'what They Did Last Night'they Set My Aunts House On Firei Cried The Way Women On Tv Dofolding At The

'what they did last night' they set my aunts house on fire i cried the way women on tv do folding at the middle like a five pound note. i called the boy who used to love me tried to ‘okay’ my voice i said hello he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened? i’ve been praying, and these are what my prayers look like; dear god i come from two countries one is thirsty the other is on fire both need water. later that night i held an atlas in my lap ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt? it answered everywhere everywhere everywhere.

-Warsan Shire

Hung (Pulvus et Umbra Sumus part two)

Besides, we’re all dying slowly and perpetually every day as our cells keep decaying at an ever faster rate, until there’s nothing left of the genetic rope that is us; a predisposed pattern of cells and atoms and bones, fused together in a haphazard mangled manner which it had to be because why else would we have such peculiar noses? And for some, our rope is longer and our infinities expansive, and others die faster, simply for the reason that they drew the short rope in life so when the platform drops

they break their neck before they touch the ground.

tell me, do you remember the names of all the girls you have loved?

looking back i can tell that i loved girls from the moment that i walked into that first grade classroom and saw Katie Fox, all breathless energy and hands moving like butterflies while she drew a crowd of excited children around her with vibrant stories. i wanted so badly to be friends with her only i didn't know what i meant by friends because i wanted to hold her butterfly hands in mine and sit with her on the playground while everyone else went by. six years old and i had an unnamed secret and longing that i had no words to describe, that i couldn't tell existed because no one ever said anything about girls who love girls. i never did get to hold her butterfly hands but we were friends in the closest of ways and that was enough because to hold a butterfly is to break its wings. in second grade i met Celina Pan who i would love until she moved away to Texas, and i would love her afterwards although it's hard to love someone when you can barely find the words to say to them. we were friends forever is what we promised and i can tell that i loved her because i told her everything and we used to hold hands on our way out to recess in fifth grade behind the school building because it felt natural and it felt like home. i still had that unnamed longing clenched inside my heart except now it had a name and a face and a voice that changed with every girl i loved and every girl i still do. in eighth grade i dated Bianca for most of the year but now the longing itself had a name and it was a dirty word i could not say and was not supposed to admit. high school came and went with a succession of dyed hair, inked arms and pretty smiles and i still remember all their names. if i can tell you that i have loved girls from the time i didn't even understand what it meant how dare you think that you can change me and that this choice of who i love is just a rebellion against the system. it isn't a rebellion as much as i wish it could be just so that i have something to claim i'm fighting for instead of feeling dirty and ashamed for wanting a pair of soft lips, pale thighs instead of something a man could give me. a man cannot give me the feeling i had while watching Katie laugh in first grade, the way i could imagine us sitting still while the world revolved, the feeling that bubbles in my chest when i look at old pictures of Celina and i together because forever felt like it could be real when her hand wrapped around mine, and no man could give me back the hours that Bianca and i spent writing bad love poetry and laughing while we hid from our mothers. looking back i know that i loved them so please, try and tell me that i didn't. i will prove you wrong.

self-proclaimed and diagnosed is just another way to say 'fucked up'

I am a self-proclaimed bitch, a know-it-all fucking jackass of a person that obnoxious motherfucker you wish would just go away. Any name you can think of to call me I’ve probably called myself. My friend walked up to me the other day and told me I was a bitch but ‘that was just my personality’ and I just smiled and laughed, said 'I warned you when you became friends with me, everyone knows I’m a bitch’ so I didn’t start crying.

Some girl tried to pick a fight with me because her friend was upset about something I did (how dare she be mad without knowing the full story, without knowing what her friend had done to me. How dare she come charging up like a knight in shining armour except in this story the dragon is secretly the princess who’s been trapped in an ugly body by society’s expectations; don’t kill the dragon we all shout except knights don’t listen so she killed the dragon anyway and was confused when there was no princess to save) and she tried to pick a fight by calling me a bitch and a terrible person and telling me I should just go die because I didn’t deserve to live and I just smiled and laughed and agreed with her with everything she said.

It’s hard to pick a fight with someone who agrees with what you’re saying. She called me a bitch and told me to die and I said I know but I didn’t say that I’d tried because telling people you want to die is the moral equivalent of kicking them while they’re down; it just makes them feel guilty so they halt and try to reverse the train with fake apologies.

Trains don’t go in reverse anyway so I let her words barrel over me and took all the blame that I didn’t deserve onto myself and said I’d let myself cry later, when everyone was out of sight.

Nobody likes to see a bitch cry. It reminds them of their humanity and the fact that yes we are all people and inside that person you say is less than a person, the one you call a bitch and terrible and say that 'I guess they can’t help it, some people are just natural mother fuckers who need to be put down and taught a lesson’ yeah the person you say that to is exactly that a person.

I’m a person but no one will believe me so instead I say I’m a self-proclaimed bitch. That way when people tell me things about myself they think they’re the first person to notice, I can smile and laugh and then I can destroy them for hurting me because that’s what bitches do.

This sword works two ways; when you tell someone they are less than a person they will believe you. You can demean them and unmercifully beat them down but you had better not turn your back, better keep one eye open when you sleep because less than human means I will have no qualms about destruction.

Your weapon is my humanity and you in your unwillingness to unlock my chains have given me the tools to render my cage obsolete.

Atlas

On my bad days: I feel like the atlas, crying out everywhere everywhere everywhere I feel like Atlas, holding apart what so desperately wants to come together All those people crying out that it hurts oh, it hurts the way my shoulders shake and quiver tremble beneath my hands the way pages do, letters pressed gently into paper making myth and legend Legend says that Atlas’ punishment was borne of his pride; That his hubris had been his undoing and now it trapped him with the weight of the world upon his shoulders. Atlas did not bear the weight of the world. Atlas held the sky upon his shoulders and the ground ached beneath his feet, they cried out to each other with a force that brought him to his knees. The sky wept with great, gasping sobs and it fell as rain, washing the earth clean her suffering cleansed those below and the earth shook. What had not been cleansed by rain was tested by fire and found wanting. Atlas bowed his head- who was he to stand in the way of a love so great that the tremblings of it shook the earth and flooded the plains? Somewhere, a woman held an atlas in her lap and cried. Somewhere, an atlas answered everywhere everywhere everywhere. And Atlas wept, for his pain was not enduring the weight of the world or the sky upon his shoulders; the world’s heart lay in his hands. (they shook- they trembled with the heaviness that comes with love) Everything hurt. He would bear the sky on his shoulders and the earth under his feet and he would take the suffering of the world in his hands and he would hold it and he would bear it because he had to. Atlas’ punishment was borne of his pride he was to bear the sky upon his shoulders. Later that night I cried, traced the constellations until I found one that looked like a man, held him close to my chest and whispered that the pain was not his own to bear he told me it hurt everywhere everywhere everywhere.

Have you ever thought about how every day we are dying, slowly disintegrating into nothing after all we are but dust collected into atoms that combine to become us, a body of thousands but yet only one we are a universe unto ourselves, infinitely expanding and collapsing as our little lives made of stardust (we are such stuff that dreams are made of, wishes forgotten and remembered and love lost and won) become stars and like everything die they supernova into an explosion of colour that we can’t even see if it happens but we do not see or even notice did it really happen or was it just an illusion, sleight of the hand that holds so gently a universe of stars known as us and we die slowly, not from ourselves supernovae in a great explosion a grand last act but of a thousand little things that break us every day, our tiny atoms fading our stars growing dim until we are left as the gloaming, the almost black fragile as the smallest thing so delicate one touch and we disintegrate, slowly dying every day bleeding out our souls till we’re an empty husk after all we are but dust

cityskylinesofimaginaryplaces, part one of two, ‘Pulvus et Umbra Sumus’ (via wnq-writers)