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no thoughts only heart full of feelings from reading The Grandest Book Shop in the World by Amelia Mellor

no one:

me, scrolling back up my writing for no reason: shut up im admiring my paragraphs

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Characters: Halt O'Carrick, David (Ranger’s Apprentice), Gilan (Ranger’s Apprentice) Additional Tags: Missing Scene, Hurt/Comfort, Grief, Angst, But just a little, this was supposed to be a fun fic of two guys having a chat, i dont know when the vulnerability popped up but it’s there ;-;, but they’re also joking around a bit, Craltine, sorta referenced but only in passing asldkjfh im just flagging it, set in between TEY and RA

Summary: While reflecting on the past few years with David over a late breakfast, Halt starts to ponder his next steps as a Ranger.

26 - Unknown

The entire spaceship shook as heavy machinery interlocked with the hatch. They had burned through all their fuel trying to escape the Grey Guard’s tractor beam, but to no avail. The bigger ship had been unrelenting, looming in Silence One’s shadow like an omen.

Lief and Barda sat in terrified anticipation. At any moment, the huge grey brutes from Shadow Prime would burst through the hatch and shoot them dead at best or take them hostage at worst.

(1.6k words)

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how to be a saint

they expect much from you. they will touch your skin and claim your blessing. they will chant your name until their lips form it without thinking, until their tongues have memorized the way it tastes, until they have said it so many times that they’ve claimed it as their own. your name is no longer yours. it is theirs. it is divine, now. 

you, too, are divine. they will fall to your feet and you will feel the whisper of their lips caress your skin. benevolently, gently, they will graze fingertips across your face like they are touching the face of your god. this body is not yours anymore. it is of the gods. it is a vessel. 

they will not always be so gentle. they touch you with reverence, yes, but they are hungry. they are hungry for the touch of the divine for the gods for you. they will devour you with dripping lips and red hands and smile and say more. it is never enough. it never will be. they will slowly taste your flesh and tear you to pieces. your blood is not yours anymore. it is stardust and ichor and wine and ecstasy. 

the choir sings like angels with your name at every breath and you realize their singing starts to sound like screaming. why aren’t you singing? Sing for us. your voice is the gods’ voice. no it is not your voice you do not get to speak for yourself. you never spoke for yourself. your voice is not yours. 

your body is a temple. they will offer up food and drink and more gold than you will ever need. none of it is yours. the church will take it. you do not know what for. they tell you not to worry about it. worry will mar that perfect face of yours. do not destroy that body gifted to you by the gods, they say. do not be ungrateful. they have made you a perfect vessel for us. this is not the first time they have made a temple out of a body. haven’t you figured it out yet? you own nothing. nothing is yours anymore. 

they crave you like they crave anything they cannot have. you are intoxicating, addicting, your silken skin and sweet voice. they stare up at you like you are a god, blinded by the light. they do not realize they are looking at a corpse. 

how come you are not perfect? you were molded in the shape of perfect beings. you should be perfect. they want more. they need more. you are not enough. if you are not enough they will feast on your flesh and lick their lips and beg for more. can you hear them screaming? they need more. more. MORE. 

you taste divine. 

how to tell a story

How does one tell a true story? 

My poetry is not true. 

They are half-truths I decorate in flowers and sugar. They are little lies that I rip apart and chew and swallow and smile with blood stained teeth and say: look. I am an artist. I give you my heart and I chop it into fine pieces so it is palatable for you. I tear the flesh from my bones and devour it and spill my entrails upon the floor and make my carcass into art. Look at me and praise my pain. 

I say: I am a poet. 

This is a lie. 

I am not a poet. I am a broken human being who spills ink and blood upon pages. I am a thief who steals all the pain from others and take it for myself so that I may sing about my grief. I am not a poet. 

I say: I am a poet. 

This is a truth. 

I grasp at words and lay them upon my tongue and savor the taste of honey and decay. I spit them upon the page and create art. The words says what my voice cannot. 

I say: she was searching for home. 

I do not say: she would never find it. 

I say: the bloodied sheets pooled around her like snow around a dead bird and she wondered if she was dying. 

I do not say: society told her that she was a woman now and her body was no longer hers. 

I say: she was a soft down-feathered bird, fluttering her feathers, singing so sweetly.

I do not say: they’d broken her wings. They’d torn them off of her and flung them into the air. They said it would heal. It did. Her flesh forgot the wrongs they’d committed. Her heart did not. 

I say: she was an angel. 

I do not say: she had sinned too much to ever fly again. 

(I ask: But what is sin? 

They answer: the antonym to purity. You are not pure. You are dirty, dirty, dirty. You are tainted and evil and sinning. You have turned your back to God.

God? I ask. Plaintive. Pleading. Pathetic. Who is God? Why have I been condemned? 

There is no answer.) 

I say: God is real. 

This is a lie. 

I do not believe in a higher being. I have seen too much to look up at the heavens and say that someone watches over me, cradles me, guards me, loves me. The pain does not make me a better person, make me more whole, make me more good. It does not teach me to value what I have. It does not make me more beautiful. Fuck that. I make myself beautiful. 

I say: God is real. 

This is a truth. 

It is a truth when I look at you. 

It is a truth when I am on my knees begging—I love you I’ll serve you I’ll do anything for you because maybe if I beg for your love as I do a god then you will not leave me and you will not hate me and you will smile at me and say that I am good enough. 

It is a truth when I pick up the pen and write. 

It is a truth when I write about love and sweet kisses and fate and destiny and you. 

I say: I love you. 

This is a lie. 

You do not exist. You are some distant wish in my head for love and companionship. You are some shapeless dream of a perfect partner, of a perfect kind of love. 

I say: I love you. 

This is a truth. 

I love the idea of you. I love the idea that love exists. I love the idea of sneaking kisses, of stealing your scarf in autumn, of waking up in your arms, of soft dometistic love. I love that somewhere out there, you exist, and you are not perfect, you are not heavenly, you are not the most beautiful creature to grace this planet—but you are you and I love you. 

I say: let me tell you a story.

I say: this is all true. 

I say: this is all a lie. 

I say: that does not mean it is not real. 

I say: truth is a semi-permeable membrane. 

I say: this is how to tell a story.

Oh, darling—

You have been hurting 

For a very long time. 

I am sorry that you have spent your life

Saying “I’m sorry” for others

I’m sorry you’ve spent your life 

Feeling like you need to be more palatable

To be perfect for others 

Because you can’t be perfect for yourself.

Because you don’t want to be a waste of space

Because to be unproductive is to be useless

Oh, darling—

You have been hurting 

For a very long time

Haven’t you? 

You want to hold the world because it is beautiful

But you are too loud, too demanding, too much. 

they try to drown you because you are beautiful

For living unapologetically. 

Oh, darling—

You do not need to be less loud 

Less hopeful

Less perfect. 

You have been grieving the loss 

of the beautiful world

Because they have tried to drown you. 

Oh, darling—

You are not too much

But just enough.

Because you’re beautiful for living as you are

And perfect for loving the world as you do.

You have been hurting 

for a very long time

You have so much love to give—

So let others love you too. 

You have always

Been good enough. 

Pomegranate juice stains your mouth and it drips from your teeth like blood. I think i want to drink it and drink you and devour you whole. Persephone’s lips are stained with pomegranate juice and my lips are stained with your divinity. She eats six seeds but for you i would have eaten an entire pomegranate so that i could always stay with you, always taste you, always love you. Her mother wails her name in grief but i say your name like it’s a prayer and you are my god. Persephone smiles because she is free and you smile with your teeth and drag them against my skin and i can only think that this must be holy. I’ve tasted heaven and it’s your skin and your lips and your flesh. You kiss my neck and my pulse is between your teeth. The pomegranate juice drips down your body and i drink it from your skin and i beg for more. I crave you obsessively, madly, incessantly, desperately, hungrily. I want to taste your lips, your hands, your lungs, your ribs, your heart. Persephone is laughing as the dead surround her and whisper her name and reach to touch her and her vibrancy and i’m begging to taste you again because you’re the closest i could ever get to heaven. I think i’ll go to hell for the things i’ve done for you but i don’t think i care because you taste of ecstasy. I’m drinking your blood like wine and i’m tasting your flesh like I’m running out of time and it’s so intoxicatingly addictingly divine. I make a throne out of your bones and your fingers make the crown and your teeth are around my neck. I have tasted all that you are and i crave more.

You smile at me with bloodstained teeth. Offer me a pomegranate. I eat it.

I fell in love with you in the summer. 

It was hot and dry and my lips cracked and bled every time I smiled. You made me smile a lot. I like to think it was a metaphor. You made me taste death every time I laughed. Or maybe life. I could never distinguish the two with you. 

Anyway. I dreamed of you, sometimes. You made me laugh and my lips would crack and bleed and you would lean over and kiss me. My friend said it means I desired intimacy but that the blood meant I was scared. She was into Freudian dream analysis. I never liked him, anyway. 

I guess she wasn’t wrong though. I dreamed about you more than I’d like to admit. In my dreams, you were poetry. In my poetry, you were the dream of you. I laughed and my lips bled and you kissed me and I tasted death. Sometimes you wouldn’t stop at kissing me. Sometimes you would keep kissing me, keep swallowing me, keep consuming me until you’d devoured me entirely. 

“Cannibalism as a metaphor for love,” I’d once said. “What do you think?” 

You’d made a face. “I think it’s gruesome. Romanticizes weird things, you know? Like those people who defend the serial killers ‘cause they think they’re hot.” 

I didn’t tell you that sometimes, I dreamed that I bared my neck for you, and that you’d torn it apart, my heart between your teeth. A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism. 

Anyway. It was summer and school was over and everything was golden. When the light hit your eyes right they looked golden. Sometimes they were dark, a soft brown like the piano I tried to teach you to play on and the damp earth after the summer storm. Sometimes they were blue like the sky or the sea and I was suffocating, drowning. When they were gold, they were like amber, sweet-sticky-thick, trapping me. Everything looked golden when you looked at me like that. I didn’t protest so long as you kept looking at me like that. 

It was your birthday yesterday. I wish I didn’t remember. I wish I didn’t text you even though you hadn’t talked to me in months. “Hey. Happy birthday.” It’s dinner time and my mom yells at me because I keep checking my phone. You text me the next day. “Thanks.” I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved or angry. I bite my lip. It’s bleeding again. “No problem.” 

You don’t reply. 

Anyway. I quit piano. I look into my father’s eyes and see you. Blue eyes that make me feel like I’m dying. “Oedipus complex,” my friend says knowingly. “You go after the familiar.” Sometimes I wish I didn’t remember your birthday. You didn’t remember mine. My father didn’t remember my mother’s, but he bought a girl a multi-hundred dollar gift for her birthday. She was closer to my age than his. You sent me a picture of yourself shirtless. My father sent a nude to her. I dated a boy just to see what it was like to be wanted. Maybe that’s why my father cheated. Maybe that’s why you kept talking to me like you could love me. It was summer and everything looked golden and I let you keep using me so long you looked at me like you loved me. I don’t know if I am more like my mother or my father. They are both unhappy. It scares me. Who am I?

Anyway. Sometimes I dream that you kiss me and I taste my own blood on your lips. Sorry about that. Sorry about the mess. Sorry that I bleed every time you speak. Sorry that I gave you my mess of a heart. Sorry that I loved you. I’ll keep bleeding for you. Just keep looking at me like that. Just keep telling me you love me. 

I fell in love with you in the summer. My lips cracked and bled every time you made me smile. I like to think it’s a metaphor. Maybe this summer I won’t remember your birthday. Maybe. 

My blog has been compared to @inkskinned. I have reached the pinnacle of tumblr poetry. (fun fact, they are the reason why I started a tumblr blog because I saw their poetry and was like wow there's still social media left that doesn't emphasize visual content and videos?) also props to @n-ehpamoi, @seeingteacupsindragons, and @literaryvein-reblogs because i checked out their blogs because of this and seeing people who like words as much as i do always makes me happy

It is august

It is summer; it is

Sticky-hot, the air so warm

It is like velvet over my skin

It is august, 

It is summer, 

and your lips

Are on mine, yes, 

And on my neck, yes, 

And I am saying your 

Name like it is holy

yes

And i am 

d

  r

   o

     w

        n

           i

             n

                g

in you, 

             yes

And I’ll admit that 

you’re the only god 

i’ll ever believe in, yes, 

And my heart is trying to

Escape its (rib)cage (yes)

You are e a t i n g  m e  a l i v e

And i am a rabbit on the altar

A living sacrifice 

your hands 

around my throat

Burning your touch is burning me i

am on fire fire fire 

You are the sun in my hands

And i am icarus 

Falling 

down

down

down

i'm in your bed,

my hands in your hair,

and i told you i could drown

in you so it's suicide,

so it's sunrise,

so it's summer it's august i was

faithless until i met you

(and i think i love you.)

It goes like this—

Your lips against mine,

One hand in my hair and

one wrapped around my neck, 

Ruining my lipstick with your lip gloss

My fingers trailing down your skin 

Like a half-finished sentence. 

It goes like this: 

You and I at the club, 

Lights flashing, 

Legs tangled, 

Chasing your lips as if 

To breathe is to die. 

It goes like this. 

You've had your fun, 

And I’ve fallen terribly,

Hopelessly in love.