#i create as i speak

You were small, could fit in my child-like hands, and I remembered thinking of all the ways I could show you I loved you.

You were sick and covered in sores and fleas. They did not care for you the way they had promised. You shook uncontrollably when I had to give you several baths and medicine. I didn’t even have time to feel sorry for you, I just wanted you to be better.

You cried for 6 days straight. Every night when I turned off the light and put you in your bed, you’d whine so much that my father would come downstairs just to yell at both of us, which never stopped anyone from crying. It wasn’t until I gave in and put you in my bed that I understood that you just wanted to sleep on my chest.

You were unhappy when I had to move away from home. Mom said that you didn’t eat most of the time and you slept in my room where my bed used to be. I tried to see you as much as I could, but I regretted leaving you every single day. When I looked for another apartment, I made it clear that you would be with me.

Now we sit outside together and you are in my lap, staring at everyone walking past us. I think of all the nights that I hoped you were happy. I think of my 3 am crying fits that you always comforted me through.

We are finally together and at peace. I hold you in my aging hands. I think of all the ways I can love you.

-bijou // hnl 2019

spring is here again, and i am not ready this time.

i have dug too many holes in this thawing ground, buried too much emotion beneath the slowly greening grass for any of this to feel like renewal.

this year, spring feels like a funeral. 

— the ground grows warm while bones grow cold // p.s.

mother, please forgive me;
i did not intend to fall in love.
but how could i not fall in love
with the freedom he offered in open palms,
as if the whole world had always been at my feet
and i had never thought to look down?

forgive me, mother, please.
but this was never a love affair with a man;
this is a love affair with myself.
and i ask your forgiveness because this is not an apology.
i refuse to be sorry for stepping outside of this birdcage life,
and if my wings led to him,
i am not sorry for that either.

mother, forgive me for breaking your heart.
i was only discovering my own.

— to demeter, from persephone // p.s.

he gift-wraps self-sacrifice and calls it love; he has never known how to love any other way. he has never given his heart in scraps - it has always been laid bare, whole and beating, on the altar.

and how does one love without an altar? how does one love without bleeding?

call him a martyr or call him a hero, but this kind of love always ends the same. he plants a kiss on the cheek of his love, and then plants his blood in the ground at their feet.

— martyr or hero, he has always been a tragedy // p.s.