#reading her poems

[trickstersaint]

i want to introduce you all to a project that is very close to my heart... or lack of one. anyway. for anyone who has ever wanted to play a poem. i'd like you to meet aromanticism

(link opens itch.io - she'll run on html in your browser! please be nice to her!)

[caruccio]

Imagine sitting in a garden with her, she looks at the flowers and i look at mine.

[spelllingandthemysteryschool]

When my mother told me she wished she had gotten a divorce before I was born, I could tell from her tone that this was different from all the times she’d look at me and ask God, like I was God, why he had punished her with me. It wasn’t about trying to make me wish I was a better child, just that I was not a child anymore and she felt she had to warn me not to repeat her life but continue it and perhaps by continuing it, set it right. Once she made me kneel facing the wall and stretch my arms as high as they would go, and watched my little back tremble until I could hold my arms no longer. When she asked me what I’d learned I remember I wanted to scream I hate you but knew somehow it would hurt her more if I screamed I hate myself, I hate myself, so I did, over and over, I knew when you watch a person you love collapse into themselves you want nothing more than to run into the boxing ring, the battleground of them, take all the blows they deal, all the shots they fire into the enemy of their own being. If I could I would without a second thought unravel the knot of my mother’s heart into something like sense, and if it’s true what they say about how when you have a child your heart begins to live outside your body I would undo my life and throw it to her like a rope, like I were a climber at the top of the mountain and she’d left something up there before making her way down and needed to go back for it one more time. If I saw my own heart, helpless and unknowing creature, living outside me, I would also want to tell it to kneel against the wall and raise its arms until it could account for what it had made of my life. In a note she left in my bag when I went to sleepaway camp she said to be my mother was the greatest joy of her life and I knew, even at ten, there were greater joys she had wanted, they lived in her dreams and disappeared when she woke to make my breakfast each morning, and I wanted so badly then to be those dreams, to disappear.

Helplessness’ Child by Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong

[kvothes]

two poems by hedgie choi in the american poetry review

[avicecaro]

i think it’s important everyone knows about the little roman girl who died at only five years and seven months old, and her grave reads "dum vixi, lusi" or "while i lived, i played"

[bixels]

The idea that uni protesters are "elitist ivy-league rich kids larping as revolutionaries" on Twitter and Reddit and even here is so fucking funny to me if you actually know anything about the student bodies at these unis. Take it from someone who's going to one of the biggest private unis in the US, 80% of the peers I know are either from the suburbs or an apartment somewhere in America, children of immigrants, or here on a student visa. I've heard about one-percenter students, but I've never met one in person. Like, don't get me wrong, the institution as a whole is still very privileged and white. I've talked with friends and classmates about feeling weird or dissonant being here and coming from such a different background. But in my art program, I see BIPOC, disabled, queer, lower-income students and faculty trying to deconstruct and tear that down and make space every day. So to take a cursory glance at a crowd of student protesters in coalitions that are led by BIPOC & 1st/2nd-gen immigrant students and HQ'd in ethnic housings and student organizations and say, "ah. children of the elite." Get real.

[ssaltlicker]

I feel like you can tell who reads and doesnt read poetry by how they took the “dirt under your nails” comment. To me, it immediately read as “we are inseparable” like saying “the salt and the sea” or something. You arent focusing on the pieces individually, but the whole that they form together. AKA, being so close to someone/something that you are forever intertwined.

Its just shocking how many people took it as some kind of dig or insult. Getting your hands dirty symbolizes hard work. Someone that “never gets their hands dirty” is someone that doesnt work hard. Caitlyn WAS the latter, the elite that puts the work on other people. The whole point is that she has changed through work, but also through her relationship with vi.

Also; the phrase is actually pretty common in some regions (usually some alteration of it, anyways). Its been a phrase of affection for a while. Just funny how you can tell a lot about someones background by how they interpret certain phrases

[welcometogrouchland]

I understand that literature nerd Jason Todd is kind of overblown in fanon compared to it's actual presence in canon (a few issues during his pre (and post?)crisis Robin tenure that highlight it) BUT consider that I think it's hilarious if the unhinged gun toting criminal has strong opinions on poetry

[stardotnet]

yes, there will be singing

[lxvenderjewel]

stars

why do you look at me like i hung the stars?

it’s much more likely that it was you

sparkling even in smothering dark

even i could shine if i was next to you

we’re like the moon and sun

i’m only there because you are too

but you don’t need me to be yourself

and when i’m the moon, i rarely get to see you

we’re like light and a black hole

you glow in so many shades of blue

but of course, i suck it all up

and leave you without a clue

why do you look at me like i hung the stars?

don’t you know i hung them for you?

[raemimuse]

but Why were we taught to fear the witches & not those who burnt them alive?

[caruccio]

“Moon of my Heart.”

[silent-insanities]

Books are my only escape.

[authenticity2025]

She is his sunset. He is her storm. Unknown

[penumbra-mayhem]

Darlin’ HCs

• They get scared shitless every time they use a toaster. Every. Damn. Time.

• When they do manage to eat (which is rare prior to Sam), they wolf everything down (haha) so fucking fast

• They devour sour candy; it’s a wonder they have any taste buds left

• They love pranking Asher by giving him candy that doesn’t look sour to see his (very dramatic) reaction

(He falls for it every time, that man can’t resist sugar. And sometimes the candy actually isn’t sour, so he can never predict it.)

• They have a stutter that developed from head trauma during their last fight with Quinn (more about that here)

• After they come back home, Darlin’ starts working for a soup kitchen. They work in the warehouse packing/distribution center.

• They love their job cause it allows them to do physical work for a good cause without having to interact with many people

• They are constantly changing their hair color/style, but their favorite colors to dye it are black and neon purple

• Darlin has been a punk since high school. The jacket they never take off is their battle jacket.

• Their (very beat up) headphones are blasting music 24/7

• Darlin’ has moral OCD, but they don’t know for the longest time

• Quinn quickly picks up on this fact, but doesn’t tell them. He instead uses their obsessions against them to make them believe they are the scum of the earth

• Sam also picks up on their OCD and does a lot of research. He gently introduces the idea to them and helps them get a proper diagnosis and therapy

[soracities]

Najwan Darwish, "Rising From Her Love", Nothing More to Lose: Selected Poems (trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid) [ID'd]