death & the maiden | a reaping of roses

death & the maiden lov'st thou Death? is his face fairer than Love’s, brighter to look upon? seest thou light in his eyes, light by which Love’s pales and is overshone? algernon charles swinburne — choriambics

dear reader — the body of me grows soft with wilt. mine heart, oh; it is a tender place, a redpale garden of achings.

I daren't name what I feel "weak." it is poetic, mayhaps, but there is no frailty to the way that I am hurting; in many ways, I suppose that I am moon-become: a beam and its' rafters, a skeletal accolade of sorrows. do you suppose this is metamorphosis?

INDEX one......an ode to september's harvest two.......first quarter : saturday 1–8 three.....second quarter : sunday 9–15 four......third quarter : sunday 16–22 five.......last quarter : sunday 23-30 six.....letter to maria angela astorch seven.....odds & ends & ill-fit things

an ode to september's harvest

wheat whirls around us and I cushion my head on his chest, tasting late dusk where it pools in the seam of his scars. his mouth at my temple is honey; oh, his mouth at my throat is the comb, dripping red gold on my aorta. there are bees around us, pawing at the wealth of winevine, greedy for the dark of their glory, for the taste of olibanum. he pulls me closer, my lover; says he wants to show me the orchards once the sun will climb lower.

I see them from afar, apples the size of a heart glinting in the fall of sun; and yet I harbor no want, no hunger. it is beautiful, the bounty spill'd from our mother's chthonic womb ——— still my stranger is heavenlier. wheat whirls around us and I could spend forever as we are, feeding on the far-flung scents wafting from the granary.

first quarter one : the passage of months is always such uncanny territory — I must profess that it unsettles me quite deeply, the way passing by a cemetery during crepuscular hours might. in many ways, I feel robbed, as if someone has, in subterfuge, stolen my days from within open hands while I was busy blinking. † two : a most productive night; some old demons were exorcised, and I, at last, have remembered why I chose to name myself rage writes. I believe in semantic power, and that meaning is something I shan’t lose sight of again — albeit I have to concede this has made some old inner conflict reemerge. I am torn between a need for peace and a need to hold on to my fire, even when it means I myself must also burn. † three : today, I revisit Swinburne. it is a bit of a funny story, my love affair with his verses: all I had read from him had been Choriambics and Ave Atque Vale, until someone mentioned how much my own writing reminded them of him. a visit to the archives later, and I was impassioned, utterly infatuated. † four : I continue to pore over Swinburne today, devouring the entirety of his Poems and Ballads. it had completely slipped my mind that he wrote in Latin; reading those verses again made me want to try my hand at doing the same, just to see whether I am able. † five : melancholy settles in, today, I spend most of my time aimlessly watching historical documentaries. † six : we went on a grocery run earlier — I found cactus fruit in the greens aisle, and I knew I had to get a couple. most of them are underripe, so I could only have a taste test, but it is definitely a new favorite. † seven : a slow day. I am anew at war with myself, fighting depression and imposter’s syndrome all at once, but I have hope. truth be told, hope is the only thing I have had for quite a while now. † eight : I gather my storms and hold them close, today; best to brood and get it over with.

second quarter nine : the trend of self-exorcisms continues — today I scrapped together a zine about not-love under the cover of the yawning dawn, baring a little more than originally intended. the experience was...cathartic. although I am not fully satisfied with the end product, it is an exercise most definitely worth repeating. † ten : depression sleep is the ruling mood of the day: I doze and I drift and then I doze again...however I think that I am beginning to crack the shell of this episode open. † eleven : exhaustion still permeates my bones, but I am feeling significantly better today. there is an indubitable cyclicality to my moods, to the alternation between exhilarating highs and crushing lows: the latter last anywhere between five to twenty days; the highs are, thankfully, always longer. † twelve : I seem to have recovered from my slump, though the cold I managed to catch sometime in the past week is dampening that victory. I have been out and about quite a bit; I do so hate being busy with “real world” responsibilities! honestly, if I had my way, I’d be cooped up in a studio and only leave for the sake of trips to nature or to one of the many historical sights I desire to see…ahh, someday. someday! † thirteen : today is for me a day of remembrance — wherever you are, S, I hope that the skies are kind. † fourteen : in an excess of zeal, I stayed up and wrote twelve out of the fifteen poems in Crucibulum, my upcoming chapbook, in one clean go. I must let it marinate for a few days before it is ready to present, however — and I shall spend the meantime entreating myself to some lazing around. † fifteen : on second thought, no marinating — this is very much an impulse work. there is nothing I could possibly add to or subtract from it; “each book is unique”, indeed.

third quarter sixteen : today is a day of quiet contemplation. I set my bones back in place, attempt to explain my hurts aloud to the walls in a continuation of my cyclic self-exorcisms. I do not know how successful an endeavor it is, and thus cannot pronounce any verdict, but it certainly is cathartic. † seventeen : I intended to turn in early last night, but I got caught up in more zine work after a conversation with Mari. with it, my digital scrapbooking projects are moving in a new and intriguing direction — god has left the server has an almost essayistic quality to its’ flow that I very much enjoy. † eighteen : today I am out and about; so many chores, so little time. my recurring dental infection has surfaced in the left flank a few days ago — I finally have the antibiotics to treat it. the fever is making me drowsy, even with rigorous intake of magnesium supplements, which might become an impediment. † nineteen : they say that Wednesdays are good days for communication, and today that held true. a pressing issue that I cannot really detail on has come to a settlement, albeit a shaky one. nineteen, again : truth be told, I am terrified; anxieties about the future have returned. I want to sleep. † twenty : once more, I seem to have run out of verses. † twenty-one : I am haunted, in the sense that there is a melancholy of memories plaguing every inch of my being; I know too much, and yet I know nothing at all. time is anew becoming a blur, as if the narrator penning the pages of my life is drunk and slurring his way through. † twenty-two : still feverish, but today I suck it up; I have to. I spend most of the day cleaning the apartment. there is a song that won’t give me peace, but I have a lapsus as to its’ name and most of its’ lyrics. I keep humming, hold back the river, let me look in your eyes —— and then, absolute silence.

last quarter twenty-three : I think I might’ve hit some sort of breaking point. I do not know whether this is s a good thing or a bad one, but I suppose I shall discover soon enough. every now and again my sense of self gets curiously muddy, not due to any questioning but rather...a pervasive sense of falsity. consciously I know this is due to imposter’s syndrome, but of late it has been taking such a toll on me. † twenty-four : I become someone else when it rains — someone much more quiet and much more in awe of the world; someone kinder, perhaps. it is almost as if the downpour gathers at my joints and nests there in pale mirrors, reflecting my roots in a manner that allows for me to see them. † twenty-five : I am getting better, I think. or at least I hope. † twenty-six : I decided to make a tumblr sideblog dedicated to astrology; already I fear it might take up too much of my time, considering how much I enjoy the topic and how prone I am to studiously applying myself to everything I do. alas — we all deserve to do things that make us happy. † twenty-seven : although I am still convalescing, I return to nocturnal habits. † twenty-eight : my convalescence takes a turn for the spiritual; as my body is healing, my mind begins to clear, and so my grievances grow. nothing is as great an enemy to the self as a functioning conscious — I am not even allowed the small comfort of hiding from myself in the throes of a fever; I must bear the full burden of my miserable state with perfect, cutting clarity. it feels at times as if I am being punished. † twenty-nine : my heart is restless; it isn’t that I cannot write, it’s that everything I do write seems to me unfathomably ugly and misshapen, and I can hardly look at my own words without my skin crawling. † thirty : I wished to end this September on a positive note — alas, I cannot. this has always been a hard and particularly desolate month for me; this year it was no different. if anything, this September has been harder than ever on my psyche. all I can do, indeed, is hope; in the meantime, I mourn myself.

mother———

someone once told me that the bodies of those incorruptible bleed myrrh when cut; and that, should you feed such myrrh to your roses, they will become ever-flowering. all a fairytale, of course, but still. it has made me wonder — how can one truly verify sanctitude? of late, I find myself more and more preoccupied with the thought of “holiness”, to the point where it has become something of a plague unto me. I’ve spent hours contemplating reliquaries, until I could almost taste the flowers and the dark honey of commiphora burning at the back of my tongue. say, mother — how did you know that the voice calling you belonged to God? how did you know that you had been chosen to be one of His brides? for you see, there is a ringing in my left ear, a faint whispering of white noise; and mother, it lulls me with such sweet swan songs, wrapping many a tongue around the vowels of my name. it tells me that when Death will come for me, God shall ask for his lordly right — and with it take my first last kiss, plucking the breath from deep within me until my body has been charred clean. it sounds so phantasmagorical, like an apple of a too perfect red. you must understand, mother; it is not hell that I fear, but rather the fury of an empty and uncertain aftermath. I am not asking you to intervene on my behalf – I wouldn’t dare do so – but I am asking for reassurance.

ever faithful, LS.

odds & ends

I decided to switch it up for this month's trivia section; so rather than a very random piece of knowledge, I shall apply more purpose and present you with the rather satisfying origin of the word "trivia" itself. the English trivia comes from modern Latin trivium, meaning crossroads, specifically a point where three directions intersect. in turn, the word trivium is likely connected to the name of the Roman goddess Trivia. often fused with her direct Greek counterpart, Hecate, she is however a much more minor personage, despite ruling over the same dominions: witchcraft and crossroads.

for this month’s album, I decided to take another trip down memory lane with The Weeknd's Starboy. several songs off of it have been in my head all month, notably 6 Feet Under.

a closing fragment

the delta is still now —— the songs have grown quiet, and all that remains is rosewilt in deep trenches, sanguine silk rusted to an indistinct maroon. we too shall be reaped; these hearts, bleeding flowers so freely today, shall soon share a grave.