06/01/2023 06:21 PM  i love you skyline, i just love my friends more as it turns out, city life doesn't mean much to me when it's not 24 hours and electric, when population density is high and height limitations hit the stratosphere. and i guess i'd rather parks past midnight and the backs of vans, completely ignoring the drive-in movie we paid to see in favour of telling stupid jokes and doing stupid dares and taking stupid pictures and being every bit of the coming of age film we knew we could be, even years past 18 and i think i still am the person i was, i think i'm person i've always been. i've just shifted into something i knew i had to fake, to make sure i didn't get found out. "found out for what?" for who i am, obviously. silly question. (don't you know everything i like is stupid?) kids like me know what they need to do to survive, who they have to pretend to be without compromising too much of what they are. eyesight always fixated on the scale, careful not to disturb the balance between authenticity & adaptability. i love the skyline, but i didn't realise you came with fine print. apparently i only love you when you belong to one particular city, and when you accommodate one particular group of people a few thousand miles away. the days of walking in at five in the morning, praying i didn't wake anyone, and looking like the prettiest picture showing up at half past ten on your doorstep, dress dirty and sweatshirt a few sizes too big. notlikeitsmineanyway. it feels like that person is climbing up the walls, gripping the bars of the cage begging to be let out. my red flag is that i think i deserve to bite the hand that feeds because the hand feeding me is utterly 𝑓ucking boring. all this urban jungle and no one wants to play with me. clicking my heels, feel free to work whenever. abby 1 Comments

05/10/2023 05:04 PM  i may be rude but i'm the truth. forgive me if my words & actions seem to contradict. if i say one thing and then say another. i'm just trying to make it out of this alive, and i'll do anything to keep my head from going under. past circumstances have made me careful to wield mortar in one hand and a trowel in the other. to a discerning eye, there's a few leaks, but otherwise it looks impenetrable. ilearnfromthebest. the truth is if i could close my eyes & knock my heels together i would wish to never have met you. it's hard for me to see you as a sympathetic figure, rather than one of pity. too often i have known people who try to play their cards to get out of jail free. but a rose by any other name is still the same. i know you're not as innocent as you seem— it's not a fair fight when you choose someone weaker than you. all i can do is be glad that i'm not naive as you want me to be. i know why you're afraid of me. i'm not dumb enough to play the game, especially not underneath the spin light. despite the posturing, i have the tendency to strike where it hurts the most. because the goal is to watch you bleed out. it's my greatest weapon and my greatest shame. not sure if i should wear it like a badge of honour or hide it in the drawer. it helps me, it hurts me, it protects me from boys like you. thanks for confiding, if only you knew i'll use it against you when you back me into a corner. force fit me into whatever role helps you sleep at night. i know what you want, what you really want. the effort would be commendable if you weren't so utterly pathetic. like i should take any advice from someone like you. because what is stubbornness but cowardice? "who you are, what you say, you're just a boy who's afraid of the dark." saint abby 0 Comments

05/09/2023 04:29 PM  put it in your blog, i promise no one even gives a Ϝuck i've got an eye pressed against the keyhole, watching the two of you on the couch. (funny how i always catch myself doing something he would do) i can hear your laughter through the door. 𝘴𝘩𝘶𝘵 𝘶𝘱. whenever you speak, your voice walks on eggshells. you hold words as if you're carrying fine china. you talk to me as if i'm a starved lion, approaching cautiously as if i could pounce at any moment. i'm more of a cat caught in the rain, but it's amusing to see you view me as a threat. what about me warrants the shifty eyes, the bristled tail? it's like you have no idea how unbelievably fake you are. what is there, deep inside? is it just mirrors all the way down? reflections of whoever you're with, simply showing them what they want to see. moulding to any hands that sit down at the pottery wheel. no discernible personality. just a shell of a person.  and you, you're never wrong, are you? i can't stand being around you for too long. i don't know how anyone can stand being around you for too long. you look at the world with grey eyes and walk the earth with heavy feet. feel free to drown in your misery, i'll be on the beach with my hands in the sand the wind in my hair the sun in my eyes. you could be happy if you wanted to, you know. if you didn't show disdain for anything you didn't understand. if you untied the anchor from around your neck. any time spent next to you is spent chipping paint off the walls and ripping grass out of the ground, widely boring & pointless. it gives me something to do when talking to you is like pulling teeth. cold medicine, cough syrup, melatonin pills. i think i've finally figured out what you are—you're nothing. you're really not much of anything, are you? ad altiora natus, semper et semper. ex infiniate ad aeternum. abby 0 Comments

04/20/2023 06:41 PM  consider, for my sake, an alternate reality in which we survived. a life where i could have laid in bed next to you wearing your best tux, grinning at me with a cigarette dangling precariously from your mouth. hair charmingly disheveled, in a roguish sort of way. the glint in my eye that says i can make it so much worse. your smug smile that dares me to. me, drunk on your arrogance, as always. and everything seems hazy, almost dreamlike. you, of course, on top of the world. overlooking it all. king of the universe. i don't mind being below you, it's a nice view. one of your best angles. you belong there. and i know that you'll pull me up from my knees when you tire of the reverence anyway. (asifthatwilleverhappen) i've begged. i've earned it. the light from the window behind you produces a sort of halo effect. it's fitting, to see you so heavenly. holy and ethereal. it just makes sense. like how you only understand the sight of your coatrack when my jacket's hanging from it, next to yours. or how touches only feel right when they're accompanied by the coolness of your old ring brushing against my cheek. i can't stand the way you look at me, when you lie and swear you love me more than anything. more than yourself. the obsession with everyone who has wronged you that will one day consume you. your need to destroy everything before you can built it back up again. not all supernovas end in nebulas, you know. some end in blackholes. but you don't hear any of this. because then i wake up. abby 0 Comments

04/19/2023 09:03 PM  from grey-eyed athena to swift-footed achilles, everyone has their epithets. vodka girls with tastes passed down from brother to sister, from rubbing alcohol to strawberry lemonade. pouring ten years plus down the drain. drunk words are sober thoughts that mean nothing when you got an empty bottle in your hand.  she is a lesson i am doomed to learn over and over again. good little catholic boy, the patron saint of springtime, the apple of his father's eye. forever protected from the threat of being decanonised. too virtuous, too pure to be tainted by my corrupting touch & sinful words. untarnished, always the prodigal son.  fortune in your favour that you outran me. these careless hands would have torn you apart.  the bad guy of the story. a pretty villain with prettier ocean eyes. the scent of a jacket doused in expensive cologne. the sight of my bared neck makes your palms itch and your hands clench.  you don't even have to ask. i already know my place. underneath you, your heel, whichever. oh, to talk a girl out of her clothes and out of her right mind. he-who-could-never-do-wrong, the dreamwalker who visits during restless nights. my greatest pleasure, my greatest disappointment. the blueprint to abandoned plans. i burn your effigies everyday, just as promised. though a gravedigger, i do respect the dead. what works? all i see is despair. an ozymandias you will never be. you got that, honey? and you. code that cannot be parsed. runtime error. you're still in development. stuck in the debugging stage and the last person left no comments. we'll have to wait and see who you decide to be. well, beyond the warmth a hand pressed against the small of backs. a payphone i whispered my confessions into but didn't have a quarter to continue the call. or you could just end up being bloatware. ...then there's me. the perpetual victim, the final girl, the scorned hero, the eternal tragedy. never in the wrong, always the martyr for the cause. the weakest bearer of the heaviest persecution complex. the sole sufferer, the biggest problem. the reason why children lose their wonder, and why innocence doesn't last as long as you'd like. the thunderstorm on a birthday or baseball game. i'm the job you never land, the guy who doesn't call back, the invitation lost in the mail. the bills piling up as you miss another lotto number. too proud to let anyone catch a glimpse of the rain cloud lingering over my head. but i hope you notice anyway. i'm the poor in spirit that will never reach the kingdom of heaven.  st. peter locked me out a long time ago. abby 1 Comments

04/18/2023 05:05 PM  a phantom pain. untouched but vicariously felt through another. i'm getting to that age where kids i used to know start making the local news. and not for anything funny, either. it reminds me of when my brother would talk about his former classmates, dead or imprisoned. hitting that part of adult life i guess. less "look at who got arrested for stealing a golf cart" and more "so-and-so died in a car wreck." . . . "you knew them, right?" kindofbutnotreally. as much as you can know anyone who you had barely spoken to but saw everyday. just faint memories of something funny said in class over half a decade ago. i only knew them the way you see bruises on the side of a head & a sister who lost her brother. the way rubberneckers know flashing lights & the vague shape of body bags. this moment replaces old ones. what i'll remember them for. what mothers will try to forget. i don't pretend to be close—thatsnotmystyle—but it's a bit surreal when the image you have of someone in your head is from when you were fourteen. the image that will forever be fourteen. that's a kid who died on that freeway. they were kids.  and now they're not. . . . "hey, you alright?" "yeah, what's up?" i'm sitting here making their tragedy about me and my fear of mortality.  the unease of what you have known to be true changing ever so slightly. suddenly, the earth's tilt is one degree off. "i mean... i heard about what happened."   ...the other day i remembered when i ran into their cousin at a jimmy eat world concert. i thought i saw michael on the train this morning. i couldn't look away.   "yeah. i didn't really know them. it's unfortunate." -abby 0 Comments

04/15/2023 07:27 PM  innocence, adolescence when all the makeup rubs off i still look like the little girl hiding behind her mother's skirt. scanning night skies in search of the second star to the right ever since i was tall enough to open a window. (or crafty enough to stand on a chair) even now i sleep with it cracked a centimetre or two, just in case he took a wrong turn at ursa major and shows up a decade or so late. whatever, i'm patient. (i'm not.) i don't know why i did the things i did as a kid. being a teenager & taking every one of my friends to the place with the best view of the moon. confessing to each of them that they were the only person i had ever brought there— "i've never shown anyone this before," recited about a dozen times. practising for a future of lying through my teeth and deluding someone into believing they're special, i guess. not really sure what the point of any of it was. or my infamous habit of straying away in the middle of a party just to see who would follow after me. it's embarrassing in hindsight. itgivestoomuchaway. (jesus, have some pride.) but hey, maybe i should be eternally grateful for the lesson in humility. it's a capital virtue, after all... since then i've learned not to test people's affections. it usually ends in disappointment. i don't want to know who would choose me first, before anyone else. the less i know the better. ignorance is heavenly, heavenly bliss. abby 0 Comments

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04/14/2023 07:29 PM  nostalgia, misplaced maybe. an ache for things that barely were. promise me that when my exile expires, we'll speed over hills again? i need the feeling of my heart catching in my throat like chase needs cheap vodka (haha.) it's not a late night drive if we don't almost crash while screaming along to tigers jaw self-titled. "what about your friends, do they make you happy?" let's skip the police pursuit though, and maybe the crying in cars and sitting in my driveway for hours past curfew too. but only if we get to drink 'til after close and walk home barefoot in the daylight. the moon doesn't mind, but the sun thinks we're pretty damn shameless.  the nighttime has always been sweet on me. i call a lot of things my second home. new york. philadelphia international airport. trashed pool houses at dawn. but sitting next to you passenger side might be the closest i've ever come. early mornings sipping leftover mixers, long before anyone else has woken up & snide remarks whispered in dark rooms. "we were just overprivileged youths seeking something to do." being well-behaved is overrated, and what they don't know can't hurt them. secrets make the best memories & tell the best stories. but i don't know if i'm that person anymore. have i changed? am i growing up? is that a bad thing? i'm not sure if i can go back to living how i used to but i can't stand how i'm living now. the mirror shows me someone i've never seen before. how cruel to have outgrown your home without one to take its place. can't regress, progress, or stagnate. somehow stuck in a limbo of all three. i wish i could pick everyone up and put us in different situations— to have my cake & eat it too. i can't keep lingering in history, but i'm a little predisposed to it. abby 0 Comments

04/12/2023 11:21 PM  necromancy i grip the back of your neck to lift your heavy head "see?" i say, your body jostling as i gesture around wildly with my other hand "i don't need you." then why do i feel compelled to dig up corpses just to prove i've made something of myself? reigniting dead dreams when new ones burn out i buried you a long, long time ago and set fire to the flowers i placed at your gravestone that's where you belong. i shouldn't desecrate your body like this. it's not fair to you. mimicry has never looked good on me. but i love putting my words in your mouth and pulling your strings like a marionette. you always know your lines. i never have to read them to you twice. when my fingers work faster than my head & heart, it's easy to conjure you in my mind and dress you up to fit the scenes. even if you've been miscast. this discrepancy between who you are and who i wished you could be still haunts me, thank god you'll never know. i don't think i could handle seeing the look on your face if you discovered the shrine i built for you. if it's any consolation, i've snuffed out the candles placed at your feet, (they rekindle every now and then, but i stay vigilant) and obscured the light haloing your hair. sometimes your holy spirit moves through me, but i'm getting better at resisting the tongues of fire hanging over my head. every day another piece of your statue chips away. i'll kick the habit of resurrecting you for my own personal gain. monsignor goretti will help me. a few hail marys maybe, but it's worth it to be back in your good graces. confessionals are my second home anyway. sorry i made you fly too close to the sun, it was either that or drowning in the sea. and i couldn't bear to watch you wash up on the beach. abby, a saint always, always, always. 0 Comments

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