nosebleedclub:

1. coming winter
2. bite marks
3. owl
4. gingerbread
5. the last

1. You feel the howl beginning and you know soon you’ll be begging for it to stop. Scared straight skinny, scared of your refrigerator, scared of the pantry, the microwave, the coffeemaker. Is that a noise you hear in the dark? The sun sets too early now, the dark is starting to crawl inside your mind, twisting and taunting. You write too much, too little, hang up “poet in residence” on the door of your apartment. No one but you gets the joke. You’re the joke, get it?

2. It scares you how much you want to claw into your skin “he’s mine”. You might scream if someone else were to touch him, were to turn his nouns possessive without you in the picture. It’s a different kind of fear than you’re used to, the kind that makes you want to fight, wants to make you bite. When you see him in the dark you want to make him yours and yours alone. Bite marks mauled onto his skin.

3. When you were younger you wanted to be wise and now sometimes you want to dead. You can’t remember what’s right anymore, only that you must write and must right the wrongs turning the world lopsided. Big bold eyes marked matte with black eyeliner, you watch the world and wait, ready to swoop down and straighten up the mess cluttering the earth.

4. Tis the season and everyone is screaming. Karens clutter the supermarket while Christmas songs screech overhead. After the fifth repeat of the same series of songs, you think that you must be dead and this is hell, fluorescent lights buzzing bright overhead. Who else could have devised such a mockery of a time you worshipped as a child? It must be the work of the devil himself. How dearly you must have sinned.

5. You can’t take the last cookie or you’ll wish that you were dead, body crawling with maggots and no more needs and no more wants. It’s the holiday season and you shouldn’t care but you do and you always care and you can’t stop caring. Don’t take the last cookie, or you’ll show everyone how selfish you are in a season of selflessness. You tell yourself you won’t do it and you don’t want to do it and surely you won’t do it but then it’s two am again and there’s crumbs on the kitchen floor. In the morning they will fight over who did it, and you will stay silent long after the arguing stops.

inkskinned:

there’s this little rumble brewing. we are all stepping around the same date, less than a week.

i have been getting texts. one of them reads is it okay if i don’t want to even fucking look at the results i just want to sleep through it all. i don’t know how to respond. i have this habit of wanting to cut my hair and then keeping it long. i like to snip split ends any time i have scissors in my hand. i’ve been walking around with sharp things a lot lately.  

i have been getting emails. on account of the fact we don’t know what the world looks like in a week, we will not be holding classes on wednesday. i want to ask my classmate - do you think she’s just planning on being hungover but it doesn’t even feel funny. i stare at it for a long time and then make an annotation to my calendar about due dates. the story i was going to turn is about being bisexual and young and having good friends.

i have been getting resume requests. jobs all come with mission statements and addendums. it feels silly to plan for something in 2021. that doesn’t even sound like a real year, my sister says. on my cover letter, i consider typing - there are many who would liken me to a cockroach.

i have been getting little worries. we are in the skype together, and he says - i love you all so much. i want to watch the world change with you. how terrifying a thought. we make a joke about it. about penning each other letters across the rest of the end of our lives. they say - oh! you’ll be armed with a hot glue gun. 

more and more people reach out. do you want to meet up? they pass little hopes and keep little loves. will you be here? do you need me to come? are you safe? i’ll get in my car and drive. do you need to just get drunk?

what else is there. these tiny little proofs of love. of wanting to hold hands, of wanting to be together, of not being done.  

seriously, i’ll get in my car this moment. seriously, i’ll buy the plane ticket. seriously, i’ve been meaning to run. say the word and i’ll come. say the word and i’ll come. say the word and i’ll come.

inkskinned:

executive dysfunction is legitimately physically uncomfortable. i’ll be trapped between two things, weirdly caught on how-much-time-it-might-take-me. i take hours worried im going to take hours doing things. i’ll sit on the floor for the entire day, caught up in the middle of not-doing the chores i actually do want to be doing.

& the amount of mental energy that goes into it. & the legitimate amount of anger and discomfort and self-hate. is not “being lazy”.  it’d be a lot less work if i didn’t have to fight myself to just get up and do it. 

i just need you to understand it’s not effortless. it’s never effortless. it’s not “okay let me just get up and finally start doing this.” it’s more like. i am slamming my foot on the pedal but the car is in neutral and nothing is moving. it’s more like shouting instructions into a dying telephone. it’s more like being trapped in a small electric box, and someone who hates me is administering shocks. 

im trying. im trying. please help me get up.

inkskinned:

also just like. its pretty fucked how many people with mental illness or chronic conditions are worried they’re “faking” it because. like someone looked at you. and said. that you were ruining your own life and your own body and your own future and your own happiness - that there was nothing actually wrong with you, you were doing this on purpose.

you battle these incredibly difficult intrusions, these symptoms which constantly assail you – and you’d fake that?? in what world do i gain anything by faking this? in what world is it winning the lottery for me to not be a functioning fucking human being??

but like i still wonder if i am faking it because it’s been suggested so much i just… have completely internalized it. and like. that’s pretty disgusting.

inkskinned:

i know we’re both just messing around pretending to be whole but look at me. if the train was coming would you move. if the ground was falling from under your feet would you even notice or would it just be another tuesday for you. if somebody stabbed you could it hurt worse than you already do. what i’m saying is that i love you but i think we both drive over the speed limit when it’s raining. what i’m saying is that i want to hold your hand and i understand about how you sometimes have to sit down in the shower. what i’m saying is that i’m here for you and if the train comes please move.

(via inkskinned)

inkskinned:

i tap my pinky finger against a hot glue gun and i burn. this is divine retribution for arts and crafts and for being what an ex called “a joanne fabrics kind of bitch.” 

i have been thinking a lot about angry. i have been thinking about what angry gives me. i have been thinking about how rage can be precious. how rage can be justice. i have been thinking about the thin slices of my sister’s apple pie, each overlapping in roses. i have been thinking about knives. i have been thinking about kitchens.

you know what i’ve been thinking about? a man three days ago reached over me while getting something down from a shelf in a walmart. i’ve been thinking about that. how do you have that much confidence. he showed me his entire armpit and i came in unfortunate contact with his hip. how do you touch something without being a part of it? how do you take up space without being aware of it? how do you reach for things without worrying what will stop you from getting it?

once i got concentrated floor cleaner in my eye and burned it completely down to the iris. i didn’t want to be an inconvenience, so i washed it out and waited twelve hours before trying to do something about it. i thought i was being overdramatic.  

a doctor didn’t see me for five hours. the emergency room nurse had written “soap in the eye” as my symptom. i was completely blinded. “you must be in a lot of pain,” the optometrist said when he finally got around to it, “that’s your whole cornea gone.” he tells me this is probably one of the worst things i will ever hopefully ever experience; a concentration of nerve endings all melted into nothing. then i said, for no reason either of us understood, “sorry i did this.”

i have been thinking about angry. i have been thinking about fires. i have been thinking about being hungry. i think about the anklet i wear with a little silver cross; i think about hell and who is going. when she kisses me, something splits so loudly that i hear damnation resonating. the priests in my old church all get full pardons and retirement funds. i drop her hand before we get on the bus.

i have been thinking about the color of my lipstick. i have been thinking about the shape of my clothing. i have been thinking about what calm looks like; how peace is commodified. i have been thinking about candles, and witches, and burning.

“bitch!” he leans out of a truck. “don’t fucking walk away when im talking to you! what the fuck are you doing?”

inkskinned:

shh, i am still in love with the mundane beauties of this world. while painting my cabinets, a perfect star splattered onto the back of my hand. there is a flower at the top of the hill that always seems too colorful to be real. under the table, someone has scratched be well in tiny handwriting. the peanut butter spreads perfectly on my toast. we all stare up at the moon. the streetlights in fog, all fall leaves around us, the pattern on little parking lot birdwings. little life, little joy, little falling. little bit lovely, always.

inkskinned:

we roll up the rug together. underneath are little bits of construction paper from art projects i never finished cleaning up or i never finished at all. my life is full of these scraps; untidy leavings.

“what would i tell her, even?” i discover in the grooves of the hardwood a single bent ring, try to pick it up with my toes for the added challenge.

you go get a broom. “you tell her the truth. they thought it was something harmless, but it’s looking like it might be serious, and you wanted to reach out because it has given you some clarity.”

“the insurance isn’t cooperating. do you think she could get the insurance to cooperate?” i hold down the metal dust pan on the floor in front of you, gently scooping lint into the pile with my bare hands.

“nobody can get the insurance to cooperate.” you have a trick to getting dirt perfectly into the pan - you somehow never leave one of those little lines behind.

“so i go up and i’m like - hi! we lost touch. i have a heart condition that might kill me and they don’t know what it is. it’s scary! anyway, wanna grab lunch?”

“you could like, offer a specific lunch place.” you gesture for me to open the trash bag, i struggle with finding the correct orientation. 

i have to shake it open. “this sound gives me the heebie jeebies and like, i don’t know why. you ever have, like, sound-heebies?”

“like, specifically for metal on teeth. you could start the conversation like that, maybe?” you pour the dust in. i spot a penny in the dinge too late to rescue it. “like - hi, i am afraid of trash bags.”

“not afraid! they’re just too loud and shouty.” i shimmy it gently so it rests at the bottom. i stare at it, penny winking through dust. “what if she hates me? what if she thinks i’m like, super ugly? am i ugly, patrick? what if she hates me and she thinks i’m super ugly?”

you stack your hands at the top of the broom. take a deep breath. “you know, i don’t wanna be that guy to someone with a weak heart, but.” you rest your cheek on the back of your knuckles, grinning. “but maybe you care too much about what people might think about you.”

“i don’t know how to stop caring!”

“yeah, that’s fair.” you close your eyes. “but you chase catastrophe, kind of.”

i stare at my hands. “not on purpose.”

you put the broom against the wall. you take a deep breath. ghost your palms under mine, almost-touching, not-quite-there-yet. like you’ll catch me if i start going, but you trust me enough to keep standing. “you are living in the catastrophe,” you say. “you are already experiencing a worst-case. late-stage capitalism. pandemic. global warming. all of it. there’s no need for you to imagine worst-case situations. you are trying, and you are caring, and you are alive in despite of all of it.” 

“yeah, but. i just….” i never stop thinking. the skin of me is full of beetles. i can never rest and i haven’t been sleeping and no matter how much planning i do i never seem to be able to get my life up and running. “… i just. get nervous.”

“it’s okay,” you say. “i’ll be your friend anyway. even if she finds you ugly.”

inkskinned:

my hands shake too hard, so you help me hang the new painting. the music from the phone in your back pocket is singing about hating winters in california. 

i’m wine drunk. “no,” i’m saying, “you don’t get it. crows, like, have a sense of their own thought process.” a little bit of the paint chips off under my fingernail.

you ask me if i think crows can fall in love. i say they are only made from love. you ask me if i think crows love like how people love. i say: i don’t know anything about love enough to answer that.

we stand back to see if it’s hanging even. it isn’t but it’s heavy so we just stand there for a second, looking at the skewed frame. “do you really think that?” you ask. look at me just out of the corner of your eye. like if you look too closely i’ll cry. the way things have been lately, i don’t know either.

“skewed isn’t used enough,” i say. “skewed is a good word.”

“because i think a lot of people love you.” you reach out and shift the thing a little to the left. now it’s off-center in the other way.

i don’t think that’s true, i almost say. “yeah, i know.”

you take my hand. “a lot of people,” you say again. “like. maybe it isn’t what you were expecting. maybe they don’t know how to do it loudly or they don’t know how to do it where you can see or that you don’t know how to look for it. but.” you turn me so i have to look into your eyes, so big and bright and caring - “a lot of people love you if you just… start noticing.”

i can’t look at you like that too long. all beautiful and soft and vulnerable. i break away and straighten the painting. “i just want the romance!” i say, trying to make my tone joking, knowing i sound like i’m choking.

“you don’t need it.” you get the other side angled correctly. now it is perfect. we are so close i can feel the heat of your skin and see the reflection of the art in your iris. your hand holds my cheek; cool and soothing. “you are a romantic already. romanticize existing. go on a date with joy. go on a picnic with surviving. you are so lovely, and loving you feels effortless and easy.”

i wish that were true. i try to make a joke. “oh, did a crow tell you that? how do you know?”

“i know,” you say. i can’t help the feeling in the back of my throat, an ache so wide it’s no longer wanting, it’s dissolving. the color of your eyes takes up all of my mind until it’s just a swathe of you. 

“you’re so easily loved,” you repeat. you run your cold thumb over my cheek. “i know. i know. i know. you gotta just trust me.”

inkskinned:

in my dreams, i am dust-covered and sneezing. we are unpacking blue-grey plates and talking about plato. i say i’m sort of a pliny-the-elder kinda monster, you have to take a lap around our new apartment, mournfully questioning corner ghosts - can you believe this girl?

in my dreams, i am wearing the velvet green dress from the movie. we are dancing in sweeping moons across uneven floorboards. your hands are cold, but you glide so easily. the whole time you’re talking about good vampire movies.

in my dreams, we are sitting at the top of a hill and overlooking an apple orchard and you’re gently picking leaves out of my hair. you are humming tunelessly and i’m chattering about all the pie i want to eat. 

my mother, in the real life, asks me why i look like i haven’t gotten any sleep. she says the shadows under my eyes are getting concerning. she asks if i’m low in iron or if the nightmares are returning.

it’s okay. i say. it’s okay. i’ve just been lying awake, thinking.