whenthetreesspeaklatin

Latest Posts by whenthetreesspeaklatin

“The writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.” — Vladimir Nabokov

You once made a promise to yourself: if you ever met a time traveler, it wouldn't be a big deal. You’d tell them the date, the most important political conflict, a recent technology, and send them on their way. You now encounter a time traveler nearly every week.

If your theme doesn’t scare you a little, it’s not deep enough.

Look, surface-level themes are cute and all “love conquers all,” “good always wins,” “believe in yourself”...but they don’t hit the jugular. The best themes crack you open. They dig into the uncomfortable, unresolved questions you’ve been avoiding. 

Why do we stay loyal to people who hurt us?

Is forgiveness selfish or selfless?

What does it mean to feel safe in your own skin?

If you’re writing something that makes you squirm a little, like something you wouldn’t casually bring up at brunch—that’s probably the real story you need to tell. And that’s also the story your readers need to hear. Vulnerability isn't a weakness; it's the damn foundation.

no you have to contribute to your fandom if you don't want it to die. most fandoms die because people say 'it's so sad watching the fandom die when the hype dies' without doing anything about it. I'm not saying you have to push out 100k word slow-burn fic, I'm not saying you have to make fan art or gif sets or edits or anything. I'm just saying we as a community should contribute to our fandom if we don't want it to die, and by contributing, I'm talking about giving kudos, commenting on your favorite fics, reblogging your favorite art and just talking about your favorite characters. that's enough to keep a fandom alive. that's the most effective way to keep a fandom alive in my humble opinion.

fandoms die because people stop talking about it, fandoms die because people stop engaging with fan content once the hype is gone. what I'm saying is, mainstream media's hype may be gone, but our fandom can stay alive and thriving if us as a community don't let it die.

If you read the fic, leave the kudos. Leave a comment too, if possible. Just do it. It takes a few seconds of your time and it means the world to the writer.

Sincerely, me who just got told that my writing feels like watching a blockbuster movie. I don't care if they were sincere or not, I'll be thinking about that comment for the rest of my life and every time I feel bad about my art, I'll remember that someone once liked it.

Hey, guys, I cometh with a question.

Do you guys know any poetic words, phrases, terms, etc, referring to death? Stuff that's more neutral, or melancholic, something that acknowledges death as a necessity of life and deems it almost beautiful.

It can be from any language, so long as it carries the meaning.

For complete transparency: this is for the name of a faerie character who personifies death.

They describe themself as: "the leaf that is evicted from the tree. {T}he ageing bones of a feeble grandmother. {T}he rot that gathers on a dead animal, the bugs that feed on its carcass, and the entire process of death.

"In short, I am Dying."

But uh—that'd be a temporary name for her. I'm trying to figure out his "real name" so to speak. They're someone who takes joy in their reaper-like role and finds mortality (and mortals' attempts to escape it) entertaining. They find their own domain fascinating, but clearly a cause for others' suffering.

Just not hers.

Anyone have a word/name that carries those kinda connotations? Again: it can be from any language!

(i'd appreciate a reblog for visibility)

You were spring except, no you weren’t, you were the leftover winter and the misty summer and the sweetest breeze and the saddest sigh, and the coldest night, and the bare truth incarnate. 

Sometimes, there are friends your parents will always disapprove of, (for good reasons) that life puts in your way, but you cherish all the same, even if they leave, even if they stay, even if they linger in the gaps like the brown of autumn and the spring in the day. 

And maybe I was inadequate summer, searing heat but no bite behind the pain, because really I’d always stayed far too quiet for anyone to care, and maybe she was the opposite, the vengeful winter, the fruitful summer, a forest fire in its entirety, burning down everything as it goes, but I’d always liked to think I was better because I did what they asked but maybe that wasn’t really true because id never know how to cling to things that really care; that really matter. 

Nothing of my world was left but you, and maybe if id lost you too, id go down the deep end so I clung to the only bit of you I had, the memories, the pain, the grief, the sorrow, anything, something, if not for me than for you, because you could hurt me all you like, but you still wouldn’t want me, so now I haunt even your ghost. 

There was a day; an age when you promised not to leave my side ever, and you held up to that oath like it meant more to you than your life, but I cant keep up with you no more now, you ran ahead and left me in the dark, you swore you wouldn’t ever make me your past, but a tragic story is all I am to you now, rotted flesh in an empty grave, flies and bees haunt me in your name, dusty pollen around my head like a halo, I suppose I was only ever a moment in time that you couldn’t really savour. 

i am back, children

bitch this is all you’re gonna get. this life, this face, this body. you better not ‘maybe in another universe’ your way out of everything. sit your ass down and face this. go make tea and have a picnic and read a goddamn book. kiss your loved ones, send that damn text, and hug your siblings. this is all you’re gonna get.

“You can run, run, run away from a lot of things in life, but you can’t run away from yourself. And the key to happiness is to understand and accept who you are.”

— Dale Archer

so the shortest day came, and the year died. and everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world came people singing, dancing, to drive the dark away. —Susan Cooper

Home is with the wind in my face

The safest I have felt today

Hugging me and blowing my tears away

Perhaps it is safe to say, when you're sad, esp on a windy day....go out, get a feeeeel..

Life goes on, without checking if it's messing some passengers, without looking behind.

Life goes on, even if the clock stopped for you, even if you didn't go on.

Life goes on. It doesn't care about what you lost in the way, and it wouldn't let you go back.

Life goes on, like nothing happened, despite all that happened, and leaves you feeling like nothing will happen anymore.

Life goes on. Maybe I'll catch up one day, maybe the time will stop just to wait for me, to let me take a breath and get out of my overwhelmed mess, maybe it will allow me a break to break down peacefully, without worrying about the lost time when life goes on without me.

Life goes on, what a surprise, the sun will always set and rise, night will fall and the next day will come, forgetting about the people who couldn't come along.

also helppp why ur likes and following on public

idk how u change it

jeez this ur poetry blog or some shit

uhu

you want the rest??

hey pookie 😘😏😩😩😣😖😩😩😤😤🥵😳😩

hiiiiiiiiiiiii

Missing you is like a knife plunged so deeply in me that I am bleeding out of any sense of the world.

There is a garden in my heart where you can sleep safely.

it is november, and yesterday it felt like it was supposed to be snowing. in boston, november used a winter month, not a fall month. it is supposed to be chilly; rarely capping over 45F. it is a sweater-and-jacket month. it is a "maybe a scarf too" month. in my childhood, november meant blizzards and sleet.

it did not snow. tomorrow the weather predicts a high of 76.

i have spent so many years of my life studying the longterm possibilities of climate change - the culmination of capitalism wreaking havoc on the bodies of people, animals, plants - but every so often i am still shocked by something small and personal.

in a hundred years, when someone goes outside in boston - will they know the feeling of "snow in the air"?

i know it's a learned feeling, a sensation that maybe only longterm experience can teach. a few years ago, i was walking with my friend who had just moved up from the south. i said it smells like snow and she gave me this look like - what the fuck. i said it feels like snow too, which didn't help. she looked up to the bright blue sky and then back at me and then back at the sky. 12 hours later, we had 3 inches. you can just tell if it's going to snow.

except i can't tell, anymore. i stand outside in a tee shirt and watch my dog dance around a lake. we're in a drought and the skin of the water has peeled back twenty meters. the lake is tamed, quiet, puddlelike and sour. my pokemon go app warns there's a weather condition in my area.

my dog gets too hot from running and sits in the water and i want to laugh about his long frame and how awkwardly he sits - and i can't. some simian part of my brain is scratching the walls. it was supposed to snow. it was supposed to snow, but now it's warm instead.

during the last full solar eclipse, the dogs and the birds and the crickets went crazy under utter darkness. we laughed at them then, promising it will all be okay in a moment. but some part of me is still locked in that long night: some animal sensation.

something is wrong, my body says. i can't afford eggs or rent. i go outside to watch a sunset and listen to birdsong. i don't bring a jacket. allergies are killing me this season, allergies i didn't have as a kid. everyone comments that halloween has started to feel strange, offkilter. that it's hard having "holiday cheer." my body thinks it's april, and then it thinks we're in september, and then june.

something is terribly wrong, she whispers. go outside. it is supposed to be snowing.

I’m scared of nothing

of the thought that this is it

my life that has gone to complete fucking shit

while I lay here, not dead

I look at the stars

and convince myself I’m connected to mars

because life sucks

and I’m too scared of nothing

to actually fucking do something

unlike my mother

I will not pray

I’ll probably make up some conspiracy

I won’t sleep

the nightmares keep me awake

I can’t help that every smile is fake

I cry every night

to deal with the stress

because no one cares that I’m fucking depressed

- jfs

I'm forgetful, they say. Almost in a strange way.

I can't remember the simple recipe my mother told me several times, and when I got a notebook to write it down They laughed, and I too laughed with them.

Whenever they ask me to do something later, it doesn't stick in my imaginary to-do list. They say they reminded me multiple times, and I ended up forgetting anyway until it was too late to fix my mistake.

Scrolling through the media, I see those posts, ''write a line that someone told you that hurt you.'', ''what is something someone did to you that caused you the most pain?'', ''what made you cry so much that you wanted so much to scream?'' And I try my best to remember, I remember being hurt and crying, of course, but the reasons just faded away, couldn't remember one single line clearly, couldn't picture the scene before closing the door on myself in the bathroom, I remember the pain, but forgot what caused it, like my brain is blocking it all out of my reach.

I'm forgetful, they say. Definitely in a strange way. But sometimes it feels more like abandoning to me because we never really forget, I only have a back room in my brain, where I put all that hurt, all the things that my brain finds not important, though it miscalculates most times. And when the pain comes again, I revisit this abandoned room, and in order to put in the new pain, I must feel them all again. Then the door is closed, the peace is back, and the memory again fades.

It's a curse. It's a gift. It's something I loath and love. I'm forgetful, but I still remember what I must.

But the dark feels different in November.

– Nina MacLaughlin, from "The Dark Feels Different in November", The Paris Review

i'm jealous of the girls with big sisters. i'm not the oldest or anything, i actually have three older sisters. i say older because they were never "big sisters" to me. my family was not made for people who crave individuality; you either fell out or fell in line and i was never quite good at keep the colors in the lines. i see all these people posting about what a big sister is like, how they save you from your shared house of horrors, how you're just like the best version of them and they love you for it.

Mine?

they resent me for shaping out to be just like them but what the fuck was i supposed to do? i looked up to them, at least two of them, and i just wanted them to love me.

I always said i felt like the older sister. whether it's because i'm sending money, holding them while they cry, or cleaning them up from a fucking breakdown; it was me. it was me holding their hands, it was me telling them that everything will be okay while i, a petrified child, trembled in fear and prayed my mantra into existence.

they all left me. first the house, then the state, and then just my life in general. turns out, when you show traits of who they used to be (who they want to be), they can't stand to look at you anymore.

“But the future isn’t tomorrow. Or even the next day. Not really. The future is in one moment to the next because we never know if we’re going to see it. The next one.

So, please just kiss me like our future is now. Kiss me like you know I’ll die as soon as I leave. Like this is the last kiss we will ever have. Because right here, right now… this is the future. So, even if tomorrow doesn’t come and even if it does and we never speak again… I had the future with you. And that is enough.”

@encyclopedia-of-prose