aarick

i’m home and it’s summer. i’m home and it’s summer and my teeth have never hurt more in my entire life. i’m home and it’s summer and i’m staring out the windows wondering if i will ever make it out alive. i’m home and it’s summer and god knows there is something about love that makes it even sharper than a knife. i’m home and it’s summer and i can feel the yearning burn in my veins. i’m home and it’s summer and i no longer know how to traverse my hometown’s lanes. i’m home and it’s summer and sleeping through warm nights feels nothing short of a sin. i’m home and it’s summer and i can feel a faint, comforting touch from eons ago, just under the surface of my skin. i’m home and i don’t remember what summer feels like. the months say it’s summer while i scream, “will i ever be home?”. but you can’t hear a sound, not even when i pick up the phone.

// wtf is this

we’ve been blessed today

// ways in which i am a horrible person //, inspired by cassandra de alba’s poem of the same name

i. you are trying to unwrap the caution tape i’ve tangled myself in and i can only hear sirens in my head. i’ve never wanted anyone to stay more than now but i’d rather let you go than hurt you over and over.

ii. i stay in places that will kill me and run from those that have given me life. as i aimlessly walk around town, i see MISSING posters of a girl who looks a lot like me when i was young, but this time, you can barely see the rage in her eyes. 

iii. hatred comes easily to me, and i swear if you look close enough, you can see the poison dripping from my fingertips. i stopped recognizing my reflection one night and i haven’t looked in the mirror ever since.

@thelastwordsofashootingstarr is so good at mind reading it’s concerning

// (s)mother //

there’s so much to be said about daughters who have mothers and mothers who have daughters. from swing sets to graves and bedtime fairytales to daytime nightmares, all the blood shed in between, you are home and the ghosts that haunt it. i want to hear the love through the violence, the comfort shining through the dark, but each time you step close to me, i picture you and i, miles apart.

so tonight, i’ve locked myself in the bathroom, staring at a reflection in the mirror that looks more like my worst fears than it does like me. it reaches a hand out of the frame, caressing my hair with a gentleness i haven’t felt in years, “darling, i know you’d stay here even if it killed you. sometimes, i think that’s exactly why you do.”

so go ahead mother, twist the kitchen knife. there’s only so long you can love someone until it kills you. 

everything she posts becomes my new favourite thing

// dead flowers //

i met persephone in a dream last night. i followed her across sunlit flowerbeds into darker tunnels, until i was no longer her shadow that could be seen. the soft murmur of petals metamorphosized into the ghostly whispers from crypts repeating over and over, "there goes persephone, there goes our mighty queen."

my footsteps got louder as the goddess of spring turned around, flowers falling at her feet as she held her hands out before me. after all, they do say "surrender is common nature to a damsel", and one question rings through my head, "is the mud under your fingernails from all these graves or the garden, who do you really belong to, the living or the dead?

// this one's been lying in my drafts for a while now and can't say i didn't try

What a beautiful day to visit the Senate... what a shame it would be if anyone stabbed the Dictator, right Caesar?

Em..... Caesar?!?!

/my mind is a like a broken record player and i can’t change the song anymore/

here’s what they don’t tell you about nostalgia, here’s what they don’t tell you about the feeling you miss every time you look at an old polaroid. that your memories will seep into your lives like ivy growing through a brick wall, even the troubled ones your younger self wanted to avoid. and now we dream about metamorphosis, we dream about rewriting history, we dream about everything we promised each other and ourselves we would be.

so ‘vienna’ plays in the background and a closet full of history falls apart at my feet. there is something so powerful about the love we hold for those we survived the darkness and embraced the light with, can’t you see? flowers pressed between books, sleepless nights set to the playlist my best friend made, the road trip down unexplored ways, and all the summers we spent together too.

i clean up the mess as billy joel asks “when will you realize, vienna waits for you?” and the music comes to an end. but the most wonderful thing about this broken record player is i get to relive my favorite song over and over again.

// something i wrote for a university event but got to nervous to perform- my best friend is reciting it for me on stage now and i think it really is all about the friends we make along the way and just living for love, love and little beyond.

nostalgia indeed kills

warning signs, flashing lights, bricks covered in rotting vines. i know i could survive the worst of endings if i saw them through your eyes. but here i am, on the outside, looking past the tall gates into a kingdom that was once mine. autumn evenings have never looked darker, now i'm sitting amongst falling leaves from the trees we planted together.

"you're not my homeland anymore, so what i am defending now?", asks the voice in my head and i'm trying to shut it out but all our memories replay instead- the hazy forest we called home, the devotion i felt through my bones, the blood on your knuckles, the castle we built from all the rubble, all the times i found a town i never wanted to run from in your eyes, all the nights i no longer felt like i was in my own disguise.

this was a love that could've brought the mightiest empires to their knees. at least we'll leave our legacy behind in these sycamore trees. i never thought i'd have to see this film again, i hope you know i'd give up my crown just so we could rewrite the end.

// inspired by taylor swift’s masterpiece, ‘exile’; folklore is SO GOOD i wanna write something based on every song from the album

this is simply iconic im so obsessed

bitches hate me for my earnest whimsy and my pathological degree of avoidant behavior

I respect the moon's unwillingness to be photographed on a phone

i can’t write anymore. i can’t hold a pen and not think of a knife anymore. these days, you’ll find me whispering to myself every night. “sometimes a wound is just a wound”. sometimes, it’s enough to just make it out to the daylight.

and there’s only so many words i can write before the ink starts looking like blood. there’s only so much i can say before the teeth i’ve swallowed start to hurt. there’s only so many summers i can go without drowning in an invisible flood.

haven’t you heard all of it? i think you’re sick of the same story by now. how this grief is a family heirloom. how only the worthy are loved. how i spill my guts every time i’m alone in a room. how girls with white dresses stain the surface beneath their skin with mud. how i’d rather be haunted than be lonely.

but how can i stop writing when this wound is no longer a wound, but a million stories woven together? and how can i stop writing when i know you’d always listen to the same story a million times, as long as i told it?

// title ideas needed!

a lil self- motivation in honour of the terrible writing slump i’m in

oh the way i’ve missed this and i’m already at a loss of words

I read. Obsessively. Because, when I read, there is purpose to my loneliness.

it’s starting to get colder now. my hands are more numb than usual. the days pass like a fever dream. the nights are sharp like the kitchen knife i can’t sleep without. one thought beating itself against the inside of my head. like a constant ache. like the lonely voice in a haunted house. have you realized? there is something holy about wanting what you can’t have. this is how it always goes. i want i want i want i want i want. i wish there was a way of telling you what. so i hold this thing that hurts to speak of like a rock in my hands and slip it into my pocket. i must walk into a river. i must let this longing weigh me down. there is water seeping into my lungs. i must let this longing drown me. your voice plays over and over in my mind. even underwater. even as i let the river swallow the emptiness inside of me. i want to ask you to stick around until it’s finally summer. look at the sunlight breaking in through treetops. listen to laughter that doesn’t sound like shattered glass. let me show you even the broken will bleed themselves dry to be loved.

// aaaaaaa brain dump for y’all

i literally have chills (and not because of the cold)

“you’re on your own kid, you always have been” i know.