onthisavenue

[onthisavenue]

didn't i grow in that honeycomb?

i often hear quiet little footsteps parading throughout my home after i settle into bed. i've gotten into the habit of peaking into the cabinets, opening and closing closet doors, and triple checking the locks before bed. but when i shut out the lights and close my eyes, i hear the whisper of taps on vinyl flooring.

the home i've lived in for the last two years has watched love flow in and out of the entryway. here, i've sat on my knees and carved the absent's initials in the cabinet under the sink. i've watched torn seams patch themselves up while i felt other threads unravel here. i nursed heartache, tended to plants, and learned to nourish my body. i buried myself in books and cried to therapists in screens about the grief that i still feel within my eardrums. and through that same screen, i finished my degree and am moving across the country to learn how to listen and hold space for it all.

at twenty-eight, the lines on my forehead are deeper but the callouses i grew sound like they are starting to soften. my zip code will begin with 0 and my new home has blue walls and real wood floorboards and overlooks a yard of wildflowers. will the breeze smell different off this coast? will i wear sunscreen more often? will my eardrums still ache? will i love the future stranger that is myself?

a friend recently reminded me of the quote "everything i've ever let go of has claw marks on it." and i think the initials i carved into this apartment are dancing on the kitchen floor when i'm looking away. but i think i'll leave the cabinets, doors, and windows open when i leave.

#personal #creative writing #spilled ink #prose #poetry #writing #moving away

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Poppies in Antelope Valley, CA by brontis5

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Jeremy Miranda, USA Landscape (Fireflies after a rain) 16 July, 2023

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“ Literarily, a “Treehouse” “ // Benedikt Eroness

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"You demi-puppets that by moonshine do the green sour ringlets make", from Shakespeare's The Tempest by Edmund Dulac (1908)

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an ode to love

i think i was born with an ache i couldn’t put words to. and as i grew, i was able to put words to the feelings - like lonely, or wanting, or emptied, or worried. and as i’ve gotten older i’ve realized the words don’t heal the wound or cover the leak - i’m simply naming it like a pet i cradle. but the pang seems to throb less in the company of women who have their own injuries. like we find our selves pointing at one another’s hurt and say “i have one of those too, i’ve managed to soothe it by dancing at midnight and pouring my feelings out on paper.” and i think i’ve soothed my wounds by pouring my love out to every woman who’s ever expressed vulnerability. and for the women in my life that have, i want to hold you up, to let the sun worship you, to let you bathe in your own beauty and feel it. i hope you know that you’ve inspired generations of healing as you pursue your own. i hope you know that your bravery in confronting yourself, your past - and whether you met it in shame, or fury, or a wince - you have changed the world. the healing is in the bracelet you made or the home you built or the sweat you dripped on the pavement or the peace you carved out of a new house. and there’s so much raw beauty in it  and i’m honored to witness it. so here’s to the love of women, who heal without even meaning to. you are your own treasure and if my purpose it to remind you of that, i’m happy to be here. i’m lucky to love you.

#personal #friendship #love #ache #spilled ink

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i sit on an axis and peer up at the glimmering world above me where my friends laugh and weep and i pray their tears are from joy. i blink and i see your wrinkled eyes swirl with pride and pain. i say out loud, i have so much to tell you, so much i want to ask you, will you lay with me on a blanket of stars and hold my hand while we talk and watch my friends grow? you nod and rub soothing circles onto my thumbs.

i think i see a shooting star above us and point to show you and i realize it’s the light catching someone’s red hair; i recognize her and she looks at me and laughs. i walk towards her on a path of stardust that slowly becomes sea-glass and sand. i light her cigarette and mine, holding a glass of red wine on a patio with a sea kissed breeze. im grinning as we cackle and talk and doodle on each others arms. And i turn towards the stars to show you how beautiful she is, how wonderful it is to be around her.

i’m pushed into a path of asphalt flanked by wild grass - i can’t see you, i can’t hear her laugh anymore and her hair stopped growing. i can’t backtrack the map that lead me to the walkway of stars or the path of sea-glass but i see skyscrapers and the voices to strangers have become louder and deeper. i didn’t get to tell you i didn’t want you to go.

These days, on my patio i am met by streetlights peering into my apartment that muffle the stars above. i’m an hour away from a beach. i miss your brown eyes and gentle hands, i miss her long hair and toothy smile. i am in awe watching my friends grow; honored to weep and laugh with them even if the tears aren’t always from joy. and sometimes i am able to look to the sky or wind and trace the maps that help me come back to you.

#personal #prose #spilled ink #writing #griefjourney #grief

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i think it’s easy to forget that we have been fucking up left and right since the day we were born. we learn how to swallow, to burp, to dance, to say “this hurts,” to jump anyway, to read, to listen, to make friends, to cook, to study, to swim, to feel - all through infinite mistakes and bruises and disagreements and burns and uncertainty. and i wonder if the mark of “growing up” is when the mistakes are no longer light-hearted - when we view them as faults of our own, and not a process in itself. as if those formative years of blubbering and splashing and spinning were the better years anyway. because now i have grown up and have to do everything that is brand new to me perfectly on the first try or i am simply not valuable. as if i have forgotten how important those light-hearted mistakes were and somehow find myself so afraid of the mistakes in my next step.

i have learned (or, am actively always learning) how to be myself, how to show love and be loved, how to write my feelings into pieces that make sense. i have gained countless wisdom and insight and yet i am always surprised by the fact that i am afraid of the next plunge. i have proven to myself time and time again that i truly can start from scratch and make magic - and right on queue, just before it is time to dive, the little voice in the back of my head says with tiny might “oh, are you sure you can do this?” and some days the voice of tiny might is quieted by the sunny voice of confidence. and she reminds me that i won’t let myself down because that is not who i am. but other days, that voice of tiny might grows; and he perches along my shoulder, holds a megaphone up to my ear and screeches. and i think next time i hear his shrieking, i’d like to sit on the ground and let him throw his tantrum until he is too tired to continue shouting.

i don’t have the (imagine a magazine headline) “ten steps to defeat the negative self talk and live your best life TODAY” spiel. but i do think our “best” life is in the moments when we remember not to take it all so seriously, to laugh at our burps, to sit with our self-doubt, to say fuck the made-up-concept of growing up and to hell with perfection, to remember how we tumbled and laughed it off and to believe that there is so much joy in having none of it figured out.

#personal #prose #writing #spilled ink #poetry #growing up #getting old

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The Monterey Coast, 1980

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𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑟𝑒 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑡, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢’𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑠𝑜 𝑒𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑝𝑒𝑑

By Bao Tran Trung

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i am slowly setting down the urge to know it all. and i am honored to hold my friends hands at the forks in their road and say “i don’t know this path, i have no idea what happens when you reach the end of it, but i know you will navigate this with wonder and i am with you.” it is a gift to hear your pain and hold space with you in it; to let the words “i understand completely and i know that must ache, you can lean on me; i am with you,” settle like a buttery balm over cracked skin.

it is true magic to pass drinks and food and laughter and tears like thread. to sit across from one another on a wooden picnic table, tearing into crispy breads, smearing cheeses on platters, sipping sparkling wines, snorting with abandon while holding each others’ cheeks and gently wiping the tears away.

i have become overwhelmed with the urge to remember more; to write how the sun bounced off the cup’s lid and hit your eye, to capture how the conversation flowed from giggling none-sense to our fleeting existence. and i cannot wait to read it all back years later; to remember that very day I asked you to try my black tea because it had maple syrup instead of honey and you hummed as you swallowed like it was medicine for your soul.

and today, i will relish in that it is spring again and i know little more than that we have cherries and soundtracks and our bare-feet and each other.

#personal #friendship #community #spring #writing #spilledink #prose

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the weight and pushes and urges of this phase i am in feel like the wound up ball of yarn sitting in my closet; kept tucked in safely in the same place it always has been to avoid it from unraveling.

for as long as I can remember, i’ve been hellbent against ever again being in limbo. if my life was a map, i believed being in between checkpoints was no different from falling and falling was stagnancy and stagnancy was the devil, whom i should avoid at all costs. but if i’m being honest, i knew i’d jump right into his lap if he’d showed me a loophole or shortcut or somewhere new to be.

i have found myself in another in-between; the walls are all shades of sand and stone, my breakfasts are oatmeal and coffee with cream, my slippers are worn and my evening walks are met with a balmy breeze. and in these quiet moments, i look back at the other periods of time stretched between two checkpoints - and realize these are the times in my life when i am offered the gift of reflecting. i have the chance to stretch my limbs and roll my neck. to sit in peace and listen to where the discomfort is clawing from. in this in-between, i can answer the call from within that is asking me to make the jump. i can hear myself asking for more, hear her asking for me. i can stop long enough to feel the current under my skin pushing me out of this phase and nudging me into the next.

i do not know where my next checkpoint is. but i know i want walls of lilac and blue. i know i crave breakfasts of eggs and herbs and fresh-baked bread and cheese. i know my inner voice will guide me to me and i stomped the devil out long ago. i know it is okay if my yarn unravels and i know sometime soon it will not be kept in the same place it always has been.

#personal #prose #spilled ink #writing

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instagram | krissmacd

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Sasamat Lake, Canada by Dasha Kern

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suddenly quiet

instagram

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i’ve gotten older but my imagination remains a child