Ruth is not her name, it's a spell
a rustling in the throat before dawn
a hush stitched in maple-blood and peach whisper
say it slow: Ru-th
it drips, saccharine
like time molassesed in a Sunday afternoon
She tells me she’s not into things
no favourite colour, no band, no dream
but she is the thing
nostalgia caught her like static on film
she watches old light like it's scripture
and I, blasphemously devout, watch her
there’s a warmness in her, so I name it apricity
I read the word once and thought of her skin
the colour of fallen leaves that don’t rot
they just rest
her voice
if lullabies melted and reassembled as language
it bruises me sweetly like a secret I asked to be told
she says “I’m not an angel”
but that’s the trick, isn’t it
the one named Angel descended without falling
her hair weeps like willow vines
soft revolutions on her neck
her lips, pink punctuation
in my favourite sentence
azalea, cherry blossom
blush and bloom and ache
I live with her in my pupils
because the mind is too crude for safekeeping
if I stored her in thought
even shadows would steal her silhouette
are we friends, or echoes of a kiss never asked for
I write this like I’m folding my feelings
into origami cranes
hoping one will fly out of this letter
and perch on her shoulder
I’ll never tell her. Or maybe I just did
Ruth. Angel. glitch in my platonic code
you are not a memory
you are the pause in everything before it becomes one
by Juvell Atherley
Feb 4
Feb 4, 2026 at 9:26 AM UTC
He walks streets that promise everything tomorrow, but deliver only the weight of waiting,
his hands untested in the world, yet taught to perform as if they were skilled,
his eyes wide with hunger for roads no one else has mapped,
his mind crammed with lessons built for a future already fading
before he has learnt how to hold it,
And still he keeps moving, as if motion alone might carve direction from the air.
Everywhere, he measures trust like currency,
observing who rises and who is left behind,
who bends without breaking, and who bends enough to be broken,
how laughter must be rationed, ideals bartered, dignity leased to those
whose hands lift only those willing to kneel,
how survival tastes like hollow victory, when every edge has already been claimed.
He does things no one has done before,
but the world rewards only attendance, not ingenuity,
only persistence, not the sparks that make him burn,
and he feels the slow erosion of himself,
the compromise of every impulse that once named him,
the quiet duplication of the fakeness he once scorned,
a reflection he does not recognise, yet cannot escape.
He counts the fractures in every promise,
learning which words build and which devour,
how attention is selective, kindness conditional, cruelty absolute,
and how every moment spent giving himself is a debt repaid in absence.
He wishes for absence, isolation,
a world in which he need not perform, bow, or surrender,
but existence presses him forward, relentless.
His energy bled into spaces that demand he be useful,
his hope compressed into glimpses between duties and demands,
and still he dreams, despite knowing the roads may not exist,
that some edge..his edge, might yet survive the making of him.
Feb 4
Feb 4, 2026 at 9:23 AM UTC
Ruth is not her name, it's a spell
a rustling in the throat before dawn
a hush stitched in maple-blood and peach whisper
say it slow: Ru-th
it drips, saccharine
like time molassesed in a Sunday afternoon
She tells me she’s not into things
no favourite colour, no band, no dream
but she is the thing
nostalgia caught her like static on film
she watches old light like it's scripture
and I, blasphemously devout, watch her
there’s a warmness in her, so I name it apricity
I read the word once and thought of her skin
the colour of fallen leaves that don’t rot
they just rest
her voice
if lullabies melted and reassembled as language
it bruises me sweetly like a secret I asked to be told
she says “I’m not an angel”
but that’s the trick, isn’t it
the one named Angel descended without falling
her hair weeps like willow vines
soft revolutions on her neck
her lips, pink punctuation
in my favourite sentence
azalea, cherry blossom
blush and bloom and ache
I live with her in my pupils
because the mind is too crude for safekeeping
if I stored her in thought
even shadows would steal her silhouette
are we friends, or echoes of a kiss never asked for
I write this like I’m folding my feelings
into origami cranes
hoping one will fly out of this letter
and perch on her shoulder
I’ll never tell her. Or maybe I just did
Ruth. Angel. glitch in my platonic code
you are not a memory
you are the pause in everything before it becomes one
May 4, 2025
May 4, 2025 at 5:51 PM UTC