Leonard Cohen, From Parasites Of Heaven

I loved you and then I didn’t and then I realised how wrong we were. I realised that your hands had not been welcome here and that even when I locked the door, you found a way to kick it open. I loved you and then I didn’t and then I realised I never knew what love was. all those terrifying memories that still feel too close and raw. memories that don’t feel like they belong to me. my therapist calls it abuse and I still don’t know if it actually was or if I’m just crazy and emotional like you said I was. I loved you and then I didn’t and then I was too sad to remember that my body isn’t a graveyard and things will be okay and I’ll never forget you or the things you did but I will move on. all those mornings spent in tears, the heart palpitations that were too urgent to feel like butterflies. your knuckles and the dark and then blinding light and then I have to explain away the bruises again to my mother. I loved you and you said you did too but you don’t hurt the ones you love. you don’t hurt the ones you love. I still loved you even when you did and I still don’t know if it was my fault or not.

mustafa and I broke up today. My blue eyed boy is no longer mine. I expected tears to pour out of me, the ground to tear open, the sun to swallow herself with grief. but there is nothing. I feel nothing. he wasn’t the angel I thought he was, this picture perfect boy with a smile like gold. he was just a boy. screwed up and scared and flawed through and through.

said to me my body kept me with him. that passion overcame him and that’s he’s just a man. just a man. how could i expect him to be anything more. said to me the light in my eyes meant nothing to him. said he doesn’t see the point in staying. I felt the breath catch in my throat as we said goodbye at the edge of the river.

blue eyed boy. stay safe too.

sunshine lover. body shaped like the word devour and I’m hungry, so hungry. sunshine lover. come lay in the garrets of my heart. let me kiss your wrists. let me love you. let me take all of you for myself. won’t you come linger, love?

winter lover. I’ll never be your snow covered sweetheart, wrapped up in a white sheet. you’ve devoured every aching corner of my heart. winter lover. all my poetry and writing is yours, though I didn’t want them to be. winter lover. cut my wrists. staple them to a cross. I am nothing more than yours.

see, I turn silent during sex. my voice buries itself in my throat like a messy bloodclot. how could I be anything other than passive anyway? anything other than silent? my abuser carries my voice around like his souvenir, has split my body in two and took one half with him. left me with skin I don’t recognise, a body that still mistakes warmth for war. i turn silent during sex. let his hands paint orchids on my neck, let his fingers climb up me in search of my secrets, let his body into mine until I have nowhere to put the bad memories. this body isn’t mine. I don’t think it ever will be.

when richard siken said, “i hope it’s love. i’m trying really hard to make it love. i said no more severity”

tender quotes:

1.  “The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.” (mikko harvey, from “for m,”)

2.  “I still feel like the world is a piece of bread, I’m holding out half to you.” (eileen myles)

3. “Wherever you are it’s okay. You can come back from it. Whatever happened to you down there, whatever the world looks like now, that’s not how it always looks. That’s not how it’s always going to look. There’s more. There’s always more.” (patrick ness, from “more than this”)

4.  “I was making dinner and I got a message. Go look outside, she said, go look at the sunset. My apartment is small, with four rooms and two windows that don’t see much light so I had no idea. I pulled my coat on and hurried out. I was running to this sunset, suddenly the only thing that mattered. I hurried past the taller buildings to the park and the sky was leaking shades of pink and purple. It was beautiful and fleeting, there one minute and gone the next. I would’ve missed it; I almost kissed it. And so I started thinking, how great it would be to get a nudge, a tap on your shoulder, a moment or two before your life changes. Stop what you’re doing and look around, you’ll want to remember this later. In a minute, you’re going to fall in love.” (kelsey danielle, from “unexpected sunset”)

5.  “Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another―why don’t you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.” (mary oliver, from “black oaks”)

texts between angels trying to live as mortals by keaton st. james

https://www.instagram.com/p/B2QGigMgA9j/?igshid=mq9ym29p2mhg

coffee, the sunrise and the buildings awash in the light of a new morning all around me. how lovely is it to be alive. to experience all this busyness and splendour. how the clouds whisper good morning and the heavens themselves shine through each crack in the sky. how the sun calls my body to wake. how the birds tell me today is a new day and aren’t there just endless possibilities. the promise of a new sunrise makes me so glad I’m still alive.