Calling Your Lover "my Lover" Is The Most TENDER And SOFT And HOMOEROTIC Thing You Can Call Them And

trigger warning: self harm

it’s been a year since I last hurt myself, an addiction that took all my willpower to overcome. I know I can fashion words into something beautiful but there was nothing pretty about all that self-hatred, all that anger, loss and pain. all that pain coiled in my stomach, gnawing at me from the inside. there was absolutely nothing beautiful about scarring a body that works so hard to keep going. I can’t make this beautiful or romantic or wistful. but it’s over now. I can breathe. I just want to let that fact be.

we roll around on the carpet floor, hugging each other tightly, pulling each other ever closer. we try to stay quiet, but whispers of “I missed you so much” spoken in the language of pleasure escape. we giggle at the intimacy of it all, two lovers ready to throw themselves off the brink of everything to stay in this dream.

the way your body melts into mine, like you belong here, like we were made for this moment. we hug and laugh and kiss and say “goodbye, lover, I’ll see you later!” and never worry. we help each other with our work and plan for a future full of sunflowers and paintings and dinner by the fireplace. we’re still arguing if we should get a dog or a cat, though. that playful love.

how my words slip from my loose gloved jaw whenever ur around. how I lie on your chest and hear ur heartbeat quicken like you still get shy when I come close. how you stumbled into my life and made a beautiful mess of my mind.

wouldn’t trade you for the world, my summertime boy, wouldn’t give you away for anything. and when we roll around the carpet floor, breathless and wistful and entangled, I’m reminded why loving you is so easy.

why limit yourself between choosing between a pretty feminine aesthetic or a dark one? if persephone can be the goddess of spring & queen of the underworld at the same time so can you

and i would do anything for you to stay

I love him, more than he knows. I’m waiting for him to come back from the farmers market with flour and bread and rum and peaches. Two hands wrapped around a mug, sipping strong coffee and sitting on the kitchen counter, evening sunlight washing everything in gold and honey and mauve. Please, leave your shoes at the door and shout that you’re home. Please, one more kiss before we turn the kitchen light off.

I love him, more than my mouth could ever admit. He sits in bed, blanket draped across his chest as he watches anime. He’s forgotten his glasses so he squints. I laugh. He calls me “my love” in our mother tongue and kisses my neck, telling me I smell of honey and coffee. Please, linger on my body for a little while longer. Please, keep your palms around my waist till I tell you it’s getting too late.

I love him in words that don’t fit comfortably in my mouth. Softness has never been my first language. Usually romantic jargon sits awkwardly in my throat but god, does it spill like glossy honey when I think of him. God, does it turn sour into sweet, bronze into gold. The soft glow of the lamp illuminates his face whilst he sleeps. He breathes softly and sighs, murmurs for me to please come to bed.

honey, you’re the sweetest thing.

am I condemned to a life of longing? seeing you laugh makes me go all nervous. watching your eyes light up as your grin threatens to shatter your cheekbones and the way the sunlight hits your hair in the summer as you twirl and twirl and twirl.

or the way your breath forms a cloud around ur mouth and condenses into the chilly night air in the winter. i’ve watched and witnessed and drowned in all the tiny things you do. and god, I’ve fallen in love with each of ur subliminal actions. each tiny quiver that your body makes. it fills me with want. i want. i long for you.

is it going to be like this forever? am I condemned to a life of longing? I would throw myself off the edges of your hipbones under the covers and drown in the tiny rivers under the translucent skin of ur wrists or sin in the holiness of your sweet kiss.

holy holy holy. if god had seen the way your eyes light up with happiness when you see me or the way your hair swings behind you like telephone wires in the breeze as you walk ahead of me he would have not written that girls should not lay with girls. honeyb, you are the most religious thing I’ve ever come close to. moans like a choir, hands clasped together in wanting.

i am condemned to a life of longing.

he makes me laugh, head thrown back and eyes alive with happiness. he asks me to come closer when we sleep together, squeezes my hips and grins. he tells me I look beautiful in a black dress and heels with my hair messy and tangled but says he knows I’d look beautiful in anything anyway. he kisses my neck and my thighs and my hands and says “baby, you’re the most lovely thing my body has ever loved”. touches me in a way that makes me think, god even the sun hasn’t spilled her light on me like this.

I can’t tell you what it feels like, to have a boy blush when I kiss him, no memorised pick up lines, sauve attitude or cocky mannerisms. he’s so honest, so raw and passionate. so in love. so in love with me.

I used to think love was this anxiety-inducing dance for two, where everything had to be absolutely perfect. where things are painful and frustrating. where I have to chase and beg and call and entertain and cry and lose. always lose. but he’s right here now, sleeping on my shoulder. soft and sweet, with his arms around me.

and I think he’s going to stay.

The closest I’ve ever been to a crime scene is the stairwell where I had my body ripped in two

(my mind still wanders there, sifting for clues). 

Your Honour- I introduce Exhibit A: 

Torn underwear, a bruised pelvis and a mouth full of silence 

In a plastic bag for the ladies and gentlemen of the jury. 

To the Defence: look into my eyes and tell me I’m lying- please, 

Because I can’t process the clockwork murder that man made of my own body. 

I carry hot pink pepper spray like lipstick- 

does that prove fear for you?

Is the fact that I can’t eat without throwing up indication enough for the horrors I endured? 

Will you please protect me? 

Because I can’t sleep anymore. 

I can’t eat anymore.

I lost myself to him.

Exhibit B: let the jury read a phone full of messages, 

Coerced consent, 

“I’ll leave you if you don’t do this”, he said. 

My mother asks me what I stayed for and all I can muster is a croaky 

“I loved him, mama”

Ladies and gentlemen- 

Won’t you pry inside me like he did?

Follow me down the tunnel he dug between my legs?

Believe me when I say I am terrified. 

Icy blue eyes, 

Claws for hands and 

Lips that shushed me when I screamed. 

Exhibit C: I offer me. 

Can’t you see my body is a funeral pyre now? 

Can’t you see that this is the scene of the crime? 

How humiliating this process is. 

How it makes me wish I never said anything at all.

“(To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to radiate with inexhaustible light. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.)”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. (via xshayarsha)

when I tell you that you make me feel safe, it means something. I’m saying that you make me feel like a flower in a garden and I’ve spent my whole life feeling like a weed growing out of concrete. I’m saying that I love you so much that I’ll let you witness my wounds up close, under the harsh light. exposed, raw...but isn’t love being vulnerable in front of you and knowing that you still love me. you still love me. you still love me. wounds, flaws and all.