Bianca Stone, From What Is Otherwise Infinite: Poems; “God Searches For God”

I sit here and put words on a paper that I otherwise do not dare to say. I don’t know who to talk to. When I mention what I think about I get told that it’s only because things are just not going my way right now. Funny. I suppose things haven’t been going my way last year either. Or the year before that. Or the year before. I don’t remember not feeling like this. These words, there the same. For years now. I’m writing them down because I’m unable to say them to anyone.

I’ve reached out for help before. Got weird looks from people when I told them that I need to talk to someone. Got told that they wouldn’t be able to help me because I just needed to get over this. Everyone feels like this once in a while.

I went there once. Got told I felt like this because I’m not taking control over my life. The situation was uncomfortable. I didn’t go a second time. They asked for feedback afterwards. What was I supposed to say? Thanks for not listening, I still don’t know how to not hate myself. How to not cry. How to make my chest stop hurting. How to stop feeling like I’m drowning.

Now the thought of talking to someone is even scarier. I don’t like to talk to people anyway. What if I take all my courage and ask for help again, only to be told it’s my own fault? I know it’s my fault. I tell myself that every day. I don’t need another person telling me the same.

Birth

I have my mother's rage.

The quiet rage, the unassuming one,

the rage which grips onto every molecule of your body,

until it claws and licks at your whitened bones.

The rage which sinks its sharp canines in you

which savours the taste of blood,

it craves it.

It lures your loved ones in carefully, it invites them into its stenching residence.

Sets out a nice cup of tea, or perhaps, the good tablecloth.

And when they think it's gone, the rage twists their necks,

and laps up the blood with its serpent tongue.

I have my father's indifference.

I sit and watch as it happens, smiling, as I watch and watch my house burn.

- e.u.

🙌 mandatory happy ending 🙌

My heart, it soars

Spending not a single day chained to the earth no longer

While my body, it rots

Beneath the daisy field

“Real tears are not those that fall from the eyes and cover the face, but those that fall from the heart and cover the soul.”

— Unknown

“I never change, I simply become more myself.”

— Joyce Carol Oates

Louise Glück, from ""Averno", Averno

“One day she remembered that it wasn’t her job to make everyone happy.”

— Robin Lee