smell of summer

I feel perspiration on my back. My brain is confused, because I forgot what seasons were like. I'm thankful.

prince rey

The sun is setting as I sit at my desk. It hits me in such a way that I turn towards it and frown, bothered by how it's aimed directly into my eyes. Waving, flickering, this is its last moment before it disappears behind that warehouse. And like a light bulb before it blackens, or a moth before the first light of day, like a terminally ill patient on her last day, the raging orange is its strongest, this giant ball of fire in the sky.

You told me that I look beautiful in this light.

Shutter Island

There is this sad and beautiful knot that wants me to love him discreetly until my limbs have fallen off and my hair coils into strings. That knot is sacred in that it tells me that I would be okay being quiet and lonely as long as I know these feelings are truthful and continuously present.

Boy, You Know Me

These are truths that we've known and truth you have feared. In the middle of the cornfield on some golden afternoon, a staunchly figure stood. It rocked from side to side, as if spider-threads pulled him from opposite ends at the shoulders. You were intrigued when he waved, hat hanging from his burlap skin. You approached him, incredulous of his friendly shrugs and awkward dance, but when his face caught the light, you could only help but touch your cheek at his faded grin. He winked his custom pinned-back buttons, and you winked back. You asked for his name, and he could only shrug in response, confiding in you his lonely hours and bawling sunsets. On his stake he flailed, indifferently. From his brazen grin, to tapered blazer, which frays from the knots of your innermost memory, you knew you've seen him before this moment. This cornfield, which you have never set foot in before, looked like a remnant of a fantastical underworld, and this straw-man was your guide on the river Acheron. The severity of this imposition overwhelmed you, and you stepped back, immediately blinding yourself from the setting sun. This facilitation for radio silence was harsh, and you cringed for fear of this sycophantic relationship between you, me, and this old gnarled scarecrow. Self-destruction is not the form of release, but a path we earn. Your straw-man was cold, dear friend. He swayed languidly when not too long before he glowed. You took his crinkling fingers in your hands, and buried your face in his musty coat. In languish, you sobbed and sighed, and remembered the needles and thread that held together your scrapbook of fear and sadness. You have been burnt, badly, and this man must know. Rapidly, the pain that bound your chest to Old Man Straw seeped straight into your pores, and there released a heat so strong, you relinquished your restraint. In your hands was fire; his hands were flickering; his straw body was crumbling from flames. You stepped back from the burning figure. From the stalks nestling your lay, you watched his flames reach for the ghosts in the air, the smoke finding its way for some unseen heaven, another realm. His coat and discolored hat curled into ash, but underneath the torrid heat, you see his smile by firelight. You settled calmly into the corn, and arrested his final sacrifice into these words: When there's nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.