they say history is written by the victors,
but the conquered are the ones romanticized.

i want to be remembered.
i want our love to sing through the ages
echoed louder than any battle, any war.

i want our enemies’ grandchildren
to liken themselves to our passion,
our desire, our madness.
i want to be the next scarlet letter
and i will waste away in moonlight
if someone remembers me for it.

if history is written by the victors
then i don’t want to win.

one.* the worst thing about madness is that you know it until you embody it.

two. losing people is the hardest part, but it's also the simplest. isn't it easy to let go? never mind that grabbing hold once more is  nigh impossible, especially for people like you. (the people who wrest the night from the moon and spend hours laughing at the stars that dare to burn.)

three. graveyards are strange. who says the dead want to be remembered? you know they don't. when you die, just another body among many, you want to be forgotten, passed over, destroyed with the acid of time.

four. logic is a cage. you break down the bars with the sword from the stone and watch as they cower. they should.

five. it doesn't matter how much armor you wear when your eye is uncovered. you make sure that your own armor is up. words, wrapping your chest, your hands, and your eyes are the most dangerous part of you, because you can see what they won't. the dragon dies.

six. you laugh and drag him down with you, drowning the prince under the willow tree. he was foolish - to think you'd need saving, as if anything here could be more dangerous than a girl with blood on her hands and screams in her head and insanity in her bones. as if a dragon had any chance against you and everything you've seen, everything you've *done.

seven. you hope they will forget you. memories can be let go - don't you know this all too well? there was never a before the madness, only an after.

eight. you die too. you don't hear them any more.

poets are the people with the words in their veins
worlds in their minds beating against the curves of their skull
syllables in their palmprints

poets are the people who look at you and see
the galaxies underneath your skin
instead of the spiderweb cracks
on the surface

poets are the people who fall easy and live hard
(you've always been jealous of them
and you're not sure why)

(maybe it's got something to do with
the wisdom you know they know
and the seventeen ways
they know how to live)

i am not a poet
i'm just trying
to figure out
who might be

people forget
that in order to rise
you had first to fall

trigger warning: themes of ****/noncon.






sunlight tilting through chlorophyll
unseen water smoothing stone
and i think that if i stand here long enough -

the tears on my cheeks might
flow into the river and go out to sea

the impartial sun might
burn away all the handprints
you left on my unwilling skin

do you want to be invincible?

i want to turn my skin to diamond
so the only thing that can hurt me
is myself.

i want to become adamantium
so i can walk through the fire
and pull you out.

i want to be bulletproof,
laugh at those who would challenge me
with weapons.

but at the same time -
i want to be as fragile as a flower
so i can be touched by the sun.

i want to bend with you
instead of standing, unflinching,
in the face of love.

i want to feel pain and sorrow and heartbreak
because then i'll remember how we laughed
and push the rest from my mind.

do you want to be invincible?
*why don't you ask achilles?

once upon a time*
and we all know how this story goes:
there's a princess in a tower
waiting for true love to find her.
don't lie: you wanted to be royalty
back before reality set in.
you outgrew it.

i never did.
i've always loved fairytales
but i never wanted to be the hero.
i'm no damsel in distress.
me? i wanted to be the dragon.

i wanted to plunder and pillage,
to put myself first,
to take instead of give.

i wanted to kidnap the princess
and feel the rush of power
that comes from leaving
a kingdom in fear.

i wanted to live for myself.
i wanted to not care when
someone told me to do better,
when people called me failure.

i wanted to burn people with my fire
like i wished i could with words.

i wanted to be legendary,
divine,
better
than
before.

i wanted to be the dragon
because the dragon always dies.

this is a love story told in metaphors,
because words can’t say how gravity
pulls on planets and suns and stars,
but they’ll be gone before they touch.

this is a love story told in metaphors.
giving voice to drowning in an ocean
of red will never be possible – despite
our myths of old, we’re only human.

this is a love story told in metaphors:
we are of fire and ice, forever apart;
of twilight, when night and day strain
for each other but always fall short;
of science, faith, and all in between;
of concepts of “peace” and “human”;
of two things that shall never coexist.

this is a love story told in metaphors
because i do not know why i am still
reaching for you when we’ll always be
stopped by something greater than us.

we are a love story told in metaphors.
outside of words, our souls will surely
explode.

i wear nothing but my words
somehow, they hide me from you
better than any mask
i've had before

maybe you are afraid
to look beneath

it always hits trees before the ground:
sunlight, rain, snowfall, moonlight.

last night i forgot myself;
told you that sun burns but doesn't warm,
rain wipes memories and leaves amnesia,
snow muffles what rain doesn't drown,
and moonlight does what the sun couldn't:
scorches skin to ashes.

last night i forgot myself;
told you how i was meant for the stars,
not the planet beneath.

last night i forgot myself
but you offered to be the trees
if i would be your earth.

i've spent 6 months
observing you with her.
i've come to this conclusion:
yeah, you talk nice,
painting pictures in the air,
but you are just that -
air.

you are just that -
insubstantial.

maybe i don't tell you how scared i am of hurting. maybe i want you to know anyways. maybe i keep quiet even though my mind screams wild like the summer sun. maybe i wish that someone knew me well enough to know when my mind burns, and that you never throw water on a grease fire unless you want me to explode.

you are 17 and still breathing.

you know there are people who have galaxies in their hearts, stars in their hair, and moons in their eyes. you're not one of them. you're not one of them and that's okay.

you? you know where the true secrets lie.

they do not reside in universes humans will never know, in stars light-years away. no, true secrets can be found only in what we think we know. we have never seen many of the stars. we have all seen birds' nests and clouds in an otherwise clear sky. we have all seen someone cry and someone laugh and someone breathe.

we have all seen two people look at each other like the person in front of them is the only thing in the universe. we have movies and books and songs and stories all about love. but we have never known it. we have never understood it.

you tell me i don't know what the secret is? i tell you, of course i don't. you don't either. that's why it's a secret. that's why it will never be solved.

people compare depression to
not being able to get out of bed

for me it's always been more like
getting up and not knowing
what to do
next

my body's an atomic wasteland
after the explosion that was you
my heart's just a geiger counter
counting the years since we blew