unlovenot all self harm comes
in the obvious form of lines up arms or down thighs
of throwing up insides and self worth
into toilet bowls with the sounds
that make you wonder how you're not dead.
she picked at her lips constantly
cracking and splitting
peeling and bleeding
it stung
more than expected
and it bled
more than ever anticipated
even after she's been doing it all day
she drank her tea that was still steaming
still made her hands flinch from the
far too hot porceline
but she parted lips
and felt it force it way down
burning and splitting
her lips and throat
before settling
like molten in her
ash filled stomach
tiny fingers
pinching, squeezing
pulling on skin
making underneath it
burst
and bloom
her blood like water colour
exploding and spreading
and mixing over
thighs and stomachs
no-one thinks to notice
the bruises
they're accidental
right?

alas, i cannot swim.and you over thought things. you stared at the concrete, and the cars, and the way the light reflected off the passing green car. you imagined how it would feel if it hit you. they're just thoughts though, right? nothing more. you tell yourself, "everyone thinks these things sometimes."
you take an extra long sip from your coffee cup, seeing if you can wash your thoughts away.
-
you spill your coffee on your shirt. a chain reaction, a subtle change of scenery; you don't exactly know what to conclude from this event. you reach into your pocket to pull out your white handkerchief, only it's red now. your hand is bleeding. you don't remember this happening, but then again, you don't remember much of anything. you make your way towards the stretch of the city. you try to let its stomach swallow you whole. is this you? are you growing old? you can't tell if you're dotted with dandelions or soaked up in the city's sweat. you are no longer the man you thought you were, & this can only mea

almost joseph.joseph was the boy with flower-pressed lips the colour of burnt wine and childhood stitches mixed with just the slightest dash of grey, for memory. i see him often, in the small parts i have left, patched together into a shadow of what - who - he really was.

i remember thinking that the ridges along his lips must have held some chemical, enticing yet silently deadly - just enough to blur my vision and make my knees weak. i think now it was a poison, because even the memory of it is making my insides ache.

joseph was - is - my almost boy.

goes on.i. she painted green over her arms and wished that people would appreciate
the special shade of the evergreens that stretch up to the sky in the forests around her town.
but they just remove them like they're just going to reappear and stick buildings in their place.
it made her green turn red.
but she was so small
ii. the girls have lipstick smothered on their lips
and their faces are unnaturally orange and eyes ringed with black spider legs
she thought it was stupid and wanted to see if she flicked
the cakes on layer if it
would crack.
iii. she had written so many words for him
and pressed flowers in the pages like each word for him was carved
into a tombstone
trying to keep his ghost alive
but he hadn't ever read a single one
and he never would.

drift.it was dark
and i was struggling
with an angry ocean
in head
and heart
you stumble home
sink beneath the cotton blues
and stop the waves
from breaking
quite so much
enough to
sleep

nervous ticki. i curse you some nights, kicking the soil around your grave and daring you
double fucking daring you to be alive somehow
somewhere.
ii. i heard you at my grave. my god your face has lengthened, your jaw was so slack and wide and i nearly lost it
lost it like you clearly already have.
i want to tell you i do. i'm alive, in most ways at least
but
no.
iii. your mail still rattles my door of a morning hiding in with mine like it can sneak past me
past my dulled senses and weakened barrier.
everything is numb.
vi. a shadow. thats all that i am now, friend.
i have tried dialing numbers or scrawling words but they don't come.
imagine that, me, out of words.
i am not myself anymore
v. solitude will be the death of me.
i'd swear to god, but you've ruined that too
you logical bastard.

a.m.She'd heard that after an attempt some people see the world differently
The chemicals or wiring changes and they see the everything differently.
But she felt the same.
Maybe worse.
She couldn't even do this right.

internalwe had a code, a way of telling the other that our mind wasn't stable that day
'i feel like smashing all the plates in the house again today'
not so secret; not too clever
but it worked
you said it every single day for two weeks, and it was always followed by you tossing your head back to gulp down half a
bottle of rot gut. i told you to stop it, and you tried.
it lasted two days.
then it got worse.
worse, worse, worse. i started to wonder if you were just getting more 'you'.
maybe you were just an inherent fuck-up, and it was hardwired into your dna.
god, you really were more than just unstable.
but you were delicate.
fucking fragile.
god dam this world makes me mad sometimes. everyone is too busy trying to stop
people hurting other people, that they don't notice those hurting
themselves.
i noticed you.
no-one else did though.
no-one ever fucking does.

.i avoid the eyes of people when i'm nervous
stare at spaces in between their eyelids
and let the conversation fade
or dissolve.
i don't know where to let my eyes rest
when you appear
in my head
around my bones
there's nowhere to look
except through you

for california.
i remember the day you ripped you chest open, and let me peer inside at the darkness and the water rising up to settle in the crook of you neck. you had scribbled it down in notebooks, and i'd heard you howling at 3am when the walls were closing in on you. somehow we both thought running from it was the best solution, never wanting to see it in its full figure, scared it might take me with you. or you with me.
you poured it out in waves, crashing and subsiding but never stopping. i sat, stiller than i'd ever sat before, my hands hovering over your shoulders trying to figure out how to comfort you. how to place my hands on you in such a way that i might be able to keep you together, stop you from splitting open or unraveling. you said you were going face your demons, look them in the eye and tell them to do their worst, do their best to destroy you.
i guess you thought that they couldn't do anything worse than you had done to yourse

cheap whisky.instead of exchanging numbers
we exchanged horror stories
and compared our
drunken scars

[yours down your side
mine up my arms]

when i looked at you from a distance
i thought maybe you could
cut me open with
your cheekbones

[but you never were
so merciful]

and your eyes were as empty
as the bottles that we
clutched to gain the silver
that traced our bodies

[but the rest of you was full
of lossandloveandhateandblackness]

you said that there was lead in my veins
and you brought it to the boil
and i sat there burning
with bugs being drawn to me

[my destruction was more beautiful
than i ever could be]

i remember you hit me

things the hurricane season taught her-don't make tea when your insides are more
blue than pink.
the leaves soak it up and leave it watery and bland
- its the things that aren't really there that stick
in your throat the most
- goodbyes never get easier
- far away looks better until you get there
then you want somewhere else

- don't poke the ache. it won't
just turn off like you're pressing a button
it will run further and deeper
or burst and spread
- the fog in your chest
wont disperse from breathing
in and out as many times as you can
you'll just lose your sight
and hit the floor
- she had loved him from
the very

Untitledyou had this way of making me forget the most simple of tasks, i screamed down the phone
trying to get you listen to me, and i couldn't stand on my own feet for almost 13 months.
i spilled tea down my shirts constantly and i went through two entire boxes of plates
from the local department store. i spent a year of my life falling apart in stupid little fits
of childishness that i look back on and hate you and myself and am perplexed at how i
didn't notice it all while it was happening.
its a special kind of blind, you know. the innate human ability to not see how fucking stupid
you're being at the time, and of course you don't listen to the people around you
telling you what a fuckhead you're being.

alright, its okay i guess.she said she wanted to find someone who would be able to read the semi-tones
and breaks inbetween her breathes when she is holding back that sadness that leaves bottom
lips quivering and the oceans of eyes suddenly grows and swells and flows freely down faces.
she wanted to find someone who could read these tones, and find the ache like a map
and poke it with the right tenderness and break it apart and let it disperse to other parts where
they can sit and not weigh so much.
someone who could take the music out of her ears, and know what each song a band means
her heart was feeling. that what sarah said mean she's falling apart but not really sure about
whether she has the energy too. or that bright eyes means she's just a big pile of uselessness
and that her insides are far too heavy for her to sit up straight right now.
and watercolouring is bad.

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slipping.our love never made a sound when it left.
it never asked to be excused
it was just there
then gone.

corners and paintswatches.i loved you in a way that was engulfing for my young heart. for someone
still small enough to fit all limbs and troubles into the bath tub with ease.
i remember that was how i thought of it the other night when i tried for the
first time in years to soak and wash this feeling away with warm water and
bubbles. but i didn't cackle with a bubble beard, and it left my fingers wrinkled
and feeling my age something severe.
you've been hiding around corners all week. i was flicking through my dvd
collection, procrastinating, or lost in what was the last thing to be moved back
into my room after i finally gave up with the blue and how i admitted i couldn't
stand another night surrounded by walls that we'd painted together.
i choked on the crow. and remembered you thought that if you took my last name,
you'd inherit his skills and you'd be able to stop anything from hurting me ever again.
but you're still in the parts of me that i thought i could live without.
i gave you my elbows, my shoulders

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tangled up in blue eyes

by ~ohsparrowsong, Nov 17, 2012, 4:30:49 AM
Literature / Prose / Fiction / General Fiction / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

_{Her hair was the kind of brown where you just knew she was born blonde. Eyes, big and bright, filled with a wonder I couldn't name or place. She kept a ribbon tied in her hair; never yellow, it reminded her of mothers and children. She was a mystery to everyone and a misery to me.}

_{They said that the colour of her skin was something that resembled perfection. White porcelain with peach undertones, something of a doll; a child made from china, painted colourful with deft fingers scarred blue.

Curiousity got the best of me and I looked too deep, too quickly; oceanic blue eyes that shifted like they'd already drowned every living soul that had stepped too close, sand-lined belly full, sated. I started to wish I'd learnt to swim but the waves were almost poetic, I kept yelling and each of my syllables would form a bubble that would float the surface and be lost. That was easy enough to explain with the laws of physics and the taste of salt water in my throat.

When i yelled at her in the house, the words just vanished, lost momentum and dropped in the slightly too large gap between us; word-bricks made up of the coppery tang of blood and stale hate.

She began to fade a little over time, her flesh turned opalescent and her breath dulled to the softest of whispers; an unfurling of child-waves new to the sea. Colours dimmed for her then and I became emboldened; I taunted her paper flesh with vicious kisses given by lips made of memory and the slightest tang of ivory until I was my own mystery and her misery.}

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tangled up in blue eyesby ~ohsparrowsong

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_{a collab with the wonderful
~Lacewinged-Beauty}

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Submitted on: November 17, 2012
File Size: 1.7 KB

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~PassionsInsanity Nov 28, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Mmmh, this is very interesting. I didn't realise at first that this was a collab, so I kept trying to figure it out. When I realised it was a collab, it suddenly made more sense for some reason. Perhaps because when doing a collab myself, I always feel like you're trying to weave to separate types of rope together and though it will most likely be beautiful, it's still two minds strangled up together.
I do, however, really love the tone of this piece. It's nice and soft, like an autumn pastel colour.. It's like there's something on your fingers and you carefully rub them against each other and you feel that there is something there, but you can't quite grab it. And I adore the abstract with the colours and the concepts that are pulled from those.
Btw, this line "Her hair was the kind of brown where you just knew she was born blonde"? Friggin' gorgeous!

~ohsparrowsong Nov 28, 2012

*forests-as-eyes Nov 24, 2012 Student Photographer

~alexischaotic Nov 18, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Great work

~ohsparrowsong Nov 18, 2012

_{thank you <3}

~alexischaotic Nov 18, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

You are very welcome

!randomlyinspired-21 Nov 17, 2012 Student Writer

I love your words!

~ohsparrowsong Nov 17, 2012

_{thank you <3}

!Lacewinged-Beauty Nov 17, 2012 Writer

^{It is crazy how much I like this little creation.}

~ohsparrowsong Nov 17, 2012

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tangled up in blue eyesby ~ohsparrowsong

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tangled up in blue eyesby ~ohsparrowsong

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