Because I like reading too, I guess. Also, they didn't seem to fit quite anywhere else.
exhalation. by Pretty-As-A-Picture, literature
Literature
exhalation.
Sixteen. Sixteen years since she was the size of a deflated lung beneath her mothers ribcage- now she has her own mass beneath her ribcage. Thumping sometimes to the outside, treating the skin of Laylla's stomach like a door. It will open in 3 months, it will be sliced open because her flesh is meat and they'll bring Sophie to air and she'll swallow until all she tastes is that dull white of the hospital. And then she'll cry and the music will drone in Laylla's ears until she tastes vomit and she is numb in all the aching places.
She doesn't know the father. She thinks Michael but she tells herself it is Louis. She repeats his name over and
the fluttered- a collection by Pretty-As-A-Picture, literature
Literature
the fluttered- a collection
i
Hear my joints dislocate, coming apart at the notion of sunlight. It falls and it settles in pictures of loveliness, golden tree branches and hints of leaves; of autumn, of spring.
I am so tall in the water. My legs are never-ending, crooked lines of peachskin- watching my fingers draw out ripples until they strain and buckle and fall into the cool. Ill touch my toes and loop my figure and Ill make giant ripples, abhorring fallen leaves and sending shivers of blue through his legs.
Its a faded crimson red holding my breasts, tugging my hips and leaving my ribcage bare to the current. Its smudged lipstick and smear
pretty boys break hearts. by Pretty-As-A-Picture, literature
Literature
pretty boys break hearts.
sometimes I think Im just a mess of badly drawn lines. Im just scrawled veins beneath paper rough skin, I wear poorly sketched scars on my thighs [skin deep red pen lines] and even my smile is lop-sided- but he never seemed to notice.
my skin [spread like thick icing over my skeleton] is a monotonous pattern of pores, a stretch of the world the sun never kissed. I cant see the beauty in multitudes of freckles and chipped fingernails- but he does.
why do you love me?
you make me happy.
I never could figure out just how. was it my illegible love notes, or the tiny hearts I drew into his bare back wi
my mouth is filling with sand by Pretty-As-A-Picture, literature
Literature
my mouth is filling with sand
my brother used to tell me to hold my breath until i could hear the ocean in my head. and i did, it was a soft roar of sky fighting sea. eventually when my eyes rolled back like waves, he would make me breathe so i didn't drown.
he was always there to tell me to breathe out but now he is gone and i am forgetting how to.
we were very young when our father died (fell from a cliff photographing the moon) and our mother started dating the milkman. he was gangly man with white hair but otherwise very handsome. we didn't mind him at all. he made our mother smile and brought warm milk every night. but we missed our father and his stories about sta
"Times like these. Someone is writing and we are only words."
-Xai
I. Bergamot
a small tree
there you were beneath it and lifting one arm up,
throwing one arm back,
in a Venetian garden (I think;
the details are unclear now, muted nouns)
and reaching for it, stretching and reaching,
while the strangest nakedness bathed your body, softened by sunlight.
I thought:
if only I could paint you as you are
in my deepest of dreams,
with sour citrus fruits.
II. Astrolabes
a medieval invention
plotted the course of our stars today; jokingly,
we listen to the fortune teller who says
'You were alchemists in a life past,
but I do not kno
Wii Would Like to Play by In-The-Machine, literature
Literature
Wii Would Like to Play
Little Susan B. stood staring at the thing before her in disbelief.
"Fat," she said. "I'm fat?"
"I'm a machine. Machines don't lie."
"But I'm ten."
"Ten and fat."
"But how can you tell? There's gotta be some mistake."
"Okay, kid, listen up. I've got your goddamn height and BMI right here. Right here inside me.
And according to my records, you suck at boxing, you suck at running, your physical age is that of a 48-year-old male and you suck at Brawl."
"Hey, you're being mean!"
"I'm not mean. I'm a machine. Can't take playing with me? If you don't like it then take yourself somewhere else and maybe go and play with the other babies ou
When I was seven, I was diagnosed with emotions.
"Poor girl." I heard them say. "She'll never survive this one."
I laid with my face towards the ceiling on the cold examination table, listening to them discuss my fate. I felt something breaking in my chest and something burning inside my throat. A small tear slipped down my cheek.
"Doctor! Look at this!" Shrieked my mother, "Something is coming out of her eye."
The doctor rushed over to me and wiped the tear from my cheek. He touched the top of my head as he whispered, "I am so sorry." And then he turned to my mother. "It's a tear. It means that she is sad."
"Sad?" My mother asked inquis