currrent prompt: write something based off of another piece of writing, art, music, etc! maybe an ode to or a commentary on it– whatever feels right.

Take this pink ribbon off my eyes [09/08/2024]

I’m just a girl, just a girl, just a girl,
you’ll never let me be anything else
I’m a smart woman
a strong woman
a strange woman
a woman,
a woman,
a woman,
you won’t let me be anything more,
anything less.

Let me out!
I scream and pray
and the sky says nothing back
God is not a woman
God does not care for my despair

A brave girl,
A kind girl,
An impossibly stubborn girl,
a girl, a girl, a girl,
You will keep me here forever

Turn me inside out
and see if my bones are glitter-free
See if I bleed as terribly as you
If I bite as wildly as you
If I pill out my guts out as coldly as you

A strange woman,
A wild woman,
An incorrigible, mess of a woman
It does not offend me.
Would a leash offend a dog?

My head is shaved
and my breasts are covered
and my love is neatly tucked in
Let me out
Let me out
Let me out!

I cry and ask nicely
and scream and claw and demand
They do not care
They are outside already
They look at me with disgust and pity
I spit lipstick at their feet

My beautiful cage shrinks all around me
It’s filled to the brim with diamonds and silk
And it smells like roses
As it suffocates me

Let me out
Let me out
Let me out
God is not a woman
God does not care
He will let me die here
I will die here
No matter what I do
No matter how much I cry
or scream
or beg
or try to chew my way out
through their pity and disgust.
I will die here.

thoughts about this week

Is this kind of depressing? Maybe! But I feel like sometimes understanding a terrible feeling and accepting it as it is is a good thing. It's also completely not in the right order because I just wrote this today, despite having seen the prompt when it was first in the Muse Ariadne site. I guess no piece of art was making me want to create then. But I kept listening to "Just a Girl" by No Doubt today and it... kind of hit. The idea that I will never escape this - that being a woman is being "other", and those huge things that Society expects and makes of me will never fade away. I will die a woman. And people will see me as that. Isn't it kind of fatal? Anyway. I'm not being very good at explaining myself right now. I'll see if I can write something for this week's actual prompt.

currrent prompt: explore how things break, branch, become fractals-- where does the importance in repetition or breaking away from it lie?

Sharp ends [24/07/2024]

My heart has broken twenty nine times and I beg you beg you beg you don't make it an even thirty. It has been broken by boyfriends and ex-friends and current friends and my brothers and father and mother. Maybe my heart is easy to break, so walk slowly, slowly around it, like you would around broken glass.

I have left twenty nine impossibly small shards of my heart behind as a gift to those who broke it. It's a simple, cruel duality, how the ones who break your heart get to keep its pieces. Please, please do not be selfish, do not try to take your share, even though you deserve it best, even though you would care for it better than anyone I have ever met.

I have broken my own heart eleven different times so I carry my own broken pieces like shiny shattered glass. If I move the wrong way they can still cut through me, some more deeply than others, right under my skin, right next to my stomach, some just tickle me if I walk a bit too fast. If you had a piece for yourself you would always be able to pierce me, too. At your word, I would bleed. Please please please don’t go looking for this power.

My heart has been broken and has broken on its own and has left itself behind and grew over the wounds and I can never leave all that has changed me behind. Don’t be jealous, don’t be jealous, you have my own heart, they only have some tiny shards, they can hurt me and bleed me and scar me but you can always heal me whole.

My heart has been broken because it has loved. And I love you most of all so you could break it like no one else. But please don’t, please don’t, please don’t. I beg and beg and beg you — it’s all I can do. You are the only one who can make this choice. I put it in your hands, my heart in your hands, its ragged edges and soft muscles beating at your will. Break it, care for it, cook it and eat it, whatever you wish, whatever you need.

And I’ll love you anyway. Maybe I shouldn’t say it. But I’ll love you anyway.

thoughts about this week

Once again idk if this is really about the prompt. I used some of the thought of breaking and branching but really nothing about repetition and breaking away from it. Or maybe just a tiny little bit. I haven't like my writings lately, but I hope if I keep writing I'll find something in it to enjoy.

currrent prompt: write about stones as keepers of stories and witnesses to history. what silent wisdom do things like stones have, with their enduring presence?

Silent, still, gentle [04/07/2024]

Silently, calmly, patiently, the pebbles wait to be thrown. Still, sternly, tenderly, the boulder asks to be sat on. Gently, whispering, clattering, the rocks yearn to be stepped on.

This sand was once stone, reduced to a million tiny grains, an echo of its past and all it has seen. Friends leaned on it as they watched the waves crash, telling secrets for their ears only (and the birds and the trees and the large, endless rocks), lovers laid on it under the sunset, whispering sweet nothings for their ears only (and the wind and the sea and the still, constant rocks). A lonely man sat on it and contemplated death (not yet, not yet, not yet, the rocks chanted back).

Now I bury my toes under the fragments of that history, and I feel under my bare feet a thousand stories kept and untold. Guarded by something that could never fade or tell. I ask the sand its secrets and I promise to keep it, and it talks back to me by swallowing my feet. It doesn’t break, it doesn’t budge, it doesn’t judge, and still it listens.

Put it in perspective: we are such fleeting creatures. We change and spin and move and play this humanity game and we feel mighty and marvelous — but oh, how beautiful would it be to be a boulder, watching such feeble life forms who think they are so grand, patiently, with the certainty of permanence, never demanding, never denying, a constant place to lean on, strong and solid and unflinching.

We think ourselves too important. But they are the ones who remain. While we blow away like dried up leaves, burn bright like ancient stars, they roll all the way down the mountain and start over, for another night, another week, another thousand years. And we get crushed under the weight of unstable tiny rocks.

How beautiful to be boulder, unbothered by what can’t be changed, unmoved by what doesn’t matter, swayed by the violent wind, but always ending up with a new place to call theirs, transforming itself unto sand under the comforting pressure of gentle waves.

How beautiful to live among them, to see them whispering, to hear them falling, to make our homes around them. To have witnesses to our feeble, fleeting, brilliant lives. To feel their moss under our fingers and their roughness under our toes. How calm, how tender, how gentle to share these rocks with everyone who lived before me — and everyone who will be here long after I’m gone.

These pebbles will be thrown a thousand years from now. This boulder was a bench a thousand years ago. These rocks have felt the feet of too many — I couldn't possibly count or know. They hold their memories like treasures. They speak to me if I can quiet myself down enough to listen and tell me of how the world spun long before me.

And when I die, they will carve my name in stone and bury me right under it, and I will find comfort in knowing I can never be alone — and the pebbles are still being thrown and rocks still roll down the hill and life will go on, and on, and on.

thoughts about this week

I kept thinking about thombstones and writings in stones and stuff like that, but in the end I couldn't exactly but anything into words. I guessed this ended up being more about history and being aware of time moving despite us and the feeling of being always with everyone that came before and will come, and how we're all human sharing a lot of same experiences, more similar than we usually, than about stones. But hey. At least I wrote something!

currrent prompt: think about the absence of something and how the shape it once filled & now leaves affects things. is it good? sad? bittersweet? write about it.

Empty spaces [04/07/2024]

There's the desk where you used to work
There's the chair where you used to sit
There's your place in the table where we used to share our meals.
But you're not here.

There's your side of the bed
There's your collection of DVDs
There's your paintings and the decoration that you chose so carefully.
But you're not here.

Your voice screaming at my mother
Your eyes chastising my brother
Your fingers poking my back and we laugh and laugh and laugh —
And you're not here.

Your snoring that keeps me awake
Your rules and demands that turn me wary
Your gentle teachings that make others think I'm oh so smart.
And you're not here.

My mother breathes easier.
My brother walks slower.
It's for the best,
It's for the best,
It's for the best.

I hear the silence of the lack of your heavy footsteps on our floor
I tiptoe around the you shaped hole in every wall
It's for the best,
It's for the best,
It's for the best

I say it like a prayer
To the you shaped hole that fills my house.
It stares me down
But says nothing back.
It's for the best.

thoughts about this week

Despite being a fairly simple poem, this was kind of hard to write. It's (obviously) about my father and the mixed feelings I had after my parents divorced and he left our house. Their relationship was really, really shitty, so I knew it was kind of inevitable and I think they are both better for it, but it's hard not to grieve the absence of something that was so constant in your life. And it's hard to come to terms with your parents being actual people, who can be good to some, bad to others, who have qualities and flaws. Whenever I try to put it in writing, I can't exactly pin the feeling down, and it always makes me feel somewhat like a kid. Which I guess I still am when it comes to my parents.

prompt: consider ‘trace elements’-- barely noticeable things and what they change. think butterfly effect! are their effects expected & small or disproportionate? is a ‘trace element’ an extra bit of DNA? is it some milk in a loaf of bread?

Unraveling [03/07/2024]

I have knitted this beautiful, intricate sweater. It has taken me twenty four years to get it to this size. It fits me perfectly — I have made it for someone who stands at one meter and fifty four centimeters, who weighs sixty-one kilograms, who wears shoes size six. It protects me from the cold and it hugs me like a mother. I knit more every day so I can never outgrow it.

My father holds a thread between his index and his thumb. I remember now: it was the only way I could start knitting my sweater. He held the thread firmly and I worked and worked and worked around it.

Something is shining in the distance. What is it? What is it? It seems to call my name. My father holds the thread between his index and his thumb. I start to walk, and my sweater unravels.

I stop. It's cold. I’m exposed. The sweater has unraveled just enough to show my soft stomach. I look back to where my father stands, so still he could be a statue. He smiles. I shiver.

But when I undo my steps, hopeful and afraid, the sweater doesn’t grow back around me. It is still destroyed. I go back to work.

I have knitted this beautiful, comfortable sweater. I made it the way my mother taught me, the way my father taught me, the way their parents taught them. I made it from the thread I found all around me.

It smells like coffee and cake, like the salt of the ocean, like trees and electrical wires fighting for space in front of my bedroom window. It sounds like the CDs I can’t remember by name, like children screaming and laughing, like an old library.

Something is shining in the distance. I can hear it, and it sounds like something I have never heard before. I need to touch it. But it looks so far. I can’t help but take a step toward it. My father holds the thread between his index and his thumb.

My sweater is unraveling all around me. It’s cold and terrifying and I feel the wind against my skin in a way I haven’t felt in years. I’m coming undone, trying to wrap my arms around myself, and I can’t stop walking toward something — I don’t even know what it is. I need to know what it is.

Every step I take, my sweater grows smaller, undoing itself, twenty four years of work lost behind me, and I’m naked and laid bare and my father smiles.

When my sweater is finally completely unraveled, nothing but used yarn, I grab the other end of the thread and clench my fist around it. I pull and find no resistance. My father no longer holds his end of the thread. When I look back, I can barely see him at all.

When I look forward, something is shining in the distance. It smells like paint and old wood and it sounds like something I have never heard before, but that I am beginning to recognize.

I keep walking.

thoughts about this week

I've written this weeks ago and never really finished it. I was listening to a Weezer song (I know lol) that I find really beautiful. It says "If you want to destroy my sweater / Hold this thread as I walk away (As I walk away) / Watch me unravel, I'll soon be naked / Lying on the floor, lying on the floor, I've come undone". I kept thinking about that and how we have to let go of comfort to grow, and how our parents give us a lot and hold us tight and we need to sometimes "fight" that grip to be able to become ourselves. Or something like that.

prompt: consider ‘trace elements’-- barely noticeable things and what they change. think butterfly effect! are their effects expected & small or disproportionate? is a ‘trace element’ an extra bit of DNA? is it some milk in a loaf of bread?

Absence [08/05/2024]

Something tiny.
Miniscule.
The lowest end of a bass line buried under the song.
That’s what you left in me.

Something big.
Groundbreaking.
Like how you can burn down the forest with a single match
If you light the right piece of grass.

I can feel it,
but I can’t claw it out.
It’s much too big
or much too small.

I see a trace of you wherever I go
Like a shadow or a ghost
Or an eyelash in my eye.
I try to claw it out and end up blind and bleeding

Something tiny.
Monumental.
Memories outside time and space
And passions I can't share with anyone else.
That’s what you left me with.

There’s a trace of you in my mirror.
I’m blessed, of course – I can still see you.
I’m cursed, I think – I can’t escape you.

A thousand or a million
Or ten tiny sparks
Adding up to us.
That’s what you left me with.
It made its way inside my skin,
It made its home inside my heart.
I can’t claw it out.
I can’t claw it out.
I end up dead and breathing.

thoughts about this week

Not sure if I have much to say. I wrote this fairly quickly, which I think is a bad habit – I'd benefit from more editing and pondering my writing instead of just spilling my guts and then changing some words. That's what I enjoy though, so I'm sticking with it for now, since it isn't professional work or anything like that. I don't love it, I actually rarely love my own poetry, but it's honest and what I have for this week.

prompt: write about or use asymmetry in your writing. what is the intrigue in imbalance? maybe work with different-sized stanzas or long, long sentences followed by short ones, or think about how no two bodies are the same, nor two halves of the same body, or how the feeling of a painting shifts with where the objects sit.

up/down [03/05/2024]

Higher and higher, your mother holds you up to see the artwork. As you get taller, the painting gets wider, stretches and shrinks and presents itself to you as something entirely new, and you applaud it when you see it for the first time. When you are a kid your mom looks like a skyscraper, and every painting looks different from down there.

The world shifts as you get older. The floor is further away, so you thought the sky would be closer. It isn’t. You can't understand why you even believed that in the first place.

But there used to be some perspective. When you look at everything from down, down, down below, huge hopeful eyes staring up, things get smaller as they get taller and you can’t make up the details but you imagine they are beautiful. Are they?

Now everything looks so flat, just like the author wanted it to be. The painting is hanging on the wall in front of you. A straight unending line from your eyebrows to the ink. Your eyes can follow the horizon until the sky vanishes, and you can’t see the details, but you imagine it’s just more of the same. It is.

When you are a kid your mom is a skyscraper, and when you are your mom you are just another pair of high heels trying to make no sound, reminding yourself to look straight ahead, chin up, eyes forward, always.

This is how the world was meant to be seen. This is how the men who built it saw it. You keep forgetting to ask: why did they make it flat? There are walls all around you. But that's unimportant. Chin up, eyes forward, keep walking straight ahead.

Your mom looks down from the artwork at you and the world bends all around your tiny floral dress and huge eyes and the floor looks different from up there, she only looks at it when she looks at you. Rain never comes from skyscrapers but you think maybe there’s a drizzle in your mother’s eyes but it’s all the way up there and she’s smiling and when you put it into perspective some rain is nothing compared to the vastness of the sun. You can always see it shining through the clouds, anyway.

So she holds you up for you to see the world as she sees it. You applaud it when the painting is laid flat in front of you for the first time. As it was meant to be. As it was made to be.

But there used to be some perspective.

thoughts about this week

I think if this was an essay I would get a big fat zero for not fullfiling the actual prompt. BUT. It is not an essay! So here it is. After reading the last part of the prompt, about the feeling of a painting shifting, I just couldn't stop thinking about this comic strip by Lynda Barry, and I had to write something about it, even if I ended up not really exploring what the comic strip is about (kind of?). What I wrote is just somewhere between the prompt, the comic strip and wherever my brain has been going this past month. I'll leave it here if you haven't seen it before. It changed my life fr