ref-writes-stuff

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i feel like a different person but at once the same and i don't know yet how to piece my old world back with the new one so this'll have to do for now

#poetry #favorites #anyway i. love this one #*writing #*poetry

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this december, ricky montgomery // i want to be with you, chloe moriondo // watch you sleep, girl in red // feelings are fatal, mxmtoon // wrath, sir chloe // too close, sir chloe // good girls (don't get used), beach bunny // i eat boys, chloe moriondo // easy on you, sir chloe // devil town, cavetown // this is home, cavetown // silly girl, chloe moriondo // why do you love me, charlotte lawrence // it's alright, mother mother // if i killed someone for you, alec benjamin

#poetry #that ask game reminded me of something i wrote in my gmail drafts forever ago and i dug it out aha

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i torment her with my thorns and only her because my heart is just so frail. i hold my hatred into me until it seeps in my bones and sends my bones to dust. you pain and i weep, because i am a weak thing but there is a fire in me. because death to my heart, to me. i don't, i don't, I DON'T. everything i am not. so please, tell me it'll be okay.

#prose poetry (not mine) #i love you #it’ll be okay

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@honeytuesday // ocean vuong // lorde

#favorites #parallels

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someone asked me how you move on. do they know i still dream about you. waited to see if you’d say anything on my birthday, was kind of hoping for an opening. my mother says you sound different when you talk about her. i hold you like a coal on the back of my tongue. 

how do we move on? i take pictures of flowers, of ferns, of things i think you would like. i brush my teeth and braid my hair and sing badly and nothing echoes good inside of me. i write poems about birds and burns and bleach and they all reek with the absence of you because not-writing about you is still writing about you. in my favorite daydream i come home to you and just kiss you and hold a candle to the dry tinder and propane, call conflict seeing sparks. 

how do we move on? i guess. like this. i eat too many watermelon sourpatch candies because they’re my favorite. it makes my tongue bleed. i can’t taste anything for hours afterwards. i keep chewing long past the hurting. this is how next time i don’t say yes. this is how i light you out of me like a sunburn. this is how i chase out all this sharp white want. i say - okay. just this once. and then we need to walk away. 

okay just this once. okay just this once. okay. just today. and then we move on.

#oh holy shit #prose poetry (not mine) #favorites

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how to tell someone you love them without actually saying it:

let them have a handful from the skittles they got you. if you finished the skittles, get them their own bag. but maybe they don't like skittles, or maybe you don't want to stand up. that's okay. fluff their pillow. leave it by the fan so it's cool on both sides when they go to sleep tonight. write them stupid puns on post-its and leave them around the house. place the empty bag of skittles by their door so they have to throw it out. smile at them. put a few of their favorite candies in the empty bag. laugh at their dumb jokes. roll your eyes at their dumb jokes. tell them they're the worst, in a loving way. tell them they're the best, in a teasing way. write them a poem. give them a wedge of a clementine. leave the window open in their room if it's too hot. close the window in their room if it's too cold. lend them your umbrella. doodle rainbows on their walls. hug them. play rock paper scissors for no reason. memorize their favorite candy so the next time you stand up you know where to go. eat the skittles they got you. hang up the post-it notes they wrote you. smile.

#love tag #abi tag #ref writes stuff #prose poetry #*my writing #this is pretty i think

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perhaps the most heartbreaking thing is that you have no fucking idea.

transcript.

Keep reading

#poetry (not mine) #words #favorites

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it’s true that in the mirror i like the way i look. that’s not the problem. i look in the mirror and i like what i see, but i don’t see myself.

there is a pile of clothes behind the girl in the mirror. her hair is down, shoulder-length and curly and a little bit bouncy, and she’s wearing a white bra she doesn’t really need. in her hands is a soft cotton shirt with striping flames of red. she lifts it over her head. i don’t know who she is. i am not this girl. i am not a girl.

but it’s not like i’m something else. (am i?) you can call me a she and i won’t mind, and there is nothing about my body that brings me acute displeasure. i am not a they. i am not anything different or anything other than a bored girl (girl) with too much time and internet on her hands.

it is normal that the word “girl” makes me flinch.

it is normal that when you open my phone browser the first site you see is 101 best hairstyles for teenage guys.

it is normal that one day i had the acute thought i want to be a boy and i can’t get it out of my fucking mind, and that looking masculine makes my heart speed up, and that being called a king or a he or just bro feels like a revelation no matter how many times it happens.

i am not trans. i am not nonbinary. i am stealing the validity of others’ identities and cloaking myself in it. i am a fucking girl. why wouldn’t i be. i am not a boy even though the word feels warm and inviting on my lips. you can call me a queen. you can call me a she. it doesn’t make me unhappy. i like it. i like he more sometimes, but that doesn’t negate the fact.

(when i say sometimes i don’t mean that it is fluid, i mean that to say always is too big a step.)

i stand topless now by the mirror, in the midst of trying on all of my new clothes. what i see in front of me doesn’t look quite right, but it’s not wrong either. i like the way my body looks. i don’t want to hide it. i don’t care if i look feminine. (though i have selfie upon selfie layering my phone of that day i wore a flannel and pinned my hair up beneath a baseball cap.) if anything, it’s my hair that irks me more.

yesterday i glanced back and back again at the boy in my class with the newly-shaved head and face-full of makeup. there were studs in his ears. i want a nose-stud someday. he looked so sure of who he was. so did the queer singer who shaved her head in a music video. they know who they are. i don’t even know what i am, hardly boy enough and not quite girl.

i test out pronouns in a gmail draft, she and they and he and other ones i read in tumblr bios that sound like melodies but not the kind for me. he is good. she is good. i don’t need a definite answer and i don’t need a word, though “genderqueer” has all the right sounds.

i like who i am, and i like trying out different iterations of me. i like the person in the mirror, who isn’t a girl and who isn’t a boy, either. (maybe a little bit boy?) it’s scary to imagine this in any sort of reality other than the glowing invitation of bios and the pronouns within them. but that’s fine. i’m okay with that and with this and even with maybe being a little bit girl after all.

this shirt looks good on me once i get it over my head, especially with my hair up. i text it to my best friend who’s had a gender crisis of their own, and he tells me i look cute as fuck. they are correct.

i don’t know who i am but i’m starting to learn what makes me happy. those are two different things.

i’m okay with that too.

#prose #my writing #gender #i have been working on this for two hours i hope you like it

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the painter or the seer?

transcript.

the painter is the mind, the maker

creating every swirl of color

every hidden picture 

the painting is the painter’s soul

their heart, their life, their soul

the seer is the wanderer, the searcher

truly seeing the painting for what it is

finding every hidden picture

finding the painter’s soul, heart & life

so who loved the painting more?

Keep reading

#THISSSSSSSSS #this is fabulous #poetry (not mine) #words

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never gonna give you up (a scythe astley fic)

when scythe curie was just a junior scythe, the beloved scythe rick astley—the only scythe who was ever allowed to communicate with the thunderhead—self-gleaned. marie will never forget her childhood idol—but he may be closer than she thinks.

takes place mid-thunderhead; spoilers for thunderhead.

word count: 1,294

dedicated to @i-love-side-characters for her incredible 5am drabble. thank you akki. truly a service to humankind.

Takes place in the middle of the scene in Thunderhead where Goddard reveals that he is still kiCkiN' at conclave. This is very crack. And a fix-it fic. I hope you enjoy.

“I wish to nominate Honorable Scythe Robert Goddard for High Blade of MidMerica.”

Silence for a moment … then a few chuckles, but they weren’t derisive. They were nervous.

“Brahms,” said Xenocrates slowly, “in case you’ve forgotten, Scythe Goddard has been dead for over a year now.”

And then the heavy bronze doors of the conclave chamber slowly began to open.

Scythe Curie drew in a sharp breath, willing her heart rate to slow. This was ridiculous, clearly some sort of diversion tactic planned by the new order. To even react in the slightest was preposterous; her body was showing its age, another reminder she needed to turn a corner soon.

But then in strode the incinerated scythe, and Marie knew even the frailest of bodies wasn’t capable of a hallucination so horrible.

Rumors began to trickle through the room. Gasps. Whispers. Cheers. The man who could not be Scythe Goddard moved down the center aisle, gait looser than Marie remembered. The worries of becoming High Blade, of being placed in the position only because of her past actions, slipped suddenly into the furthest thing on Curie’s mind. This was impossible. She was supposed to be watching out for Scythe Nietzsche, and Nietzsche didn’t have the votes. This could not be.

And yet it was. They had entered the worst of all possible worlds.

Entering the chamber in Goddard’s wake was a familiar figure in bright green. Scythe Rand was alive, too? Eyes now looked to the open bronze doors, expecting that Scythes Chomsky and Volta might also return from the dead today, but that was not who next entered the chamber.

No, this was another figure. A figure even more impossible.

In the years before Curie was born, the world was chock-full of turmoil. Although the Thunderhead had revealed itself some time ago, humans were still clinging on to government and power. The scythedom, only in its founding years, was still mistrusted. And black market revivals for those who had been gleaned—a problem all but forgotten to history now—were all the rage.

It had been becoming a bigger and bigger issue, from what Marie knew; the Thunderhead believed it was under the scythedom’s jurisdiction to deal with, while the fledgling scythedom was relying on the Thunderhead to solve it. What was essentially breathing life back into the gleaned single-handedly rendered the entire scythedom useless. And though the Thunderhead was beginning to engineer safe space travel solutions, it needed a backup in case of failure.

So the first (and, to date, only) scythe-Thunderhead ambassador was chosen.

Marie had idolized Scythe Astley throughout her childhood. Apprenticed under Scythe Sappho herself, Astley—whose Patron Historic was a largely-forgotten mortal-age musician—was a man not only of the scythedom and the Thunderhead but of the people. And not in the phony, self-serving way of the current new order, but honestly, genuinely. After helping the Thunderhead and founding scythes engineer a solution to the black-market problem—which, once they’d found a means of communication, was relatively simple; the Thunderhead would shut down all operations and the scythedom glean anyone who dared involve themself—he stayed wildly well-known. The Thunderhead continued to speak to him and only him, and once he self-gleaned refused to choose another ambassador. The scythedom and the Thunderhead would remain separate entities, it declared, this time for good. Nobody could replace Astley, one of the few truly-beloved scythes.

Scythe Curie could remember the day he self-gleaned. It felt tragic, doubly so knowing now that the scythedom had so thoroughly shoved his memory under the rug. Prominent scythes didn’t want anyone new to know conversing with the Thunderhead was anything short of impossible, and somehow he had just been … forgotten.

But Marie remembered him. His love of ice cream. His iconic robe, fashioned to look as though it were a suit. His studded, intricately-designed dark leather dress shoes.

The same shoes that were tapping their way through the conclave chamber now.

It couldn’t be.

“Astley!” Marie breathed, words sticking in her throat. She saw Anastasia shoot her a confused glance, completely unaware as to the identity of this new key player. She’d never told her about Scythe Astley.

Around the room, similar gasps of shock were passing around. Many scythes, however, were like Anastasia; they ignored this new man and focused their attentions back on Goddard—who looked positively furious at being overshadowed. “What is this?” he shouted, a vein in his neck pulsing.

“I might ask you the same thing,” Scythe Astley responded smoothly. He reached his hand into a pocket and pulled out a large pin with his own face on it. Scythe Astley isn’t ghastly! it read in garishly cartoonish print.

And now Goddard’s face had truly paled. “Scythe Astley? But—but you self-gleaned, years ago!”

“Yeah, no I didn’t.” Astley smirked, drawing his fingers through his impeccably styled hair. “Anyway, you’re one to talk.”

The entire scythedom tittered. Xenocrates, having lost all semblance at control in the room, slowly backed away.

“Who’s this?” Anastasia hissed to Curie, and the Granddame of Death saw her moment.

“Everyone!” she shouted, voice commanding. “This man is Honorable Ambassador-Scythe Rick Astley, apprentice to founding scythe Sappho herself. Show him the respect he deserves.”

“Thank you, Scythe Curie,” Astley said, and Marie blushed as though she were a little girl again. He knew her name!

He stood tall, and the entire scythedom—even Goddard—found themselves bending to accommodate him. “It’s true. I, Scythe Rick Astley, did not truly self-glean. I meant it when I said I was never gonna give you up. No, I’ve simply been waiting for the perfect time to rejoin the scythedom—and that time has come today.”

Astley looked around the conclave chamber thoughtfully, before continuing on. “You see, I and I alone have access to the Thunderhead. I am the single exception to the schism between organizations. With me and the Thunderhead by your sides, I can solemnly swear we’re never gonna let you down.”

He smiled kindly, before giving a disapproving stink-eye. “The Thunderhead and I pronounce Robert Goddard illegible for the position of High Blade, so don’t even try it. We have some problems with that man.”

Scythe Goddard sank to his knees, distraught. “Scythe Astley? You don’t like me? What have I done?”

Astley ignored him, instead moving on to Curie herself. “Therefore, by process of elimination plus nobody cares about that other contestant, I hereby pronounce Honorable Scythe Marie Curie High Blade of MidMerica.”

Marie let in a shocked gasp, tears coming to her eyes. Rick Astley believed in her. “Is this true?”

“I don’t know what’s going on so I guess,” Xenocrates called from the back. “Ima go hop on over to Endura now anyway. I will live a happy and fulfilling life as Grandslayer and hopefully learn to become more than competent. Scythe Goddard will never come for a vacation.”

“Sounds good!” everyone called.

Rowan Damisch and Scythe Volta tiptoed in from the back. The mere presence of the near-god Astley had brought Volta back to life and caused Rowan to escape his bonds. Speaking of, he caught Anastasia’s eye and they started making out passionately. Scythe Curie decided to forgive him because if he was truly bad he too would have been smited by the wrath of Scythe Astley.

“Thank you, Rick,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“Of course!” he cried, and then repeated, “I’m never gonna give you up!” There was cheering from the crowd, all divisions in the scythedom forgotten. Someone started singing his theme song, the popular mortal-age ditty of his Patron Historic. It was very catchy. He tapped his dress shoes some more.

All was good. At long last, Curie felt herself truly relax. The scythedom was in good hands.

“Now who wants to go grab some ice cream?”

#this technically counts as my writing ig #however crackficcy #so #prose #arc of a scythe #fanfic

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do you hear me now?

#rbed this on the wrong one but idec #it's so. so powerful. #i love you so fuckign much #prose poetry (not mine) #words

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a love letter for the girl who felt so alone: you're not alone anymore

#you already know but i. adore. this #i'm so proud of you nessie #prose poetry (not mine) #words

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Her name was Imani of Irresin, and she had once been great.

Now she was nothing. A sad, quiet woman who lived on her own with callused fingers and a cupboard of letter-soaked jars. A town wordsmith, good enough to sometimes attract business and pretty enough to sometimes attract lovers; she never got much further in either category, probably for lack of trying. People came to her with aches and pains and she crafted charms to heal them, crisp cold words she smoothed together to speak a cure. She was, largely, unremembered.

But Imani Okori had once been great, and greatness is never forgotten for good.

#wip: the wordweaver's apprentice #snippets

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I think I shared a profile pic with someone and we matched, two halves of a whole, an orange split into smaller pieces {and I think that's why I liked her because she hid the sour part of me behind her} small emotions stuck between the pips and I think

This is love

I think I snatched away my notebook from someone curious something cruel and shrivelled stuck inside {it was my heart} and as their face crumpled {like the torn paper notes I'd written to them} I relented, I think, and as she flipped through my scarred and crumpled letters with my entire heart {yet nothing} I can't help but think that even in the cracks of pain, it's bleeding out-

This is love

I think I gave someone my shoulder to lean on, and as she dropped her burden, face lightening, even though she didn't say a word I can see the indecipherable smile she relaxes in content and vulnerable {only with me? what a beautiful mistake} and I wonder how something can be so tender

This is love

And maybe it's just the fact that it's just so much and so heavy and so great that it feels like an enormous debt to someone or somewhere {that I cannot repay} but maybe maybe I think I'll learn that there is something beautiful in chipped pieces that are broken {but not broken!} and maybe and maybe we can be whole and I think maybe, maybe it's time for me to accept and tell myself that it's ok {maybe I am a mistake but I am a good one which will make better mistakes that can be cherished} and that The broken wings that were bent once a wound, a mark of cowardice can now maybe be a mosaic a patchwork of scars and shapes {or maybe it can just be me because I'm still just me} of the fact that I exist! I am existing and I am continuing and I am here to live! {and finally, and giddily I think} This is love

#holy shit this is gorgeous #poetry (not mine) #words

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yellow ball against blue sky and sweat coating my limbs and thoughts racing like adrenaline like a noose, i’m being hanged and i made the rope with my own hands

#poetry (not mine) #words #(i love you)

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#t h i s #snippets #glass shard

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(i say these words to myself in an effort to try & believe them)

#poetry #ref writes stuff #it's been too long since i posted my own writing on this blog #so here you go