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the lie - don paterson

As was my custom, I’d risen a full hour  before the house had woken to make sure that everything was in order with The Lie, his drip changed and his shackles all secure. I was by then so practiced in this chore I’d counted maybe thirteen years or more since last I’d felt the urge to meet his eye. Such, I liked to think, was our rapport. I was at full stretch to test some ligature when I must have caught a ragged thread, and tore  his gag away; though as he made no cry, I kept on with my checking as before. Why do you call me The Lie? he said. I swore: it was a child’s voice. I looked up from the floor. The dark had turned his eyes to milk and sky and his arms and legs were all one scarlet sore. He was a boy of maybe three or four. His straps and chains were all the things he wore. Knowing I could make him no reply I took the gag before he could say more and put it back as tight as it would tie  and locked the door and locked the door and locked the door

@madchen

Mar 17, 2024

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brief nighttime reflection

I’ve spent the whole morning looking for a lost key that would open all the doors. It was like waking up small cuts in the throat, like searching for the past and remembering the pain. Another thing crossed off the list, but was it worth coming back home? Will it help to bang your head against the doors? What we do is shameful, it’s shameful to neglect what we have around Walking back home, I unplugged myself and looked up at the sky. It was 8:34 PM and there were a few stars. I realized the trap - dispersion. I don’t know how long it’s been since I last looked up at the sky - usually, we gaze blankly down, the deepest point of a screen.

@alikelylad

Jan 29, 2025

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JACKET

I hang your jackets in my closet like trophies, or maybe like warnings. I don’t know which. I don’t wear them. It’s far too hot — sticky, oppressive heat that clings to the skin like regret — but I keep them there, row by row, like memory has a dress code. The scent is gone now. That clean, clove-sweet sharpness you always carried. Still, I walk past them every day. I make myself look. It’s supposed to mean something. All of this. I keep telling myself I’m meant for something bigger — to make a name for myself, they always say — but what name? The one I was given, or the one I’ll have to carve out with blood and trembling hands? Fifty-five years. Fifty-five steps to the top of the hill, up to that damn library where I’ve been meaning to go. Where I keep meaning to go. And yet. I don’t move. My legs work. I know they do. They carried me through worse things — war zones of the heart, ancestral curses, kitchens full of shattered plates. But I still can’t make them climb. I don’t know if that makes me weak or merciful. I don’t know if it’s sabotage or a mercy I don’t deserve. A dog that weeps after it kills is still a killer. A dog that weeps is still a dog. Your guilt won’t make you holy. Your regret won’t make you clean. So I ask: when you see a butterfly land on lavender — that momentary grace, delicate and impossible — do you still spell my name in your head, as if that might bring me back? As if I ever left?

@baileyxward

May 28, 2025

Top Recs from @Undoubtedly

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"Just like the old days"

Some days I can feel the craving of release, the soft whisper of an old "friend" beckoning me for just one more. Maybe on a thigh, perhaps the abdomen, but never in clear sight. All these places oozing with insecurities, making me think that if I would make one single incision all of these emotions will finally get cut loose.

@Undoubtedly

Mar 15, 2025