I am learning to be ok with not having what I want. It is a funny journey. As a queer girl of colour, one who grew up in a family laden with trauma and control, one who has ran from abuse in different people and places, I thought I should be used to lacking love and community, with not having what I want. But instead of being acclimatized to a place of lacking of what I wanted, I realized I had…
a natural disaster that
spun out
at the end of your fingertips
and i saw in my head
how many times i’ve been
a calm ocean, a morning
where there is nothing moving
but a few birds, a warm sunday
with no responsibilities
i am a blizzard. i arrive and
leave nothing but cold behind me.
but i am also the spring thaw,
the grass below.
“girls like that,” you write about me
in your books and poems, “are
hurricane systems, they are
sudden destruction,
they come and they go.”
but if you stuck around
and got to know girls like me
you’d figure out
we are more than our wild hearts and
quick tongues and fire breathing,
we are leftover cake, we are the rainbow on your
birthday, we are good socks and bad movies,
we are loving, loving, loving;
a tidal wave of passion that comes without warning
but floods only with laughter, with light, with
devotion
girls like me will never be more than a quick storm
to boys like you. girls like me are good for a few months
before you start seeing our paint chip off and we stop being
so mysterious and hard to keep track of
girls like me are only fun until you see how we’re fueled
by a swirling darkness, girls like me are only worth it
until it’s four in the morning and we’re awake and sobbing,
girls like me are tornadoes,
on the inside, we are witches. we are strong.
we are a fury, but we are
gold.
(via inkskinned)
licks the blood from my chest,
then listens to the thumping
beneath it.
Yes, she knows what these
hands have done.
She knows I’ve poked holes in the
water of every bed I’ve ever slept in,
knows what my heart looks
like when it’s tired;
the pastel houses lining the streets.
The lipstick shades of the
bored housewives with their
ambrosia salads, stuffing the
mouth of pain until it can’t say their names anymore.
She loves me this many bodies-worth.
She loves me this many mountains.
She stretches across the room,
forgives me without blinking.
You fucked me up so bad // I wouldn’t have it any other way
cw abusive relationships, cigarettes Once he told me my eyes were so small, like slits, I must always be glaring. I laughed. He wanted to drown himself in my jealousy, wanted to taste it in the back of his throat. But I bit my lip and did not give it. Swallowed it like everything else he shoved down my throat, with pride and anger, letting it bury itself in my chest. He tried harder every day to…
something-in-the-way-she-knows:
Jupiter’s moon, Callisto.
is no one going to explain what all the lights are
they’re impact craters! callisto is one of the most heavily cratered object in the solar system, and as far as my very basic research has just gone, the light parts are essentially iced over impact craters
so, essentially, we’re looking at something with a very frosty/icy surface. they’re bright because they reflect the sun!
(via arreptitious0)
(via summerstormchangeling)
To the markings in my heart that 2015 made
This year I have been learning all the ways I deserve to be alive and finding the true horrors and beauty of my heart and mind. This year I have been delving into depths I have never been before, tripping over the hands of old friends and of new ones, and landing in places I have always been nesting in. This year I have been failing and falling, loving and longing, and have felt an ache so…
to the diaspora it would break
every word count undo
every border erase
every dictionary definition unravel
every noun/verb/adjective
and then it would unwrite
itself
no colonial tongue was made to
describe or translate or sustain
the pain trauma love
that is lived with every
fractured severed healing diasporic breath
another fucking poem about finding “home” in the “third space”
(via decolonizehistory)
(via decolonizehistory)
YOU DIDN’T WRITE ME LOVE POEMS, SO NOW I’M WRITING THEM FOR MYSELF. CAPITAL LETTERS ON MY HEADER SO PEOPLE KNOW I’M MAKING CHANGES YOU NEVER WOULD HAVE APPROVED OF. NO MORE SMALL VOICES HERE, I’M LAUGHING LOUD NOW, I’M SINGING WHERE OTHERS CAN HEAR ME, I’M PRETENDING THAT I’M ON STAGE BECAUSE MAYBE SHAKESPEARE KNOWS A LITTLE SOMETHING.
YOU NEVER PUSHED MY HAIR BACK BEHIND MY EAR. YOU NEVER HELD ME GENTLY TO WAKE ME. YOU ONLY KISSED ME IF IT MEANT GETTING ME NAKED. YOU DIDN’T BUY ME CHOCOLATE. YOU NEVER DREW ME FLOWERS. WE WATCHED YOUR SHOWS AND LISTENED TO YOUR MUSIC AND ATE THE FOODS THAT YOU LOVED AND I TOLERATED. YOU NEVER HELD MY HAND LIKE YOU MEANT IT.
WELL NOW I’M PUTTING IN EXTRA CONDITIONER AND LATHERING UP. I’M NOT WEARING MY HAIR LIKE I USED TO. I’M SOMEBODY ELSE NOW, AND I LOOK IT. MORNINGS ARE BLISS BECAUSE I RISE AND I MEAN IT. I KISS THE MIRROR BECAUSE I’M PRETTY AND PERFECT AND I DON’T NEED TO WAIT AROUND FOR YOU TO REMEMBER TO TELL ME IT, I KNOW IT. I DRAW MY OWN FLOWERS ON EVERYTHING I OWN, I BATHE IN THEM. I MARATHON SEASONS OF TELEVISION WITHOUT WORRYING THAT YOU’LL MISS SOMETHING. I LISTEN TO MY MUSIC SO LOUD THAT THE SPEAKERS START JUMPING. I EAT FOOD THAT FEELS GOOD AND I FEEL GOOD TO BE EATING. AND MY HANDS? THESE HANDS THAT HAVE SCOURED FLOORS AND YOUR SKIN AND HAVE HELD YOU AND HELD US TOGETHER AND PUSHED MYSELF INTO THE IDEA OF WHAT YOU WANTED AND SCRATCHED AND CLAWED AND NEVER TOOK ENOUGH?
THESE HANDS ARE ATHENA. THESE HANDS ARE TEMPLE DOOR. THEY ARE WOLF ON THE PROWL. THESE HANDS DON’T NEED TO APOLOGIZE FOR WHERE THEY’VE BEEN, THEY KNOW AND THEY ARE HAPPY ABOUT IT. THESE HANDS COULD BUILD CITIES AND BURN DOWN ROME. THESE HANDS GROW GARDENS AND SEW WITH STEEL. THESE HANDS KNOW FIRE. THESE HANDS WRITE ME DESTINY, PAINT ME SKY, SWADDLE ME SLEEP. THESE HANDS ARE STRONG ENOUGH TO PULL ME TO SHORE.
I AM FREE. I AM FREE.
NO. I DON’T NEED YOU ANYMORE.