I Cup My Hands Around All The Sweet Things In The World To Try And Taste Some Form Of Optimism, Some

Men hold up a baby saved from a pile of rubble. Damascus, Syria, 2014

what if he loves her the way he refused to love me?

Why didn’t you leave, my mother and my friends and his friends asked me and I wish I could give them all an answer because it’s been months and I’m still not too sure. I can’t really work it out because it’s not like he ever hit me. In fact- maybe it was my fault, the way I swallowed the words that spilled over the floor until I was sick. I carefully clipped admissions of pain into jokes about how love feels like drowning, whispered softly to my friends, “so fucked up” as if this wasn’t the life I was living. I walked around with my jaw clenched because he was safe enough, right? And it’s not like yelling or insults ever killed anyone (it is bad to have this body. it takes up too much space.) I heard someone call me “emotionally delicate” and I would cry but there isn’t really anything to cry about. that’s the joke of it. so what that he said he’d make me do it even if I didn’t want to? so what he’d recoil when I argued and say “you’re so annoying when you panic”. There was nothing beautiful there, nothing soft. No red flags, no warning signs- just an empty carcass and dirt. My heart like a rotten peach (how it is all so unbearable). He has a new girlfriend now and they kiss and hold hands and something inside me breaks (maybe she was soft in ways I never was, maybe it was always me). Is this how love works? Was it always supposed to be this way?

I’m back in a stairwell. blue faced and weak

and weak

and weak.

It isn’t getting easier.

Peggy Porschen

the gentle hand reaching out from the grave. the wandering ghost and the haunting of a life that wasn’t meant to be. a life spent with you.

you were so bad for me, the way you bent me over my own grave and called it love. moaning into that demon’s kiss as I rolled my eyes in ecstasy, ready to give into this little death. ready to die and haunt the corridors of each other’s lives. how sweet destructive romance tastes on our lips, how empty all this is.

we made a graveyard of this didn’t we, honey? dug up too many skeletons and wandered too far from home, feigning surprise when we got lost in the dark. walking amongst our own destruction, holding each other tightly.

rotten love. dirty, rotten love that was dead before it even started.

a conversation with sappho

we roll around on the carpet floor, hugging each other tightly, pulling each other ever closer. we try to stay quiet, but whispers of “I missed you so much” spoken in the language of pleasure escape. we giggle at the intimacy of it all, two lovers ready to throw themselves off the brink of everything to stay in this dream.

the way your body melts into mine, like you belong here, like we were made for this moment. we hug and laugh and kiss and say “goodbye, lover, I’ll see you later!” and never worry. we help each other with our work and plan for a future full of sunflowers and paintings and dinner by the fireplace. we’re still arguing if we should get a dog or a cat, though. that playful love.

how my words slip from my loose gloved jaw whenever ur around. how I lie on your chest and hear ur heartbeat quicken like you still get shy when I come close. how you stumbled into my life and made a beautiful mess of my mind.

wouldn’t trade you for the world, my summertime boy, wouldn’t give you away for anything. and when we roll around the carpet floor, breathless and wistful and entangled, I’m reminded why loving you is so easy.

“In a shaky voice, he said: bring me back to you, or bring me back to myself. don’t leave me standing in between.”

Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl, but maybe someday I will attract the right one who will treat me like there are stars within me

(Edit): This is a temporary addition to this post; this is a popular post right now and I’m desperate here. I made a gofundme for my mom. If you can spare anything that’d be amazing if not reblog this so it gets more visibility, thank you sm I’m sorry to do this.. it’s the newest post on my tumblr

Ladurée Saint Honore rose framboise

a brief primer for the hopeless days, part 2:

Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (167) | Bertolt Brecht, ‘Motto’ | Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird  | Gregory Orr, Concerning the Book of the Body That Is the Beloved | Leonard Cohen, ‘Chelsea Hotel No. 2′