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4.6k · Jun 2015
Songs for Persephone
Lucy Ryan Jun 2015
i
girls with guard dogs at spike-heeled feet
lips to kiss fire, still semi-sweet

ii
dirt black coffee on a fine tipped tongue
and spiderwebs only half unspun

iii
dead roses in flowercrowns and tangled thorns
and white bedsheets, handcuffs, lingerie unworn

iv
tempest springtime to summer’s rest
and flowers of lovers laid on deathbeds
2.6k · Dec 2015
hello, new moon
Lucy Ryan Dec 2015
waking
newly human
strange and soft;
pinpricks, feelings -
the crawlings around inside you
shiver as your skin becomes real

a nightlight for daytime sleeplessness
carry the seas inside yourself
like people:
walking barefoot
drinking sunstreams
and braving the dark red nights

hark, choir voices, still
slurring miss you discrepancies
howls in empty skies
wolves die

a misunderstanding of your insides
bones
more sand than rock
crumble at a press too hard

on this,
last day of your first life
hung on a boy’s fingers
the edge of a cliff
taste the water in your nerve endings dragging you home
you splinter,
and you rise -

when the bruise blooms, you shine
2.4k · Nov 2015
...In A Red Dress
Lucy Ryan Nov 2015
Lips like bloodlines,
Carmilla kisses her mirror
and calls herself dangerous

Naming myself for dead things,
for ruinous things;
fire,
the ash that drank Pompei,
the ivy that made your walls cave,

Was Lady Macbeth sweeping her hair in braids
to nest her crown?
Or Nefertiti painted gold to reclaim God?

I’m asking for the lavender girls
See, we do these things to be holy
to be myths in our skin

Tying feathers to our shoulders
and glitter to our tongues,
thinking
I can be gold if I want to
I can be thorn-tipped ugly

In pink fur, black lace, we kiss the toes
of Courtney Love and Venus in one breath

Cut back
to my blood-laced lips on the mirror
as though saying Narcissus is my idol
my skin placed above heaven
and I wish to love myself so much
I’d choke for it
2.4k · Feb 2016
home
Lucy Ryan Feb 2016
my reflection, anatomical inaccuracy reads something like:

fairy dust in a silt layer, bones all shattered at the press of her fingers, and for months I molded a sandcastle around the soft

sinking, drinking ichor from a cocktail glass and dragging nails across my discomfort -

did you see that girl taking a tempest inside herself, to warp her sinew, spreading from this side of the universe to other?

in the lamplight I bit a secret onto the ridge of her spine; *sometimes I sleep near fires hoping my insides become glass
2.1k · Aug 2015
unstoppable
Lucy Ryan Aug 2015
be always wakeful
of the weakness of your bones

when you buy shoes
only wear one size too small
you will still feel the blisters
but your bones will reset

your shoulder should carry
no more than twice your bodyweight
so suffering is enough
and never crippling
1.9k · Jun 2015
Sleepovers
Lucy Ryan Jun 2015
wrap your arms
around her waist
her face
soft in sleep
white sheets
around you both
- like something brief
might change
1.4k · Dec 2015
like a matchbox, just bigger
Lucy Ryan Dec 2015
the first accident we **** a baby bird,
hardly a bump in the road
hardly anything,
a tiny body in ***** snow,
us, howling roadside prayers like coyotes to the moon

second, we bruise;
shining yellow cheeks blush under peach
and eyes bluer outside than in,
just the taste of skin, slightly sour
and one missing tooth

third, there’s a casualty
my casualty,
a long slick road and a wall
and a fatal breath, just my bones slipping
- down my throat
and blood flowing back up
laughing

a slight of hand trick
we pull away in the last moments of mysticism
broken and stunning...
...our fourth accident is a blinding light
and the fatalities were minimal
none of them ours
tw - suicide
just wondering - if i made a short chapbook would you guys be interested in downloading or even buying a physical copy (very cheaply, don't worry about that)? feel free to send me a message, lovelies
1.2k · Oct 2015
elocution lessons
Lucy Ryan Oct 2015
is it you – too?

the scratch of skin

blood under nails,

fighting the phantoms

and scratched back in couplets

through flesh onto bone

words inside, words out


is it you, love?

who has me choking on verse

spat with toothpaste and blood

tucked into an unwatched glass

and drunk

until birdsong flows
potential tw for non-consensual drug references that could be associated with date-****
1.1k · Aug 2015
for lux
Lucy Ryan Aug 2015
were you born drinking the sky
like the oceans split at your toes
when the gulls called morning?

with sleep-sunk eyes
trapped between fingers
to watch the moon bleed through

a starburst on your jawbone
cut from kissing lightning
and threading daisies through park swings

did you sleep on the soft sands
seaweed plaited through your hair
when the water called you home?

we raised you on thunderstorms
and you brought us summer rain
987 · Jan 2016
vices
Lucy Ryan Jan 2016
i

violent things trade off my discord
mistakes from either my gentle heart
or shattered bones

ii

birds take off from the mountain ledges
fragile and fearless
and i compare all my bruises
to falling or flight

iii

i cut my leg on the razor in the shower this morning
blood and water and steam;
good things come to people without feathers sticking from their spine
this is from my chapbook new youth which you can read for free here https://issuu.com/celestiologies/docs/newyouth
960 · Jul 2015
(marla)
Lucy Ryan Jul 2015
kiss me
(says he, maybe she)
cut up on the sharpness
of lips
and teeth

she is that thing -
about plastic flowers;
they never wilt on you
and stay young
and beautiful
as long as you care to see them

kiss me
like real people
do
when they touch
don’t quiver
or glimmer
just bruise like decayed fruit
and bleed as freely

and the flowers,
plastic flowers -
smelling just as sweet
with sprays of perfume
sweating
ugly juniper fragrance
dripping
down spines
like dew

**** me
she says, definitely she says
*******,
wide open eyes
to creep inside him
(or him, perhaps)
and she could
with her fingers
stop his breath
and she might
if the light
hits his eyes just right

burning flowers
smells worse when plastic
like explosives
like fat in a deep-fryer
crisping like
bodies in a burning house
- three bodies, two bodies, and a burning house

**** me
like a litany
**** me
like you promised me
**** me
in fields of plastic peonies
just
**** me*
and
you’ll love me
you’ll see
i re-read fight club and i have *feeeelings* sorry
788 · Oct 2015
divinity
Lucy Ryan Oct 2015
Praise my pillowcases and her shoulderblades

which carry my horrors so soundlessly


Press kisses to the mouths of ghosts that sing

and the lullabies I swallow like prozac


and bless you, angel, who told me I was Holy

and I told you I was *God
758 · Oct 2015
falling away
Lucy Ryan Oct 2015
these pieces / found in mud / beneath the water / where we stitched them / as feathers / on Michael’s spine / and ****** / kisses you / like God / could fear you

may dirt / on your jawbone / make you holy / and blood / on your mouth / make you thirst / and you / in moments / as glory

and we prayed / we prayed / we pray
679 · Jan 2018
something with claws
Lucy Ryan Jan 2018
she ripped a hole in her socks every day, maybe just to feel the thorns and let her legs bleed / that kind of lovelyblindingfrightening thing that you want to run your fingers through, tug on her hair just to feel the resistance / you ask her what it means to be a constructed girl and she says ‘convict yourself of ****** and you’re halfway there’ / in the dirt, tearing out flowers like a lonely god in the universe - she’s bruised, and soft and waiting
661 · Jul 2015
principality
Lucy Ryan Jul 2015
I will end my envy of angels
Bloodless feathers and empty joy
I hurt because my bones are sunk heavy in my skin
And I can still taste "happy" on my fire burnt mouth

... I will be crown prince in my empire of squalor
658 · Nov 2015
horizon pt ii
Lucy Ryan Nov 2015
pull the clouds //  up over us // covered in soft // in gold-laced kisses // so when the sky // cracks open // we smile // falling in
521 · Jan 2018
january
Lucy Ryan Jan 2018
I am finally starting to understand winter nights for what they are:
sterility of a black sky, inner warmth that never quite touches skin, shivering on the side of the road after tequila and laughter have laid waste to four AM and it is only the traffic lights left to reflect you.

Maybe that's why we listen to the downbeats of summer, the slow songs made for rooftops but more devastating in the pitch dark of seven PM on a main road somewhere in the city, all alone and au revoir and sepia memories of honey-warm light leaking through the kitchen we used to share.

internal warmth and windchimes outside sing hellfire for the passing storm.
514 · Jul 2015
knee-highs
Lucy Ryan Jul 2015
love that shadow
that dances over
your lips and bedroom walls
and your fingers
tangle with smoke
and mysteries
that he carves out
with killer’s hands
****** and almosts
setting alight
the fairybooks
and writing on your pages
needle-points in irises
blind in light
and brilliant in darkness
so you see
his brilliance
and resent yours

can’t stay,
run faster
- the wolves are catching
on the souls of your feet
and the mothers are crying
for the lovers
you leave
always leave
the bedclothes *****
and the faces blurry
singing Morrissey
blame humanity
for the hatred of everything you touch
and touches you
rainwater down a window
a shadow
still warm on your tongue
sweet boy
could be young
must be so much older

insubstantial you,
runaway i
*this
is
a
story
of
478 · Sep 2015
small
Lucy Ryan Sep 2015
city height, light,
never for your toothpick bones
- but still, a second skin for the sleepless
and your starless starry-eyes
405 · Aug 2015
evening
Lucy Ryan Aug 2015
fireflies -
alflame at dusk
we dead moths

— The End —