Teind
"Let GO, you harpy! I told you not to interfere!"
"Sev, you idiot, if you think I'm going to stand by while my best friend gets dragged off to hell—!"
"Oh, so we're 'friends' again now that you find it convenient!"
"You... you... UGH! What part of this do you think is convenient??"
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honestly no wonder harrow forced ianthe to lobotomize her so she could save gideon. listen…LISTEN…if i was a secret-war-crime cult nunlet princess worshipped by my entire planet and the only person that (barely) kept me in check was my childhood nemesis—a butch a year older than me, towering over me in stature and physical prowess, and so hot it made my teeth hurt from how hard my jaw clenched in her presence, who wielded a two-handed seven-foot sword and had irritatingly huge biceps and told very lewd stupid jokes and also learned how to wield an entirely new weapon and be my bodyguard with startling accuracy in three months—only to have us finally learn to trust each other because we got invited to a magic murder mystery and then before the bubble burst i spilled the worst secret about myself that i was born because my parents murdered an entire generation and tried to Kill Her along with them and she just wouldnt die, and i told her this expecting a swift death i believed i deserved, only for her to fucking cradle me in her big butch arms and kiss me on my forehead with her soft butch mouth and just. forgive me for a shameful weight ive carried my entire life and then MAKE AN ACTUAL NECRO/CAV VOW with me despite every evil thing i have done to her……to have her tell me, in the end, bleeding and broken after putting up the most beautiful and glorious fight of her life, that she understands purpose and she understands duty and she knows loyalty more fiercely than ever now, that she knows who she is to me, that there is no her without me….to have her backed into a corner and make the ultimate sacrifice…..for me…..to recite scriptural wedding vows of eternity to me in her last wisps of soul-consciousness…..if i thought there was even a snowflake’s chance in the pyre that i could save her by turning myself into her very own locked tomb, i’d be begging ianthe tridentweirdius to crack my skull open and turn me to mush too, goddamn. i understand you harrowhark girl you don’t have to explain a thing to me. god said you couldn’t undo the lyctor’s bond bc it’d kill you. you told god and his angels that not even a lyctor’s bond could outshine the power of female spite and lesbianism and they didn’t listen. they didn’t believe you. but i heard you loud and clear and i was 17 and hormonal and hopelessly romantic not too long ago unlike those fucking dinosaurs and i’m saying it’s valid it’s what i would have done and really everyone should be thanking you for not being worse and more wretched about it, all things considered
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yesterday while feverish i wrote about how boats can moor next to each other like pigeons, cooing with the gentle rap of water against their hull. you once said that that the way i see things - birds in the water, feathers in marina paint - was "childish and naive." you said i'd been misdiagnosed - "it can't all be adhd. you might be just kind of stupid and lazy."
i still do certain things like how you taught me - turn the pillow case inside out before putting it on. drive defensively. hate myself entirely.
the prompt for this poem is "mahler's fifth." i wish it wasn't, but mahler's fifth was our song. it ended up in my book. every person that knows your name has promised me they'll give you one swift rabbit punch, right to the face. dean read the book and showed up on my front porch, drenched in sweat from running the 8 miles at 4 in the morning. he was shaking. pacifist and gentle - he works with children - i'd never seen him furious. a punch isn't going to do it, he said, and then said i'm sorry. i had to come to see if you were okay.
mahler's fifth was mine first, like my girlhood. i like the way each movement piles onto the next movement, each instrument bleeding into the next. i like the horn version the best. before i met you, i danced to it on grass still-wet from sprinklers.
later you would tell me that the way you heard it was somehow better. you understood something in it that i couldn't quite wrap my fingers into. once, on our anniversary, you asked the classical music radio station to play it for us. we missed hearing it because we were fighting. one of the things people get wrong about abuse is that sometimes victims are, like, brutally aware of the stupidity of our situation. what do you mean that you thought i wasn't good enough for you? you? you're just... nothing.
sometimes people can pull the poetry out of your life. i watched my words become clothesline, and then thin out into kite twine. i watched you chew through every good syllable of me. so many good songs and places and moments were ruined. i am glad you didn't like most of my music - less to tie back to you.
but still mahler's fifth. the music swells, and i am 21 and throwing up in a bathroom on my birthday. a woman i will later refer to as lesbian jesus runs a cool hand down my back, her perfect pantsuit starch-pressed. she told me to leave you. she said - and this is true, and not an invention of rhyme or fantasy - i'm you from the future.
i am 22, and i got home from an award ceremony, and i remember you telling me - you act so proud of yourself when you're actually so fucking embarrassing. i took you to disney world. you took my virginity. i gave up visiting spain for a week with my family - i instead choose you, to spend the time just-cuddling. you called it "our fuck week." the music swells. it probably should have been a red flag that for about 3 years - i just gave up on crying. my grandfather died and you said nothing. my uncle died and you ghosted me for 3 weeks. you said i need to protect myself from your ongoing tragedy.
every so often i come back to the memory of one of our last afternoons in person. i had just told you that i wasn't going to law school, despite the free ride - i was going to join a creative writing program. master's in fine arts. i was going to finally do it - i was going to follow my dreams. this blog was already internet-famous. however reluctantly, i would occasionally refer to myself as a poet. i got into umass amherst's writing program for fiction authors. it is one of the the top 5 programs in the country.
wait are you seriously considering actually attending that? dumbfounded, you turned completely towards me in your seat. for the 3rd time in our relationship, you almost crashed the car. you actually want to be a writer?
the first time i went viral, it was for a poem i wrote about you:
he wants to say i love you
but keeps it to goodnight
because love will take some falling
and she's afraid of heights.
every time i see that, i want to throw up. you weren't in love with me, you were in love with the control you had over me. a little truth though: i am afraid of heights. you caught a rabbitgirl and skinned her alive.
mahler's fifth still makes me sick.
give me that back. give me back music. give me back everything i had before you. give me back fearlessness. give me back bravery. give me back a scarless body.
give me back what you took from me.
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