Hozier, ‘Cherry Wine’

JAMEELA JAMIL by Chantal Anderson for The New York Times (2019)

The closest I’ve ever been to a crime scene is the stairwell where I had my body ripped in two

(my mind still wanders there, sifting for clues). 

Your Honour- I introduce Exhibit A: 

Torn underwear, a bruised pelvis and a mouth full of silence 

In a plastic bag for the ladies and gentlemen of the jury. 

To the Defence: look into my eyes and tell me I’m lying- please, 

Because I can’t process the clockwork murder that man made of my own body. 

I carry hot pink pepper spray like lipstick- 

does that prove fear for you?

Is the fact that I can’t eat without throwing up indication enough for the horrors I endured? 

Will you please protect me? 

Because I can’t sleep anymore. 

I can’t eat anymore.

I lost myself to him.

Exhibit B: let the jury read a phone full of messages, 

Coerced consent, 

“I’ll leave you if you don’t do this”, he said. 

My mother asks me what I stayed for and all I can muster is a croaky 

“I loved him, mama”

Ladies and gentlemen- 

Won’t you pry inside me like he did?

Follow me down the tunnel he dug between my legs?

Believe me when I say I am terrified. 

Icy blue eyes, 

Claws for hands and 

Lips that shushed me when I screamed. 

Exhibit C: I offer me. 

Can’t you see my body is a funeral pyre now? 

Can’t you see that this is the scene of the crime? 

How humiliating this process is. 

How it makes me wish I never said anything at all.

kissing you and laughing with you and holding you reminds me that happiness is possible, that happiness is here and that it is here to stay. how wonderful it is to come home to you. how wonderful it is to call you mine, my love. every cell, every inch, every curve of you calls me like the sea. I’ll happily drown in all that you are. happily burn in the sunlight in your eyes. I’m obsessed with all that you are. the chocolate chip cookie grin, the curve of your Adam’s apple, the scent of your skin.

so this is what lovers mean when they say they fall in love with their person more and more everyday. this is what falling feels like.

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”)

come teach me why flowers grow better with blood-based fertiliser. come bury me in the ripe plum of your body, tangle around me like ivy. see, im so tired of dragging around this empty casket of a mind. see, i know I shouldn’t but baby, I’m fucking hopeless over you.