asoftepiloguemylove

"I was born homesick in my own body does it // ever // get better?"ALT
Film still from "Tetsuo: The Iron Man." A man's body has slowly been taken over by various pieces of metal and machinery, leaving only the bottom half of his face exposed. The picture is entirely in black and white.ALT
"See that young man who dwells inside / His body like an uninvited guest"ALT
"All this talk about haunted spaces / But it's the body / That's haunted"ALT
"Past a certain point, you stop being able to go home. At this point, when you have got this far from where you were from, the thread snaps. The narrative breaks. And you are forced, pastless, motherless, selfless, to invent yourself anew."ALT
"You're losing in a staring contest / With whatever's in the mirror / You are me and I am you / But we're not one and I'm inferior"ALT
Game still from "Silent Hill 3." A young girl stands in a dirty public bathroom, staring at her reflection in the middle mirror. Her reflection shows a repeated view of her back and the bathroom stalls behind her but not her face. Her face is not visible. The caption reads: "And the person staring at me isn't really me, just an imitator."ALT
"Two brothers are fighting by the side of the road. Two motorbikes have fallen over on the shoulder, leaking oil into the dirt, while the interlocking brothers grapple and swing. You see them through the backseat window as you and your parents drive past. You are twelve years old. You do not have a brother. You have never experienced anything this intentional with another person."ALT
"There's a ghost in the house. / But, / I've learned that the house is me. / And the ghost is also me."ALT
"'Sometimes, my body feels like a burial ground for all the people I should have become.'"ALT
Manga panel from "Sleeping on Paper Boats." A young man stands alone, staring up at the starry night sky. He has short, straight black hair that is disheveled by the wind. He wears a jacket.ALT
"'This year I have disappeared. Or I was never there. Or I was never here.'"ALT

DO I EXIST?

Jody Chan aubade for the BPD subreddit user who wrote can people with BPD love? // 鉄男 Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) dir. Shinya Tsukamoto // The Mountain Goats Birth of Serpents // Dorothea Lasky Love Poems for Bathsheba // Zen Cho The Four Generations of Chang E // atlas a conversation about identity // Silent Hill 3 (2003) cr. Konami // Richard Siken You Are Jeff // unknown // Roe Gardner Requiem // Teki Yatsuda Sleeping on Paper Boats // Jane Mead World of Made and Unmade

#not mine#man i forget all of my tags.#q#words + quotes#i just read sleeping on paper boats....
ink-flavored

i caught a glimpse of someone
in the mirror today
waiting for my t-gel to dry

shirtless and smooth
with a thin rope necklace
a single butterfly ring as a charm
hair bleached on one side of its freshly cut shape
breasts bound to the chest with skin-colored tape
old sweatpants with ancient elastic, sagging at the hips,
letting the boxers sneak out a notch
that had a stuffed pouch in the crotch

yes, this person is almost myself
a wo/man i almost recognize
despite his imperfections, i took a picture of her
because i know how quickly time flies

                                       – mirror mirror

Poetry Taglist: @elegant-paper-collection​ @polyphonetic @qelizhus @livums @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils  @thelaughingstag @ceph-the-ghost-writer @auntdarth @srjacksin @alesseia @maxdamaz

#not mine#q
letterful

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i do love listmaking…

letterful

here be two decidedly incomprehensive lists based on highly arbitrary criteria — off the top of my head and in no particular order:

rattling like a bag of bones:

resonating like a bright bell:

#not mine#poetry
ariaste

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YIELD UNDER GREAT PERSUASION comes out on September 17th! It's a cozy M/M romantasy about second chances, the difficult journey to self-forgiveness, and a one-sided enemies-to-lovers situationship 👀 It's available from most book retailers in hardback, paperback, and ebook (with more retailers coming soon) -- links to most of the common ones right here. The cover art is by the amazing @holographings, check out more of his work!

SUMMARY:
Tam Becket has hated Lord Lyford since they were boys. The fact that he’s also been sleeping with the man for the last ten years is irrelevant.

When they were both nine years old, Lyford smashed Tam’s entry into the village’s vegetable competition. Nearly twenty years later, Tam hasn’t forgiven him. No one understands how deeply he was hurt that day, how it set a pattern of disappointments and small misfortunes that would run through the rest of his life. Now Tam has reconciled himself to the fact that love and affection are for other people, that the gods don’t care and won’t answer any of his prayers (not even the one about afflicting Lyford with a case of flesh-eating spiders to chew off his privates), and that life is inherently mundane, joyless, and drab.

And then, the very last straw: Tam discovers that Lyford (of all people!) bears the divine favor of Angarat, the goddess Tam feels most betrayed and abandoned by. In his hurt and anger, Tam packs up and prepares to leave the village for good.

But the journey doesn’t take him far, and Tam soon finds himself set on a quest for the most difficult of all possible prizes: Self care, forgiveness, a second chance... and somehow the unbelievably precious knowledge that there is at least one person who loves Tam for exactly who he is—and always has.

This book might be for you if:

  • You like enemies-to-lovers but you think it would be improved by being one-sided and meanwhile the other person is living through a “hopelessly yearning for childhood crush” trope
  • you like it when two people are so, so, so stupid that they’ve been fucking for 10 years and Person A hasn’t figured out that Person B is in love with him, and Person B hasn’t realized that Person A doesn’t even know about his feelings
  • You know how fucking hard it is to Do The Work In Therapy and you want some catharsis about it
  • you want to read about an imperfect, truly difficult person who still gets loved, because being perfect is not a requirement to deserve affection and care
  • you know that apologizing for wronging someone doesn’t just magically take away the bad feelings and automatically repair the relationship, and you want to read about someone having to do the extra steps that come after the apology
  • this one’s for the wlw: fat harvest goddess milf. my gift to u
  • you like gods who don’t have anything better to do than stick their noses into human business
  • when you see a gorgeous man holding an infant, it takes you out at the knees
  • you like queernorm fantasy AND small-town gossip, and you find the intersection of the two delicious and intriguing
  • a religion based on pre-Christian Brythonic England. That is, they’ve got henges and standing stones instead of churches and altars. it’s cool
  • plant magic!!!!!
  • “god of temptation and evil” actually “god of self-care and personal boundaries and taking responsibility for the consequences you consented to”.

"Alongside the sexiness and absurdity (and the sexy absurdity) in Yield Under Great Persuasion is a tender, resonant story of second and third chances and being loved when we need it most and feel we deserve it least. Evocative, emotional, and endlessly entertaining."
—Jules Arbeaux, author of Lord of the Empty Isles

Preorder links for most retailers are here! If you live in the US and you'd like to order a paper copy from the retailer that benefits me most (thank you!), that retailer is Allstora.

(Signal boosts are always greatly appreciated, thank you in advance!)

ariaste

Comes out the day after tomorrow!!!

#not mine#q
ink-flavored

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Magnet Monday Week 53: Sinister

i may have gone ape shit ham on this prompt

If you’re interested in being able to choose the topic of the next poem, make sure to vote in the weekly Magnet Monday polls! Or if you want a commission just like it, check out my pricing sheet!

Transcript under the cut!

[Ko-Fi] [Magnet Monday]

Magnet Monday Taglist (Check out my Google form to get added): @elegant-paper-collection ​ @polyphonetic @qelizhus @livums @maxdamaz @auroblaze @stardustanddaffodils @thelaughingstag @ceph-the-ghost-writer @auntdarth @damageinkorporated @srjacksin @alesseia

Keep reading

#not mine
dallonwrites

Beau remembers a weekend in November – though not the specific date, just the quietly growing chill – when he and Bobby got up early to hike for the first time since Summer. They had mostly wandered with no real direction or plan, just to be amongst the daylight, the eucalyptus trees. But they had, slowly, made it to the summit, and though the hike was not long they’d forgotten it was a steep one which made Beau – it had been his idea to keep going, when he noticed they were near the top – carry, for the rest of way up, an unexpected shame. Though Bobby said nothing it became clear he was struggling; he was breathing heavier and occasionally slowed behind, and each time Beau looked his face was strained, but because he said nothing Beau also said nothing. He asked once if he was okay but Bobby insisted he was fine. He cringes now at how quickly they let it drop but what else would he have said, what else would Bobby have said and what would Bobby want him to say, if anything at all, and they were both still so new to all of this, for Bobby to admit his vulnerability and for Beau to hold it safe in his hands. They sat at the top for an elongated time; cloud watching, taking in the gossamer quiet of a slow morning, Bobby massaging his calves, and on the way down Beau still felt guilty but stillALT
said nothing and tried to silently rectify it, tried to guess which route would be quick yet gentle. And he still feels guilty now, in a new sense; it’s easy for him to look at that day through the lens of his current knowing, his deeper understanding of Bobby’s pain and how to help, even if at the time time Bobby himself did not know. And it is easier, painfully easier, to look at it through the lens of this loss, let reminiscence sour into regret; where Bobby is not here and Beau can’t help, can’t make him feel better anymore, when he can no longer reach out towards his friend, and so instead stays with all the moments where he could have but did not.ALT

this was supposed to be the quick set up to a flashback about trying to understand your friends chronic illness and pain from a time when he himself didn't yet understand it, from the pov of grief and irrational guilt, where the most important moment about that is after the events of this set up, but language wise she ended up doing the most and is now holding up the entire scene and therefore doing the most for the "trying to understand chronic illness and pain and your own guilt about it" themes. i fear the prose immediately after this is falling apart in my hands as we speak

#not mine#q