Today, Betelgeuse, Antares, and Eta Carinae are all undergoing the final stages of Stellar Evolution - cores collapsing in on themselves [innards being scraped out of a mother’s womb] - Great Dimmings left to stumble across the dark.

Somewhere on Earth, a vase shatters against freezing marble tile.

“I aim to make amends by praying for your soul so that it may never be met with such viciousness again.”

The message blares on the screen amidst the shards.

Too late, too late, too late.

-

I have come to believe a deer is a facile sort of animal, you see. Fawn-Eyed and Bone-Cold at the first catch of yellowed headlights. However, no one expects the imprint from its last stare, and absolutely no one could fathom its impact upon collision.

Poor Little Lonely Star couldn’t believe the dent I’d left behind- found the fissure in his feigned indifference and pried him open. He’d speak of our wedding on the Amalfi Coast (or in Cambodia?) with the same blasé manner one might discuss the weather - niceties for the sake of niceties. Now I stood there elated for another at the altar, while simultaneously averting my gaze past bridal shops - fabric white upon glaring white - reminded that even the most pristine foundations would come to be overrun with ivy; such is the cruel rhythm of nature:

Fire ants skitter over skin, chase me around the clock face, gnaw through marrow to burrow themselves into my heart.

Sorry, father. Sorry, father. You’ll never walk me down the aisle - the timer’s ticking on you!

Better the fire ants.

Better the reddened cuticles and scabrous heart than to be the mother birthing her son devoid of innards.

-

God shatters the glass sky from above and the debris rains on my Beloved.

Lonely Stars pray ‘til the skin’s flayed off their knees, failing to realise they’re bowing to a False Saint - Forgiveness rendered Null. The Brass Angel wars with the Callous Snake in the grass who’s chameleonised herself on every soil. Let me bear the weight of both.

I tell A—— that Beauty was the Abstract Composition that never served me well - Fruit Flies Fled to Carcass; mind splintered - I turned Driver, Deer, Dent.

So it goes: every Sharp-Tongued Adult was a Fawn-Eyed Child at some point.

-

Ad astra per aspera, he sings! Such Cadence! Such Brilliance!

I hold their Dull Dreams in a vice-like grip. There’s Deer-Blood before me, Deer-Blood after me; remove the Coward’s knife plunged half-way in now, and I’ll be left Bloodless.

May all witness this Stunning Immolation of the Self.

Ad astra per aspera, you wail, but the distance from your hardship to my star is just too far.

buy me a coffee 💌

author’s note:

22.09.2025

it feels unfathomable to me that i turn 24 today. for months, i’ve kept this journal entry - this letter - unfinished, stuck at ‘the Sea’ portion, clinging to the hope that by some miracle, i could wedge myself between my loved ones and Time, as if it does not mark us all.

i see now that i’ve spent much of my life carrying others' pain to quell (avoid? quiet?) my own. i recognise this pattern in eldest daughters and their fathers - this mirroring of each other, this silent sacrifice.

i am publishing this because, despite the unfamiliar vulnerability of sharing such a personal letter, i hope that any daughter or father who sees their reflection here will remember they do not have to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. may they find grace in being human, not in the impossible task of bearing every burden of the other. to never express your own pain is to sacrifice yourself. love is already proven in the willingness to sacrifice, not in the decimation of your entire being.

On the Flixbus Back to Vienna

15.04.25

The waning moon is obscured by the clouds tonight. On most evenings, I seldom notice whether this is the case. I only notice the road ahead. I only notice the road ahead.

Look up.

Look up.

But my eyes are plastered to theirs; I can only ever look through.

—

They ask how you’re made of God-blood and honesty, but never about your pain, Baba.

You soar across vast, unrelenting lands to help refugees, and polish your own shoes, and you can never say “no” to us.

I limp across continents, losing my own shoes in this fruitless process, and I can never say “no” to them.

—

You are not the rose, they scream.

You are the bud.

—

There are times when a passerby smiles at me on the street, and it jars me completely. For a moment - just for a moment - I am rendered fully human. I am made Corporeal. In these fleeting instances, I am your daughter. It is all-encompassing. Therein lies the acknowledgment: I have been seared into the recesses of someone’s mind. And you know, just like you, I can never let this endure. They will pass through the immaterial again, unable to shift my organs out of place as they leave.

I don’t tell you that in my most gorgeous dreams, I am Forgotten, and everyone around me is left unscathed. I was there. I was there. I have been there, at some point, at some point, for some time.

Nothing is reminiscent of missing someone like the slow crawl of bile up my throat. I am as extraordinary as you have always been, as you always will be. In this trance-like state, the hatchet cleaves away at my name and does not stop short of pliable.

“রুসাফা”/“Rusafa” is the name that had been given to me: paved stones, a garden in paradise, the pilgrimage to perseverance. And persevere, I must.

When the stitches on my mouth come undone, I am emboldened to ask you how you go on with discarded limbs and a heart that vows to stop beating. You tell me to lead a simple life. I beg you to pass the weight of the supernovae tearing you from end to end onto me instead. This should not be an honest man’s fate.

You ask me to go on happily with the passage of time.

But I cannot outrun the passage of time with a boot on my neck.

What a shame, Baba, I think, that even you, the man who has given me everything, can’t stop a clock from ticking.

—

The Vehemence ebbs and flows. Detestation. Anger. Bravery. All of it. It just comes, and then it goes. I have never been able to retain any of it. This is the one thing I will not wrap my arms around: why people embed immovable pain unto others when their very beings are etched with the same hurt. Should I have cried my guttural sobs, as I do by the riverside? Screamed? Do they not know? Do they not know about the Dull and the Mundane? Glorious speck of mud on my pale pink princess shoes. Tedious. All so tedious. The spanning horizon before me. Muse and Bore. Muse and Chore.

This is what is sought out through bottomless eyes; it is all the more fascinating to see it through theirs. Incandescence. That’s what it is, is it not? They must think me so beautiful that I stop being a person. The speck of mud. It’s getting larger. It’s in their irises now. Accolades. Commendations. Merit. Prestige. Pennies. Nickels. Dimes. Quarters. They all roll out of my sleeves and latch onto my fingers. I am no longer able to intertwine the Fundamentals of Physics and Philosophy with just these at my disposal. I become a mirage lost behind them.

They call me Perfect, and I want to laugh in their faces. They call me Cold, and I want to laugh even harder. This is the Brutality that lives alongside Politeness. This is the Revelation.

You must have felt the same, Baba, while ash deposited itself into your lungs, people praised you for being the self-sacrificial martyr in their stead. You and I both, we are only ever able to cry with vantablack eyes alone, so no one dares to hear.

—

You are not the rose, they scream.

You are the thorn.

—

Today, I am thinking of Ma, too - the words you write for her, a woman with so much willpower and academic drive that the Face becomes a Reduction:

জ্বলে জ্বলে একদিন

নক্ষত্ররাও ছাই হয়ে ঝরে -

তবু আশা জেগে থাকে কোমল সবুজে,

দিনের আলোয়, রাত্রির নিগড়ে।

তবুও মানুষেরা ভালোবাসে মড়কে,

ক্লেদে, যুদ্ধের অবশেষে।

তবুও মানুষ মায়াময় চোখে তাকাতে যে জানে,

অনামি তারার প্রগাঢ় নীল অভিমানে।

/

Burning, burning, one day, even stars turn to ash and fall -

Yet hope awakens in tender green,

in the light of day, in night's dark thrall.

Still, humans love amidst the plague,

the filth, the remnants of war's call.

Still, humans know how to gaze with wondrous eyes,

at a nameless star's profound blue pride.

—

In the aftermath of my most violent nightmares, when I am scared to leave the confines of my own home, when I wake up drenched in sweat and sputtering, on mornings where it takes All of Me not to spew out the Bloat and Tar that has been corroding me - these scorching hands I can’t scrub myself of - just know it was never your fault, Baba. You protected me from most of it. I become Nothing when I’m Derealised. I am Free when I am Awake. I said so once at fourteen:

—

In this recurring dream I have, you give me the last glinting silver coin that rolls out of your pocket; the light of it is blinding. Then I look up, and you’re gone. As the Sea takes you, as you dissolve within its foam, as you’re drained of ichor, I scream, “Please stay with me, Baba. I can’t do this alone.”

Please let me fall asleep on the sofa just one more time. Please let me wake up in the comfort of my childhood bed as if by Magic, and not your arms.

—

I love you so much, Baba. I live for you, I live for Ma, I live for all my loved ones. Please stay on this earth for as long as you are able. I will start fighting them back. My screams will not exist in dreams anymore. I’ll stop being beckoned by the call of the Sea.

Please outlive me.

—

I am not the rose.

I am the stem.

—your Selfish daughter

buy

Note: I incorporated the words “Hatchet,” “Incandescence,” and “Revelation” into this journal entry/letter to partake in the writing challenge started by the wonderful . You can find all the other posts by these amazing writers under their profiles :) : , , , , .

author’s note:

i suppose i’ve been a perfectionist for as long as i can remember. during escapril last year, i rewatched the virgin suicides during a tumultuous period of my life and, in doing so, wrote these poems heavily inspired by the perspective the lisbon sisters were deprived of, by the bald-faced stripping of their autonomy by the narrator. i never published them, but it dawned on me that i don’t have to necessarily "like" all my work—as long as my writing resonates with someone, that in itself is the reward i’ll forever cherish. from the archives: 11.04.2024, 24.04.2024, 28.04.2024, and 29.04.2024 ♡

Unexpected Transmission

Refraction, reflection, unexpected transmission.

Don't go towards it,

Don't [...]

Don't go towards them.

The Earth and its rivers flow within you,

Flora and fauna, through and through, [...]

Cracked spines and soot covered shelves,

I am the cradle to your book-nooked self,

Absorb me, rosy-cheeked star, I'll admire you, glassy-eyed and from afar [...]

Royal-blue veins, my clogged tear ducts had sought thee,

The lowest frequency?

These radiowaves are beneath me.

it is not merely the act of biting and peeling—

it is a lodging of themselves into my hypodermis,

and a refusal to extract their talons.

my heart strings are feathered into a lone singularity—

and dead skin is leftover on the apples of my cheekbones from soft,

yet calloused hands.

bent posture and lambasted spinal discs,

i’m being used as your ashtray,

everyone burns and rekindles the same way.

surgery

i scrape off my scalpel,

you are bleeding poppies

from the corner of your mouth;

don't worry,

i'll lick it off.

how to exist

live backwards, i say.

virgins who chose suicide deserved to squeal,

blow bubbles,

and look through distorted lenses.

maybe then they’ll know how to love again.

lux lisbon's inner child was left on a lush green field and deflowered by life's cat and mouse game.

as a sleep-deprived student running this reader-supported publication with what little free time i have, i rely on your support. so if you enjoy my work, feel free to buy me a coffee <3

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a note from the author’s present self:

sardonic tones, sardonic tones, projections onto women.

there exists an almost negligible delay between sense and synapse. the future-present enmeshment. dwell too much on the past, and you rob both your current and future selves simultaneously. reality is derealised. the real, surreal. overthinking the future becomes redundant when your body is already living in it. and as i mentioned before, the pain dissipates—it always does.

i don’t ever wish to be someone’s source of comparison nor their insecurities when i’ve lived with so many of mine in the past. you are your own company for the rest of your earthly life; make it count.

and with that, i present to you some old excerpts from my rough draft[previous perceptions] of womanhood:

11.03.2023

journal entry:

in order to be worldly, i am flayed open. i ponder upon what it must be like to not be so vulnerably exposed to its inner workings. what is there left for anyone left to see? except in the irony of an unreliable narrator, narrating their own life? is it for a fruitful cause? to prod & poke poke & prod at the skin laid bare right in front of them? when a single breath of air blown to the back of the neck, singes the hair there? a flower’s stem is forthcoming of to the forceps sloppily tearing at tendons[;] internal bleeding morphs to show reveal external scrapes[,] and no tethers remain attached when i inquire you about the tender optimism rendered transient global amnesia. so rarely do moments of clarity manage to grasp at me with short[-]lived, manicured hands[—]for i flit in and out of the scenery like that of a hummingbird’s thrumming heart much like a hummingbird’s heart does thrum. what nectar do you seek? what is there to be envious of envy lies for a woman not ever-present? in layman’s terms, there is no miracle, only a withered frayed mind.

25.04.2024

escapril prompt: “dark secret”

ten dark secret(s) :

i. i shed scales every time i seat myself on sand dunes.

ii. my chest cavity has a filling.

iii. (it's an event horizon.)

iv. (it's my heart.)

v. i break each of my teeth on every forged iron sword i encounter.

vi. i didn't know thorns themselves could be pricked until he held my face between his hands.

vii. i gorge on your hurt.

viii. i like it when you scream at me until your throat is hoarse (but i just sit there with a blank stare).

ix. women find most expeditions in life dull and for the mundane if they have been groomed to do so long enough.

and

x. this poem is mediocre.

01.04.2024

escapril prompt: “changes of state”

a liquid doesn’t know it’s a liquid,

when its loosely packed molecules,

are fumbling for a purpose,

formless hands outreached—

find no greater vibrations.

i look out my window,

a girl of 12 is perched under

the kaleidoscopic maple tree,

grazed knees, bronzed skin and crooked nose.

ashes to ashes,

an eye for an eye.

she wishes to know a solid,

tightly packed,

where its molecules dance in fixed places,

but the convection currents won’t allow it.

i gaze at the sky and it breaks my heart.

soul for soul,

fly high.

am i 22 now?

yes.

a decade has slipped away?

yes.

08.03.2025

international women’s day

Waxy, thorn-embedded wings, bruised hands—

does femininity always mean submission?

Was Icarus at fault for flying a little too close,

when women only bow down to the sun?

as a sleep-deprived student running this reader-supported publication with what little free time i have, i rely on your support. so if you enjoy my work, feel free to buy me a coffee <3

My want mingles with the flecks in your irises when you flee from your own timid smile and head towards the sky.

My hopes are to be basked down upon me when your wishes become Heaven-sent -feathers from Lucifer's own torn wing.

My inclination for things and pieces only abide by the same laws that make you fall into the well of my gaze, and mixes my very being with cemetery soil and odourless bouquets.

-Lucifer's Torn Wing

L'ala nera o Il tocco dell'angelo by Roberto Ferri

as a sleep-deprived student running this reader-supported publication with what little free time i have, i rely on your support. so if you enjoy my work, feel free to buy me a coffee <3

"A great fire burns within me—

but no one stops to warm themselves at it,

and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke."

"I put my heart and soul into my work,

and I have lost my mind in the process."

Why do creatives gaze at the world bleary-eyed,

as if it would accept them with open arms in life—

and not post-mortem?

Even when your s…

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Beach

The sky turns over above your eyes.

By this seaside lives a tailor who could not sew my liver together for you.

A saccharine smile ignites in the sunlight.

Even so, you are very far away from me.


সৈকত

আকাশ উল্টে যায় তোমার চোখের উপরে |

এই সমুদ্রের ধারে একজন দর্জি থাকে যে আমার

কলিজা সেলাই করতে পারেনি তোমার জন্য |

একটি মিষ্টি হাসি সূর্যের আলোতে জ্বলে |

যদিও তুমি আমার থেকে অনেক দূরে |

Oh does the body desecrate,
Profane prayers uttered from undulating lips,
That stitches yours shut.
The butterfly sealed in the mucus-glued cocoon cannot see God in this life.
Ophelia drowns in her pond of flowers,
And the river of life is just blood,
The stream was red all along

ii. Oh, the light!

How it aches, and aches and stifles.
I can't hear you, I can't hear you over the roar of our muffled breaths.
Glory be ablaze to your resounding blows on my chest!
I hem my skirts with Hemlock from the grove, and feast on Hedonism until the gluttonous glaze from its slicked meats coats me in morning dew.
I stuff myself with styrofoam to drown out whatever's left of you.
I may be poison-repellent but your bellows come with Wolf's Bane and the beam of a quicksilver fox's grin

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And occasionally, I’ll find myself at the ruins. I can’t imagine that the thorn lodged in the palm of my hand had actually meant to catch my sleeve, or that the pollen-infested air was just a byproduct of the…

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