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iron

i. the polaroid of the angel statue, her stone face rotted away. what happens when even the immortal rock sickens, the untouchable collapsing beneath the gentle lips of time? of course we had known, but only in the vaguest of senses, like an evening fog that bears the first chill of winter on a creeping hand. our hearts were pits of ashes. not enough material left inside to spark a fire, much less feed its ravening hunger for more than a few charred days. how to cut the weights chained to our ankles with only our hands—fingernails and teeth. the liminality of public transport; how the planes and trains became a white room, indistingui

All

284 deviations

Literature

iron

Featured

279 deviations

NaPoWriMo 2014

29 deviations

Literature

blackest

turning to ashes, everything we touch, this is a toxic city. & i still love you i still love you i still love you. i kiss your fingers in my sleep. i kiss the inside of your wrists, your elbows, your collarbones, all your bones. you whisper 'we are unholy, awful people' into my spine & i know you're right, you're always right. you hit an ashtray with your arm & scatter the ashes all over the sheets. neither of us clean them up. the ashes coat our skin & get stuck in our hair. we sleep in the ashes like we can carry them as parts of each other; somewhere, but not here. not here with the curtains closed & the shadows that s

truth vs poetry

15 deviations

Literature

air

it was always you, i just couldn't see it. i lost you but you never lost me; you thought you did. i am iron at your side and in your side. how could i ever leave? you are the only thing that could possibly matter. i could hold on to you until i don't exist anymore but i am so careful, i will be so damn careful, to only remember the dreams of you in private, just know the others were not unimportant but next to you they might as well not have happened at all.

NaPoWriMo 2013

30 deviations

Literature

1: an introduction of sorts

The thing was that my mother continued to insist that the ceilings in our house were low, thereby ignoring the obvious, which was that her son was a giraffe. It wasn't the fact that she was trying to kill me with kindness that bothered me, it was that she was pretending to not see what was right in front of her eyes. In fact, my entire family (which consisted of my parents and the stray cousin or aunt that sometimes dropped in unexpectedly from obscure places such as Majorca) had a way of glossing over the fact that I towered above them like an obscenely tall office building. They'd crane their necks back and squint up at me and say, "Why, T

Anesthesia Lessons

13 deviations

Literature

edinburgh

dragging your feet out the back door with a hunk of kryptonite tied around your ankle; that clowder never brought you down much cat-scratches across your arms when you were a boy, your parents told stories in their easy scottish dialect; they placed a kitten in your lap-- you looked into its bluemoon eyes and imagined it was dreaming about ruling the world. someday, they told you, you'll meet someone and it will be a moment that will change your life forever; that was when their charming discourse turned harsh and ragged-- just like your aunt kathy, whose clothes were always stained with nicotine-- forever was like breathing to

Na-Po-Wri-Mo 2012

23 deviations

Literature

to mute your glory

you remember these hallowed halls being the fruits of your black-eyed nightmares your bare feet sliding over malachite marbles and it hurt, didn't it? you used to cry out in your sleep you forgot after a while, and the ram-horned men became ram-horned girls, sliding about in gauze-thin dresses through the hollow doors of sin and you left stranded at the center of the waterfall a bit of queen anne's lace clutched in your palm as you passed under the arches someone whispered "a good man doesn't drink" into your ear and you laughed as you ascended to the pulpit shoeless, jeans ripped, with some leftover glitter beneath your eyes y

Devious Folder

3 deviations

Literature

union st. clare

there were too many people at the show for the size of the venue it was in and i didn't know most of them, but they weren't important so it didn't matter how can i explain it when you walked into the room i think everyone could tell anyway because fuck me if i didn't prop myself against that thin plaster wall and try to look like i wasn't not not expecting it or like it didn't matter to me either way everything was loud, and the freshmen were playing 80's hair metal covers but it didn't even matter because i was looking at you and you were looking at me but not at the same times and i'm not a fan of change, but i fell for the you that you a

Scraps

13 deviations

iron by ssleep, literature

Literature

iron

lost without by ssleep, literature

Literature

lost without

crow hands on my back like a dream you materialize in front of me so illusive; the wavering silhouette cast onto the brick wall by the setting sun. golden hour etched into your skin. sadness takes different forms. the black raindrops race down your cheeks forlorn—tattooed deep down and wrapped in violent fascinations. so vague—sewn weakly together, decaying lips pressed close and crumbling.

unsaid by ssleep, literature

Literature

unsaid

so quiet was the space where we hovered, inches apart, silently wondering when to touch. as always, the ropes around my wrists, waist, throat, pulling me back into the cold void to starve alone, as always, the words reaching my ears but never my heart. at first, i did not take the thickening air seriously; i determined that it was not a part of me, that the reach was singular, one-sided. you would see whatever you needed to; whether or not it was true was irrelevant. i, dislocated, somewhere other than with you. i, clinging to my ego like it was a dark rock jutting out of a churning ocean. i looked until i could no longer see you. your eye

double paisley nightmare by ssleep, literature

horsepoems by ssleep, literature

Literature

horsepoems

i. desolation raped the vine. blackest ink pouring through astonished fingers—the wound a crack in the crown. it is not known if the damage is repairable. seal it with fool’s gold for now and carry on as if all has gone according to the divine plan. ii. if wanting you was sin let me confess it now and be absolved. if i was not mistaken to be wary, i am wary now. it was not your time or place to speak of love. love is not love when it has been corrupted by fear. even a single impurity renders the data moot. from this, i have only learned to be more careful when trying to walk in god’s footsteps.

and so but like by ssleep, literature

Literature

and so but like

in the time of the most extreme oceans my stomach is very thin, almost sack-like. time is like a river, river-like. but, also, our lifelines become rivers and start winding. in the times of the most extreme skyscrapers your hands are very thin, almost nonexistent. time is very frightening to think about but, so are your hands. but, also, the snow falls very heavily and we collapse, like rivers. in the time of the most extreme trains the evenings are very long, almost endless. muscles are knot-rope strong: the blood, of course, slips around above. but, also, the skin splits apart and falls aside, like rivers. in the time of the most extreme

runic cross 1 by ssleep, literature

something something 'a map of your body' by ssleep, literature

Literature

something something 'a map of your body'

yours and mine, and yours should be with mine, whether it be slightly intoxicated, the heat of your hands, or fully awake seeking skin, and skin, and skin. that mouth, a gateway to someplace i didn't know i wanted to be. something like the sound of my watch ticking in my ear when i have your lip in my teeth and my hands in your hair pulling your head back to find your pulse with my breath and i feel less alone because you feel it, too. it's hard for me, for once, to put it in concrete terms, perhaps because it is so tangible, so i hope i don't have to say anything, and your body in my bed can be the words; but sweetheart, when i said

falling for you by ssleep, literature

why i'm scared by ssleep, literature

Literature

why i'm scared

because i don’t want to close my eyes when i kiss you; like i am afraid of falling asleep or letting even one precious moment slip by me. because i bought a train ticket, and boarded on the wrong line, but arrived at the right place all the same, and it was easy to tell you that same metaphor. because i made the right choice when i was too drunk to see beyond my immediate physical craving, and i slept even better sober in your bed. because yearning is not passion. because desire doesn’t have to be overwhelming. because beauty can creep up on you softly. because you walked away from me as soon as you learned my name, but when

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