond). But here I am. Thank you for reading, both this & the poem. xoxo ♥️

[fly-underground]

my poetry new book, VIRAHA, released today!

VIRAHA is a collection birthed out of a space of enduring loneliness, a celebration for the hope of life, that never stays dead for long. These poems repurpose and invent mythologies, situating human fragility and resilience as part of the natural world: every broken heart, lost love, failed dream is as ordinary and bewildering as the sunrise, as a bird in the sky. This is a book about the hard work of continuing. 

i wrote the bulk of this book during the first year of the pandemic. it’s the book i’ve always wanted to write and i’m so proud of these poems, that feel so much like my true writer’s voice.

get your copy of VIRAHA here today!

and i’m actually doing a virtual reading TONIGHT (december 13th) at 7:30pm EST with the incredible Lyd Havens (aka @heartmagician) and i would love to see you there—you can check out the event details here!

[unfathomable-understanding]

« He wasn’t fine because he was still so fucking angry at everything, and Father still wasn’t here. 

[…] Because he was still so angry with his father. »

The art of burning chapter 30 // @hella1975 (archives of our own)

[ID: screenshot from Avatar : the last airbender « the day of the black sun » episode. Zuko is redirecting lighting towards his father Ozai. End ID]

Avatar : the last airbender // Michael DiMartino & Bryan Konietzko (Nickelodeon, Netflix)

[if you’re raised with an angry man in your house, there will always be an angry man in your house.]

Cut // Catherine Lacey (The New Yorker)

[…]

I still identify

as a spiteful bitch. The gold dust settles

on my cheeks, but I don’t. The tables

have turned,

And now my father is afraid of me.

Damn my fury, damn my forgiveness.

[…]

When I was still a girl, I cut my all my hair off

in mourning, Twice. When I was still a girl,

I found my grandmother’s childhood braid

framed in the attic. She sliced it off herself

while angry at her own father. I sleep

with scissors next to my bed, just in case.

I practice a running start. I tell the mirror

what I want to tell my father:

you will never get away from the sound

of the [ ] that hates you.

I only misgender myself when Fleetwood Mac comes on // Lyd Havens

Credit bundle :

The art of burning chapter 30, @hella1975 • Avatar : the last airbender, Michael Dante DiMartino & Bryan Konietzko • Cut, Catherine Lacey • I only mis-gender myself when Fleetwood Mac comes on, Lyd Havens

[bostonpoetryslam]

I had a writing teacher in middle school who really loved poetry, and urged me to keep writing outside of school after he found out I was going through some really dark personal difficulties. I mostly kept my work to myself until I was fifteen, and started competing in poetry slams. At that point in my life, I was lonely and feeling like nobody cared what I had to say. Both writing and performing poetry showed me otherwise.

Lyd Havens, interviewed for Mass Poetry

[kavikshiraj]

Dear me, much like beginnings endings are un-linear. Is finality a spectrum? I deserve every love letter, including this one.

from Lyd Havens

[lifeinpoetry]

Luck is more than green. It's a whole limb, stretched out in awe and teaching itself all the ways to say always.

— Lyd Havens, from “Sonnet for all the flowers not yet in my hands,” published in Homology

[kitchen-light]

I was twenty years old and the college freshman mistook me for the next decade. Typical.

Lyd Havens, from their poem “XX”

[crushpdf]

Ronan & Gansey & Theo & Boris: orange juice

[ @art-fraud / lorde / @sunsbleeding / lyd havens / (unknown) / wolfgang tillmans / @freecssgons / donna tartt / adriaen coorte / uncredited / maggie stiefvater ]

[aridante]

lullaby, chuck palahniuk // compel, lyd havens // landscape with black coats in snow, richard siken // an unofficial rose, iris murdoch // a great and terrible beauty, libba bray // rebecca, daphne du maurier // haunted, beyoncé // almost heaven, judith mcnaught // the princess diarist, carrie fisher // halloween, naiche lizzette parker.

[heartmagician]

“Our first date was a month ago.

We’d laid next to the river and mimicked the current, my hand between your T-shirt and the warm of your back, your ear pressed to my heart. I didn’t mean to ask it aloud: where did you come from?

Only recently, a wasp died in the center of my life— and now here you are, like so many delicious fig seeds.”

—from “Pine” by Lyd Havens, published in Wax Nine

[a-shakespearean-in-paris]

Sweet Reunion

Cullen x Lydia Trevelyan, rated E for a sexual situation. Content includes spanking and oral sex. Read here on A03

Often they reunited in the stables. Though always sweaty and disheveled from riding he always cared not, kissing her in hello and sometimes lifting her feet from the ground in front of their audience of horses and companions who enjoyed the sight of a sweet reunion between two joyful, miscreant lovers. Yet their reunion this time, after three months parted, happened in her room. Better to fall apart in her room and in his arms where no one else could see. Better to fall apart for only Cullen, not even the Commander. 

She wept, Maker she wept. She thought parting would be easier the more often she did it. It wasn’t, and with each new journey her frustration mounted. It was always something, whether it be in the Plains or the Graves, a new discovery far in Orlais that only the Inquisitor would deign to handle. It was dark where she was, far away from Skyhold and far away from him in Orlais. Letters only went so far. She craved for him, ached and pined, her memories not enough, her hand not enough alone in her tent. He beckoned her to quiet as he held her, his body gently rocking her as he stroked her hair, let her cry. Maker, he cried too--she felt the tears fall softly against her hair. 

He took her to bed, kissed away the tears. “I was so scared,” she said, her ear pressed against his bare chest, his beating heart. “Cullen, I was so scared.” She shouldn’t have been and she knew it, she was the Inquisitor, so she didn’t show it. She kept herself hidden at night, alone with her thoughts. Reunited, she feared she kissed him too hard, held him too tightly. He cradled her, would spend hours reminding her she was home, she was safe. She slept. 

She often woke him up from a nightmare. New it was, to have him wake her. She thrashed and she shrieked underneath her luxurious blanket until he threw it off, held her face in his hands. “You’re home,” he promised, amber eyes heavy. “You’re safe.” He kissed the tears that feel from her eyes, her lips. She was drowning, drowning...

He pet on her and loved on her gently earlier. She was done with that. Months from him left her aching, pining, numb. She wanted to be fucked, filled, wanted to remember she was a woman and not an unbreakable symbol. Hard she wanted him, and she didn’t care if it hurt.

He could never hurt her.

Cullen littered every part of her face and neck with kisses and gentle bites that wouldn’t leave marks, laving them over with his tongue. Mark me she wanted to say but couldn’t say, mark me, fuck me and fuck me harder still.

She tugged clumsily at the strings of his breeches, and he helped her, pulling them off and tossing them to the side. He grabbed her silken shift and she helped him toss it off. She rubbed the tip of his cock as they kissed, Cullen hissing, groaning. She laid herself down for him, let him fuck her with his eyes, that naked portrait she had commissioned of herself in a moment of sweet rebellion against what they thought of her come to life. He drank her, consumed her. He fucked her with his heavy, amber eyes. He painted her, his hand tracing her body’s curves, her stomach with the scar there, given during Haven’s assault. More, she needed. She laid flat on her belly, hands gripping the pillow, her legs spreading. She heard his heavy breathing, felt the roughhewn hands she loved so much knead her sore back. Her arousal pooled, leaked against the sheets. He called her name, stroked her sore back as he hovered over her, his cock against her cheeks, too teasing. He asked if this was what she wanted, like this.

“Yes,” she said, her face pressed inside the pillow, a strangled breath. “Fuck me hard.”

“Lyd.”

Was he so romantic to want to look into her eyes during their reunion coupling? Of course he was--it was romantic Cullen, knightly Cullen. But there would be other times for that, when they woke in the morning or when they were blessed a week without leaving or going. She wanted Commander Cullen, rough Cullen. So she rose to her knees. With one slow yet unrelenting thrust, his arousal too much, she too much, he pressed deep inside, his hand making red marks on her cheeks. How she didn’t care, how she wanted more. On her knees she rose further, her back meeting the front of his body and reaching behind to grab and tug at his hair, Cullen leaving searing kisses against her mouth as his hand wrapped around her middle. His nose pressed into her hair, his breath fell down her neck and shoulder as he took in her scent—that scent of jasmine and rose and sun and fire. He sank his teeth into the deep of her neck, made her cry out. It was all sound and full feel—the sound of his cock and her slick arousal, and their moans an unholy, indecent, melodious song. He licked a line down her neck to her shoulder, rubbed at her clit, all delicious electricity. He told her to come for him, and she wailed, more and more until he pressed harder and turned her boneless. She came an with unholy shrieks of his name, dissolving against him, reeling and swimming, his cock still buried inside. He cried out, and she whimpered when she was no longer full with his cock but with him pressed against her cheeks, warm and slick with her arousal. He laid them down, Lydia on her stomach as she was earlier, his body pressed atop her, blanketing her. He grabbed her hand, squeezed and interlocked their fingers. She mewled, more. He obeyed, his knee imparting her to spread for him. Filled again, inside her again, he moved her along the current and sea, wrapping an arm underneath her, sheltering her.

“I was alone,” she muttered, weeping still. How she thought she was done, but  bow she crawled and craved stings of pain mingled with pleasure alone in the dark. “Cullen I was so alone…”

His hands were clumsy, pulling her hair away from her face. He kissed her cheek, her lips, called her dearest, love, moving his hips as she pulled her leg up, allowing him a deeper, fuller encasing. Vaguely she could see them in her full length mirror—his body atop her, her body pressed into the sheets, dissolving. He tempered his want for further wildness—she could see it in his eyes, feel it in his desperate kisses, feel it in his quivering hips.

“Spank me.”

She never suspected, to say it like that, during this. She talked about it to him before, how she wanted his hands like that. Why they reframed, why she always told him another time before, she couldn’t say. And yet now when they were making up for lost time, she had said it and she realized she wanted nothing more.

He froze, removing himself from her, and he wanted to scream. “Cullen. Spank me,” she ordered. “Spank me now.”

“Lydia...”

Her knuckles went pale as she fisted the sheet underneath her. “I want your hands.”

He said nothing. She saw him in the mirror, his cock erect, his cheeks rosy and hair mused, his eyes contemplative. I will be tender later, she silently pled when their eyes met. Rough now. 

“I asked for it,” she cried again, Cullen still hovering over her with one leg pressed between hers. “I asked for it. I want your hands. I couldn’t cry, be wounded or anything away. Let me feel. Let me...ah!”

She had buried her face in the pillow, did not see his hand rise and then strike. She cried out as his hand hit her flesh—the juncture between her cheek and thigh. Not hard, he didn’t hit hard, and she wept not from the pain, but her cups that had long been too overfull. She felt the hesitation, his hand ghosting over, considering it again.

“Lydia…”

“Please,” she begged. “It feels good…ah…”

He rubbed gently in small circles, leaned down, kissed her lower back and rubbed his beard against her skin as if to ask for premeditative forgiveness until his palm slapped against her ass, and then again, and again until he rubbed at the spot. He continued the motions, the dance, first rubbing to dull the pain before slapping the flesh again. Maker she drenched the sheets, she loved the sound of their fleshes meeting from the loud clap, she wept from the sting but mostly something else. They were all the tears she never shed, alone as she was at night, aching, mourning. Then he brought her to her back…were those tears in his eyes? And he leaned down, kissed her gently, touched her gently. Yes. They were tears.

“No,” he said, his cock between her thighs. “I never want you to cry. I—"

“I wanted you to,” she said, tears streaming down her face to her neck. “It felt good.”

“Then why are you crying?”

He wiped them away. “I was alone,” she said.  

“I’m here now. I’m here and…”

He was inside and she wrapped her legs around him. She kissed him and he cried out, his end nigh. But she placed her hands on his chest, a silent wait, and she laid him against the bed as he did to her earlier, drew her hand down his body, and took him in her mouth. Hardly she did this—he preferred to be inside, he preferred to give her his mouth, yet she wanted his taste and his fullness in her warm and welcoming mouth, and she wanted to see him flushed and rosy as he bit his lip, moans unstrained. Jerking his hips upward, his hands threading, tangling her hair, he came in her mouth. Too greedy, she took it all, tasted all. She kissed his hips after, his abdomen with the coarse, golden hair. He beckoned for her and she came to him, laying between his legs, her breasts pressed against his chest, and was it unholy, unseemly, for him to rub away the traces of him on her lips, parting her mouth with his thumb, she then sucking on it as she did his cock? He held her, set her down beside him, and vaguely she felt the wet spot from earlier, both moments and a lifetime ago. Their skins were one, they were together, he kissed away the last remnants of tears. He dragged his mouth down her body to her thighs to the dark hair between, spread her thighs with his hands and inhaled her scent of musk and salt. His eyes never left her as his tongue darted against her clit, lapped gently inside her. She came with his eyes watching her, with the rush of the sea and bed of the river. He held her again as she drifted, her hands wandering his body, dissolving, sliding away back to the sea.

“Sleep,” he asked of her when he laid by her side, kissing her closed eyes. “You’re home. I’m here.” 

“I am never parting from you again.”

She knew it, he knew it. It couldn’t be their promise, not yet. Someday, she would have to part from him. And yet for that moment, they lived in the imagined world were this moment was their last, sweet reunion after too long apart.

[schuylerpeck]

16/30: After Lyd Havens’ poem Heirloom, write about something passed down to you, internally or externally.

instagram: hiitssky

[painted-piggy-ships-archive]

Beetlejuice Rewrite 1

Non-romantic ship! Features; Edward and Lydia being step-siblings.

Word Count: 1302

Tag List: @heavenshipped @ghostlyvenus @the-schizotypal-cryptid @heartstringsymphonies

Summary: I’m going to attempt to rewrite some things from Beetlejuice with this new s/i in mind! First up; The Deetz move into the Maitlands’ house, and Lydia & Edward meet Barbra and Adam.

Warnings: None.

The Deetz’s car pulled up to an old, white house on a hill, a bit a ways from the main town.

“Well, we’re here,” Charles hummed, twisting in his seat to look at his daughter and stepson with a weary smile. Edward’s eyes were already focused on the tall tower of the place.

“I’m going to make my haven there,” he stated, gesturing to the small window at the highest point in the house. His stepfather followed his gaze, shrugging.

“Fine by me, Delia?”

“Yes, yes, whatever you’d like dear… but let’s see how much of a facelift the inside needs first,” Edward’s mother, a woman of haute couture and high standards, tittered as she exited the car. Charles followed, then the kids, one of which was no longer such. A work crew was already beginning to clean out the old furniture and move in everything the Deetz’s had brought with them. Edward glanced down at his petite stepsister.

“What do you think of it?” He asked, their parents already ahead of them, heading inside. Lydia shrugged, hidden behind a dark veil, camera in hand.

“I guess I could live here,” she looked Edward in the eye, “though I don’t think I’ll get to enjoy it in this state for very long.”

At this point, the two stepsiblings looked up as another car joined the fray. A portly man in a suit stepped out and headed straight for a window, not even bothering a friendly acknowledgment as he walked past.

“Well, c’mon. Do you want to walk around the grounds or head straight inside?” Edward offered.

“Let’s walk. I want to take some pictures before Delia destroys the place.”

“Couldn’t agree more, Lyds.”

~~~

By the time the two worked their way to the inside, Otho and Delia had made their plans obvious. Charles had at least managed to salvage an office for himself.

“Have you checked out the attic yet?” Edward asked.

“No, but feel free to go have a look for yourself, Eddie,” Delia smiled at her son. He was practically the only one she could somewhat hold her vicious temper with, possibly because she respected his artsy nature, even if he hadn’t found success in it yet.

“Alright,” he patted Lydia’s shoulder in a friendly manner before heading to the second floor to locate the attic stairs. Once he reached the door however, he found it locked. “Strange…”

He turned and headed back to his parents. “Either of you have a key to the attic?”

“It’s locked?” Delia responded, her tone a mix of shrill and intrigued. Edward nodded. Charles tossed him a skeleton key.

“That should open it.”

“Thanks.”

He returned to the attic door, this time accompanied by a curious Lydia, who had been snapping photos of the interior in a hope to salvage its rustic beauty before it’d be turned into an abstract art piece by her stepmother. He tried the key, but surprisingly the door wouldn’t budge.

The stepsiblings pressed their ears to the door, hearing something on the other side. A TV or radio, perhaps. They gave each other a look only they could understand. They got along well due to their shared interest in the supernatural and Gothic stylings, and they were both thinking the same thing; Ghosts?

Their shared thought was broken by the key flying from its hole. Edward immediately grinned.

“Maybe we ought to come up here again once everything’s settled down. Best show we mean no harm if there’s any entities here…”

“Maybe the ghosts of the people who lived here before us,” Lydia added and her stepbrother nodded, looking excited.

“I just hope they let us speak with them before they have a reason to hurt anyone.”

The two returned to the first floor.

“No luck with the door,” Edward returned the key.

“Really?” Charles inquired.

“It’s jammed. Or something’s blocking it.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to break in,” Delia piped up.

“No!” Lydia and Edward cautioned in unison, earning a confused look from their parents.

“I think we ought to just leave it alone for now,” Edward cleared his throat and straightened out his outfit, a nervous habit, “me and Lydia will just have to share a room.”

“Fine by me.”

Charles looked between the two, “well… I guess you two get along fine enough.”

“Great!” Edward chirped before his mother could give any reason why they shouldn’t hold off on renovating the attic. The stepsiblings shared another glance before going to get their own things and set up their own room.

~~~

Later that night, after a dinner of takeout and awkward conversation, Edward and Lydia heard odd… moans, and wails, coming from the hallway. Slowly, the two got up and opened their door, just a crack. After all, it could be ghosts, or it could be something they’d both much rather not see.

Their collective four eyes landed on stumbling sheets in the hallway, an obvious mockery of ghosts. Lydia grabbed her camera and threw open the door, snapping pictures.

“C’mon you guys, if your gonna do weird sexual stuff, do it in your own room… I’m a child, for gods’ sake,” she huffed. Edward stooped to pick up one of the polaroids that slipped from the camera, giving it a shake.

“Lyds, look,” he showed it to her eagerly. Glancing at the bottom of the picture, she noticed immediately that the figures had no feet. Curious, she began to approach them, Edward not far behind.

“Were you hiding in the attic earlier?” She asked. The sheets waved at her in an attempt at being eerie.

“We’re ghosts!” A man’s voice responded, and a woman howled to punctuate the sentence. Neither of the stepsiblings were very perturbed by their display.

“What do you look like under there?” Lydia asked, trying to peer into the holes cut in the sheets.

“Are you not scared??” The male ghost asked, stepping away.

“We’re not scared of sheets,” Edward chuckled, “though I am just as curious, if you don’t mind us asking-”

“Are you gross under there? Are you Night of The Living Dead under there, like… all bloody veins and pus?” Lydia excitedly made a grab for the sheets.

“Night of the living what???” The man asked, confused, both ghosts removing the sheets from their heads.

“Night of The Living Dead, it’s a movie,” Edward clarified. The two ghosts looked perfectly normal, perfectly living.

“If I had seen a ghost at your age I would’ve been scared out of my wits,” the woman added.

“You’re not gross… then why’re you wearing sheets??” Lydia continued.

“We’re practicing.”

“Wait a second… you can see us,” the man realized.

“Yeah, of course we can,” Edward responded curiously.

“Then how come the other’s can’t?”

“Well, I found that handbook earlier-” Lydia started.

“Handbook??” Edward interrupted. 

“And it said that; ‘Live people often ignore the strange and unusual.’ I myself, am strange and unusual.” Lydia smiled triumphantly to herself.

“What handbook??” Edward spoke again.

“It’s on the bedside table, did you not notice it?”

Edward shook his head and went back to their shared bedroom, leaving Lydia to continue conversing with the ghosts.

“So you read our handbook… and you understood it?” The male ghost was fascinated by this discovery. Lydia shrugged.

“Yeah.”

“You could follow it???”

“Yeah, and I’m sure Edward can, too. We’ve got this… connection, even if we’re not related by blood. Anyway, what were you doing sneaking around in sheets??”

“We were trying to scare your mother.”

“Stepmother. You can’t scare her, she’s sleeping with Prince Valium tonight.”

Edward returned, pouring over the book and muttering about how interesting it was. The two were then invited up to the attic, these ghosts, the Maitlands, putting trust in them… after all, who else could they turn to in their state?