even-fools-are-right-sometimes

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

A midwest town relearning that nature isn't the enemy, that we must steward the wildness

It rains all the time, so the dirt is rich and brown and the trees are dark and alive, the perfect contrast for those first precious greens. The redbuds and magnolias are blooming, filling the tree lines with blooms of pink. The dandelions are sprinkled like bright little stars and no one is mowing them down. There are so many daffodils.

I'm aching already, knowing how fleeting this spring is. The air is fresh and floral, winter clean with the newest tint of crab apple blossoms, and I want to breathe it and then hold my breath so I never have to let it go. Why can't the world always look like this, I want to paint it all, need some way to force the image onto paper so I don't ever need to give it up. It's so lovely and I can't help but mourn its loss while I'm still in the thick of it. I say I want to take a picture, but what I mean is, I want to freeze the world so I can live in this spring forever, everything on the cusp, all of the growing and none of the pain.

Spring where you are -

Location: (can be a general region like “Midwest” or “city” or something)

What it’s like: (observations, ecology, who is out and about, quiet moments, hiding places, etc.)

How it makes you feel:

#a fools secrets #i think this is my favorite spring ever #but also i think i think that every year #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writing #writer #spring #flowers

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I'm all tangled up over you. I've been not-dating-you for longer now than I was ever dating-you but I'm still so Tangled up. The i-shouldn't-be-missing-you all messed up with i-am-definitely-still-missing-you. I tell my friend all the terrible ways you hurt me and they say good riddance. A year ago I told them all the wonderful ways you loved me and they said I was the lucky one. I feel like I'm lying whatever I say. I can't hold the whole of you in my head anymore

#a fools secrets #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writer #writing #love #pain #hurt #relationship #break up #breaking up

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I should be angry. I should be mad and violent and sharp

but its like i forget how to be cruel halfway even while you stab me through the stomach

somehow it always just goes back around to being my fault. He lied and led me on, but really I should have known better. I saw the signs, watched the sudden icing over of the river and yet I stayed.

Yet I soften all of my words, say it was frustrating when i really mean that it hurt the entire time, that I felt betrayed and abandoned.

But whats the point of all this sharpness. it won’t change his mind, won’t make his cold heart feel any remorse, won’t make him care that he hurt me, won’t get it through his thick skull that what he did was like laying down next to me in my bed and then slapping me everytime i tried to reach for his hand

and im furious, furious like an ocean, smooth waves on the surface and a violent undertow underneath

---

from the first sentence i knew it was a lost cause, the next two hours was just mapping the extent of the damage

#a fools secrets #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writer #writing #love #pain #hurt #relationship #break up #breaking up

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

Mary Oliver, from “Hum Hum”, A Thousand Mornings

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

we dissected salamanders in class today. did you know the eggs have to travel half way up their abdomen, loose in their belly, to get from the ovary to the oviduct?

he holds me close and calls me his little monster because of how much this (me and him, him and me, us) scares him. it scares me too

i'm flaying back pieces of skin, offering him slivers like organs like facts about how salamanders mix their oxygen-rich blood with their oxygen-poor blood and its inefficient but its alright because they can breathe through their skin

and he keeps taking them gently and smiling and is slowly fitting them together like something worth cherishing and it should hurt but it doesn't. its never been so fucking easy to peel back a tangle of veins and give them away.

i'm crazy, this has got to be crazy, he's interlocking our bones with every word and every touch and i want it but i'm terrified. the ribs on a salamander don't surround anything, but if this doesn't work its going to take breaking all of mine to remove him from where he's grafted himself into my chest

salamanders lose their gills when they move onto land. they don't ever get them back. do they realize as it happens how much is changing?its not that i want to stay in the water, but what if once i leave its too late to come back. the call of void equally opposed by the fear of the unknown

it's good, somehow its so good but i keep anticipating my scalpel to hit rotten flesh (is it pessimism or prophesy) listen to your gut, but mine only trembles (is it warning or anticipation)

i don't know what i'm doing, peeling back muscle and viscera to say here is my heart, fragile as a liver

after this is free fall

#a fools secrets #poetry #poem #love #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writing #writer #salamander #dissection #anatomy #these are all real facts #biology #apparently my poetry has all become strange metaphors

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

oh no i met another cute guy

#i guess its going to be love poem season again #i did not intend for this to line up with valentines #but our first date is thursday

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

@even-fools-are-right-sometimes // this is how i love you, yukla // @iamcon-fu-sion // Françoise Sagen, Bonjour Tristesse // The Abduction of Persephone, Gian Lorenzo Bernini // History student falls in love with astrophysics student, @boykeats // Snowbound, objectlesson // @even-fools-are-right-sometimes // Marathon, Louise Glück

(plus a bonus from @dogmotif)

#ive been sitting on this idea for ages #web weaving #webweave #webweaving #critical role #shadowgast #man from uncle #napollya #tmfu #poetry #love

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I keep imagining how this conversation will go. How I’m going to sit you down on my bed and then settle in your lap as if that will prevent you from running away from me again, as if it’ll make me feel any more in control of this.

Sometimes I start the conversation like a fist fight, Why don’t you kiss me anymore? all of the anger and frustration and betrayal bubbling to the surface before I remember to swallow it down. Sometimes I fold myself down into something soft and light, plead hey, i miss you, talk to me and pretend there isn’t something wild screaming in my chest. Lately, I’ve been looking at your too blue eyes and saying I’m mad at you with no inflection and watching to see if you even care.

I’ve tried to imagine your response, a million different possibilities. In most of them you break my heart. I don’t know if that makes me a pessimist or a prophet.

#a fools secrets #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #poetry #he did break my heart

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I wanted to say i love you like an accident, like it just slipped out my mouth, like bars of soap, like youth. Anything so I could pretend it wasn't on purpose, wasn't carefully scripted and rehearsed, everything weighed on the great scales -- my dignity against the shape of your lips around my name, my heart against the exact temperature of the sheets between us.

There was always this core of me that thought you would treat me more gently, might not realized how the distance from my thoughts to your ears has consumed me, if it seemed to surprise me too. As if the practiced spontaneity might convince you I said it without thinking, and that might protect me.

I've never done anything without thinking about it.

#a fools secrets #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writing #writer #love #i love you

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I am kissing you on the forehead. I appreciate the kind words, but do not worry about me. My happiness is not so fragile as all that

And truly, none of my friends would actually begrudge me my happiness, but I’m in the sort of job right now where everyone very much has the mind set of “this job is hell and everyone is depressed” so it kind of surprises them that actually i really like this job and am happier than I’ve ever been. And also there is a very big difference between being happy and telling them “i know you’re struggling, but I’m doing just fine and actually im flourishing (so clearly this is a problem with you and not the job)” which is what I’m trying not to do cause it can be very disheartening. And I am strong enough to be gentle with them and still be so happy I dance in my kitchen at 9 in the morning

I feel like I’m not allowed to talk about it sometimes, with how depressed everyone is. Is it alright for me to say that I’m happy?

I don’t want to brag, only I do want to lay it all out; like a picnic, or an art exhibit with the title in all in bold: if this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is. I don’t want to brag, but I want to shout it from the roof tops and breathe it in until my lungs hurt from how full they are. I didn’t know I could get here and sometimes I need to say it out loud just to remind myself.

I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. And its not because I have everything figured out – it’s just that for the first time, I finally feel like I’m pointed in the right direction. (It doesn’t matter if it takes me the rest of my life, the point is that I smile after every step)

I’m happy. I laugh so easy now. It’s nice.

#yes no one should have to hide their happiness #but also when i say dont brag #i do actually mean it #you can be happy without being demeaning #but also i know the people reading my original post have none of the context #so yes #if youre happy dont hide it #but my happiness is sturdy #and it is also my own #it is not reliant on telling people #on anything at all #it just is

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I feel like I'm not allowed to talk about it sometimes, with how depressed everyone is. Is it alright for me to say that I'm happy?

I don't want to brag, only I do want to lay it all out; like a picnic, or an art exhibit with the title in all in bold: if this isn't nice, I don't know what is. I don't want to brag, but I want to shout it from the roof tops and breathe it in until my lungs hurt from how full they are. I didn't know I could get here and sometimes I need to say it out loud just to remind myself.

I'm the happiest I've ever been. And its not because I have everything figured out -- it's just that for the first time, I finally feel like I'm pointed in the right direction. (It doesn't matter if it takes me the rest of my life, the point is that I smile after every step)

I'm happy. I laugh so easy now. It's nice.

#a fools secrets #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writer #writing #happy #happiness #if this isn't nice

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

1. Do you know how pearls form? It’s like a splinter for an oyster, an irritant slipping inside and being wrapped gently, incessantly in smoothness. Bundling up the pain until its soft and shiny and doesn’t hurt anymore.

2. I broke up with him on a Saturday. I didn’t tell anyone until Monday and in those liminal hours in-between I wrapped myself in three blankets and watched competitive baking shows for hours on end. I didn’t want to tell anyone because that would make it real. I didn’t want to say anything until I could tell the whole story without crying. (I couldn’t bear being seen until I could stand under the weight of it all)

3. My grandparents bought me a pearl oyster for Christmas when I was eleven. We cracked it open in my great-grandmother’s kitchen right after presents and I watched, too young to hold the knife, as my grandpa broke the shell open and pried out my prize.

4. I never learned how to swallow pain, only how to hold it in my mouth, rolling it around on my tongue like a terrible mint, unable to stop myself from tasting it, unable to speak around the heaviness.

5. I still have it all these years later. When I was younger, I would slip it from its little necklace cage and roll it around in my mouth. I’m not sure I can explain why I did it. Perhaps I just liked the feel of it. Or maybe I had the strange desire to take this paradoxical treasure inside myself. The irritant and the reward. Maybe it was practice for all the pain that would come later

6. Perhaps someday, someone will take a knife to the hinge of my shell and pry this ball of pain from behind my teeth. Perhaps I will thank them

#yes this is all true #in honesty though #i still put the pearl in my mouth sometimes #and im still not entirely sure why #pearls #a fools secrets #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writer #writing

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

It’s stupid. we were all a little drunk, celebrating the exam i had passed that morning, everything was a little raw and open, still high on the adrenaline of not failing even hours later. you asked me about my baggage and between the alcohol and the rent in my chest I forgot to lie, forgot to spin some clever half-truth and said i need everyone to love me so fucking much with a little too much feeling for a cheap bar

did you hear it? could you tell how deeply i meant it, and how little i meant to actually say it out loud? both of you kind of looked at me, perhaps as surprised as I was, worried maybe or confused. that doesn’t seem healthy you said. i’m supposed to be the stable one in our trio

And then I had to backtrack, shore up all those defenses I had so stupidly thrown off its not a problem. im fine. i dont let it affect me. if i hadn’t said anything you never would’ve had guessed

i’m still trying to figure out why i said anything at all. maybe i just wanted confirmation that i hide it as well i think i do. whether i look as needy as i feel. i think i was curious whether there’s some part of me that makes sense now that you know this terrible thing at the core of me (if knowing changes what you think of me)

#can someone tell me what they think this means #im always curious if what im writing conveys the things i think it does #but tbh im not even sure what im trying to say here #its a true story #i think im still processing it #a fools secrets #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writer #writing

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

We spend so much time apart now. Not on purpose, only the threads of our lives are building different cloths and its so hard to find my way back to you when the places we belong together aren’t home anymore. I miss you with this kind of backward ache, I miss you and I miss our younger selves that didn’t know what it was like to be separated. I miss being knotted to you, so close that it must have been fate that bound us together.

It’s just so hard to tie you back into my life with all this distance between us. Every time I see you I worry. Worry that this time it won’t work, that in the months apart we’ve changed too much to fit together like we should. And I know you laugh when I say it scares me, but oh god it does. I don’t want to imagine the tapestry of my life without you in it.

But maybe that’s why it will be alright. I’d drop a hundred stitches to loop you in. I’d let the whole thing tangle to keep us tied. Maybe as long as we keep making knots we’ll never come unraveled.

#dont look at me i made myself cry while writing this #missing my best friend vibes #knitting metaphors anyone #or i guess any fiber craft #a fools secrets #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writer #writing

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

I introduce you as my best friend, always, soft like a child after all this time. I say best friend like some people say husband, like these words are a promise and this promise is my defense against the world (like knowing that I have you is enough to make all the rest bearable).

There are no rings for something like this, so we pass the words back forth like a vow, an endless repetition of this is my best friend and my best friend said and she is my best friend, over and over like an oath, like a call and response where I ask still? and you say yes and no other words are needed.

#a fools secrets #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writer #writing #love #friend #best friends #Guys I love my best friend #vow #promise #marriage #oath #i love her so much

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

“Here is my flaw: I want to be untouchable i want to be touched”

– here is the paradox of being human (Haiku #145)

#a fools secrets #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writer #writing #haiku #love #touch #humanity #human

[even-fools-are-right-sometimes]

"It's bad for my ego" I say with a sarcastic smile, as if my hubris is a cliche, as if my ego is overlarge already.  But truly I don’t want the compliments because I need them so deeply. I am cracked desert earth, parched and crumbling (steady but brittle) and truly I do not need them because I do not know what I would become if I was fed. I have gone so long in the sun, I do not recall the rain. I think it would hurt.

#a fools secrets #poetry #poem #spilled ink #poets of tumblr #writerscreed #writingthestorm #writer #writing #pride #hubris #compliment #pain #sadness