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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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![]() I. lampyridae The night is silent, you can hear the stars rise forget. forgone. forgotten. forty forbidden lies and, there is a darkness between two stars. and, there is a star between two darknesses. i could count better, before betrayal began
i could back then feebly field the fierce feelings now I’m worse now I’m better do things over, over, over until it’s all over just go row, row, row your boat, even as it sinks hearts are hallways looking your way minds are museums an open doorway Lampyridae I’m drawn to what I miss I know nothing I know nothing else but this II. i fall in love with haunted neighbourhoods I fall in love with haunted neighbourhoods with empty houses devoid of living but evanescent photographs stand witness to a time when the bed wasn’t so empty with roads that have no cars fluttering by no pedestrians no children toddling by with hard candy with the silence of the streets the quiet of the quiescent stores where I can whisper my words to the willows and the water whispers it back to me I fall in love with haunted neighbourhoods with the ghosts that inhabit them because they know as I know they are no more real than my love III. What (opening up feels like) / (I didn’t tell you when you asked me what I was thinking about) (i) Phlegmatic words cling to the walls of my pharynx like slowly dripping sap, the viscosity of my vulnerability providing enough drag for them to cling to my chest like jello that you left in a blender and can’t clean out words that are stringy like half dried glue and then the tangled threads sit here, right here, where my mouth falls into my throat and my throat emerges into my mouth a yarn ball, it lodges itself there and I cannot cough it out so I swallow it back it leaves a slimy trace on my tongue. (ii) Thoughts that lead to a graveyard of more thoughts where all these dead thoughts sit on their own graves and think of more thoughts that die before they are born, the intrapartum deaths give rise to thought ghosts that haunt the graveyard and they die and they die and they die and they die and they die until it is only tombstones as far as you can see, whispering ghosts in clandestine catacombs, a tear gas grenade of thinking and thinking and thinking. (iii) The emotion is in glass bottles that line the mahogany shelves of my stomach, the glinting green glass whispers that it doesn’t want to hurt you and it’s for the best but go ahead gulp it down go ahead feel the fiery lava burn your buccal cavity go ahead feel the heat come to life under your eyes go ahead the double vision, the blurry vision, the wasted vision, go ahead till your body has to take the keys away from your brain go ahead it hurts to sit with all this emotion swimming in your intestines go ahead, no one will judge you if you cry now (iv) I brew tea with the bags under my eyes and use it to fuel forward, my concrete tongue and mortar mouth hide a mercury soul, it is easy to be dandelion seeds, light but it pains to carry this truck of thoughts suddenly slimy baseballs with embedded glass shards are spilling out of my mouth, they cut my lip and slip out before I can catch them I don’t want you to help me pick them up. I don’t want you to leave so I do it instead. Comments are closed.
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Unless otherwise noted, all pictures used are open-source images in the public domain. Archives
November 2023
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