I Love You Because I Don’t Know How To Love Myself

Regrets from a princess,

Or a knight

Let’s call it a night.

My heart beckons me to your every call.

It races, it leaps, frolicking in some poisonous daises.

Why doesn’t it know any better?

Each day is a lesson learned

Each day is a prayer earned.

My hatred for syrup is the same as my feelings- a sticky situation that i can’t get myself out of.

I want to cry

And i cry.

I’m angry

Again.

I’m let down

Again

CUT FROM THE SOURCE 

I had to let go, 

All those things you said I was 

I unraveled, 

Became undone, 

My bones melted, 

My heart unrest- 

For it won’t stop beating, 

Beating, beating 

Because it knows no less 

I became unplugged, 

Undressed in your layers of 

Manipulation, 

Unleashed from your cage from 

All the ways you  Underestimated me.

Who else literally does not talk

To have met you was not a careful thing,

Neither graceful nor patient,

And we definitely didn’t know what we were

Getting ourselves into.

All we know is happiness,

Your presence, and essence scream joy.

You are my warm kindred spirit,

My daring bog creature,

My knight in shining armor

Your lips do wonders

The words that flow from your lips are always spoken with such a passion that makes the angels jealous

When i close my eyes, i can still feel you on my skin

What a blessing you are

From all the prayers I’ve prayed, to be met with your gaze,

My heart won’t stop

Racing

My hands never forgiving,

To let you go is always hard

But to see you once more, i thank the very car you drove in.

A cis woman tells me that maybe she should transition to gain male privilege as I'm recovering from getting beaten up in the men's bathrooms.

I tell her to be my guest and give me a call when she gets her jaw broken, I always carry a first aid kit and a pepper spray.

She calls me a misogynistic asshole.

A cis man tells me that he'd sure love some T.

Gave him my prescription and best of luck with the constant shortages and getting denied.

He calls me a pussy.

I'm fighting for my life and reproductive rights. I get told to get off women's fights, that it's not about me, like I shed my womb after my first T shot.

I search for support groups for SA victims, and I'm stuck in the same “women/NBs only”. Still shooting my shot, send an application. I introduce myself. Never get a call back.

I go to a trans night. Say I go by he/him. Get told back “yeah, that's how we all start !” by a trans woman. I'm too exhausted, I get up and I leave.

I hang out with my friends, one of them drunkenly says masculinity is a prison we must learn to escape. She gets rows of applause. Back to drinking alone.

Yes I could explain it. But who'd you rather be ? A delusional girl or a man made threat ?Or it could be better, I could just not exist ! And we'd bleach my corpse and I'd become a casualty. Not an F, ot an M, a W for Wound and for Wrong.

I put a candle on a single cupcake, 2 years on HRT. I blow it in the dark. Curtains closed like casket.

Heart imagery by Andrea Zantelli

Armenians have lived in Jerusalem for 1,600 years and Armenian Palestinians are the oldest group in the Armenian diaspora. From their indigenous land in Artsakh to the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem, Armenians have been facing ethnic cleansing and persecution on multiple fronts. With the escalating genocidal violence in Gaza and the West Bank, armed settler encroachment into Armenian holdings in Jerusalem has fallen under the radar of some pro-Palestine activism and it is critical we do not allow this to happen.

Some context:

( In 1948, Armenians in Jerusalem numbered about 16,000. Today, that number has shrunk; estimates range from 700-1000, with a smaller community in Bethlehem. )

“We are not the objectives of the Israelis, but we occupy a huge chunk of Jerusalem. The fact that we’re here is an obstacle for them, but we’ve been here for 1,600 years and we’re not going anywhere.” "These are only the most visible of the challenges facing the community....Israeli discrimination, economic decline, and political insecurity have taken a toll on Armenians, encouraging emigration. A century after the community was nearly annihilated, Armenian Palestinians today say they feel deeply at home in the Holy Land, but fear how much longer they will be able to hold on."

“Don’t ask me about the massacres that happened 100 years ago [1915],” Annie Guluzian said when asked about her experiences as an Armenian Palestinian. “I won’t open [up about] those topics. Because if I do, I will start talking about my brother who was martyred by the Israelis in the [second] Intifada.” The toll of the Israeli occupation in Palestine is what defines her life today, Guluzian added. Source

Since October 26th, 2023, when the leader of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem announced it would cancel a once-secret 2021 land lease deal with a real estate company that has alleged links to settler interests, the company, Xana Gardens, has sent in armed settlers and bulldozers to steal the land (including Armenian Chruch property and several Armenian families). Armenians have been resisting the occupational forces day in and day out.

From November 5th:

Link to tweet and video

November 5th:

Link to tweet and video

November 22nd:

Link to tweet and thread

November 25th:

Link to tweet and thread

In response, Armenians have created an account on Twitter called SaveTheArq which has been documenting and updating on social media the recent land demolitions by Israeli settlers in the Armenian quarter, they have also launched a fundraiser for legal actions to protect the Armenian quarter and I highly recommend donating, if you can't, please share it around:

Center for Law and Justice Tatoyan Foundation

Legal Defense Fund for Jerusalem Armenians

Support the historic effort to help the Armenian Community of the Old City of Jerusalem in the defense of its very survival and security.

thank you to trees and also rain

I know it’s not much in the face of everything but I have been finding hope & resilience in palestinian poetry these past few weeks and I created a google drive file of poetry collections by palestinian poets that I will keep updating as I keep on reading. I also recommend checking out @fiercynn’s palestinian poets series for more poets + poetry available online

Happy STS! ♥️ You can go back in time and give yourself one piece of writing advice. What is it?

If I could go back in time and give myself one piece of writing advice, it would have to be “Don’t compare yourself to other writers and go at your own pace.” I often feel like I shouldn’t even refer to myself as a writer but hearing this advice has really helped my confidence and understand that everyone is different and I should be happy to refer to myself as a writer.