delicate bones.: May 2011

18.5.11

mirror, mirror.

There once was a girl. One with hollow eyes and a rotting heart. She spent most of her free time inside her own mind or in front of the mirror on the wall. She would sneak there at midnight; her bird bones rattling like sweet wooden wind chimes as she made her way up the stairs. The dusty floors clung to her bare heels, willing her to drink a cup of chamomile tea to settle her stomach, and go back to bed. But she dug her claws into the banister to keep her steady, and continued her journey to the mirror.

When she reached the door that held haunting secrets beyond its frame, she could almost taste the desolation that seeped through the cracks in the wood. A skeleton key crawled its way out of her nightgown pocket and into her shaking hand. After they saw what happened here, they always kept the door locked.

She put the key into its rightful place, the lock click-clicked in response. A satisfying noise to the girl's ears. Her dahlia lips formed a smug smile in that shadowy corridor. The door creaked on its hinges when she pushed her spindly winter hands against its chipped surface, and the temperature dropped instantly. Her breaths made delicate clouds in the air, her heart pitter-pattered frantically against her ribcage; throbbing bear-sized raindrops.

The room was a den of shadows. And, as always, it frightened the girl. Horrible things happen here, she thought to herself. As her timid ballerina feet met the limestone floor, she felt the crusted blood drops tattooed there. Hundreds of earthquakes crawled up her spine, cracking the surface; goose flesh danced along her collarbone towards her neck; her breath caught in her chest. A familiar mirror hung on the wall directly in front of the girl. She could just make out her reflection in its frosted surface; monstrous kohl eyes sinister holes etched into alabaster marble, thick ropes of wild snowy curls flowing to her infinitesimal waist, arms and legs emaciated tree limbs, and a skeleton lost underneath a thin layer of lace nightgown that fluttered unnervingly around her frail ankles. Her reflection was not unlike a ghost.

The mirror was a lake of phantoms. Callous phantoms who whisper-lied to the feeble girl. They poured their heartless whisper-lies into her ears. Whisper-lies that crawled their way into her brain, laying their contagious eggs there. Whisper-lies that coated her eyes with poison, distorting her vision and her thoughts. For this reason the girl longed to be near the phantoms, even though they were terrifying. She longed to dip her fingers in the frothy pool of silver they slept in, and listen to their chilling secrets.

She crept closer, letting only the very tips of her toes come in contact with the numbing floor. The girl could hear the soft murmur of the phantoms now. She wished for them to take the agonizing pain away, she wished for them to lead her by the hand to their world, the one behind the reflecting curtain.

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all?" the girl whispered, taking a few steps closer, her hands trembling.

An arctic breeze washed over the girl, followed by the sound of the door creaking closed, which sent another round of convulsions through her tiny body. The room was now a puddle of ink. Dark shadows swallowed the girl. She could no longer move; her bare feet frozen to the stone floor. But she could hear the phantoms dripping from their pool, onto the limestone below. And soon, she felt a frigid whisper of air lick her hand, dragging her towards the mirror, where the ghosts lived.

13.5.11

i'm invincible.

This wonderful weather has put me in such high spirits.

I hope I can find some time this weekend to lay on my trampoline, lost in the pages of a book, and let my albino skin become sun-kissed.

(My fingers are crossed for a light dusting of freckles, and even a small coat of sunburn.)

I hope all you lovelies feel as invincible as I do.

much love,

xoxo

6.5.11

lost.

I feel lost.

The sands of time whispering through my fingertips.

A heart being crammed through a paper shredder.

Heavy eyelids that refuse to completely drain their tear basins.

I feel lost.

I need someone, anyone, to help me find my way back home.

Follow the saltwater trail, through the woods, to the house made of candy,

where I'm being eaten alive, and bring me home.

quotes.

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." -Ernest Hemingway.

"Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish." -John Jakes.

"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." -E.L. Doctorow.

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you." -Ray Bradbury.

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia." -E.L. Doctorow.

"A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket." -Charles Peguy.

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." -Sylvia Plath.

"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all." -Richard Wright.

"The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about the life, which helps us regain our equilibrium." -Norbet Platt.

"It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop." -Vita Sackville-West.

"Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart." -William Wordsworth.

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible." -Vladimir Nabakov.

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." -Anton Chekhov.

"Ink and paper are sometimes passionate lovers, oftentimes brother and sister, and occasionally mortal enemies." -Terri Guillemets.

"When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can." -Samuel Lover.

"Writing is my time machine, takes me to the precise time and place I belong." -Jeb Dickerson.

"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them." -Nathaniel Hawthorne.

"Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind." -Catherine Drinker Bowen.

"Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead." -Gene Fowler.

"Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum." -Graycie Harmon.

"The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies." -Ray Bradbury.

28.5.11

soft-heart.