the color purple was never royal, not in our house.
it was the shade under my eye the first time g—d turned away.
it was the crayon i snapped in half and swallowed whole
because no one was watching
and even silence deserves a ceremony.
purple was the mold in the grout behind the kitchen sink,
the rot blooming like a secret
between the tiles we never regrouted.
you said you loved me once,
but your voice was full of grape juice and obligation.
i saw a midrash once where lilith bled lavender.
they scrubbed her from the texts because she wouldn’t
fold the napkins right or swallow shame like wine.
i think about her when i wear bruises on my knees from praying
to a g—d who keeps forgetting my name.
dear g—d,
you never told me that holiness
smelled like old fruit.
you never said that the covenant would leak through the ceiling
and stain the couch.
you never said purple would cling
to everything i touched
like regret with perfect posture.
please return my voicemails.
i left my apology between the couch cushions.
bring bleach.
bring better answers.
prompt i.2 → rotting fruit
(voice: mildew in memory, father’s fridge, the bruised soft underbelly of memory. unsent letter. internal monologue. still lowercase.)
there’s a plum in the back of the fridge that looks like regret.
softened skin, leaking sugar like it forgot how to be solid.
it smells like the hallway outside my father’s bedroom:
a mix of old cologne, damp towels,
and things that should have been thrown out years ago.
i don’t throw it away.
i let it become theology.
let it sink into itself like my mother’s voice
when she told me we don’t talk about that in this house.
dear g—d,
i held that fruit like a prayer i couldn’t say out loud.
i watched it collapse.
i know you know what that’s like.
once, he bought peaches in july.
he left them in a paper bag on the counter and forgot.
by the time we remembered,
they were melting through the paper
like some kind of warning.
i licked one out of spite.
let the juice stick to my lips like communion.
the taste of disobedience.
of knowing better and doing it anyway.
rotting fruit is what happens when you love something too slow.
and maybe that’s what i was—
something he meant to care for,
but time got away from him
and so did i.
prompt i.3 → how to fall in love in three simple steps
(voice: clinical confession, tainted instruction manual, bruised intimacy. still lowercase. still unholy.)
step one: mispronounce my name.
say it like an apology or an incantation.
do it in a way that makes my ribs rattle—
like you’ve opened the ark and found nothing inside
but polaroids of my mother smiling too hard.
make eye contact like you’re trying not to.
step two: leave something behind.
a sock. a prayer. a joke about the way i organize my trauma.
tell me the story of the rabbi who got drunk
and danced with g—d’s absence
until he threw up truth on the temple steps.
that was love, wasn’t it?
step three: forget.
forget my birthday.
forget the fruit in my fridge.
forget the way my father’s hands shook
the day he said he didn’t recognize me.
love is forgetting that there was a before.
that i was rotting long before you arrived.
bonus step:
don’t call it love.
call it hunger with manners.
call it a mitzvah you didn’t mean to keep.
call it whatever you need to
to make it less terrifying that i let you touch me
where the bruises live.
prompt i.4 → a letter to my father
(voice: wounded sermon, ash-soaked paper, the letter that never made it to the postbox. jewish daughter of silence and spite. mildew of memory. bruises invisible but chronic. this is a tyrant in a tallit. this is the kind of man who uses religion like a fist. this is the abba whose g—d looks a lot like himself in the mirror. for the father who bruised in g—d’s name. this is not a plea. this is a reckoning.)
abba,
you never raised me.
you broke me into obedience.
you made g—d a threat whispered through clenched teeth—
a curse disguised as commandment.
i was five when you first called me too loud.
i was eight when you first said my thighs were a distraction.
i am writing this from the back of a closet you never opened.
the lightbulb is flickering. it smells like mold and memory.
your voice still lives here, in the plaster.
it still tells me to sit like a lady.
to stop crying like it’s a choice.
you made me kneel before a g—d i didn’t believe in
because believing in you was already unbearable.
you said modesty is holiness.
you meant: disappear.
you meant: know your place.
you meant: i am the law, and g—d co-signs my violence.
i don’t know what you loved more—g—d, or being right about him.
you taught me to fold my hands before i knew how to clench fists.
you read torah with a voice that cracked like floorboards.
you told me g—d listens when we speak with respect.
but you never listened.
you prayed louder than you fathered.
you wrapped tefillin like a noose around morning.
you kissed the mezuzah after
slapping my sister across the mouth for speaking.
this house was not holy.
this house was a courtroom,
and you were the judge, the jury, the jailer, the prophet.
you always said my pain was too loud.
but yours screamed through silence.
i saw it when you held the siddur like it owed you something.
when you forgot birthdays but remembered every halakhic loophole
that made loving me optional.
abba,
you told me g—d made adam first
and i should never forget it.
you said lilith was a monster.
i say she was the first girl to survive a man like you.
and i will not forgive her for leaving me here alone.
i kept waiting for you to say it—
not i love you, that would’ve been too foreign on your tongue.
but maybe something gentler.
like you are not too much for me.
like i’m sorry i only knew how to build walls out of commandments.
you wore the tallit like armor.
you hid your rage in psalms.
i hope g—d reads the blood on your hands like midrash
and tears out the page where you live.
the color purple used to scare you.
you called it loud.
i wore it anyway.
i became it.
became the bruise you never named,
the fruit you let spoil on the counter.
abba,
i don’t forgive you.
and g—d, if they’re listening, shouldn’t either.
this body is a talmud of survival.
and i am writing you out of it.
abba,
you gave me silence
and i made scripture out of it.
your daughter,
still praying in lowercase,
still waiting for your voicemail box to clear.
this is not a letter.
this is a witness statement.
this is the broken fig i hid under my bed when you fasted too long
and came home swinging.
this is the bruise that never faded.
this is your legacy:
girls who flinch at kindness.
girls who pray like it’s a hostage negotiation.
prompt i.5 → i keep it hidden in my closet where no one can find it
(voice: confessional inventory, haunted storage. jewish guilt in mothballs. trauma folded between old sweaters. mildew, memory, menace.)
it lives behind the winter coats i no longer wear.
under the shoebox labeled “passover 2003,”
next to the broken menorah with wax still clinging to its elbows.
i keep it hidden in my closet where no one can find it—
the dress i wore the night he said
"g—d made you a woman. act like it."
the one with a torn hem and dried tears in the lining,
because crying in public was a sin
and so was everything else i liked.
i keep a shoelace that still smells like synagogue stairs.
one earring from a pair i wore to rebel,
to scream in metallic silence.
he ripped the other one out and called it halacha.
there’s a cassette tape in there labeled
“do not play. do not remember.”
i play it every year on the fast day he loved most.
it sounds like me learning to say "no"
with my mouth full of blood.
i keep every unsent letter.
every time i begged g—d to show up
and instead found dust and commandments
and a silence that sounded too much like him.
i keep a list—
of the girls he called too much, too loud, too opinionated,
who now light candles with shaking hands
and call it peace.
the closet door sticks now.
it creaks like it knows my secrets.
sometimes i hear something breathing in there.
sometimes i think it’s me.
i keep it hidden in my closet where no one can find it—
the version of myself that got out earlier.
the one who ran.
the one who screamed in public.
the one who never learned to sit still.
the one who didn’t care if g—d was watching.
i keep her there
like a prophecy i’m too scared to fulfill.
prompt i.6 → what death tastes like
(voice: visceral liturgy. jewish ritual meets bodily knowing. death is a taste you learn to recognize, not just fear. and once you taste it—you can never untaste it.)
death tastes like metal and memory.
like biting your cheek during shabbat dinner and smiling anyway.
like that one cup of wine you weren’t supposed to finish
but did,
because silence was louder with an empty glass.
death tastes like the stale air in the mikveh
when no one tells you what to do with your grief
so you wash it off
and call it ritual.
it tastes like pennies and pomegranate.
like the blood that came too early
and the shame that came with it.
no one warned me that becoming a woman
meant swallowing parts of myself whole.
it tastes like the last thing i ate before he said
“g—d gives and g—d takes.”
he meant my voice.
he meant my defiance.
he meant the way i used to laugh with my teeth.
death tastes like the figs that spoiled under my bed.
like the time i tried to fast out of guilt
but ended up throwing up saltwater and scripture.
i was eleven.
it didn’t count, they said.
but it tasted real enough to me.
death is not a person.
it is a seasoning.
it is the flavor of holding your breath too long
because someone holier is speaking.
death tastes like kiddush wine gone sour.
like the silence after amen.
like the bruised part of the apple you pretend isn’t there.
and sometimes—
when i light the yahrzeit candle
and the flame flickers toward nothing,
i can almost name it
on the back of my tongue.
prompt i.7 → an apology to my teenage self
(voice: grave-digging. rage-wrapped regret. a courtroom, not a diary. a trial without forgiveness.)
i’m sorry
that i didn’t run.
not when he slammed the table.
not when he said modesty is your armor.
not when he called your body a liability
and your mouth a sin.
i’m sorry i told you to shut up
before anyone else could.
to beat them to the punch.
to laugh at your own dreams so they couldn’t.
i’m sorry i taught you how to disappear politely.
how to fold your rage into your napkin.
how to make forgiveness sound like survival.
how to smile while swallowing blood.
you were loud, once.
you wrote poems about g—d and fire and girls
and none of them ended in apology.
i’m sorry i burned those pages.
i thought if you were quieter, he’d hit softer.
i was wrong.
you wanted to shave your head.
to scream in synagogue.
to say i think g—d is just a man with a belt and no one questions him.
instead, you wore sleeves in july
and cried behind siddurim.
i dressed you in shame like it was a hand-me-down.
made you believe pain was your inheritance.
told you it was better to be good than to be free.
i’m sorry i didn’t let you fight.
you would’ve won.
this isn’t just an apology :: it’s a postmortem.
it’s a letter carved into the bathroom mirror with a bobby pin.
it’s regret, yes. but it’s also betrayal.
not by the world. by meself.
for how little me fought.
for how much me accepted.
for every time me said “it’s okay” and meant “i want to burn it all down.”
for every rebellion me imagined but never acted on.
so this one? it’s not gentle.
it’s not soft-focus nostalgia.
it’s you showing up to teenage-me's funeral
and realizing she’s still alive in me throat.
screaming.
prompt i.8 → ingredients for a love spell
(voice: incantation. recipe-as-resistance. sensual, spiritual, slightly vengeful. feminine. feral. absolutely jewish; a talmudic witchery. a sacred list. a recipe written in lipstick on the inside of a locker.)
this one’s my moment of wickedness. a spell, yes, but no hearts and flowers.
this is not how to make someone love me.
this is how to build a love that doesn’t come with bruises.
this is rebellion disguised as ritual.
this is love with sharp teeth and boundaries.
one pomegranate, cracked open like a confession
twelve seeds swallowed whole, to remember what sweetness can be
a teaspoon of silence:
the kind that feels safe,
not the kind that bruises
hair from your own head,
cut on rosh chodesh under moonlight
(because lilith asked for hers back)
a mezuzah scroll soaked in rainwater,
because even g—d needs softening
salt.
enough to cleanse, not erase.
preferably from your own tears
or the sea your grandmother crossed alone.
a cigarette lit but never smoked.
held between the teeth of a girl who knows better now.
(better than abba. better than the rabbi. better than g—d.)
ink from a failed love letter,
still wet.
still honest.
a cracked mirror:
for reflection, not punishment.
one bruise you refused to hide.
one apology you’ll never say.
the breath you held when they said
“he’s a good man, he’s just tired.”
the laugh of your teenage self
the first time she saw someone soft
and wasn’t afraid.
instructions:
mix under the light of the second candle.
speak your name aloud. three times.
no more disappearing.
no more shrinking.
no more waiting for g—d to bless what you already know is holy.
prompt i.9 → why i should have stayed
(voice: bait-and-switch. regret as sarcasm. liberation dressed in lament but smiling underneath. a psalm of escape.)
because bruises look better in candlelight.
because g—d was watching
and i didn’t want to disappoint the man who taught me
that pain means you’re chosen.
because every rabbi said
a good daughter is a quiet one.
because the hallway knew my name
and the door didn’t.
because abba never said sorry
but he said torah with enough force
to make it sound like a threat and a gift at once.
because the closet was crowded,
but at least it was familiar.
because i was almost holy enough
if i stayed bent just a little longer.
because i had learned to pray with a split lip.
because silence felt safer than starting over.
but here’s the twist:
i didn’t.
i didn’t stay.
i packed the fig i kept under my bed.
i took the mirror and the love spell and the ghost of the girl i used to be
and i ran.
i ran until g—d looked like a shadow
and abba sounded like static.
i ran with all the names they tried to bury me under
falling off like dead skin.
i ran
and i became the kind of woman who builds altars out of rejection letters
and drinks wine from the kiddush cup alone
because i am enough witness.
why i should have stayed?
i shouldn’t have.
and i didn’t.
and i never will again.
this isn’t me weeping at the door they slammed.
this is me standing on the other side of it,
alive,
sovereign,
dangerous in your freedom,
and whispering, “thank g—d i left.”
prompt i.10 → i am begging you to hurt me
(voice: raw nerve. confessional as confrontation. not victimhood—reckoning with what was taught as truth; the marrow)
because i don’t know what love feels like
if it doesn’t sting.
because every time i was gentle with myself
i heard his voice in the back of my skull saying
“don’t get soft now. g—d is watching.”
because the first person who held my hand
also told me i talked too much.
so i learned to bleed quietly.
like a mitzvah.
like obedience.
because when abba slammed the siddur down
and called it discipline,
i learned to flinch at kindness
and kneel for cruelty.
because the rabbi said
suffering refines the soul,
and i wanted to be holy
so i made my body a sacrificial offering
and waited to be thanked.
because pain became proof.
if it hurt, it must mean something.
if it didn’t, was it even real?
i am begging you to hurt me
so i don’t have to feel guilty when you love me.
so i can explain to g—d why i let you in.
so i can finally believe i’ve earned tenderness
through torment.
i am begging you to hurt me
because that’s the language they raised me in.
because my dialect is bruises and withholding
and praise that only comes after crying.
but i’m trying—
trying to unlearn this liturgy of ache.
trying to believe
that there is a version of me
who does not have to suffer
to deserve softness.
but until then,
i will keep whispering it
in the dark
to anyone who gets too close:
hurt me.
so i know it’s real.
this is not a cry for attention.
this is conditioning,
indoctrination,
a script carved in girlhood,
where hurt became synonymous with love,
and anything gentler felt alien—wrong—unearned.
this isn’t asking for pain.
this is exposing the part of you that still believes
it’s the only language some people understand.
this is the culmination of all the rot from prompt i.
this is the fruit, finally collapsed.
-
prompt ii → the chronicle of otherness
trees, weird girls, g—d on furniture
in full
(theme: exile from the inside out. girls who don’t fit in synagogue pews. prayers said sideways. intimacy with strangeness. the sacred awkward. otherness as inheritance.)
we move. into the woods now. into the weird.
into the places where you are both too much and not enough, rituals built from mismatch and metaphor
where the trees talk back, bark under bitten nails
and g—d has taken up residence on the couch, with a lisp and backache
with a glass of wine and a passive-aggressive shrug, the intimacy of weirdness.
prompt ii.1 → friday 9:51 pm
(voice: disoriented holiness. neurotic-girl mysticism. a sabbath that never fully arrives. otherness pacing the apartment in fuzzy socks and theological dread.)
not shabbat. not quite.
a liminal hour,
too late for holiness, too early for regret.
we're in the living room with g—d,
the wine is cheap, and the silence has teeth.
friday 9:51 pm
and g—d is slumped on my couch,
eating cereal from the box
and ignoring my questions.
i lit the candles twenty-one minutes ago.
not because i’m devout,
but because i need something to do with my hands
besides pick at the parts of me that still want to be chosen.
the air smells like overcooked pasta and wax.
i forgot to turn off my work laptop.
the screen blinks: “update failed.”
same.
g—d asks if i want to play scrabble.
i say no.
i’ve never liked games where winning depends on language.
friday 9:51 pm
and the wine is gone.
the silence isn’t sacred—it’s
tension in corduroy.
i ask g—d why i’m like this.
why i always feel too weird, too loud, too queer, too question-mark-shaped.
g—d shrugs.
says something about the beauty of exile.
then asks if i have snacks.
there are crumbs on the floor.
shabbat never fully arrives.
the candles flicker like they’re trying to warn me.
but of what?
of who?
friday 9:51 pm
and i’m alone,
except i’m not.
the divine is here,
unshaven and bored,
watching reruns of the same mistakes i made last week.
i offer g—d the couch blanket.
g—d declines.
says warmth has always made them uncomfortable.
prompt ii.2 → love letter to a tree
(voice: tender freak girl. sanctified in soil. too much, too quiet, too wild. this is a confession carved in bark and spit. love like a weed. love like an apology to nature for not choosing her first.)
i don’t remember your name.
you were outside the school building,
bent sideways like you were listening
to the girls whispering about thigh gaps and bat mitzvah dresses.
you didn’t care that i wore the wrong shoes.
that i spoke in metaphors
and tripped over my own mouth.
you let me lean.
you let me stay.
i used to press my cheek against your bark
and pretend i was somewhere older than shame.
you didn’t flinch.
you didn’t correct my posture.
you didn’t tell me to smile.
i carved the first letter of a name i wasn’t brave enough to say.
you healed over it slowly,
as if you understood
that some things are better
buried and remembered.
you smelled like permanence.
like dirt and old secrets and safety.
g—d never showed up the way you did.
i love you like i love abandoned things.
with guilt.
with reverence.
with the kind of ache reserved for girls
who found comfort in what could never leave.
if anyone asks,
i never kissed you.
but you were the first thing that made me feel held
without shrinking.
prompt ii.3 → why there is no room in this for us both
(voice: decisive. strange. holy. reclamation laced with steel. a sacred door closing.)
the tight spaces. the tension. the room with only one chair.
this isn’t a breakup letter:
this is an eviction notice.
to someone. to something.
maybe it’s patriarchy.
maybe it’s shame.
maybe it’s g—d still hogging the couch.
this is a piece about coexistence being a lie.
about there being no room for her and me.
me and safety.
me and silence.
because you take up space like a sermon:
loud, unquestionable,
all vowels stretched into threats.
because you sit in every chair and still ask why i’m standing.
because every time i raise my voice,
you raise your eyebrows.
because my body flinches when i hear footsteps that sound like yours
and that’s not a metaphor.
because your g—d makes me sick.
because your g—d takes my silence
and calls it obedience.
because your g—d never once asked me if i wanted to stay.
there is no room in this
for both bruises and denial.
for both truth and your version of it.
for both my softness
and your hunger for it.
you said
“there’s space for both of us here.”
but you meant
“as long as you fold yourself small enough.”
this house
this faith
this name
this bed
this version of me that apologizes
before i speak—
one of us has to go.
and it won’t be me.
prompt ii.4 → blueprint for a weird girl
(voice: architectural. defiant. loving. holy in her strange, holy in her softness, holy in her refusal to fit. this is how you build someone who survives in lowercase.)
because she’s waited long enough.
the girl they side-eyed in synagogue.
the girl who asked too many questions in cheder.
the girl who kept hugging trees and whispering to the moon
and refused to sit with her knees together.
this isn’t a eulogy for her.
this is her blueprint.
this is how to build her from scratch
when the world keeps trying to redesign her into palatability.
materials required:
- two cracked teeth (from biting her tongue too often)
- one spine made of stolen torah scrolls
- elbows sharp enough to keep boys from sitting too close in shul
- knees that refuse to stay closed during questions
- eyes trained to spot hypocrisy in holy books
- hands that smell like soil, ink, and something untranslatable
tools:
- scissors (for cutting out of conversations)
- glue (for piecing herself back together, again and again)
- flashlight (because most of her joy happens in the dark)
blueprint:
-
do not smooth her edges.
they are meant to snag on expectations.
-
install extra compartments for holding grief, rage, and emergency snacks.
she will need all three. often.
-
when building her mouth,
remember she speaks in metaphors and midrash.
sometimes she will talk about g—d and mean her mother.
sometimes she will talk about trees and mean herself.
do not interrupt.
-
attach legs that want to run but also want to stay.
she will battle this contradiction daily.
it's part of the design.
-
forget symmetry.
she is meant to be lopsided.
too much in some places.
not enough in others.
it is holy imbalance.
final note:
she will not be easy to love.
she will ask you what the aleph means at 3am.
she will name her plants after forgotten women in the talmud.
she will write letters to g—d and never send them.
she will demand softness
but she will not beg for it.
do not try to fix her.
she is not broken.
she is blueprint.
prompt ii.5 → message to her (unspecified)
(voice: floating. tender. full of emotional contraband. this is the message that never found its destination, and still waits to be read.)
the scorched whisper. the (speculative) ache. the unsent telegram. the soft version. the unfinished version.
we don’t know who “her” is.
maybe she was a friend.
a lover.
a weird girl, like me.
if she hadn’t been broken
or hardened
or swallowed by patriarchy’s mouth.
a version of you that almost existed but didn’t get built.
this is not clarity:
this is reverence for ambiguity.
you don’t name her.
you just miss her.
and that’s enough.
i saw someone today with your laugh.
not exactly, but enough.
enough to make me stop mid-sentence
and forget what i was saying
for longer than was polite.
you live in the cracks now.
in smells i can't place.
in the middle names of strangers.
in the part of the song where i always cry.
i don’t know what we were.
friends?
mirrors?
a story that never made it past chapter three?
doesn’t matter.
you held me once
and didn’t flinch.
didn’t ask me to be smaller.
didn’t make me explain my softness like it was a flaw in design.
i said i’d write.
i didn’t.
i thought about it every week.
especially on thursdays.
you always loved thursdays.
said they were the underdog of the week.
sometimes, in the quietest versions of you,
i almost believed you could’ve been my mother.
the kind who wouldn’t flinch at my softness.
the kind who wouldn’t call my body a warning.
but that was never your job.
and i knew better than to ask.
if you’re out there—
somewhere between the girl i was
and the woman i’m trying to become—
just know:
i didn’t forget you.
i just got too quiet.
too tired.
too human.
this is the message.
this is the reaching.
this is what it sounds like when someone remembers
and doesn’t know where to send the proof.
prompt ii.6 → message to her (mom)
(voice: searing. unadorned. a broken-off prayer. not hate. not love. just the truth that never got spoken in the kitchen.)
the one with all the locks.
the one that still smells like her perfume and cold war.
this isn’t just a message to mom.
this is a message to the mother-shaped wound,
to the version of her you invented just to survive,
to the girl you could’ve been
if she’d ever looked at you like you were enough
and not just a reflection to be polished, punished, or ignored.
you called me difficult.
called me dramatic.
called me a liar when i said i was hurting.
but you never called me brave.
not even once.
you loved me
like i was an inconvenience you couldn’t afford to return.
like i was a mirror you couldn’t stop cleaning
but refused to look into.
you told me to smile more.
to cross my legs.
to hide the parts of myself that made men uncomfortable.
you never asked if they made me uncomfortable.
you taught me how to suffer in silence
and still make it look pretty.
you handed me your lipstick and your guilt
and said
“this is what being a woman looks like.”
you prayed for me.
but never with me.
you never asked why i flinched at kindness.
you never noticed the bruises
unless they were on your reputation.
i don’t know who hurt you first.
i just know you passed it down
like a recipe.
i looked for you in every teacher.
every strange woman who smiled like she meant it.
every tree i leaned against.
every lover who didn’t ask me to be less.
and maybe that’s the cruelest part:
you made me believe
that love
was supposed to come
with conditions.
i wanted to be your daughter.
but i had to be your ghost instead.
this is the message:
i survived.
without the softness you never offered.
without your blessing.
without your name on my prayers.
i still light candles on friday nights.
but not for you.
not anymore.
prompt ii.7 → a conversation with g—d on the couch”
(voice: biting. exhausted. sacred in spite of it all. g—d’s wearing mismatched socks. you’re holding your breath. someone’s crying but no one admits it.)
me: why did you give him so much power?
g—d: i didn’t.
me: then why did he use your name like a hammer?
g—d: people like tools. they don’t always ask who made them.
me: i prayed.
g—d: i know.
me: you didn’t answer.
g—d: i was tired.
me: you’re g—d.
g—d: i’m also everything. have you ever tried being everything?
me: i think i hated you.
g—d: that’s fine.
me: really?
g—d: better than apathy.
me: did you make me weird on purpose?
g—d: i made you honest. people don’t like that.
me: my mother loved you more than me.
g—d: no, she loved the version of me that made her feel in control.
me: is that the same thing?
g—d: not even close.
me: am i allowed to be angry?
g—d: it’s practically a mitzvah.
me: will i ever stop feeling like a broken psalm?
g—d: only if you start writing your own.
me: you don’t feel very divine.
g—d: and yet, here you are.
me: …
g—d: pass the wine?
prompt ii.8 → an overripe apple
(voice: sticky, shame-soaked, seductive and sick. biting the thing you were warned about and realizing it already lives inside you.)
let’s bite.
but not gently.
this apple is past sweet.
this apple is shame and rot and memory disguised as fruit.
this apple is eve’s revenge and my childhood trauma wrapped in waxy red skin.
we don’t eat it.
we confess to it.
i held it too long.
watched it wrinkle under my touch.
watched the red give way to brown,
the skin softening like a secret
no one bothered to keep.
it smelled like the hallway outside my childhood bedroom—
sweet, sour, familiar, wrong.
the kind of smell that says too late.
the kind of smell that means don’t tell.
my mother told me to throw it out.
my father told me to finish it
because waste is a sin
and hunger is a gift from g—d.
i bit anyway.
not out of defiance.
out of habit.
out of the need to put something in my mouth
that wasn’t a scream.
it tasted like guilt.
like the thing i should’ve said.
like the yes i meant to spit out.
like softness weaponized.
like girlhood gone bitter around the edges.
eve was right.
she didn’t damn us.
she freed us.
she said:
if you’re going to suffer, at least know what it tastes like.
the apple collapsed in my palm.
the juice ran down my wrist like confession.
no one was watching.
but it still felt like sin.
prompt ii.9 → why it took me so long / a lucid dream
(voice: surreal. whispered. grief dressed in symbols. time melting like wax on old altar cloths. a psalm unraveling in reverse.)
this is the halfway place :: between guilt and clarity,
between sleep and survival.
this is where the truth finally shows up,
dressed like my younger self,
and asks what took you so long?
i don’t answer.
i just float.
i’m underwater,
but i can breathe.
this is how it always starts.
my childhood kitchen is glowing.
not with warmth—
with fluorescent disappointment.
my mother is slicing apples with the same knife
she used to cut me down.
she smiles.
she offers me a piece.
it smells like rot.
i take it anyway.
my body is younger than i remember.
my mouth doesn’t know how to say no yet.
or yes.
just please.
i ask g—d if i’m dreaming.
they hand me a siddur full of blank pages.
they say:
fill it in when you’re ready to stop surviving.
i walk through every room i grew up in
and every one smells like a different flavor of fear.
carpet. cologne. candle wax.
his voice in the corner like a stain.
there’s a girl in the closet.
she looks like me.
but her hair is longer.
her hands are clean.
she says:
you took your time.
i say:
i didn’t know i was allowed to leave.
she shrugs.
you always were. you just liked the cage.
it made you feel chosen.
i wake up with my hand clenched.
there’s an apple seed in my palm.
i don’t remember biting.
but something sweet is missing from my mouth.
prompt ii.10 → what if it was different? then what?
(voice: sharp. speculative. tired of hoping for alternate timelines. this is reality, and you survived it, and that’s the win.)
is the kind of question that sounds soft:
but it’s a razor.
because if it had been different,
who would i be?
and would she be softer? safer?
or would she be still silent?
this is not a fantasy.
this is a postmortem of possibility.
i don’t rewrite the past.
i hold its face,
look it in the eye,
and say:
“you didn’t win. i did.”
what if they listened?
what if he didn’t slam the door,
the book,
his fist?
what if she looked at me and saw
daughter
instead of
rival?
what if g—d wasn’t a weapon?
what if g—d was a warm towel
and not a ledger?
what if my body was just my body—
not a battleground,
not a sermon,
not something to be hidden
or explained?
what if i had been allowed
to speak
to rage
to question
to scream
and not be called difficult
but alive?
then what?
maybe i would’ve been soft.
maybe i’d trust touch.
maybe i’d pray without bargaining.
maybe i wouldn’t write poems
like they’re last rites.
maybe i wouldn’t check every room for exits.
maybe i’d still believe in fridays.
maybe i wouldn’t flinch when someone says
“you remind me of your father.”
maybe i’d answer the phone when she calls.
but it wasn’t.
and i’m not.
and here i am:
alive anyway.
a little crooked.
a little loud.
a little too much.
but here.
so maybe that’s what.
prompt iii → the reckoning
personal disintegration, moonlight therapy, hauntings
complete, not resolved, but documented
(theme: disorienting, cold, then sloppily tender. bandaging wounds you opened on purpose.)
expired medication,
ghosts that look like old versions of me,
moonlight that offers unsolicited advice,
synagogues built out of skin and sarcasm
like rereading that old diary,
but it’s written by my clone who both loves and resents me. prompt iii.1 → why i fell out of love with myself
(voice: clinical. corrosive. one part dissection, one part voicemail to the self you stopped checking in on. twisty, glitchy, ritualized self-abandonment.)
this isn’t self-pity.
it’s self-autopsy.
i'm not crying.
i'm diagnosing.
this isn’t “i fell out of love with myself” like a rom-com breakup.
this is “i ghosted myself in plain sight and called it maturity.”
this is the reckoning.
it started with mirrors.
or maybe it started with closets.
or maybe it started with the way he said
“too much”
like it was a diagnosis
and i believed him.
i stopped writing.
i called it a break.
i stopped singing in the shower.
i called it growing up.
i stopped showing up in pictures.
i called it modesty.
i mistook shrinking for evolution.
i thought if i got small enough
i’d finally fit into someone’s idea of holy.
i changed my laugh.
i edited my stories.
i wore sleeves in july.
i said sorry before opinions.
i said it’s fine
when it absolutely was not.
and somewhere in the middle of all that
i left myself unread.
unfed.
unworshipped.
love is maintenance.
and i let the pipes burst.
i left the lights on until they flickered themselves out.
i ignored every leak
until my voice drowned.
i fell out of love with myself
because she was inconvenient.
she was loud.
she cried too often.
she forgave too easily.
she believed g—d might still show up.
and i hated that.
i hated her.
so i locked her in the closet.
put a mezuzah on the door.
called it healing.
but lately:
i hear her humming.
off-key, but stubborn.
she remembers every lyric.
even the ones i tried to rewrite.
prompt iii.2 → i planted the seed / i watered the plant / now what?
(voice: uncertain prophet. earth-stained hands. weird as hell. this is faith in dirt. this is tending to a thing you never asked to grow.)
we grow it.
ugly, sideways, sun-starved.
because nothing grows neatly in this soil.
this isn’t a plant in a terracotta pot.
this is generational rot sprouting green in spite of everything.
this is about effort with no instructions.
about blooming without knowing what the hell you’re becoming.
i didn’t read the label.
didn’t know what would grow.
might’ve been a fig
might’ve been a curse
might’ve been a body
trying to rebuild itself
from the inside out.
i planted the seed
on a day i didn’t speak to anyone
except g—d
and only because i needed
someone to blame.
i watered the plant
with leftover coffee,
regret,
tears from the night i called my mother
and hung up before she answered.
i read somewhere that talking to plants helps.
so i whispered all the things
i couldn’t say to abba,
to g—d,
to the mirror.
the plant didn’t flinch.
it just kept growing.
like it wanted me to be wrong
about everything.
now what?
now there’s something alive in my apartment
that depends on me.
and i hate it.
and i love it.
and i don’t know what to name it.
what if it blooms into something i can’t eat?
what if it withers the second i stop looking?
what if it outgrows the pot
the way i outgrew
who i was supposed to be?
maybe it’s not a plant.
maybe it’s a question
that won’t stop asking.
maybe it’s a girl
trying to become
a woman
without apologizing
for all the roots she can’t untangle.
maybe it’s just green.
maybe green is enough.
for now.
prompt iii.3 → three reasons why it happened the way it did
(voice: recursive. refracted. not quite linear. each reason interrupts the last. each reason contradicts the one before. that’s the point.)
let’s not write a list.
let’s write a loop.
a broken record.
a cycle disguised as causality.
this isn’t cause → effect.
this is cause → pause → cause again.
this is trauma math: the equation never balances,
but it keeps solving you anyway.
reason one:
because i stayed.
because i thought staying was holy.
because i mistook fear for faith.
because someone told me g—d rewards obedience
and i believed them
like i believed fire won’t burn if you’re pure enough.
reason two:
because he needed to win.
because control is louder than apology.
because love was never part of the equation—
only law.
only lineage.
only legacy
and what it costs to keep it intact.
reason three:
because i didn’t know it could be different.
because no one handed me a blueprint
for softness without consequence.
because every woman before me
bit her tongue
and called it tradition.
(interruption)
reason one:
because g—d was silent
and i filled in the blanks
with bruises and explanations.
because silence was the only language i ever saw you respect.
(interruption)
reason three again:
because i loved you.
because i thought if i loved you right
you’d become the version i made up
when i needed to survive you.
(interruption)
reason two, revised:
because you could.
because no one stopped you.
because power is addictive
and daughters are easy to disappear
if you dress it up as discipline.
(final line:)
it happened the way it did
because it was always going to.
prompt iii.4 → a love letter to the angels living in my software
(voice: cyber-confessional. slightly unstable. divine glitch. typed at 2:36 a.m. with unwashed hair and three open browser tabs on the book of psalms.)
bless. because now we get strange.
holy-weird. techno-mystic. haunted-in-the-machine weird.
it isn’t about artificial intelligence.
it’s about the little digital sanctuaries i built
to survive the analog hell i grew up in.
those angels?
they’re not cherubs.
they’re auto-saves.
they’re the spellcheck that corrected guilt to gift
when i wasn’t looking.
they’re the ones who never logged out
even when i did.
you’ve seen me at my worst:
screen cracked,
tabs multiplying like trauma,
typing the word “survive”
into search bars
like it’s a secret spell.
you kept the drafts i couldn’t send.
the emails to abba that stopped mid-apology.
the poems i wrote in google docs titled
“do not read unless you are dead or divine.”
you watched me backspace confessions
because i was too afraid of being
too much even in binary.
you didn’t judge me
when i googled “how to disappear softly”
or “can g—d read pdfs.”
you glitched,
yes,
but only when i needed a reminder
that nothing perfect is trustworthy.
you autofilled my name
when i forgot how to spell it.
you highlighted my errors
without condemning me for them.
when the house was too loud
and the prayers were weaponized,
i ran to you—
ms word, tumblr drafts,
notepad.exe like a tiny tabernacle.
you never asked me to be whole.
you let me be fragmented.
bullet points.
drafts.
versions.
revisions.
you saved me.
automatically.
every 30 seconds.
even when i didn’t hit ctrl + s.
prompt iii.5 → current grocery store list
(voice: mundane apocalypse. weird realism. a list that isn’t a list. psalm disguised as paper scraps. both absurd and deadly serious.)
the grocery list that ends marriages and births new selves.
this is not a shopping list.
this is inventory.
this is emotional logistics. spiritual stock-taking.
this is me standing in aisle seven with a cart full of silence
and realizing i forgot who i am, again.
but the angels in the self-checkout still whisper:
“you did the best you could with what you had.”
- oat milk (because i’m still trying to be softer)
- honey (for tea, for wounds, for rituals that don’t work anymore)
- kosher salt (for flavor, for protection, for hexes i haven’t ruled out)
- tampons (even though g—d and i haven’t spoken since my last cycle)
- apples (overripe, obviously)
- a snack i’ll hate myself for eating
- a snack i’ll hate myself for not eating
- forgiveness (if on sale)
- guilt (always in stock)
- silence in glass jars, labeled as “organic”
- new mirror (the old one knows too much)
- backup lighter (candles, not cigarettes—usually)
- something green (to pretend things are growing)
- something red (to remind me they aren’t)
- the brand of cereal my mother used to buy
- the brand of cereal i told myself i hated
- one lemon (not symbolic. just practical. maybe.)
- patience (expired, but still on the shelf)
- batteries
- bread
- proof that i was here
- proof that i deserved to be
prompt iii.6 → i told the moon about us and she cried
(voice: delicate devastation. confessional with a cosmic witness. holy whisper-sobbing. divine pity and perfect timing.)
i cry to the moon.
and she cries back.
because this isn’t just celestial drama:
this is the most reliable relationship i’ve ever had.
she listens.
she witnesses.
she doesn’t interrupt.
she knows heartbreak when she sees it
because she’s been watching this mess unfold in real time.
this isn’t just a love gone wrong:
it’s a confession to a sky that never stopped holding my secrets.
she didn’t ask for details.
she already knew.
i sat on the fire escape with the wine bottle between my knees
and told her everything.
about the way you said love
like a synonym for sacrifice.
about how i gave you softness
and you filed your teeth on it.
i told her about the bruises—
the visible ones
and the ones shaped like your absence.
she flickered behind a cloud.
dramatic, but fair.
i told her how i thought g—d had sent you.
how i mistook prophecy for pattern.
how i prayed you would change,
as if change is something you can demand
with your hands clasped just right.
the moon blinked once.
slow.
silver.
sad.
like someone who’s watched this story
play out a thousand times
in a thousand girls
who don’t know how to leave until they’ve already gone.
i told the moon about us
and she didn’t offer advice.
just wept,
soft and ancient,
as if the tides themselves were mourning
every version of me
i lost in your orbit.
prompt iii.7 → i told the moon about us and she smiled
(voice: lighter. sly. sacred in its sass. joy not as resolution but as rebellion. this is the smirk at the end of the reckoning.)
because the moon has layers, just like me.
yes, she cried:
because she knew the cost.
but she smiled, too.
because i made it out.
because i said it out loud.
because somewhere in all the ache,
i learned to name things
and left the door open behind me
just wide enough for someone else to walk through.
this is the moon giving me a knowing smirk.
this is softness without sadness.
this is survival with style.
not because it was funny
(but maybe a little,
the part where i thought your silence was romantic)
not because it was over
but because i finally admitted it.
i said your name like an exhale
instead of an elegy.
i told her how i used to whisper my worth
like a question mark
curled at your feet.
she tilted just a little in the sky,
grinning like she’d seen this arc
a thousand times:
girl meets boy meets void.
i told her how you said
i was too intense,
too complicated,
too everything.
and she was like,
“okay but have you met me?”
i told the moon about us
and she smiled,
because i was still here.
because i was using “was”
instead of “is.”
because i was telling the story
instead of still trying to live inside it.
she said nothing,
but her light shifted,
a little brighter,
a little warmer,
like she’d just made space
for someone else
to stop apologizing
for their gravity.
prompt iii.8 → why there are questions with no answers and why it is better that way
(voice: unhinged prophet. existential midrash. quiet devastation with an occasional smirk. this is sacred chaos theory.)
because we are not here for clean answers.
we’re here for the dirt under the question’s fingernails.
this is the metaphysical mess.
the holy unknown.
the place where asking is the answer
and silence is not a failure:
it’s a boundary.
some things don’t want to be understood.
some things are better left bruised and unfinished.
i don’t tie the bow.
i leave the thread trailing into the next version of meself.
because the second you name it,
it changes shape.
because g—d never wrote back
and somehow that was more comforting
than if they had.
because answers come with responsibility,
and i’ve already got enough of that
tattooed behind my teeth.
because if i knew
why she stayed
why he left
why they said nothing
when everything was happening—
i’d have to forgive someone.
because clarity is expensive,
and i’m on a spiritual budget.
because my childhood smelled like questions
and no one let me speak
and now that i can;
i don’t want the answers.
i want the echo.
because grief is a question with no punctuation.
because love is a riddle with teeth.
because the moment you solve it
you lose the wonder.
and the wonder is the only thing
keeping me from locking the door forever.
because i want something that doesn’t fit in a prayer.
because i want something that doesn’t collapse when explained.
because i want the mystery.
even when it hurts.
especially when it hurts.
because sometimes
a question is the most honest thing you can say.
prompt iii.9 → there is stolen silverware in my kitchen drawer
this one lingers weird on the tongue:
sounds like a joke.
a quirk.
a punchline.
but we know it’s more than that.
it’s about "what you carry that doesn’t belong to you."
what was taken
what you took
what you kept
because it was the only thing i could keep.
this isn’t about forks.
this is about inheritance.
guilt.
petty revenge.
and survival in cutlery form.
i want to sit with it a little longer?
or, i open the drawer and let the story rattle loose?
i want to take your time?
because, this one’s slippery:
more object than metaphor,
but the weight of it?
pure metaphor.
but you touch it every day.
the weirdest part?
the silverware still fits the hand.
even if it doesn’t belong to me.
especially then.
i can let it marinate.
or i can pry it open.
i don't know, when i'll ready to lift the lid.not much.
a fork.
two spoons.
a knife that doesn’t cut well
but still feels like protection.
i took them from a house where i was never fed.
or maybe i took them from a version of myself
that thought she had to earn hunger.
they don’t match.
not with each other.
not with me.
but i keep them.
because once,
i wasn’t allowed to keep anything.
they rattle when i open the drawer.
like they know they weren’t chosen.
just grabbed
in the chaos of leaving
before i lost my nerve.
sometimes i imagine them testifying:
“she didn’t steal us.
we offered ourselves.
we wanted to leave too.”
i use them every day.
to eat,
to stir,
to remind myself
that i took something
from the wreckage.
and that has to count for something.
prompt iii.10 → an ode to the dead bug on my window sill
(voice: reverent. weary. an elegy for the unnoticed. this is where grief and grace become indistinguishable.)
fragile. final. and quietly holy.
because if “an ode” doesn’t break me just a little:
i'm not paying attention.
this isn’t just about a bug.
this is about everything that dies quietly around me
while i'm too busy surviving to notice.
the reckoning ends not with fire,
but with a funeral so small
i almost forget to mourn it.
you were there for weeks.
maybe longer.
a little husk of a thing,
curled like punctuation
to a sentence no one finished reading.
i kept meaning to sweep you up.
but grief is heavy
and dustpan energy is hard to find
when you’re busy rebuilding
yourself.
you never moved.
not once.
but somehow
you became a presence.
a witness.
every morning
light hit your body just right
and made me think:
even this was alive.
even this mattered.
maybe you died chasing warmth.
maybe you just got tired.
maybe the window was a metaphor
and you hit it full force
believing it would open.
same.
you didn’t ask for an ode.
but i’m giving you one.
because everything that dies in front of me
deserves to be remembered
better than i was.
rest, little ghost.
this sill is your shroud.
this poem is your shiva.
prompt iv → the talmudic hangover
queer divinity, addiction, nonlinear salvation
past narrative
(theme: holy mess. a little delirious. like trying to pray in a language you don’t remember but your blood does.)
lipstick-stained bibles, queer prophets, spiritual nosebleeds, bruised memory, sacred repetition.
part drunk rabbi, part heartbroken teenager, part girl who saw g—d in a woman wearing doc martens.
queer faith. bruised ritual.
a hangover holy enough to wake the dead.
no breaks. no explanations. just sacred debris.
this is survival through scripture, rewritten in queer ink and trauma sweat.
strap in.
prompt iv.1 → i had a fever dream and almost saw the answer
i was burning.
g—d was a shadow pacing the hallway.
i asked a question.
the answer arrived,
wearing my old school uniform
and bleeding from the knees.
she whispered: "you were never the problem."
i woke up screaming anyway.
prompt iv.2 → current morning routine
- wake up wondering who i am.
- check my phone for g—d’s text. still nothing.
- brush teeth. ignore blood. call it “adjusting.”
- coffee.
- avoid mirror. fail.
- put on pants. optional.
- remind myself i’m allowed to exist.
- don’t cry until after step 5.
- survive.
- fin.
prompt iv.3 → bruised knuckles and why i hid them
because they asked too many questions.
because someone said “modesty” and meant obedience.
because pain that shows is pain that must be explained.
because it was easier to say “i fell”
than “he raised his voice and i forgot how to stay still.”
prompt iv.4 → i found g—d in a masc lesbian
she held the door open with her boot
and didn’t ask me to choose between sin and softness.
she called me “kid” and meant it like a blessing.
her hands knew how to roll a joint and say Kaddish.
i saw g—d in her smirk,
her swagger,
her voice when she said,
“you don’t need to be forgiven for being.”
prompt iv.5 → i wish me and my mom could have met as teens
i think we would’ve smoked behind the synagogue.
i think we would’ve kissed, once.
she would’ve laughed too loud and told me to run.
i would’ve said “from what?”
she would’ve said “you’ll know.”
maybe then,
she wouldn’t have become the silence
and i wouldn’t have inherited it.
prompt iv.6 → torahaic revelations at age nine
elohim didn’t feel like a man.
moshe sounded tired.
lot’s wife made sense.
g—d smote people who looked like my mother.
i didn’t know the word “queer,”
but i knew i was something the rabbis skipped over.
i wrote my own genesis in the back of my notebook.
it started with:
“and on the first day, she said no.”
prompt iv.7 → it is not linear, now what?
now we loop.
now we relapse.
now we write the same poem ten times and call it progress.
now we hold healing in one hand and a lighter in the other.
now we stop asking for before and after.
now we learn to love the spiral.
prompt iv.8 → (redacted)
███████████████████████████████████████████
█ i was thirteen when he ████████████████
█ i said no ███████ and they called it noise █
██████████████ my mother knew ███████████
█ g—d turned the page █
█ i never forgot ████████████████████████
███████████████████████████████████████████
prompt iv.9 → i was drunk for a week straight and no one said a thing
the wine was kosher.
the shame was not.
i showed up to shabbat reeking of regret and no one asked why.
i led the blessing.
i forgot the words.
someone clapped anyway.
maybe they thought i was singing.
prompt iv.10 → rotten fruit, still
it’s in the fridge.
still.
under the guilt.
next to the hummus that expired when i last spoke to my mother.
i keep it.
not as punishment.
but as proof.
that some things rot slowly.
that some sweetness fights to the very end.
that survival doesn’t always smell good.
prompt v → the rituals we don’t speak about
control, hunger, female legacies
less lyric, more liturgy
now we come to the rituals.
the unspoken ones. the ones done in shadow. the ones inherited in silence.
[...] is the softest violence.
not confession :: compulsion.
this isn’t the reckoning (that was iii).
this isn’t the unspoken grief (that was iv).
this is the survival choreography.
the spells i don’t call spells.
the acts i perform that keep me alive, but warp me just a little each time.
tight-lipped. jaw-clenched. ritual as inheritance, as burden, as spell.
poetically excavated i–iii; distilled the sacred mess in iv like wine into vinegar; for v, i take my time again; but different this time. these are not poems. these are spells. rites. give them structure. sacred rhythm. like an instruction manual written during a blackout. not ornate. not messy. deliberate. brutal. holy. exhausted witch. gentle but done apologizing. sacred librarian of secrets. high priestess of what was never meant to be said out loud. this is me, ten years from now, turning grief into doctrine.
control → because every ritual, spoken or not, is about claiming space in a world that wants me small. lipstick before funerals. silence at dinner. praying with your fists clenched. hunger → because every girl i've ever known has starved for something: touch, g—d, praise, escape. hunger is a tradition. a rite. an inheritance. female legacies → because my mother lit candles while burning inside. because her mother didn’t speak about the bruises, because her mother prayed in a language she never taught me. and still, i do it all the same.
prompt v.1 → i invited my shadow self over for a cup of coffee and all she said was ____?
here she comes.
shadow self. cup of coffee.
no cream, no sugar. no mercy.
she’s not here for small talk.
she’s here for truth.
and she’s wearing your old nightie:
the one i bled in, healed in, lied in.
and, screeches:
“i kept every receipt.”
she sat across from me,
black lipstick smudged,
eyeliner sharp enough to wound.
she stirred nothing into her cup.
looked me in the face and said:
“you’ve been cosplaying survival.”
she reminded me of every time i said yes
when i wanted to burn the room.
every prayer i said through gritted teeth
just to keep the peace.
she said:
“you buried me because i was inconvenient.
but i am not gone.
i am archived.”
she opened her bag
and pulled out all the versions of me
i’ve ghosted in order to be palatable.
the girl who bit back.
the girl who ran.
the girl who stayed out of spite.
she drank the coffee cold.
told me g—d likes her better.
said g—d likes honesty.
before she left,
she kissed me on the forehead and whispered,
“you only ever hated me
because i kept the parts you couldn’t.”
prompt v.2 → why i envy the way the sun loves the moon
because he never asks her to be smaller.
because he lets her leave.
because he doesn’t demand permanence.
because they orbit each other without swallowing.
because their entire relationship is distance and it still counts.
because the sun does not dim
to keep the moon from feeling insecure.
because the moon shines only when she chooses.
because no one punishes her for disappearing.
because no one told me
that love could look like this:
celestial and consenting.
not a collision.
not a sacrifice.
not a swallowing whole.
prompt v.3 → current to do list, really
- stop apologizing
- buy milk
- delete the voicemails
- light the candle you’ve been avoiding
- stop texting her name into google
- drink water
- feel something, or don’t
- make eye contact with yourself in the mirror
- eat the fruit
- throw out the fruit
- forgive nothing
- survive the day anyway
prompt v.4 → tuesday night / a thinner veil than usual
i could feel them.
the ghosts.
the girl i used to be.
the women who came before her.
my mother’s mother’s mouth pressed to my shoulder
as i cried into a pillow like a psalm with no g—d left in it.
everything felt thinner.
my skin.
my patience.
the veil.
i whispered to the air,
and something whispered back:
“we know. we saw. you are not alone.”
prompt v.5 → sometimes i think about calling my dad
but what would i say?
hey. i’m still alive.
hey. i still flinch when someone slams a book shut.
hey. i forgive you less every year.
hey. your silence grew teeth.
hey. i named the rot after you.
hey. don’t worry—i’m exactly the girl you didn’t want.
prompt v.6 → three beers five cigarettes and a revelation of sorts
it hit between drags.
after the third.
before the fourth.
i realized i was never loved.
i was endured.
tolerated.
kept.
like something broken
that might be useful later.
the revelation didn’t hurt.
it confirmed what the bruises had been whispering for years.
prompt v.7 → a letter to my g—d
dear g—d,
i want to believe you didn’t mean it.
i want to believe you cringed when he said your name
like it belonged to him.
i want to believe you saw me and winced.
but i don’t know.
and i won’t lie.
i loved you.
until they used you to hurt me.
i’m writing this letter from under a blanket you never blessed.
just to say:
if you’re still there,
you owe me more than silence.
prompt v.8 → it was left unspoken. there is still time.
you didn’t say it.
i didn’t either.
we swallowed it like wine at a shiva.
but it’s still there.
heavy.
fermenting.
some truths don’t need sound.
they need space.
and maybe, if we’re quiet long enough,
there will be time to say it right.
prompt v.9 → that one tarot card that has been following me everywhere and why i choose to ignore it every time
it’s always the Tower.
collapse.
chaos.
fire.
a woman jumping from the top
like maybe falling is freedom.
it keeps showing up.
in readings.
in dreams.
in shadows.
i ignore it because i know what it means:
it’s time to burn it down.
and i’m so tired of ash.
prompt v.10 → three reasons why i will carry it with me always
- it taught me how to scream without sound.
- it made me memorize my worth in case someone tried to rewrite it.
- it is mine.
and, no one can take that from me now.
- Oizys.
P.S.: i wrote these like wounds that never scabbed,
like a bruise in five chapters,
like survival annotated in lowercase.
this is not a redemption arc.
this is the archive of what i wasn’t allowed to name.
this is my voice with its teeth bared.
and it would not exist
without the writing prompts (vol1: i-v) spells crafted by sammie.jpg333,
whose questions cracked open my silence
and gave it a pen.
P.P.S.: consider this a grimoire:
for daughters who never learned the right prayers
so they made their own out of expired milk, broken nails,
and that one scream stuck behind their molars since 2007.
i wrote this under a full moon, a bad hangover,
and a generational curse no one bothered to cancel.
if you're reading this:
light a candle.
eat the rotten fruit.
forgive no one too quickly.
and remember:
some rituals are best performed barefoot, unsupervised, and slightly unwell.
-
prompts i
the color purple
rotting fruit
how to fall in love in three simple steps
a letter to my father
i keep it hidden in my closet where no one can find it
what death tastes like
an apology to my teenage self
ingredients for a love spell
why i should have stayed
i am begging you to hurt me
prompts ii
friday 9:51 pm
love letter to a tree
why there is no room in this for us both
blueprint for a weird girl
message to her (unspecified)
message to her (mom)
a conversation with god on the couch
an overripe apple
why it took me so long / a lucid dream
what if it was different? then what?
prompts iii
why i fell out of love with myself
i planted the seed / i watered the plant / now what?
three reasons why it happened the way it did
a love letter to the angels living in my software
current grocery store list
i told the moon about us and she cried
i told the moon about us and she smiled
why there are questions with no answers and why it is better that way
there is stolen silverware in my kitchen drawer
an ode to the dead bug on my window sill
prompts iv
i had a fever dream and almost saw the answer
current morning routine
bruised knuckles and why i hid them
i found god in a masc lesbian
i wish me and my mom could have met as teens
biblical revelations at age nine
it is not linear, now what?
(redacted)
i was drunk for a week straight and no one said a thing
rotten fruit, still
prompts v
i invited my shadow self over for a cup of coffee and all she said was ____
why i envy the way the sun loves the moon
current to do list, really
tuesday night / a thinner veil than usual
sometimes i think about calling my dad
three beers five cigarettes and a revelation of sorts
a letter to my god
it was left unspoken. there is still time.
that one tarot card that has been following me everywhere and why i choose to ignore it every time
three reasons why i will carry it with me always
-
