#warm up

pieck/annie, things that weigh on your mind. T rating.

they’re laying side by side, faces turned towards each other, with half-worn bedsheets bunched up around their bodies, the night an overhanging veil of gloom. they’ve been here before, many times, always the ritual of annie slipping into pieck’s bed at night when she can’t sleep. she says as much every time she walks in when the moon has dwindled to a fleeing silver, gives the same explanation: it’s too hard to sleep in my room. the real reason, which pieck begins discerning soon after the first ten times it happens, is: i’m frightened, and i can’t stand to be alone with my thoughts. she sees it in the trembling palms of her ambivalent hands, the way her fingers dig into the side of her long sleeves, the penitential gloom annie always falls into. each time, pieck simply nods and lays there in the dark, peering at her through diaphanous eyelashes, and lets her warmth and breathing lull her into a better escape. she never probes, simply gives her a safe space away from prying questions.

tonight annie looks different. she usually feels a hundred times older, her world-weariness cavitating itself into her shoulders. but now she peers at pieck with so much blue in her eyes, such a far cry from her usual dreamless stare, that she looks for a moment like the world’s most young and vulnerable girl. as pieck brushes a stray strand of hair behind annie’s ears, she feels a question working its way into the shape of annie’s voice.

do you think people like us can ever be forgiven? annie asks, her voice coming out choked and ensnared in the stale midnight air.

pieck’s face is calm, but she feels a vise settling itself into her throat as she replies. she’s thought too often about the same thing. she lets a hard truth fall from her lips. it’s alright if we can’t, annie. nobody leaves this world with their hands clean.

and annie, understanding that this is the only lifeline available to monsters like her— a necessary one if she wants to avoid tormenting herself to madness— curls her fingers around pieck’s soft hands.

i mistook perfection for being good. i wanted to be good, you see. i wanted to be desirable, enviable, witty. i was boiling inside with something unnamable and wild - i didn’t want to have my life be a slew of mistakes and warnings. i wanted to be a good girl, and sit pretty, and have the sun beam down on me. and i thought - all it takes is that i never crack. that i simply push through the wretched morning and never admit to the sheer weight i was balancing. i could be good if it was pretend. i could be perfect. i just never had to be myself.

the thing was that other people knew. i don’t know how. but they smelled it on me - that i wasn’t perfect. and therefore, as a result. well, i wasn’t good.

this May is about release. this may is about new doors opening. i thought for a long time i had run out of things to be interested in. that the world was a dull socket i kept sticking forks in. but this May is about the tiny things. i am back to wondering how to keep my hands steady. i am back to dancing. i am back to the slow nod of the evening. you know, i haven’t tried skydiving. you know, there’s a new place down the street i hear sells really good ice cream. you know, the trees outside my window all look different lately, and that’s something.

this May is about listening. the soft gentle return of the sun. the crowning heads of flowers. a newborn, tender future - awake at last, and faintly glistening.

i wish i wasn’t so easily ran aground by you. i was getting better. my therapist purses her lips when i say so i heard from her. i had a nightmare last night; you showed up and we fought. maybe you felt the way i woke up and needed to remind me: you just snap your fingers and unwind me.

you could never stomach gore, though, could you? so what exactly is this, that you’re doing to yourself? what would you call that? you flinch at the sight of spilled red wine - but here, in this place, you call a sharpness the divine.

will you curl your hair for this and leave the sink so full of little bits of you; toothpaste and lingering strands and the full shake of your fingertips. the little wet linage of your shaking saturday night: this is the time you’re supposed to be young and stupid, right. these are the best years. this is the way the birds in the morning are all asking you: why did you fall asleep? you are awake, and everyone expects you to begin and beget your life, full and vibrant and shining.

don’t cry. the price is right. you can apply the eyeliner with a smooth stroke. you can whiten your teeth. you can commit insanity quietly, privately, like pressing prayer out through your teeth.

are you alone? in this world of so many people, are you alone again?

i. august the earth. let the blue chemical of the morning shush the way the too-sweet waking burns in your stomach.

ii. i forgot to go to therapy yesterday, because the reason i go to therapy is also the same reason i forget things.

iii. they won’t let you talk about it, but the truth is that the illness wants to outlive you. and there is something beautiful about anxiety; about the press of my tongue to the roof of my mouth. that immediate, single-toned insanity. where would i be without panic? she is protecting me, goddamn it.

iv. i’m going to die alone. i’m going to die with my hand over my eyes.

v. they made this world for lovers, didn’t they. the exit has a single red eye over it. they won’t let you talk about it, but being sick is addictive. it needs to be, or none of us would be sick, would we? it makes the effort of surviving horrifying. why would i do that? why would i get better and force myself through the endless hurt and rehurting - when i could just waste? when i could turn rotten? it’s easier, this way. succumb to the hike of her skirt, trembling up a pale leg. the soft, mesh sack over an open mouth.

vi. lay down, lay down. let the train pass over you, so close your skull shakes.

thinking of how many traditions stem from bread, from dough, from sharing food. how many times we as a species come back to this small gratitude. how we tie it into grief, into celebration, into early mornings. how we sigh into it, how we seek to change it. the other day i made a meal that only me and maybe 2 other people on this planet know about - my friend made the recipe up; it’s a weird conglomeration of foods he calls spicy perfect. i keep thinking that somewhere is another college kid accidentally stumbling on their new favorite “whatever’s in the fridge”. somewhere someone is making their grandmother’s old pie recipe. every time i’m cooking, someone else in the world is cooking too, probably. and isn’t that just sort of beautiful? this quiet, necessary skill - to make-something-good. to make something filling.

i. how big is your grief today? how soft do her little grey fingers push against your spine? can you breathe past it, or is she deep in your mouth now; crushing the bird in your windpipe.

ii. how funny - emily dickinson writes hope is a thing with feathers. on a tuesday, i turn to you and say - this makes sense. grief has always felt feathered, too. gentle cat paws on an august afternoon.

iii. where is your grief today? does she nap in the tender of your breast, or is she plunging through the floor of your hips? is she holding your hand through the shower. is she dragging you in a perfect tango - down, down through the floor.

iv. someone asks me how i’m doing in that way. like grief is holding her hands over my eyes. i tell my therapist i feel lost. it is another way of saying - the grief is leading, and i must follow.

v. when will you be able to let go? and, my love, what would you even hold on to instead?

The best warm up sketch I’ve done, no discussion

So hey people, meet my little rat Nea, she’s about 3 or 4 months old and loves to run the wheel at 3am, she runs so much I heavily considered naming her Meg but Nea was my main so she has privileges >:)

Soo, Nea is super friendly since the pet store, ahe only bite my hard once and hissed once too, but I suspect it was out of excitement of eating the dark green leaves

Sooo she’s been with me for two weeks, still getting used to me and the environment, hope we can become good friends

(also I’m not sure about her sex but have a huge feeling is a she)

warm ups!

“You know, it’s tomato tomato.”

She stares. Are they joking? “It’s toMAYto toMAHto.”

“What?”

“That expression. You said said tomato twice, but that’s wrong. It’s supposed to be both ways people say it.”

They laugh. “That’s stupid, there’s only one right way to say it.”

“Then why even use that saying?”

“Because, like there being only one right pronunciation, it’s my way or the highway.”

“You could have just said that—“

Warm-up doodle of Aubrey! Heard today was her day.

Pygmalion fall in love with a woman who could never love her in return.. ♡

Instagram:@arthurshahverdyanart

Inspired by Amberly Valentine’s amazing photoshoot of Taylor LaShae, styled by Remy Bernhardt ✨