Regulusblackdefender - Tumblr Posts
"maybe i wasn't made to be loved. maybe i was made to write about a love i will never feel. maybe i was made to split an orange with someone while we watch the cars go by from the curb. maybe i was made to give them the bigger half. maybe i was made to be used. maybe i was made to make other girls feel better about themselves because "at least i don't look like her." maybe it's just better that i stop trying. maybe."
but oh, sweetheart, you were made to love. and that is enough. isn't it? seeing the love you hold in your heart is enough to make any sensible person cry. well, it's enough to make me cry.
love has softened my sharp edges,
making me sweeter.
i went from wanting to destroy the world,
crush it like chalk in my hands,
to wanting to breathe in every summer
and let it linger.
love has made me more lovable,
the storms in my gray eyes
clearing to sunny skies.
i want eighteen to come quicker,
because then our home can be a possibility.
nothing loud, except for music
nothing cruel, except for poetry
a swing for us to sit on
and star gaze.
and when i point out leo,
she'd point out my scars
and tell me they were her favorite constellations.
so love has softened me,
and i think that's okay.
how can you write poetry about a girl who is walking poetry?
how can you paint a girl who is walking art?
how can you write a song for a girl who is walking music?
how can you fall for a girl who is walking love?
the answer is easily.
there's something so raw and beautiful about humanity in love. i am a mosaic of people who have been in love, and it ends with me. i have my mother's eyes, my father's need for spontaneity, my grandmother's patience, my aunt's love of space, etc. and mixed and molded together it created me.
one of humanity's biggest continual theme is the fear of being forgotten. hands chip away at marble to create statues that beg to not be forgotten. brushes held by people, every stroke a constant prayer to be remembered at all. we forget as time goes on and nobody wants to forget. nobody wants to be forgotten. we want the world to remain in vivid colors in memory, remember their touch, his eyes, her breathy whispers, his dimples. i want to be remembered. as a poet and artist, sure, but more for simply being human. there is no criteria a person should have to meet for being memorable. i remember everyone for as long as i can. my mother died in May, but i still remember her laugh. i have her laugh.
when are the dead really gone? of course, when their heart stops and they aren't breathing. but, under the hopeful assumption that we have souls or spirits, why then does their presence linger? my mother's soul is stained on my hands and hangs in my hair like the smoke from her cigarettes. my father's soul is nestled in the deepest crevice of my heart, hidden away in my primitive urge to forget him. i won't forget him.
i wouldn't be a good mother. i am from a family of bad parents and even worse kids. as a girl with a tendency to bite affectionately, it's a shame my teeth are coated in poison. i am a mother figure already, to my three younger siblings. they are scared of me. i have breakdowns if nothing works. i can't stand infants. i have, on multiple occasions, hit my youngest sister for not cooperating. i come from a family of control. really, all i want is tenderness and domesticness. but instead every aspect of my life is a fight for control. i want to live without fighting for it.
humanity in love is stupid. it's beautiful. we create poetry, songs, plays, novels, movies, musicals, art, etc. to show our devotion. i hope i never fall out of love. i hope i never lose my humanity.
i think i am an okay person. i know i can't be a good person, but i don't think that means i am a terrible person.
grief has rotted away like an apple core in my soul. but that rot is full of seeds, and those seeds are slowly digging their roots down to anchor me in reality. their harvest will be plentiful. i am glad i met who i am after she died.
but the strange thing about her death is that everyone is acting like i died too. we shared the same last name, same eyes, same laugh, same humor, yes. but i am not her. i lost two people that night; my mother, and the girl i was.
after that night, an anger began to boil over inside me. i was claws and teeth, i was knives and blades, i wanted to make people hurt. all that tender hurt was hidden under layers and layers of pressing rage. i did not truly want to hurt people. i just wanted them to hurt me back. it was only when i had bruises blooming like a morbid garden on my arms and legs and was tearing out thorns from my hands after a tumble down a ravine did i realize that. the boy who hurt me didn't get so much as a scratch. i ended up scarred.
i don't want to hurt people. but there is a violence under my skin, a venom in my mouth, that aches to be put away. just because i have said cruel words doesn't make me a cruel person. i did not mean them. they came from a place of ache. i wanted to be yelled at for doing wrong, because without her, who would yell at me anymore? when you are not fed love on silver spoons, you learn to lick it off of knives. and when that love is coated in poison? you find a nostalgic comfort in the pain.
all this to say i don't think im a bad person. i think i am an average person who has been through bad things. i think i am an average person who has done some bad things out of a place of hurt. but i am certainly not a good person.
he was a fire, and i was just a silly girl who learned to love the way he burned.
today i will get out of bed. i will open the blinds, and i will soak up the sunlight like a sponge soaking up water. i will look at the things he gave me, and every picture of me and a dead person on my mirror. and today, ill know it was for the better. i will go to school and understand the unspoken rules the girls have. i will follow them. and even though i do not look like they want me to, i am smart enough to keep myself together when they call me names. i will get home at three and call my best friend. i will talk bad about a girl who is like a mirror image of me. she is reverse, but too similar. still too similar. and i will let my brother scream at me, because i would scream at me too if i could. i know it's because i look too much like my mother. that's not the only thing i inherited from her, but it's the only thing people who didn't know her will notice we share. i also have her hunger for destruction. the bubbling of ache under our skin was shared. but she pulled it together enough to have a family, whereas i never will. the twin sized mattress i sleep on calls my name. i lay down to stare at the stick on stars on my ceiling. they're in the virgo and leo constellations. they mean the most to me. im a scorpio. i will wait until after dark to text his old account. and maybe i will know it's for the better that he left today. but i have texted him for too long, and it is already tomorrow. and i have deluded myself into believing he still thinks about me. and i will go to bed, and wake up at five. and i will lay in bed for another hour. today i will rot in bed. today i will know it was not for the better that they left. today is sunday, after all.
i have a habit of living in fear of what the dead will think of my life.
sunset on the river and in a walmart parking lot
i say i am all bad. rotten down to my genetics, molding from the day you picked me from the shelf and brought me home. i accept the pain that comes with being inedible, for i believe i deserve it.
but there is a part of me. a golden part, one untouched by the knives and mold and time. one that is still free. one that wants so badly to teach those i can't anymore to make angel cake. one that wants so badly to sit in summer fields and eat mulberries from the tree that was cut down the year my father died. one that is gentle. one that still goes roller skating in her grandmother's kitchen. one that knew not how to find constellations, but loved to tell you obscure star facts.
i may feel rotten and spoiled like milk, but this part, this gentle, soft girl who never got the chance to move on? she's in another universe where she teaches her mother and best friend to make cake. one where she eats mulberries and draws on the back porch with her father. one where she gets to be gentle because nothing has forced her to harden up. one where her grandmother has the perfect kitchen for skating around in her brother's shoes. one where she asks her father where orion is and talks all night to her mother about the stars.
in another universe, i got to be gentle.
save a little love for yourself. because some days we all feel unloveable. but i promise you, someone wants to love you. someone wants to be there with you. and maybe that person is you. so before you leave the house, make sure you check your sock drawer. last night you were so tired you dumped all your love in there. before you go away, make sure you check your favorite bag. one of your friends left a little bit of love there for you to find in the morning as a joke. before you turn off the bedroom light, make sure you check under your bed. when you fell asleep last night you must've still been holding a cup of love, and it spilled under the bed. it smells like summer. before you leave home for good, check the fridge. you saved some chocolates for your friend, but she never stopped by to take them. they taste like a better time. it gets easier. so check under the covers on a rainy day. you can find true meaning in the way the wildflowers reach towards the sun. love is inevitable. it curls around you like a blanket. love is gentle. love is soft. love is waiting for you to find it. i love you.
Cassandra by Taylor Swift is so vanity coded and i could explain but i choose not to
i want to bathe with you. there's something raw and real that spills out of my every pore when i take baths and i want to have you bare witness. here, let me wash your hair. i always feel loved when you let me play with your hair. let the foamy water submerge us. maybe this is baptismal, the way my love for everything around me swims into the water and eats us whole. i want to have a home with you where i bake foods ive never made before. and we are always happy. the bed is big enough for both of us and our parents can't try and get in. a place where we always just throw our shoes off at the door and end up losing them. a place where my yellow gloves ive started wearing when i do the dishes are hung to dry in the window. a place where there's a tub that's big enough for both of us. in that tub, i want to bathe with you.
we were like gods at the beginning of the world
everything we touched
was fresh and
filled with the gentle joy
of creation.
had you fallen as hard as i
i'm sure that the blood
leaking from your scraped knees
would be golden.
the outline of you holding me
had i been viewing as another
would've been created in constellation.
you promised me forever
and like a fool
i took your promise.
but neither of us are gods
although you may come close
and my blood is still red
and a promise of forever doesn't mean anything
when you run out of time.
currently mid hair dye, oh lord trusting my own process has never been harder
my mother had my eyes. when i lied, she'd shake her head. if i said something stupid, she'd look at me with a face i can't describe but know by heart. i bleached her hair once, she said she only trusted me to do it. we used to watch trashy tv on the couch. her breath smelled like cigarettes and her voice was so similar to mine. she listened to music that i learned to love. i can't listen to hotel california without imagining her grabbing my hands to dance with me and spin me around again. when i would scrape my knees on the pavement, she would carefully clean them and bandage them for me. i stayed on the honor roll for her. she would pull me into her side late at night when we watched tv on the couch and joke about how dad would yell at me for being up so late. she used to dye my hair for me and braid it. i still can't braid very well. her hands were always adorned in rings and i knew the cold metal as well as i knew my own name. she used to sing to my brother to get him to sleep when he was about six. i was only eight, and yet felt much too old to ask my mom to sing to me as well. i listened from the doorway. my mom helped me through a really messy relationship. when i didn't know what to do, i would text her. when i was at school, she'd send me memes and random texts throughout the day. during 5th period, i would always go to the bathroom to see what she sent me. it took a lot to adjust to not having that anymore. she knew me like she knew her own reflection. i saw myself in her and she saw herself in me. if i reached out, she reached back. she could tell when something happened and when i was just overreacting. she used to take me to her nail appointments and let me pick the colors. less than 24 hours before she died, she asked me to watch walle with her. i made a big fuss about going to ask my brother if he wanted to watch. i didn't ask. when i came back and lied and said he didn't want to, she saw straight through me. i didn't stay for the whole movie. i remember thinking that id have so much more time with her, so i would go to bed early. i wish that i had known that this is all i would have. i should've fucking stayed. i feel so guilty. im sorry mom. i should've been better.
ermmm cannibalism as a metaphor for love and intimacy as a media trope. in case you didn't know what my favorite trope was.
im like a dog in the way that i love too much and too hard. i wait at the door and when the people i love come back they just sigh. im like a dog in the way that it feels like i don't understand fundamentally how to be human. everyone else understands these little social cues that i have to take notes on and memorize. when they say this they mean that, but not always. im like a dog in the way that my heart has teeth. i learned to bite before i learned to speak. and when i bring them that dead bird they take it and hide it to throw out when im not looking. i find myself frequently wishing i was better at either being a person, or being a dog.
has there ever been a time when blood did not stain me? it is under my nails, in my teeth, on the bones that rattle between my jaws. to be canine is to be bloody and to be loyal. violence and love are both associated with the color red. i often mistake violence for love.