Sad Writing - Tumblr Posts
broken eternity
tw // death
drarry microfic:
draco managed a minuscule yelp through his eternal despair, as he slumped against harry’s cold, hard, shaking body on the floor. with one hand tightly gripping the corner of his lower right abdomen, draco had his eyes shut as the pain that echoed from his belly button started inflaming his appendix, too. harry looked down at the anguished blond on his lap, as he raised his palm to caress draco’s cheeks while there was still life in his body. a hot tear drop jogged down his cheek, before another, and another, and another drowned draco’s face below. silence filled the air. not one bestowed upon silk, not one to appreciate. this silence made the air cold, as though daggers flamed through each corner of the room. silence that reminded the two men the candle was dripping, and soon it would vanish. silence that reminded them that time was soon to be out.
“you never told me you had appendicitis, draco” harry managed through his cries.
“harry..i-” but draco could feel his voice faltering. the life in his body slowly escalated further and further off until he could feel it only at the tip of his fingers, barely able to grasp back.
“i love you” draco slurred, and suddenly all the pain he felt vanished as he let his eyes take one more look at the man he’s come to love since the tender age of 15, before closing in termination. his ears could only pick up the hue of a hospital van, and the vociferous cry of his husband above him. it was too late.
So this is it?
Deep breath. A sad attempt not to cry.
So you just get to lie to me?
Another breath. Anger boiling up.
I needed you!
In a hopeless attempt to console my mind while you prance around proudly showing your true face.
You called yourself my friend...
I should've guessed as much when I was the one messaging first.
When I was the one attempting to converse...
But you didn't want this.
And now I am here,
Grieving our friendship in the cold loneliness of my mind
What doesn't kill you makes you weird at intimacy
sometimes I just get so sick and tired of fighting just to survive.
sometimes I just get so sick and tired of fighting just to survive.
sometimes I just get so sick and tired of fighting just to survive.
sometimes I just get so sick and tired of fighting just to survive.
sometimes I just get so sick and tired of fighting just to survive.
"I saw a guy that looks like you at the gallery / And this older, wiser version of you on the bus / And I swear he almost looked like your dad / Was that you sitting across at the restaurant / Anyone looks like you cause I just don't care."
-Isabella Lamberty, Marriage is a funny thing
"And I Wish I picked up better habits from my father Like chewing gum instead of yelling at my mother And I Wish my brother taught me magic More than he taught me betrayal."
-Isabella Lamberty, An Epiphany of Enlightened Illusions
"If i wrote every trope into my books would that make you love me again? I can't change the world enough in my poems. I am going to die in this place. I am unloved in a world you once loved me in. How is that possible?"
-Isabella Lamberty
it's that time of year where all of my pain turns red and becomes a brittle brown leaf.
-Isabella Lamberty
"My Vows" by Isabella Lamberty
My soul embarks, and stains,
the soul stamped with his name
The numbness of life surroundings
Birds pecking out my shortcomings
I'm left in a pile of black feathers
Shaking in the shadows of a father's
Lackluster lingering marriage
Somethings a miss
Praying over spilled beads, throwing out ripped jeans
Eyes spinning in bad dreams, us loving prophetic things,
Elbow pains and elbow sores, my crooked dresser drawers,
Lying lovers harboring bedsores, the bit: “I’m sick of being yours!”
Fiddling with the fibers just to cross the road
Latching on to piping hot love but the tea’s cold-
Falling over in lamplit streets, eventually going home.
Because every little fiber just didn’t wanna know
I’m left in a pile of love letter similes baked in snow
Blank little white boards for personal love scores
Loose rhymes, stern words, lost myself in microscopic blurbs-
That settles the score!
Love is like winning a long dead war, where I never get to touch him,
Never get to be rewired, sifting through the fibers- of this married bore.
He never wrote a letter so I have the heroin nod,
I fought off birds against all odds,
So I present the tared feathers in awe,
For all those lingering in marriage,
I rip stickers off plastic sheets, harboring the early birds starry deep!
My soul- like his- a husband in hiding, me some wife to reside in-
Was a miss.
I stained boards and beams, never leaving a single seam
To any nuptial sheet, never turning a cheek, this would seem-
to settle my score!
Love is like winning a long dead war,
So much praying and pecking,
Just to end in divorce.
Hiding the hurt, hiding the pain
Hiding the tears that fall like rain
Saying I’m fine when I’m anything but
This ache in my soul rips at my gut
My skin is on fire
I burn from within
The calm on my face is an ongoing sin
The world must stay out, I’ve built up a wall
My fragile lie will collapse should it ever fall
Loneliness consumes me
It eats away the years
Until my life is swallowed by unending fears
Waiting for someone to see I wear a mask
And care enough to remove it
Is that too much to ask?
Her lover was a vampire. She should have realized it early on. She saw the signs, caught glimpses of his fangs, and every time she looked in the mirror he wasn’t there, just the punctures on her neck, red blood dripping down her pale skin and pooling in her collarbone. She ignored the signs even as he admitted them, the words rolling from his tongue like a whispered confession. Yet, she denied it, like a wife turning a blind eye to the murderer in her bed. He could never be, she loved him, she wouldn’t love a vampire.
How naive. You can love anything, even something that hurts, even something with fangs.
She got tired over the years. Late-night blood dripping down her neck, fangs in her shoulder as she sat on the couch, laughing with her friends in the dark, stuck in place but unable to admit it to them. She loved him, could lick the blood from his lips with such ease. So easy it became a habit, even when the hollowness set it.
She got tired over the years. Her life drained from her with every locked door, every pleading look, every time he grabbed her hand as she danced in the rain, pulled, dipped his mouth, and dug in.
She got tired over the years, her friends noticed the shadows under her eyes, and her smiles got smaller. And yet, at times, she saw them there, all those years ago, a selkie swimming downstream smiling at her admirer as he sat on shore in the shade of the trees, under cover of the stars. She saw the girl with sparkling eyes, wet hair draped down her back and the pale boy so sad, his small smile such a victory. She saw the girl that took his hand and wadded out of the water, dropping her skin at his feet.
For years, it draped over his shoulders and her blood coursed through his veins. His eyes went from drooping to open and his skin flushed but hers dried and cracked. His cloak started to fray but he didn’t care and she rubbed lotion on all of the dry patches because she loved the sparkle in his eye. If she couldn’t swim in the water then the look in his eyes would do.
She got tired over the years until one day she looked in the mirror and realized that the wild selkie inside was no longer behind her eyes. It had bled out of her.
She had begged him to return to the water and sometimes he brought her to a stream and she would drink from it, a puddle she would dip her toe in, a couple of drops of rain dripping from her nose. She lapped at her taste of freedom, every drop, and promised herself that this was better than nothing, that the ocean was just too far. But that selkie in her clawed to get out and she watched her skin wear to holes around his neck until she ripped it from him.
She ran and found herself diving into the stream once more and the water flowed around her and stung her dry skin, salt reddened her eyes, agitated the scars on her neck, and she let the water suck into her lungs.
The water still feels unfamiliar in her lungs at times and sometimes she sees the sad boy sitting on the bank once again and she longs to bring the sparkle to his eye, blush his pale skin.
But she knew now, her lover had been a vampire, and selkies bleed out easily.
-After, May 2023
(s.m)
Mausoleum
The only thing as consistent in this world as the sin of human beings is the inevitability of my death and the dust of my forgotten bones. Through the many ages my bones have turned to dust behind the protection of stone, been worn by the weight of the dirt that pressed down on them and been burned to ash on many a pyre. My skull sits, bejeweled and gilded beneath the altar of a Cathedral in Europe. Somewhere, I know, lost to me in the shuffle, is an arrow carved from one of my tibias sitting in a velvet case in a museum. I still remember the day I dug it up, with a shovel and my bare skin, holding the sharp edges in my palm and running my thumb over the divots worn by time. It had been many years since I held a relic of my life and as the bone warmed in my palm, I felt those long forgotten sensations dust themselves off in my chest; the feeling of the kohl rimming my eyes, silk sliding over the skin of my thighs, the desert sun kissing my collarbones.
The only thing as present as my death is his own. It has happened more times than I can recall in this age though, some of my sharpest memories are often those littered with my own agony; as I see him finally, my lost companion, marching along the front lines of my army before the slaughter. I can so crisply recall the soft strands of his hair soaked in blood, body littered with wounds on the steps of a great building, surrounded by traitors. Some deaths are even more agonizing as I miss them entirely. Hearing about it from an advisor, reading about it in a book, the newspaper. A new memory, not greyed by the act of distant remembrance, often plays before my eyes as I drift off to sleep; standing before an exhibit as people mill around me, mothers corralling their children, teenagers huddled together as they shuffle past, and me, looking up at him for the first time with my new eyes.
He was smiling in the picture, arms thrown around two other men as they stood before a car, a 1932 Ford Model 18 V8 read the small plaque below the picture. His dark hair was slicked back beneath a top hat, and his coat was fitted to his lean frame. I was so transfixed; I did not realize I had stepped forward and placed my hand on the glass of the photo until a guard sternly asked me to take a step back. The moment was distinct, when the world came rushing back to me and a sharp pang took over my chest when I realized it, when I knew it in my soul. I had missed him entirely. It happened from time to time, when the only way we knew of one another was through a history book or a passing mention from a stranger. I was only eleven when I listened through the crack in the door of my father’s court as his advisor told him the tale of the Great King who had died in Babylon, as was prophesied. Not even the muddled understanding of my youth could keep me from the crushing loneliness of knowing, in my soul, that I would be utterly alone through my life.
The memories come slowly at first, a morbid understanding of a wisdom beyond my years is often recognized by those around me, though considered the quirk of my personality. At some point, an understanding settled in me to hold those memories close to my heart as the smell of smoke still burned the inside of my nose from time to time, the echo of my charred flesh shaking me from my slumber. I think, sometimes, that I can hear the timber of his screams paired with taste of ash in my mouth. I singed myself once with a candle; I watched the blood drain from his face as he cradled my burned skin and he wept. It was clear that our shared memory was much sharper, in his mind, than my vague impressions. There are many stories we cannot bear to tell the other that haunt the space behind our eyes. At some point he stopped looking at fire the same way and still, he has yet to understand why when he turns his head to the side, just so, tears slide down my cheeks as I see him sprawled on the dirt, neck broken as my husband towers over him in a foreign land.
Sometimes, warming ourselves in the light of a fire, the night settled around us where no prying ears could hear we would fill in the gaps of each other’s forgotten experience. The name of our first born child, the war we fled from, the court he presided over, the last name he wore. Our own names were long forgotten along with the life they lived, a sad but relieving tragedy in the face of our endless existence.
His favorite story was that of his time as one king or another, the kingdom forgotten in the cracks of his memory, but he could still remember the sweet smell of my hair as I poured wine into his goblet. He had never noticed a servant before yet found himself slowly lifting my trembling chin. His mouth had stretched into a grin when our eyes met and he often teased that his first thought was that of triumph to finally be the towering authority to my submission after so many moments standing before my many thrones age after age.
My favorite tale is always that of the wide set of his eyes as he was introduced to the visiting sister of a fellow priest as we stood on the steps of a great cathedral. His surprise was so great, he tripped on his way down the steps and landed in a heap before the hem of my skirts. I would always tease him for how he could barely make eye contact with me once he righted himself and he would defend himself with a scoff and a waving of his hands. How was an old soul in the body of a young man supposed to react when he realized how sorely he regretted taking his holy orders not even months prior as he was now faced with his lost love.
Our journeys to finding one another were mostly a waiting for fate, which we both had decided must exist, and would lead us together eventually. Though, the fear was always there of when, and how, and if that meeting would happen, our hope scarred by many missed opportunities. In the meantime, how were we supposed to live our lives? Sometimes the waiting would be too much, and our indifference would grow as our years passed in one life or another. One cannot cease living to wait for the companionship of another and the years after that realization were often better for it, and the meeting if it did come, was a gift more sweet.
One of my favorite pass times is reading about him, those details I don’t know or the people I missed entirely. Only years prior, I even wrote a thesis in my senior year of university on the phenomena of prohibition crime, inspired by that picture; the smirk on his lips, the gun in his pocket, looking the ever suave American gangster. I hope to remember my work by the next time I see him so I can ask him my curious questions. He will most likely tease me for being so obsessive as to write a thesis on him. Though, he’ll quickly blush when I mention the multiple volumes he wrote on a past queendom, by hand, when Gutenberg was but a young man.
In this life, however, my love for his past life is, I am beginning to see, a veiled acceptance. A hope that, if I dig enough, he will appear. If I just walk through the museum hall one more time he will be standing before that picture, waiting. I have yet to learn, once again, that waiting will only lead me to an agony too deep to encounter.
I hope, in the meantime, to leave something behind for him as I am now, so that when fate eventually brings him to stand in a museum hall, or see the names on a wall of alumni, or maybe read my name under the authorship of a paper handed to him by his professor, there will be something there to comfort him, to give him, until we see one another again.
(s.m.)
“Do you really think that she would want this? Lu—“
The villain cut them off with a sharp hand to their chest.
They heaved a breathe, eyes gleaming and shoulders just on the edge of shaking.
“Don’t say her name. You don’t get to say her name.”
The hero’s mouth went dry.
“She was my sister too, you know,” they said quietly.
It was the wrong thing to say.
The villain grabbed the front of their jacket and hauled them against the wall, gritting their teeth as angry tears flushed their eyes.
“And yet you killed her anyways.”
The hero spluttered.
“I would never have hurt her, you know that—“
“You let her die.”
The hero fell silent.
The villain dropped them as if they could no longer bear to touch the hero, could no longer bear to touch their youngest sibling.
“You drew her into all your chosen one bullshit, and then when she needed you, you weren’t there.”
Anger, hot and heavy like a summers day,
sprung to life in the hero’s gut.
The villain regarded them, then shook their head in disgust. “Selfish.”
“I was taking care of your henchman,” the hero spat, and the villain stopped dead.
It took them three tries, in all their elegance and poise, to get the word out.
“What.”
The hero took a shuddering step, hand outreached, so angry and so lonely.
“I was taking care of the henchman you set loose in the lower quadrant. She said she could handle it—I thought it was you. I thought she would find you at the other end of the SOS call, and you would be gentle.”
The villain’s face went oh so pale.
“You thought—“
“I thought it was you,” the hero confirmed, voice shaking. “If I had known it was Nightshade—if I had known, I never would have let her go.”
The villain opened their mouth, but had nothing to say. Car alarms blared in the distance.
The villain gestured with their head.
“Aren’t you supposed to get that.”
The hero shrugged.
“Yeah.”
Neither of them moved.
“We ruined this family, didn’t we?” The villain looked like they were trying very hard not to cry. “Always trying to one up each other, always trying to be the prettiest star. Burned so bright we burned everyone around us.”
“Until there was no one left to burn for,” the hero said softly.
Somehow, they had sunk onto the ground of the damp alley.
The hero wasn’t sure who reached first, but then they were tangled in each others arms, sobbing violently, snot dripping onto each others shirts.
“I’m sorry,” the hero retched. “I didn’t mean it.”
The villain loosed a shuddering breath.
“It’s okay. We’re okay.”
The hero only clutched them tighter, because this was their family, the last of their bloodline besides themself.
The villain pressed an apology into their back with trembling hands.
I’m sorry, they murmured together, until it was no longer two words but something akin to a keen.
Lucy, I’m sorry.
When their tears had dried along with the pavement, and the emergency vehicles had once more begun to sing, they had stood there awkwardly, for one moment, as if memorizing each others faces, before they hurtled into the city, opposite directions.
They never spoke of it again.
But the villain stopped trying to kill them.
So there was that.
This story does have some of the “wake up, you’re in a dream” type plot, but it isn’t directed at the reader. Just wanted to give a warning because I know how damaging it can be.
“Beware the Ides,” someone whispered. James snapped his head around, but in the bustling market, he couldn’t locate who.
That was the seventh one today.
He cursed, and then hurried for his flat, letting the door bang open against the wall.
He locked it behind him, leaning against the door to catch his breath.
It didn’t mean anything. Just scared people who were more willing to fret about an upcoming day then actually take responsibilities for their problems.
That was all.
Somehow, James didn’t quite believe it.
From just outside his apartment door, someone viciously whispered “Beware the ides.”
When he opened it, the empty hallway stared back at him, as if mocking him.
He closed the door, and locked it.
“Hey, James,” Dahlia said, soothing a piece of his hair back. His respirator clicked in response. She swallowed.
“Your parents were supposed to be here but they—well. They couldn’t.”
His heart monitor beeped.
James whirled, but he couldn’t find the voice. Dahlia, it sounded like Dahlia, but she was dead. Years ago, in an accident.
A chair clattered over against his knees.
Dahlia felt a sob rising in her chest, and tamped it down.
“Celia wants to go to college,” she murmured, as if soothing a fussing child. “The doctors say they don’t think you’ll wake up.”
“Beware the ides,” the voice whispered, and this time, James screamed.
“Who are you?”
His flat didn’t answer him. His voice echoed off the walls.
Dahlia sucked in a breath, chest tight.
“They don’t have the money for you and Celia,” she explained. A nurse clattered by with a cart. “They didn’t want to choose, but Celia. They can still talk to her. But even after all these years, when they talk to you, you can’t respond.”
James grabbed a kitchen knife. The handle was cool to his palm, and it almost slipped with how much he shook. Something rustled in his apartment, and he bolted, slamming out his door and into the hall.
A doctor came in, and she motioned for him to continue. He nodded once, solemnly, and began to disconnect the machines.
She kissed his sleeping forehead once.
“I love you.”
A stranger slammed into him so hard, he almost didn’t feel the knife slide between his ribs.
“Beware the ides,” they hissed in his ear, and then they were gone, leaving him to slide gasping to the floor.
The heart monitor beeped one final time.
And flatlined.
Beware the ides.
“I love you,” they pressed a kiss to their lovers temple. Their lover smiled sleepily at them, beneath blankets and pillows and bandages.
“How are you feeling?”
Their lover smiled, reached for them, and pulled them into bed.
“Better, now that you’re here.”
“I never left.”
“Don’t ever leave.”
They pressed another kiss to their forehead.
“Promise.”
Their lover winced, and blinked wearily.
“Kiss it better?”
They smiled.
“Of course.”
They kissed every wound thrice times over, until their lover was dead asleep in their arms, coated in their love.
“I love you,” they whispered into their hair.
And despite the bruises, despite the wounds, in their sleep, their lover smiled.
“I just—I don’t think I love you anymore.”
It hurt—like a thousand suns burning in his core, a million white lies, a rockslide in his gut.
He swallowed, and tears threatened to spring to his eyes.
“What do you mean, you don’t love me. I made myself for you. Is the witty humor not enough anymore? The undying devotion? The kindness, all of it, I did it for you.”
Lila bit her lip.
“I’m sorry.”
“Tell me, did I not change quick enough, or did you change too fast?”
His voice was bitter, a winters cold bite, even to his own ears.
“Matt—“
“It’s Matthew.”
Lila paused.
His scoffed, angrily.
“You don’t love me anymore. I became Matt for you—I created myself around you, built myself upon you. I became the picture you painted in your mind. You can’t say you don’t want it and have it the same.”
A flush rose to her cheeks.
“You’re being ridiculous—“
“You stopped loving me!” He shouted, and after a moment, softer, “how could you not love me?”
A tear slipped down Lila’s cheek.
“You’re perfect. I just—I’m sorry. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
It wasn’t enough. How could it ever be enough? He had taken classes to be with her because she didn’t like to be alone, had started the track to become a vet because she loved animals and wanted to work with the love of her life, hd cut his hair, and changed his posture, had gotten superpowers, had been sexy and cute and smart and kind and wholesome and dorky and funny and yet—
He was perfect. And still, she had stopped loving him.
Somewhere between Matt—Matthew—he had remade himself in the negative space around her, and somehow, as he changed himself, she had changed too.
“I still love you,” he offered weakly, and she turned her head, as if slapped. “I could change—“
“Stop.”
A tear dropped off the end of his chin.
“I’d do it well—“
“Matthew.”
His name, a plea. No more Matt.
Lila had killed him.
Lila sniffed, as if steeling herself, then drew herself up.
She looked him directly in the eye.
“You need to stop changing for others.”
“You liked it when I changed for you,” he murmured, voice raw.
She swallowed.
“That was different.”
“How, Lila. Different because it was you? Because me changing was romantic, not sad, when it was you? God.”
“Matthew—“
“You didn’t love me for me,” he threw an arm out. “You don’t love Matt, and you don’t love whoever I am now.”
Lila closed her eyes.
“I said I was sorry—“
“I became a new person for you, and you relished it, and now you’re sorry?”
She pursed her lips.
“It’s not like that.”
“You know it is.”
And whatever was left of his heart broke.
A match lit itself inside his chest.
Lila opened her mouth, and he cut her off.
“No. Just—stop. Stop apologizing when you aren’t sorry. I am going to go out, and I am going to find someone who loves me, not for Matt, not for Matthew, but for me. And when I do, I am going to love them harder than I have ever loved anyone else. Even you.”
Lila looked like she didn’t know what to say, as if she had expected the collapse but hadn’t expected him to bare his teeth.
“Go.”
When she left, she slammed the door behind her.
Eight months later, he met a girl named Kaylie in a coffee shop.
They ruled the world, together, five years later.