yesterday while feverish i wrote about how boats can moor next to each other like pigeons, cooing with the gentle rap of water against their hull. you once said that that the way i see things - birds in the water, feathers in marina paint - was "childish and naive." you said i'd been misdiagnosed - "it can't all be adhd. you might be just kind of stupid and lazy."
i still do certain things like how you taught me - turn the pillow case inside out before putting it on. drive defensively. hate myself entirely.
the prompt for this poem is "mahler's fifth." i wish it wasn't, but mahler's fifth was our song. it ended up in my book. every person that knows your name has promised me they'll give you one swift rabbit punch, right to the face. dean read the book and showed up on my front porch, drenched in sweat from running the 8 miles at 4 in the morning. he was shaking. pacifist and gentle - he works with children - i'd never seen him furious. a punch isn't going to do it, he said, and then said i'm sorry. i had to come to see if you were okay.
mahler's fifth was mine first, like my girlhood. i like the way each movement piles onto the next movement, each instrument bleeding into the next. i like the horn version the best. before i met you, i danced to it on grass still-wet from sprinklers.
later you would tell me that the way you heard it was somehow better. you understood something in it that i couldn't quite wrap my fingers into. once, on our anniversary, you asked the classical music radio station to play it for us. we missed hearing it because we were fighting. one of the things people get wrong about abuse is that sometimes victims are, like, brutally aware of the stupidity of our situation. what do you mean that you thought i wasn't good enough for you? you? you're just... nothing.
sometimes people can pull the poetry out of your life. i watched my words become clothesline, and then thin out into kite twine. i watched you chew through every good syllable of me. so many good songs and places and moments were ruined. i am glad you didn't like most of my music - less to tie back to you.
but still mahler's fifth. the music swells, and i am 21 and throwing up in a bathroom on my birthday. a woman i will later refer to as lesbian jesus runs a cool hand down my back, her perfect pantsuit starch-pressed. she told me to leave you. she said - and this is true, and not an invention of rhyme or fantasy - i'm you from the future.
i am 22, and i got home from an award ceremony, and i remember you telling me - you act so proud of yourself when you're actually so fucking embarrassing. i took you to disney world. you took my virginity. i gave up visiting spain for a week with my family - i instead choose you, to spend the time just-cuddling. you called it "our fuck week." the music swells. it probably should have been a red flag that for about 3 years - i just gave up on crying. my grandfather died and you said nothing. my uncle died and you ghosted me for 3 weeks. you said i need to protect myself from your ongoing tragedy.
every so often i come back to the memory of one of our last afternoons in person. i had just told you that i wasn't going to law school, despite the free ride - i was going to join a creative writing program. master's in fine arts. i was going to finally do it - i was going to follow my dreams. this blog was already internet-famous. however reluctantly, i would occasionally refer to myself as a poet. i got into umass amherst's writing program for fiction authors. it is one of the the top 5 programs in the country.
wait are you seriously considering actually attending that? dumbfounded, you turned completely towards me in your seat. for the 3rd time in our relationship, you almost crashed the car. you actually want to be a writer?
the first time i went viral, it was for a poem i wrote about you:
he wants to say i love you
but keeps it to goodnight
because love will take some falling
and she's afraid of heights.
every time i see that, i want to throw up. you weren't in love with me, you were in love with the control you had over me. a little truth though: i am afraid of heights. you caught a rabbitgirl and skinned her alive.
mahler's fifth still makes me sick.
give me that back. give me back music. give me back everything i had before you. give me back fearlessness. give me back bravery. give me back a scarless body.
give me back what you took from me.
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I guess that this is as good of a time as any to remind people that WRITERS MAKE THE STORY!!!! I cannot count how many times I see posts praising tv directors for things that are simply not their doing. That iconic line of dialogue? Yeah a screenwriter wrote that. The characters you love? Screenwriter. The places, the plot lines, the developments? Writers.
A show CANNOT happen without a script because a script is necessary for EVERYONE to do their job right. It dictates what set to look for/create, the filming schedule, the casting calls, the costumes and so on. It's not just words on a paper, its the backbone for all of production and it deserves to get recognised as the integral part of tv and film as it is.
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EDIT: post no longer rebloggable not because i disagree with these statements or anything i said in my addition, but just because i dont want to deal with many notes and the occasional rude person!
i totally understand that when discussing the sex lives of gay people, there is a very large overemphasis on a top/bottom dichotomy to the point that many people (especially cishets and lgbt people w little experience in the subject) believe that all or at least most lgbt people are exclusively tops or exclusively bottoms, and i understand wanting to correct that misconception, especially because part of the reason it is so widespread is because cishets assume that in same-gender relationship one person must always be "the woman" (who therefore exclusive bottoms) and one "the man" (who exclusively tops). i understand wanting to make people understand that for many if not most gay people, switching is natural and enjoyable and that these roles are not usually so strictly defined.
but ive seen far too many people say things like "we take turns like normal people" or "im normal i just switch" - with that specific phrasing of "normal" or very similar wording - and i really want you to consider that that is a very hurtful thing to say. there is and has been a longstanding disdain for men who exclusively bottom and a specific disgust for men who bottom in sex with other men, as well as disdain for stone butches and stone fems, who are often treated as regressive, selfish, reproducing heterosexuality, or inherently sexually disordered. people (especially wlw) who exclusively top or bottom are often treated as if their sex life cannot be satisfying, as if they are sexually defective, as if their boundaries are unfair to their partners, as if they have some sort of sexual issue that they need to just get over. before you say something about how switching is "normal" unlike the supposedly immature or regressive people who dont switch, please consider that there is no "normal" sex, that it is not more progressive to put norms on how people may have sex, and that what is most unhealthy for all of us is to tell people that their sexual boundaries and the things theyre not comfortable or willing to do during sex make them abnormal. as someone who is a stone top in large part because of sexual trauma, some of you honestly make me feel like shit about myself for not wanting to be topped, and i dont think thats "normal".
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