Short Prose - Tumblr Posts
When do we remember
a moment?
When we're in it?
When butterflies fill
our chest with bliss,
and we wish
we could linger
in that state of euphoria?
Or do we wait
for the time to be over,
for the person to leave,
for the laughter to turn
into an echo
that haunts us
in our sleep?
Do we wait
for the moment
to become a memory
before we start
to remember
how to feel?
-before we start to remember,
katie, 20:56
If we will ever come to a point where goodbye is inevitable, I will not ask you to teach me how to forget. Instead, I will ask you to show me how to remember. We made so many beautiful memories together, it's a shame to erase them all just because we have to part, and can no longer go back to the beginning to fall in love again. No, no matter how much it will hurt, I won't ask you to teach me how to forget. I will walk all the paths we've trodden and remember how your laughter sounded, how your fingers curled around mine, how your hair smelled under the sun, how your lips tasted. I will remember every bit of you, so when I am finally ready to let go, I can let all of you go the way I've let all the kites fly away when I was young and life was innocent and gentle and kind.
-let go,
katie, 17:30
as long as we do not die,
darling there'll be words
to stain blank sheets of paper
piled on your empty desk waiting
to be reunited with your pen,
there'll be stories about the night
we sat at the porch reminiscing
how we used to be good friends,
ah, cool, old days, we could not stop
talking as though the world is going
to end the next morning, you told me
how much you wished to wrap
your arms around me that afternoon I
was feeling under the weather,
there'll be tales to be told,
songs to be hummed,
poems to be recited,
darling, there'll be ample of words
to be written, so i'll let you fall
deeper into silence and revel
in the pangs if it soothes you
as long as we do not die,
there'll be stars twinkling
above us as we lean
for that last kiss.
-katie,
18th April 2021, 15:36
December 15, 2019
23:30
Hey, it's me. We talked before. Now I am back to tell you more stories like I promised. My clock reads 11:30. I'm in bed, drinking my third mug of coffee. I am reading your favorite novel. It's silly but I feel nostalgic as I read it. Every chapter reminds me of you, my darling Ana. Your rawness, your beautiful flaws are all engraved in the words stained in each and every page. But before I totally lose myself in it, I feel it appropriate to ask first, how are you doing tonight?
How are you doing there, in your time? Are you in bed reading too? Or are you in your desk writing the first line of your poem? It's something about him, isn't it? Oh don't worry, I know.
I know that you think about love more often than you should. And you stain your notes with things associated with it. I want to tell you it's okay. It's okay to savor the moment. It's okay to fall in love. I don't know what age you are now. Maybe 16? All sweet and innocent. You know I fell in love for the first time when I was 16. Got my heart badly broken six months after I turned 18. It was a lot to go through but I survived. After that I stopped writing for a while.
They say heartbreak makes a poet. Well it made me numb. I never loved again after I got my heart broken for the first time. I watched my shattered pieces,millions of screaming pieces bleeding on the floor. I spent years trying to mend me. But wholeness seemed evanescent. Lovers came and went, I taught myself to pretend. For years I rolled thousands of I love you's on my tongue while I felt so empty. So empty I wondered if anything could ever fill me up again. For something in me has died that day he ruined my faith in love and destiny.
But he's a lovely memory. I never regretted loving him. He taught me how to sway in gaiety and laugh with the daffodils. He has to leave all right, and life was never the same. I began drinking when I was 19. I theorized liquor could drown my feelings, wash them all away. Since then I couldn't stop drinking. I took shots after shots as the crowd applaused me until I pass out cold. I was young and broken and stupid. Above all, I was numb.
At 23, I became totally cynical. I took love for granted. Love took me for granted in return. I played fire like a fire dancer. I got burned but never minded the scars. I slept with lions but never feared death. Those moments, I was gladly signing my death sentence. At 25 I was totally addicted to loneliness. I began dining alone. I began doubting promises. I began driving people to the wall. I began breaking hearts.
Are you still there? I hope I am not scaring you with my stories. If I disturbed your poem writing, I'm deeply sorry. I just want to feed you tales. Tales you will search in your mind as precedents, before you make a decision sooner or later. Before you catch fire and burn. Before you catch cold and die. You know they always say, look before you leap. Well I say, listen to all these tales I keep. They waited years to be told.
I was 27 when I realized it's time. It's time to lower my guards down. It's time to trust love again. But that one person worthy of everything that I am never came until I was 28. And you know, when I caught a glimpse of him for the first time, I fell dazed. The familiarity was striking. The smile, the voice, the scent, oh it's him. He's the one I've been waiting. I looked at him and the world around me stopped. Everything else stopped. All of a sudden, it's just him and me. Even the cacophony fell silent to hear my heart drum erratically. It was surreal.
We've been going out for months now and it always feels like the first time. It's crazy but I am head over heels in love with him. And you know what's even crazier, I actually got drank one Saturday to tell him what I feel. Oh, don't laugh at me. It's a clumsy move I know. But I was too nervous like a teenager. Too nervous I can't even act cool when he's around.
Anyway, I hope you're happy my darling Ana. But if you're somewhere trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea, don't fret. Whatever it is that you're facing in your time, trust me there'll be better days. Tears are temporary. You will feel whole and loved again. If you're currently tearing yourself apart, don't revel too much in the pangs of brokenness. But if you have to, remember it isn't the end. Love will find you, slowly, eventually...
Sorry I took a little of your time to tell you things you will later discover. You can go back to your poem writing now. Write about him, your love at the moment. Pour all your emotions, ink your diary with words that describe him. You will read them one day as I do now. And you will smile. But I would like you to know, your masterpieces will come years later. When you're 29 and start to write passionately about the man I told you about tonight.
Wait for him. He will come.
All my love,
Your older self
Plot twist: I MARRIED HIM. 💗
-katie, 15:14
I was never a halcyon sea
but you calmed my waves
with songs
I've never heard before.
-katie,13:10
the past is an old apartment
i try to visit
everytime i feel the need
to be reminded
of the times
love and happiness
were my roommates
-katie, 31st of July 2021
One day you will realize, it's not fate or luck that got you here but the choices you've made, the habits you've formed, the thoughts you've run in your head.
-sometimes it's easier to blame the gods or destiny
katie
One day you will realize, it's not fate or luck that got you here but the choices you've made, the habits you've formed, the thoughts you've run in your head.
-sometimes it's easier to blame the gods or destiny
katie
If we will ever come to a point where goodbye is inevitable, I will not ask you to teach me how to forget. Instead, I will ask you to show me how to remember. We made so many beautiful memories together, it's a shame to erase them all just because we have to part, and can no longer go back to the beginning to fall in love again. No, no matter how much it will hurt, I won't ask you to teach me how to forget. I will walk all the paths we've trodden and remember how your laughter sounded, how your fingers curled around mine, how your hair smelled under the sun, how your lips tasted. I will remember every bit of you, so when I am finally ready to let go, I can let all of you go the way I've let all the kites fly away when I was young and life was innocent and gentle and kind.
-let go,
katie, 17:30
dear universe,
how many fire
will you ignite
before you realize
i am a phoenix?
-did you honestly think i'll just burn?
katie
my september, a dream,
a swift kiss, a muffled scream
a coin rolling in a dark alley,
waiting,
waiting
to be picked
by someone
drowned in melancholy,
my september, like the thread
of hope
i was clinging to somehow
escaped with the
thoughts squeezing
my weary mind,
and i'm here still
trying-
trying my best
to figure
it out
-september, katie
Your eyes are dark coal mines and I think if you let me search in them long enough I just might find a diamond. I guess I’m trying to say that the hot heat of our bodies could force the charcoal of burnt embers into the structured unbreakable. In eighth grade I learned that miners used to dangle canary’s into the depths ahead of them, if the birds came back alive they knew there was oxygen enough for them to descend. Maybe that’s why I gave you my body first, wanted to see if you could sustain my breath and I found out you left me gasping. Dark tunnels echoing around me as the oxygen vanished into desolate space.
I don’t know when I realized it, but it could have been last night. I was sitting in a pile of my freshly washed sheets, my left hand precariously balancing half a corn tortilla smothered in peanut butter.
Licking the drip off the lowest corner and barely saving my clean bedding I refocused on the list of side effects of brain tumors pulled up on the phone in my right hand. Something about the night felt too calm like when the sun comes out after a storm but you still don’t have power.
I remember thinking forward to the next morning, picturing the way nausea would swell in me as if the butterflies in my stomach were celebrating the last warm day before giving in to the freeze. As I fell asleep the only thing I could think of was brittle fragments of monarch orange shattered across wet concrete.
I think the two of us know what color she would be. That spicy sweetness sits tucked behind your teeth like bubblegum, the very sight of her reminds me of summer. A perfect silhouette who glows amoxicillin in the sunset, I watch you get sick to swallow her. I wonder if this is why when she looks at me I go cold. Her heat burns hot, illuminates in flamingo and fuchsia, I bet she blooms like a French rose. Spread her across my skin like calamine, but I think her brightness might burn us both.
With Draco’s hands on him, Harry finally understands what it must be like to be a Phoenix; it feels like he’s going up in flames, like he’s losing himself to smoke.
Mausoleum
The only thing as consistent in this world as the sin of human beings is the inevitability of my death and the dust of my forgotten bones. Through the many ages my bones have turned to dust behind the protection of stone, been worn by the weight of the dirt that pressed down on them and been burned to ash on many a pyre. My skull sits, bejeweled and gilded beneath the altar of a Cathedral in Europe. Somewhere, I know, lost to me in the shuffle, is an arrow carved from one of my tibias sitting in a velvet case in a museum. I still remember the day I dug it up, with a shovel and my bare skin, holding the sharp edges in my palm and running my thumb over the divots worn by time. It had been many years since I held a relic of my life and as the bone warmed in my palm, I felt those long forgotten sensations dust themselves off in my chest; the feeling of the kohl rimming my eyes, silk sliding over the skin of my thighs, the desert sun kissing my collarbones.
The only thing as present as my death is his own. It has happened more times than I can recall in this age though, some of my sharpest memories are often those littered with my own agony; as I see him finally, my lost companion, marching along the front lines of my army before the slaughter. I can so crisply recall the soft strands of his hair soaked in blood, body littered with wounds on the steps of a great building, surrounded by traitors. Some deaths are even more agonizing as I miss them entirely. Hearing about it from an advisor, reading about it in a book, the newspaper. A new memory, not greyed by the act of distant remembrance, often plays before my eyes as I drift off to sleep; standing before an exhibit as people mill around me, mothers corralling their children, teenagers huddled together as they shuffle past, and me, looking up at him for the first time with my new eyes.
He was smiling in the picture, arms thrown around two other men as they stood before a car, a 1932 Ford Model 18 V8 read the small plaque below the picture. His dark hair was slicked back beneath a top hat, and his coat was fitted to his lean frame. I was so transfixed; I did not realize I had stepped forward and placed my hand on the glass of the photo until a guard sternly asked me to take a step back. The moment was distinct, when the world came rushing back to me and a sharp pang took over my chest when I realized it, when I knew it in my soul. I had missed him entirely. It happened from time to time, when the only way we knew of one another was through a history book or a passing mention from a stranger. I was only eleven when I listened through the crack in the door of my father’s court as his advisor told him the tale of the Great King who had died in Babylon, as was prophesied. Not even the muddled understanding of my youth could keep me from the crushing loneliness of knowing, in my soul, that I would be utterly alone through my life.
The memories come slowly at first, a morbid understanding of a wisdom beyond my years is often recognized by those around me, though considered the quirk of my personality. At some point, an understanding settled in me to hold those memories close to my heart as the smell of smoke still burned the inside of my nose from time to time, the echo of my charred flesh shaking me from my slumber. I think, sometimes, that I can hear the timber of his screams paired with taste of ash in my mouth. I singed myself once with a candle; I watched the blood drain from his face as he cradled my burned skin and he wept. It was clear that our shared memory was much sharper, in his mind, than my vague impressions. There are many stories we cannot bear to tell the other that haunt the space behind our eyes. At some point he stopped looking at fire the same way and still, he has yet to understand why when he turns his head to the side, just so, tears slide down my cheeks as I see him sprawled on the dirt, neck broken as my husband towers over him in a foreign land.
Sometimes, warming ourselves in the light of a fire, the night settled around us where no prying ears could hear we would fill in the gaps of each other’s forgotten experience. The name of our first born child, the war we fled from, the court he presided over, the last name he wore. Our own names were long forgotten along with the life they lived, a sad but relieving tragedy in the face of our endless existence.
His favorite story was that of his time as one king or another, the kingdom forgotten in the cracks of his memory, but he could still remember the sweet smell of my hair as I poured wine into his goblet. He had never noticed a servant before yet found himself slowly lifting my trembling chin. His mouth had stretched into a grin when our eyes met and he often teased that his first thought was that of triumph to finally be the towering authority to my submission after so many moments standing before my many thrones age after age.
My favorite tale is always that of the wide set of his eyes as he was introduced to the visiting sister of a fellow priest as we stood on the steps of a great cathedral. His surprise was so great, he tripped on his way down the steps and landed in a heap before the hem of my skirts. I would always tease him for how he could barely make eye contact with me once he righted himself and he would defend himself with a scoff and a waving of his hands. How was an old soul in the body of a young man supposed to react when he realized how sorely he regretted taking his holy orders not even months prior as he was now faced with his lost love.
Our journeys to finding one another were mostly a waiting for fate, which we both had decided must exist, and would lead us together eventually. Though, the fear was always there of when, and how, and if that meeting would happen, our hope scarred by many missed opportunities. In the meantime, how were we supposed to live our lives? Sometimes the waiting would be too much, and our indifference would grow as our years passed in one life or another. One cannot cease living to wait for the companionship of another and the years after that realization were often better for it, and the meeting if it did come, was a gift more sweet.
One of my favorite pass times is reading about him, those details I don’t know or the people I missed entirely. Only years prior, I even wrote a thesis in my senior year of university on the phenomena of prohibition crime, inspired by that picture; the smirk on his lips, the gun in his pocket, looking the ever suave American gangster. I hope to remember my work by the next time I see him so I can ask him my curious questions. He will most likely tease me for being so obsessive as to write a thesis on him. Though, he’ll quickly blush when I mention the multiple volumes he wrote on a past queendom, by hand, when Gutenberg was but a young man.
In this life, however, my love for his past life is, I am beginning to see, a veiled acceptance. A hope that, if I dig enough, he will appear. If I just walk through the museum hall one more time he will be standing before that picture, waiting. I have yet to learn, once again, that waiting will only lead me to an agony too deep to encounter.
I hope, in the meantime, to leave something behind for him as I am now, so that when fate eventually brings him to stand in a museum hall, or see the names on a wall of alumni, or maybe read my name under the authorship of a paper handed to him by his professor, there will be something there to comfort him, to give him, until we see one another again.
(s.m.)
on the worst of my nights when I'm crying in my room alone
I like to imagine you there comforting me ever so softly shushing me saying you hate my tears running your hand through my hair trying to soothe me
I like to imagine you holding me close to your heart rocking back and forth hoping i would focus on that just for a moment and forget the rest
I like to imagine your hands holding tightly onto mine as you listen intently to me ramble on trying to give good advice by the end of it or even just make me laugh
on the worst of my nights when I'm crying in my room alone
I like to imagine you....
I randomly decided to make a more condensed version of my WIP/story list.
Though, here's another list of stories I'm not really working on atm 🍊 Idea list 🍊 and here's 🍊 my writeblr intro 🍊
This one is just a more condensed list in case the others are a little too much to read through.
Finished with more than 30k
Devine Intervention: The Demonic Repentance (63k).
All the Screams (61k).
Same Breeds (40k).
normalities (36k).
Finished with less than 30k
Before the Reignfall (27k).
Secrets of a Teenage Man (22k)
A Fourth Dimension Reality: The Strange Beginnings (22k).
A Fourth Dimension Reality: The Crimson Soul (19k).
A Fourth Dimension Reality: The Interpose of Idiocy (30k Ik this is thirty, but this is a series.)
A Fourth Dimension Reality: Untitled 4th book (23k).
Unfinished with more than 30k
The State of Quandary (62k).
The Makings of a Love Story (46k).
Unfinished with less than 30k
Kingdom of Bumalia (29k).
Orange Perfect (21k).
Before the Love Story (15k).
One of Malovence (13k).
The Promiscuous Journey of a Virgin (10k).
Manifested Malovence (6k).
Devine Intervention: Sirin's call (6k).
With much forgiveness, anyone can go from foe to friend.
Frustrated tears cooled the warm face of the young girl seated by herself outside in the warm summer afternoon. No matter what, this day felt especially bad and her thoughts wouldn’t stop for anything no matter what she did to halt them.
However, the world would have it where she could have no privacy and was soon approached by someone else.
“Cassie?”
She rubbed her face quickly and turned to look at the voice that called her. “Jessica? Why are you here?”
Her eyes looked off. “You’re annoying ass brother wouldn’t leave me alone. He didn’t know where you were so I… figured you’d be here.”
Cassie’s head shook. “How did you know I would be here?”
“Because, dummy, this is where you and… him would hang out isn’t it?”
Thankful she hadn’t mentioned the name, Cassie still felt a twinge in her chest and turned her head away. “I guess so…”
The pair remained in a stiff silence and Jessica made no effort to say anything. Cassie didn’t move and remained sitting on the ground with her knees pulled up to her face. Eventually, Jessica sat down beside her and let out a sigh.
“Can I ask, why you’re out here?”
Cassie just shrugged. “I wanted to be alone.”
“Because?”
“Just because.”
Jessica rolled her eyes knowing they weren’t going to get anywhere. She didn’t know if things were right for her to say considering their relationship up to this point, but she felt a bit like she could say one thing.
Now, it was a matter of if she wanted to say it or not.
Jessica sat on that thought for a while and eventually Cassie shifted to stand up.
“I’m sorry Ren bothered you. I think I’m just gonna head home now.”
Jessica said nothing as Cassie started to walked off. She didn’t get very far before Jessica got to her feet as well and caught Cassie by her arm.
“Hey just… you don’t have to leave.”
Cassie didn’t look back.
“Just, let me say something okay?” Jessica’s grip only tightened and soon she let out a slight groan before speaking. “Were you crying over Aki?” Feeling her arm tense, Jessica assumed she was right.
“I wasn’t crying,” Cassie said with her head turned away.
“Come on already, I know you were crying and I know it had to be because of him.”
Cassie continued to shake her head and she started to yank her arm trying to break away from Jessica.
“Look, I miss him too, and it wasn’t like I had any reason to; but you can’t sit here and cry about him. It’s over and time to move on.”
More violently this time, Cassie pulled her arm and used her free hand to pull as well. “Let go of me!”
“No, just… if you don’t have anyone to talk to, then you can talk to me.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Why can’t you? What’s the issue with just telling me something I already know?”
Cassie, with a frustrated tone, said, “because you’ve always acted like you know everything! Even when you would bully me because of some boy.” Jessica’s grip loosened and Cassie was able to pull her arm back to her side.
Trying to ignore the first part, Jessica moved on. “So, he was just some boy to you?”
Cassie sighed. “No, he wasn’t just some boy and you fucking know that.” Cassie ran a hand through her hair. “I just used to think it was so ridiculous that you were actually bullying me because of a crush you had on a guy who was dating someone else.”
Jessica wrapped her arms around her waist. “Yeah, I know it was stupid.” She paused. “But, you can’t blame me. I had no other choice, especially when… I had no chance.”
“So you were aware Aki would never like you, yet you still bullied me to no end?” Cassie scoffed. “I’m not sure how I should feel about that. This whole conversation is making me feel that way."
Jessica kept her eyes away from Cassie’s figure and as the silence fell over them, she could only hear her thoughts trying to answer that exact question. Eventually, Jessica managed to find some words and looked back at Cassie who was scowling at this point.
“I know I should say something like sorry to you, but that would be a lie. I don’t feel sorry for what happened, I feel like I should make it up to you instead.”
“Huh?”
“Like, I know what I did to you. Saying sorry isn’t going to make up for the years I made fun of you, the rumors I spread about you, or even the spiteful things I did to break up you and Aki. So, I feel like maybe I should make it up instead of saying sorry.”
Cassie stared at the girl in front of her. Without very many words, Cassie felt a little off about what she was saying. Not because she didn’t want to hear it, but because it didn’t make sense where this was coming from.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Cassie said, “why would you even want to do that? Why not just leave me be?”
Jessica let out a small breath. “Because, I think you and me are the only two people in the world who knows how the other feels.”
“I’m… not getting it.”
“Come on, you and I are both too smart to play dumb here. You were crying, no matter if you say otherwise or not, and I know exactly how you feel because I also liked Aki.”
Cassie bit her lip listening to Jessica’s words. “Even if that was true, what happened between me and Aki isn’t something I’ll remember forever. I’ll move on because no one cares about just a stupid relationship anyways.”
“I know you don’t feel that way. I don’t know what kind of shit you went through to think that no one would care, but only an asshole would say that to your face.” Jessica paused. “Someone who really cared about you would feel every little sliver of pain you feel no matter how dumb you think it is.”
That seemed to strike a cord in Cassie and her breath caught in her throat. “Wha-what are you saying that for?”
“Because Aki is an extremely nice person who—believe it or not—comforted me as well. I know he said those things to you because he used to say them to me. The only difference being that he was just sympathetic to me.” Jessica’s head dropped. “I can admit now that, yes, I was jealous of what you and him had. So, to see that you lost what I was trying so desperately to get… I know how you’re feeling, Cassie.”
“Like I haven’t heard that a million times. Listen, I don’t need any comforting. Like I said, I’ll move on eventually.”
“And I’m sure you will, but I need you to understand that you don’t have to be by yourself right now. I told you—I know exactly what you’re feeling.” Jessica’s head came up and there, Cassie saw something she never thought she would.
Streaming down her face, were tears that appeared just as cooling as Cassie’s did. Jessica started to choke over her words, but she spoke through it. Through her sobs and coughs, she managed to keep talking.
“I know it hurts… I know you feel like Aki was the only good thing to ever happen to you… I know you want to hug him again, you just want him to tell you everything will be alright.” Her hands went to her face. “Because he always made it seem like things really would be okay.”
Hearing that and seeing Jessica’s strong outburst, Cassie felt the tears she tried to hide come back. Her head dropped into her hands and once again, she started to cry. Jessica moved closer to Cassie and grabbed her, pulling her into a tight embrace. The girls held each other as if letting go would kill them and, in this moment, it felt like it would.
It felt like their hearts were both hurting and this hug was the beginning to mending them. Their hearts that fought for so long to maintain an image that hurt them more than protected them was starting to melt away. This embrace felt like something they both had been missing in the months their hearts were given back to them.
Jessica managed to calm herself and leaned over to see Cassie’s face. She was still crying, but was obviously holding it back by her frame shaking in Jessica’s grasp. Thinking not to bring it up, Jessica spoke about something else instead.
“By the way, Ren didn’t tell me you were here.”
“H-he didn’t?”
“No. I got worried about you when you left school today. I figured something might have been bothering you since you never really opened up about it.” Jessica paused and allowed the quiet to wash over them. “So, are you really okay?”
For a while, Cassie didn’t say anything or even move. Eventually, she said, “no…” Her voice was broken.
“Is there anything that’d help?”
Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never had to deal with something like this before.” Her voice was becoming shallow.
“Okay, that’s fine.” Jessica paused. “I wouldn’t know what to do either, but how about we take it slow? You can talk to me if you want and if not, we’ll spend the summer doing whatever you want.”
Cassie said nothing to this, but it was obvious she was grateful as her shaking calmed significantly. She then gave a slow nod.
“Okay…”
Jessica felt relieved at those words. “Alright, but I really think you should at least let your brother know about this. He can be with you much more than I can.”
Cassie barely got out any of her words, but she finally mustered out a whisper of, “thank you…”
Jessica smiled. “You’re welcome.”