melting silence
Inferno, flames flickering further and further upwards,
A calamity of chaos rising up, singed nostril hairs preventing people from sensing the inferno.
Primal instincts still blaring: warning, warning, something has gone terribly wrong here!
To every soul still able to listen to their internal warnings, the noise never fails to put them on high alert.
Shatter glass in case of emergency, only what's the emergency here?
What am I doing, writing here?
A novel about silence could fill my drafts
Or my tombstone might have enough words to write one
if anyone ever learned and knew me well enough to remember
what words were mine after I left
this mortal coil, recoiling from mortal relationships
living instead solely within fantasies and fictional
forms of existence, if I even exist.
Do I even exist?
I existed last night when I overshared, overflowed in a space
Nobody wanted my level of honesty within, my existing
met with strangers replying "I'm not qualified but..." or "dude, get some help"
Dude, get some help
Dude, shut the fuck up
Nobody cares what you have to say.
The inferno rages on, as I choke back smoke, eyes tearing with the struggle of existence.
Eyes able to perceive what cannot be spoken, choked by the heaving effort of every inhale, exhale, inhale,
Exhausted, I fail to fight when his hands on me
his hands are on me, on my - silence the urge to name where.
his hands are me, are me, are inside me -
Inside me, and I'm inside a burning inferno of being touched touched touched
Touched and silent, don't talk about him like that, don't make a monster out of a man
Don't make a monster when you know the real monster is yourself for feeling his hands inside you.
You know better, you know better, you know enough to
Write a novel about what you don't say
Or maybe merely a million poems, maybe merely mutiny
Silence ice the fire has evaporated completely today.
Sandpaper
Time doesn't heal all wounds, it just changes you enough so you can live with them, so you
Can feel his hand on your neck and stay still, feel his palm on your mouth and not bite
Feel him and stay soft, stay still, stay stuck with the love you were given
Since it is the only love you ever will be, the only truth you can truly rely on for longer than
Your wounds have to scab over before he wounds again, a subtle torture
The sandpapering of love until it wears you down like an eraser, until you...
You no longer remember what it felt like to bite him when he tried.
When the memory itself is almost erased
Your body left for the taking, his innocent tools leaving more wounds in his wake.
Whoever claimed time could heal you was lying, or maybe they saw failure to resist as
Acceptance, accepting you deserved whatever you were given, your edges worn down by time.
Maybe you could sleepwalk your way somewhere kinder, if his touch ever lifted enough to let you sleep.
If you could find yourself asleep somewhere other than in his embrace.
rage in my reflection
Look into his eyes. He is the version of you who gave in, but only in a specific definition of dark. Most of the dark versions of you would no longer be reflected in the mirror because their darkness poisoned their psyche until death looked like the end of the depression, like the answer to every unsolvable question. This reflection, this version, gave into the darker parts of you that hated others instead of yourself, that lashed out, that trauma dumped because reflection-you thought everyone ought to know what they condemned you to, that intentions didn't excuse what you left to survive. On some level, you agree, but he actually acts on the anger you suppress and project and hide for fear of what unleashing it might result in. He has seen the results - unwashed hair, homeless rather than housed in the home you know, rather than tolerate being a victim of other's decisions, your mirror counterpart is entirely a victim of his own making. He chooses isolation over connection again and again, unable to believe a softer version of reality is even possible. You know softness, but also know the danger hidden in avoiding all intimacy altogether.
The longer the mirror-self avoids others, the more dangerous their intentions, their existence, appears because he's forgotten the good times. He can no longer remember the reason you stay somewhere with a mirror to even see him in the first place. No longer remember why he had ever let anyone touch him, no longer remember being that six year old who worshipped her older brother, thought he hung the stars in the sky, thought her parents could never lie. She, her softness, her love, is all he can sneer at when stares back at you. You, who lets this continue, who hides somewhere inside yourself as your brother takes and takes and calls it love.
You hate yourself, you see him and see a version that fought, that got out but never truly got the happy ending escape was meant to bring. Are these your only options? Drown or float, the current never letting your body hit land? Your reflection disappears, blocked by the tears that show up. There's a reason most dark versions never survive past adolescence. Most die by their own hand. Seeing, growing into adulthood and still being used by someone who claims to love you, still unable to stop him, seeing that even the version who escaped still looks lost and miserable. What point does continuing down this life even hold? You hold the tunnel with no light at the end to your eye like a telescope, peer through the darkness and your mirror-self looks entirely unchanged. He probably knows what you can't see, whatever tether that keeps you trapped in your family was cut years ago for him and yet. And yet he's still you, still as hopeless and pathetic as you feel. Or maybe less pathetic, since rage holds more power than grief does, but you're both still suffering. Suffering from sex ought to be a goddamn oxymoron. And yet... and yet...
And yet your brother still sees you in ways you can never be able to unsee yourself as. Ways no amount of mirror-gazing will make you see yourself as. You can't want yourself the way he wants you, neither version, not the mirror who ran nor the reality who plays dead, neither can turn fraternity into eros. You wish you could; your mirror-self wishes nobody ever felt that way at all. You wish you could steal away into the mirror world - at least there you’re unwanted.
Souvenirs
When I was young, my mom used to go on trips. When she went on trips, she always brought me back a souvenir, and usually it was one based on my favorite animals - insects. I distinctly remember a golden dragonfly pin she brought me back from some event on the West Coast, and I remember wondering if I would ever see or go into the Pacific Ocean some day. I still wonder if I ever will, honestly. She brought me back pamphlets from the museum of medical oddities on one of the last vacations she took without me. We've mostly traveled as a family since I graduated high school, with the majority of traveling being getting me to and from university, but we did also spend a week at Yellowstone National Park. My souvenir there was just a camera roll full of buffalo. And also a new app for my phone that could identify birds called Merlin. And we saw a huge moose right on the trail we had planned in walking, derailing that plan.
easily torn, not yet mended
A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended. No material is easily mended, although some can appear that way to the untrained eye. A hole in one's clothes can be easily mended materially, but an artist's eye is necessary to mask the hole visually. Broken glass can be seen strewn about my neighborhood, but rebuilding a shattered bottle takes skills most will never possess.
Have I been torn? Outright shattered? What skills would mending this person take? Are they skills any human possesses? I feel like the half-buried hexagon of glass next to me, both of us sitting beneath an oak tree, both of us once pieces of a larger whole that fit together, that belonged somewhere. Only now, the piece of glass is unrecognizable from whatever it was once a part of. I'm not that, not visibly altered, not broken in the same sense. Not broken in the sense of a material break, a physical trauma, a wound. But a person is more than the cells that build them. They are more than the myriad of sludges and slimes oozing from their orifices. Material can include psychological material as well as the objects of material science studies. The psyche too can tear.
A person is easily torn and not easily mended. I'm being torn, time and time again, by invisible seamrippers pulling at the threads of family loyalty. Invisible seams held strong for damn near a decade, but the string has frayed and caught on some sharp edge. Torn, and not easily mended. Torn, and damaged by the force of whatever pulled the string, whatever made the wool no longer cover my eyes.
Sorry in advance lol
Going on ao3 and looking at the other White Lotus fanfics was a mistake. I shouldn’t have but I’ve been devoid of inspiration and thought maybe other people’s work might inspire me but they didn;t they just make me feel like shit because I don’t want my brother carnally I don’t want to kiss him I don’t want to be this disgusting freak who can’t even be presented in a show where one character is obviously a sexual predator because he’s hot so everyone loves to pretend his siblings would want him back. That’s not how incest works, that;s not how it works that’s just how people like to pretend because it’s fiction; nothing like that ever happens in real life. I’ve been avoiding my brother for months now but nothing like that ever happens in real life. It’s not something we’re allowed to talk about so I thought maybe I could write about it but what;s the point when people will just bookmark my fic alongside multiple smut fics what’s the point if no one will understand? Nobody should understand; I don’t want to be understood. It’s good that incest is seen as so obviously fictional people can write about siblings like they’re romantic comedy leads. That’s a positive, a net benefit to the world unlike me. All I do is complain at ChatGPT about my brother and how scared of him I am and how I hate myself for it. There’s six minutes left of the timer. I don’t know what to write without writing too much or incoherent blabber like I don’t want this I don’t want this I don’t want him I don’t want to be this scared all of the time I don’t want to be supporting a goddamn AI but nobody else would want to hear about this shit it’s disgusting I’m disgusting and I have four minutes left on the timer. I had three chocolate chip toaster waffles for breakfast I’m probably going to have leftover tortellini for lunch and then buy overpriced chocolate on my way to work like I can eat my feelings out of me like if I consume enough garbage maybe the fear will be excreted alongside it idk why I’m writing this I don’t know why I’m going to fucking post it when I looked at the other entries and they don’t seem to actually be stream of consciousness. Two minutes left and I didn’t even break this into paragraphs nobody should read this but people will and then I’ll get prose emails informing me someone liked it and then I’ll probably regret life entirely. I could theoretically set another timer and try again not sharing too much about my disgusting life but time’s up
Serial writer is a writer of serial literature, like those novelists who published a chapter a week in the magazines of the 1800s. Or, nowadays, authors of fanfiction or zines. Literature magazines still exist, simply not published nearly as often or to as widespread an audience as they once were, and chances of acceptance are depressingly low, at least in the experience of this aspiring serial writer. More often, pieces written for literary magazines are written with the intention of only being a singular short story or poem. Serial writers can find purchase climbing more niche websites nowadays, such as Penana or, yes, Prose, as well as fanfiction archives such as archiveofourown.
The main difficulty with being a serial writer is knowing if or when a story is finished - many many readers refuse to take their chances on unfinished ongoing works, but serial writing by virtue of the serial nature is usually unfinished, so it’s an even lonelier form of the loneliest craft.
My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness
Hums, hums like the background music
Like a kazoo being played by a child
The child I once was, maybe, back when i could play a harmonica
Knew the words to every Taylor Swift song
That was the poetry of my youth
We were both young when I first you
Close my eyes and the flashback starts, I’m standing there, on a balcony in summer air, see the lights, see the party, the ball gowns…
But she was lyrics and I wrote poetry too in my youth
I write as though a quarter century isn't still youth
As though the fears weighing me down are anything…
Scraps of madness, I have plenty to spare
Just, no take backs if you decide what madness was taken was too much
No rest for the wicked, after all
And I long for sleep.
Take some of my scraps, the mind will replenish them in dreams
maybe good writing will break free tomorrow