Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I say:

lay open your soul

cleaved in half like a shockingly ripe apple

So firmly sweet and bordering on

miracle

set it on the bed sheets, soaking through like the early morning

pale and peeling like wallpaper see—

slow, the suffusing of past effort and current degradation

Adore; verb, to love something intensely

bright night cooled down to something hot, like the rippling roof of a mouth, like a prayer separate from religion

i say:

see the blinding day smoothed over into the quieter night

and how we are all painted in blue

Chapter Text

Anger anger anger

The ocean understands

It screams back

Has there ever been an angrier thing

Than the waves against the cliff and the shore

Scream scream scream

Or is it my own voice echoing through

The riptide of my ribs

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I am a fire.

Against the earth.

A small flame smoldering.

In the underbrush.

And also I am the fog.

Wrapping around it because.

How else do I pay repentance.

To a god I do not believe in.

And so I am a flame.

Heating up the dew of morning.

And expanding the tree trunks.

While withering them down.

And also I am the fog that puts that fire out.

That smothers.

That curls between the trees looking like.

My curls i havent cut for.

So long.

Deer against the wood.

Do not burn your hooves.

On my breath.

Or wet your coat.

On my flame.

I think sometimes the sky.

Looks fluorescent because.

I am a kid again.

Reaching for the shopping cart.

With my soft fingers.

And all the shelves are like trees.

Towering over me and.

It is where I belong, I think.

I will rot before.

I ever learn my name.

Chapter Text

How to explain to your mother that you have depression in ways she will understand:

1. I have an illness in my head, except it isn't cancer don't worry

2. My brain is like a milk carton full of heated milk that has been sitting out for three years

3. My skull is like a bowl and inside of it are fruits all rotted, and my thoughts are like fruit flies

4. Its a mental disease so i wont die, except mother

5. Do not look up the statistics of people who have died from it because

6. I don't want you to worry

7. I am sick but i am still me there is still

8. A stain on my comfort hoodie and it doesn't really matter

9. That they wrote depression on my official health documents but you also

10. Cannot pretend

11. That they did not

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How to explain to your mother what depression feels like in ways she will understand:

1. A needle and yarn was placed in my hand, along with a half finished sweater, and i was told to finish it. The colours clash and the material makes me hands itch but. I crochet the sweater and somewhere along the way i. Have sewed it into my skin and i am losing blood but. I would have to kill myself to get it out. So i wear that sweater every day. 

2. There is glue inside my skull sticking my

3. Sensibility to my bone and it makes me slow, tired. like i have already lost what made me important. 

4. There are stones on my chest in the morning. Inside my mouth, too, over my tongue. 

5. They burn and i suffocate and. Im sorry it takes me so long to get out of bed. 

6. Sometimes it feels like nothing at all like. I understand that there is a cloud there, that there is a storm coming

7. The sky tinged for hail and wind except

8. The storm is already here and i am just seeing what

9. It has already done. 

10. I am a basket of clay that has been squished. Pounded. Made by other hangs that pulled and prodded and. I am not sure what my form is now just that. It makes my best friend sad. 

11. My depression is like an old house. Filled with honey and termites. Like a childhood home that is decaying and. 

12. The diagnosis you didn't understand because.

13. I had no reason to be depressed

14. Just like the carpenter bees had no reason

15. To burrow into my brain

Chapter Text

In the night and

I cannot see very well without your hands to guide my eyes

Across the earth that you created

Under our feet and i look

Out to the wave sna di see–

You, brilliant, beautiful

Seething and fleshless and bitter

My baby, my baby, like the shells of the ocean and

Your name sea salt on my teeth and like

A trsunami over my bones

I miss you with everything i have

Inside my body

Why have you left me on a boat

I do not know how to sail

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You say goodnight and i think

Yes, it is a good night

Because i can hear the stars

In the form of thunder

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Cat on the wall

Silhouette against storm with just its

Bright eyes staring out

Like two blinking stars

And its ribs on the outside of its body

Pale and glistening like

Fresh snow

Fangs over lips and

The imprint of past memories on its fur

Sleek and dark like the

Surface of grief

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I was told

You cannot eat the sun

And clearly this person did not know

That I knew that and didn't want to eat  the sun

I wanted to devour it and clearly this person did not know that

When I go to the lake, I see

Fish and fish and fish

And the ducks come to my feet and their feathers

Peel back to reveal their souls

Or that i always find

At least one penny on the ground a week and

Why else would I heal from my sunburns if it was not proving

I could hold that heat in my skin

And conquer it

(Humans are too filled with the idea

Of “to conquer” so

To change it

I will love it as nothing else has

Love it enough to devour it raw and let it experience

What it is to be alive

In a weak body)

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I mostly remember

Watermelon flesh between my teeth

As we dug for miracles in the red clay in the lawn

As memories piled up around our hands

Staining

I mostly remember the creaky old hunting post

We dared each other to climb up

But neither of us ever made it 

Up the last three rungs

I mostly remember

Carving the earth, building up rocks and making little houses from leaves and

Twigs and then

Running everything out with water

Pretending we could make a flood

I mostly remember you, barefoot, alive

With nothing to cover your heart

Holding my hand as we caught fireflies

Pretending all of them loved each other

I mostly remember

How little we were, and how much I still love you

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I want them to tell me

Whisper it like lipstick on a woman's neck or

Scream it like a fist getting pushed through glass

Where do i go to get protected when

I cannot walk outside without my feet

Growing sticky from the blood of my friends

How do i let myself be harboured

When i was taught that 

To sever the rope is a justice, when i was taught that whose womb that housed me

Would not care if i came out a little sick

But i was lied to

For my bird ribs and beetle insides

It must be hard to breathe sometimes from the tear gas

That clogs my lungs

I remember the feeling of desperation well

Wear it like a coat so they cannot say

That i was ever afraid

I am mostly just tired

From fighting for the right to live, from fighting for the right to be alive, from fighting for the rights i was denied

The high tide comes in dressed as midnight

Hips wide and lips darker than any of my sins

It comes to kiss my chest, my thighs

But it never does wash away 

The bruises there

A coconut sun, rapping like the inside of a tin can

Shaking back and forth over a hazy world

I understand its pain

Because people tell me they want to set me on fire

Start with my long, long, miles of hair

They want to set me on fire but they swear

If they dont do it

Then their god will

The lament of the queer child

Is that i was told to apologise

For being alive

The lament of the queer child is told through drug store eyeshadow and midmoring gagging

You will have to take away my skin, burn everything i have touched, kill everyone i have talked to

Before you have scrubbed me from the world

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One day i will find myself

Like wedging my fingers between the lips of an oyster

Its ridges biting into my skin

And i will pull it apart, wrench and twist as softly as is possible

In destruction

To find myself, curled up inside

Radiant and not quite untouched

But still divine

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Take your life seriously

Please

One day i will have to learn to live without you but today

Honey

I refuse

And for all i talk about not fixing your problems for you

I will shake self worth into your daily water until all you drink

Is absolutes of the self as in:

You will fight to live until you want to 

As in:

I will not bury you when the ground yet has no need

For your nutrients as in:

Take your own worth into your hands. 

And make yourself into something to be proud of. 

As in do not let me find you ever doubting

What wonder it took to even get you

This far.