Edmond-monet - Dying Vicariously

i know what i want now

i didn’t before

i want cold mornings and leaves that crunch under our feet.

I want warm blankets.

I want a house in the woods.

I want clean air and sunshine and my own means of living.

a hand to hold, someone to confide in

I want to be loved; but I most of all,

I want to be loved by you.

To be loved means to be consumed. To love means to radiate with inexhaustible light. To be loved is to pass away, to love is to endure.

—Rainer Maria

Gouache 🎨

The Poet, Reynier Llanes, 2021

dear god,

i have grown since we last spoke, but i have not forgotten. i will never forget.

the silence will be etched on the canvas of my memory for all of eternity

your world, this world, that ebbs and flows so beautifully

the passage of time is a rich work of art that so few understand

and as it spins, the things that die create new life

flowers grow among the bones and

leaves sprout from the ashes and

i am still here.

i wish to die like a star, glowing and gleaming and destructively beautiful.

we mourn the empirical fastenings

of those who came before

most now dead and buried in swill;

beheaded

as they had their time, so shall I

as they loved, so shall I

as they died in a thousand ways,

fractals spinning through space

through the human mind

eternally soaring in mist and

touching heaven for but a moment

before all, all is lost

and down they fall into the black

window of obscurity;

so shall I.

something is rotting.

the smell pervades the house, wafting through the halls, seeping under the doorframes.

it’s subtle at first. easy to ignore. i turn on a fan and soon enough I’ve gone noseblind.

it’s been three days. I found a little mouse dead on the floor. it’s small. too small.

the smell gets worse. the fan is on all the time now. I put perfume under my nose to block it out. eventually, I grow numb.

a week. there is no escaping it. I have looked everywhere. it has stained all my clothes. It is here, somewhere, the source of it.

it has been months. I cannot leave. I am weak. it affects me constantly.

something is rotting.

it is me. it has always been me.

one of these days,

you will ask me to hold you,

and I will crush you in my hands.

not through any ill intent,

but out of never learning to love

and never learning the art of being gentle

northern lights photographed from space

With @staff 's recent post saying 1/4 of this site is LGBTQ going around, I'd like to see what the actual demographic is

So!

Please reblog for bigger sample size!