#ritika jyala

[saltair-and-webweaves]

Words from the mouths of babes, promises ocean deep. But never to keep.

@inanotherunivrse/cocaine jesus - rainbow kitten surprise/fredrick backman, us against you/i lost a friend - finneas/poem - langston hughes/ocean vuong, on earth we’re briefly gorgeous/the underrated heartache - rupi kaur/@sarakleijn/unknown/motion sickness - phoebe bridgers/ @honeytuesday/saw ur mom at the grocery store - abby cates/louise glück, seizure/@thundersoon/ bronze - the regrettes/ritika jyala, the world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire/i still forget we’re not even friends - trista mateer/the light that shines when things end - anonymous/couch sleeper, unknown site/ @saltair-and-palemoonlight/i lost a friend - finneas/dear friend, - dayglow/peter - taylor swift

Requested here

[ritikajyala]

and nothing helps, no amount of rest, no green teas, no walks in nature. I bleed on paper and it smells like roses, roses full of thorns, thorns digging into my chest, and I bleed on paper. And the next morning, I find the words too cringe and the roses look like dried blood, clotted into me, heart full of clots. And the night comes again, and you ask me how I am. I tell you nothing helps, not the walks, not the teas, no rest. And I bleed on paper.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The Flesh I Burned

[sicknessinmotion]

I MISS YOUR SMILE: ON ABANDONMENT

ritika jyala // michael cunningham // euripedes // lord huron - the night we met // richard siken // coldplay - the scientist

[fairydrowning]

"All my teenage years, I had bottled up anger and grief and promised myself I'd never cry but when I sat down with her hands in my hand and looked her in the eye, all the anger turned into tears. I sobbed for hours and she sat there, rubbing my back. That's when I saw. Growing up is also tearing down walls, it's also letting go of the anger."

– Ritika Jyala, Excerpt From "The Flesh I Burned"

[metamorphesque]

musings on motherhood

Kyung-Sook Shin ("Please Look After Mom"), Nguyen Thanh Binh, Ocean Vuong ("Headfirst"), Ritika Jyala (excerpt from "The Flesh I Burned"), Gustav Klimt "Mother and Child" (detail from The Three Ages of Woman), Sue Zhao ("My mother texts me instructions to cook silken tofu")

buy me a coffee

[asoftepiloguemylove]

intimacy through oranges

Jacques Prevert Alicante / Youqing Wang (via @cheruib) / pinterest / Ritika Jyala The Flesh I Burned / pinterest / @/chaandajaan-moved (tumblr) / Hafsa Qasim / @itsbaditsgood

[eldestsiblingsyndrome]

ava, tula, and viola: on mothers and daughters

burrow's end ep. 3 // mitski // ep. 2 // supernatural // ep. 3 // annie ernaux // ep. 3 // ritika jyala // ep. 1 // maia baia

[sinligh]

As a woman I’m used to living in cycles,

Twenty-eight days if you start today I’ll bleed the rage that my mother mastered with age and only then I’ll seek acceptance, I’ll seek love, but hide behind paranoia and when that can’t fix me, and when this earth can’t hold me

Like an ouroboros, I’ll devour all that i let into my inner circle all that i let define me, only to destruct it simply to reincarnate myself, with or without it.

I’ll trace the lines in my body to try and delude it into thinking we can be touched. I’ll look in the mirror just to see, not to judge. I won’t look too long cause I still fear that the shame i was taught to absorb will manifest on the tips of my fingers.

Potential exposure.

The pathophysiology of the chronic cases of loneliness. Starts with a history of a lonely pregnant woman

When my mother gave birth to me, silent and cyanosed me, i was deemed viable. But not the part of me she wished and prayed to end with still birth, the melancholic presence that wrapped around me inside her womb.

The one with no heartbeat, but is loud enough for a part of her existence to hate part of mine.

She loved me enough to never acknowledge it. Enough to breastfeed me the leftover energy she used to be herself.

and when all the love she felt for me blinded her, our case lacked enough evidence and slipped undiagnosed.

Now when I say love can’t fix me, you have to understand…

Love isn’t the only meal I skipped I’m highly malnourished, and running on paraphrased memories.

I trade cautiously when it comes to hope. I’m not hopeless,

but I’m never hopeful about that fact.

I can’t fall for it, or anyone really; i was raised to be ashamed if only I thought about taking a step that might lead to a mistake.

As a result,

I think the absolute worst of everyone, even when i don’t necessarily believe it.

That being said, paranoia is as intrinsic as breathing to me.

•••

•Quotes:Sylvia Plath/Sandra Cisneros/Azra tabassum/Sandra Cisneros/Louis Tomlinson/Cassandra Clare/ Louis Tomlinson/ Ritika Jyala/ Gloria E. Anzaldua

• Original context: Sinligh

•Art reference:

1.Tight, by István Sándorfi. 2. Painting by István Sándorfi. 3. Painting by Henry Asencio. 4. "Hugs II" by Yang Cao. 5.painting by Ans Markus. 6.Painting by Liu Yuanshou. 7. The Brood By Sam Wolfe Connelly. 8. "Passionate Dreams" by Henry Asencio.

[oldwinesoul]

“February arrives like a train and runs over the bones of January, and just like that-the death of a new year.”

// Ritika Jyala, excerpt from “The Flesh I Burned”

[prettiestmetaphor]

Movies and books also don't tell you that friendships don't just end after one fight or incident, it's like the rusting of a bridge, the slow decay of flesh and bones and secrets. It took weeks, months- until one day I woke up and I realized I hadn't thought of her in a while. And I wrote a poem that day and I titled it 'The dying of a best friend' and I put all my love for her in a tiny box with my half of the matching pendant of a dolphin we had and stored them in a corner of my heart under the heading Grief. Where else can one hide unspent love?

It's been 3 years since I lost my best friend, lost as in I still carry our secrets in a tiny box but we only text each other on our birthdays.

Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

[destruhction]

they say that loving someone is predetermined, predestined.

people speak of the instantaneous bond between mother and child, and, yes, she had become more than familiar with the biological and socio-psychological reasons for that. but it wasn’t that. or maybe it was that, but it was certainly something more.

whether you call it fate, or chance, or circumstance, loving someone persists beyond what our minds can comprehend. and she was convinced of that when she first held him. like she had wandered in her thirty-some years here, aimlessly searching for someone she faintly recognized, and yet could not name.

so, years later, when she gazed hazily into the eyes of her child she could no longer recognize, the waning yet persistent strength by which she held his hand, and the warmth she felt, could only be explained by something that had happened in a world before our own. it was no worry that her earthly mind couldn’t recall his name, or who they were to one another. in those the fleeting moments before she returned to the place that she, he, and you and i once came from, she hoped that she could relay through her gaze to this stranger she loves that she'll be able to find him again.

inspired by a beautiful excerpt by ritika jyala’s ‘The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire’, and the concept of barzakh

[chemicallyrotten]

[ritikajyala]

Mama I don't want kids, I say. For the hundredth time. Mother has this look on her face, it sits still- something between disappointment and bewilderment. But who will take care of you, she says, when you're older? And that is a rotten feeling. To believe that a child is only as good as what it does for its parents. To believe you are only as good as you give. To believe you owe someone, only to feel love. Who deserves this? Who deserves this wretched snarling beast sitting in my chest, whispering, shrieking- give, give, give.

-Ritika Jyala, The Beast that makes me Give

[yourpostisonpinterest]

@ritikajyala

i found your post on pinterest!

[fairydrowning]

– Ritika Jyala, excerpt from "The Flesh I Burned"

– Much Ado About Nothing, Play by "William Shakespeare"

– Terri Guillemets

– Charmaine J Forde

– Roses by the Stream, Book by Hua Bing

[mypaperlesstowns]

no, because trauma doesn't just go away when someone pretends to understand you. And you say you're fine and I'm okay but can't stand the silence ringing in your head. how many movies and series and books and stupid fucking reels do you need to feel something again? I'm sorry for the 6 missed calls, I read your texts and in my head, I told you everything.