Work Text:
you’re not empty. you know you’re not empty. you swear it.
you know there is something here. somewhere in the heart of you there is a heart.
you carry it with you, after all. for the tear streaks that paint your cheeks, you carry it.
love is always an option. or is it better to say that unlove is never a choice?
you have never had the choice to stop loving.
you carry it with you, after all. for all the lonely roses browning in the winter gloom, you carry it.
inside of you is a castle. your ribcage is the museum. beneath your lungs lies the mausoleum.
here you keep alive the memory of feeling. the storm of it. statues. sculptures. worshipful spires.
to all of the butterfly you saw perish. to the unkempt dog always tethered to a stake near the bazaar, that one who you should have reached out to touch. you are twenty years too late, but she lives on inside of you.
you will never stop collecting grief. inspiration is the hand that weaves the technicolour coat and spins the loom of misery. tragedy is just as fine a building block as trust or affection. it is cheap, too.
and if you could make yourself into a house to keep all the world’s sadness, you would. you would make yourself the landlord of suffering. that is what all of this space inside of you is for. you’re not empty: you’re just making room inside of yourself to share in your fellow man’s woes.
you know there is something here. somewhere in the heart of you there is a heart.
you carry it with you, after all. for the ideals that keep you chained to the earth, you carry it.
and no god will ever be exempt from sadness;
and no year will pass that does not see at least a little darkness;
and no blooming flower will be without its violent end;
and no one like you has ever been so ready.
the space inside of you is meant for keeping a hold on evil.
you’ve boundless depths and an overflowing love for everything, everyone, even when you know it will be no good for you.
a woman turns her back on home. a friend-who-is-not opens his door to you.
a woman makes a new life across the sea. a heartless bastard remains unchanged.
a woman smiles for the first time in years. an irritating man laughs at you.
a woman tosses a bouquet into your arms. a man tells you how empty you really are.
(you know there is something here. somewhere in the heart of you there is a–)
a woman writes you letters you fear opening. a man touches the nape of your neck.
a woman finds her home without you. a man makes you question the four walls you live in.
a woman lives. a man lives.
a woman lives. a man lives. and what do you do?
(and if you could have met pandora–)
a woman… stands somewhere on a far shore.
you pick up seashells. once upon a time, she tossed you a bouquet filled with her grief.
inside of you is a castle. a museum. a mausoleum.
and somewhere inside your emptiness is a heart;
and somewhere inside that heart is a heart.
a woman walks away. (for unlove)
a man holds you from behind. (is never a choice)
his lips brush your neck. kaveh.
somewhere inside of your heart is a heart.
you carry it with you, after all.
all of him: you carry it with you.