Muse 46: Cut the Swan

Skins Unseen, Effy

She thought her heart to be precious like a domesticated animal that has been yours for years, but you're too afraid to let it go, let it slide past your fingertips into serenity, because your emotional needs, pitied and sought for, conquers vast nations with atomic dust endings. And even when her parents, friends and others told her she had to let go - to take this self hatred, that had enough strength to tear apart mountains into valleys, turn glaciers into melting ice caps that consumed green lands - she didn't think she could bear to cut the swan. If the swan died, opened up with a willing secret, then perhaps nothing would be beautiful again.

Muse 45: Legs

found via milobelgrove

"The more banged up the better," he declared as we stood in front of H&M, looking at the pale, milky white legs of the thin plastic models.

They were faceless beings with perfect bodies that compelled any passing girl to transform themselves into the same form. The latest Vogue declared that women should have gangly limbs and pointy faces, the poise of an arrow, to show their determination in effort to further the feminist era. Show them boys what they can't have, the text declared, be the tease, the flirt and the flawless canvas that can't be marked up - I looked at my legs, they were covered in nylon stockings to look blemish free. "I like the scrapes, the bruises, the discolored spots..." he grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the mannequin mirage. I found my thighs rubbing together as my boyfriend continued on about masked perfection. I wonder if he'll say the same words if I take off my stockings and reveal my cuts no one has ever seen.

"...The more the better! It means that she's unafraid to fall. You can't be caught if you refuse to fall."

Muse 44: Fireflies

found via we heart it

She took a deep breath and got ready to exhale, to spread a million seeds to grant one wish. In a second - a moment composed of a thousand emotions, which have multitudes of histories that take up hours within a lifetime - she remembered more than she needed. What she remembered wasn't the past or the present but the forever continuing wisdom of truth. She looked at the dandelion in her hand, the deceivingly sweet seeds, and wondered if it was right for her to spread a weed. It only took a second for her to reevaluate reality; her wishes were just weeds under the guise of myths. Then in the next second - a change of mind that felt like a thought composed through years of wisdom and tribulation - she realized that in her fingertips wasn't a dangerous flame that would consume the valley but a jar of fireflies waiting to be released.

Muse 43: Joy

found via made you look

you bring me joy. incredible amounts of joy like sacks of gifts that are carried by wise men who travel far and wide in search for a single person, you bring me joy. i've seen daisies and dandelions swell in winter bloom, but the sight of birth has never been as beautiful as you. and sometimes, sometimes when you sit alone, i don't want to come and say hello. hello might break that moment where i could imagine a thousand more with you. i imagine you turning around with a smile, holding my hand, and we sleep together underneath the painted stars. i dream, and you bring me joy. only then, the physical overrides the mental, i can't live in thoughts, and so i say it anyway. i say hello, and these fantasies say goodbye.

Muse 42: the Road

found via joann lee

I've seen the light. It promises something at the end of the tunnel, while I'm searching endlessly, has been just playing me like a fool. Some go all the way, find that gem and let it shine over their world, coating the greys with yellow light. I'm traveling this road, and I see the light. I've felt it tickle my skin and beckon me to the end of the tunnel to be saved. I've been in the light. The feeling of stepping into the whiteness is like the feeling of being salvaged from a shipwreck. Pieces of you are picked up, fixed and mended because they think you are broken, but it's just the experience. It's all apart of the experience, and I don't want it erased. I've seen the light, but the night has won. I will stay on the Road. The night has won.

Muse 41: Thirsty

found via jessieroth

They slid down her fingers and into the deep cup that her palms formed, slipping through to where she couldn't catch them again without spilling everything else. In her perfect red dress, she looked up innocently and lifted her hands to my lips. I drank from her hands until there was nothing left for her to give.

Muse 40: Buried Dreams

found via Antoinette Tran

You keep your dreams in a jar, he said. Your dreams in a jar won't get your very far. Not when they settle on top of water, growing like a stagnant lily pad. And as he continued, losing me in the image of a ship caught in a bottle. His voice crashed gently against me like the morning tide, playing in the background as I focused on my own thoughts. You need to let the ship sail, and he kept repeating, open the jar and let what is there loose. Alright maybe fine, I snapped in return with heavy sarcasm, My dreams are made of rotten ore and termite ridden wood. They are meant to sink to the bottom as an infestation undiscovered. Down, deep in the bottom of the ocean, my dreams will grow old and treasured. Then one day, someone will uncover them and uncover something great. There is no value until it's buried and I am dead. I stared defiantly into his eyes, hoping his lips would seal shut.

But he challenged, Then do it. Write your book and we'll bury it for discovery.

Muse 39: TinMan

found via vogue

"Why do you think love is so dumb when - " he stuttered significantly as her pace quickened and his small steps failed to catch up. He gripped her hand tightly, only successfully pulling her back by kindness of her part. His nimble body worked its balance along the sun soaked wall, made of pale bricks, that spurred endlessly beyond the horizon. She smiled at his clumsy movements, the sway of his body like a rocking chair on the edge of overuse, as she slowed down, adjusting the pace to match his. "- even the Tin Man in that wizard story wanted a heart?"

She shrugged. They were drawing closer to the school. He would let go of her hand and turn around to face her with arms wide open. Then she would take him under the arm, and for a few seconds he would fly the air like a jet plane before his feet crashed against the ground. He would collide into her, burying his face into her stomach as his feet stumbled over themselves. As usual, she would kiss her forehead and promise to pick him up later that day. "Maybe you're right," she said, slowing down even more as they reached a green door with a bright gold knocker. "A heart is precious, so don't lose yours."

"You can have my heart," he offered, wide-eyed.

Laughing, she patted his head. "It's alright, Jack. Now go inside. I'll see you tomorrow." She leaned down and kiss his forehead before pulling back to see his beaming face. He waddled in with a strange maturity of a young soldier who only had grandeur ideas of a battlefield. He was still too young to be known of love's own mine field. I've seen what hearts do, they stay whole or they break. And I've seen what love does, move swiftly without ever waiting. No, I think I'll stay a Tin Man.

Muse 38: Lucky

found via ATLITW

I feel like a good luck charm. Not the kind of charm that wards off evil, but the kind that brings good luck, you know? The kind of charm that is stuck to the top of the ceiling by a thin thread, waiting to be cut off from safety and fall into the hands of an expectant receiver. Whenever the wind blows, I hold my breath in anticipation, wondering where I will be next, wondering how far and how long I have to wait until I'm hovering over the right hands.

I'm also the kind of charm that weighs less than a thought, but is worth the remembrance because it can give a thousand smiles. They say that whoever is with me will be happy, that I bring happiness wherever I go. They say I just have to wait for the right person to come along. Well, my heart is a good luck charm, you know?

Muse 37: Where It Is Safe

found via dearskye

I used to believe that standing in the center of the road, where the doubled yellow lines mingled, was a safety zone. That thin space, where nothing more than a thin shell of a human could stand, had invisible walls that protected travelers from everything that hurt.

During those cold nights, when they sat in a festering silence that normally grew into a wounded battlefield, I snuck out of my room into the welcoming, scathingly cold air. Pushing myself until acid burned in my legs, I ignored the pain, and kept going... going, hearing the honking and storming of drivers who feared more for their own life. Still, I kept going, kept going until the cold air ate away my lungs, ate away the potential to live and run again. This might be what it feels like to be eaten when decayed, and the cold ground kisses my body as I rest in-between the lines, listening to the sounds of passing cars that narrowly missed my frame.

Muse 36: Enchantment

found via loveyourchaos

"Everyone is waiting for it, you know?" she said, then licked her finger without missing a beat. The sliding drip of ice cream disappeared into her mouth, and the finger reappeared, pink and wet like a newborn child. Her actions are always so pure, completely natural. Every time she moved, the slight change in the air always brought her scent closer to my nose. She smelled sweetly, an entirely unintentional mixture of happiness and promise in one, of unadulterated joy, a freshly crushed grape from the first frost. And her hand, still wet, came down right next to mine as she took it gently, laughing at the strange sensation of her saliva cooling in the savannah heat. "I'm glad I don't need to wait."

And to keep the magic intact, I don't ask for clarification.

Muse 35: VCR

found via stephanie chan

More than anything, I... I mean, I feel the soft cotton flex underneath my empty, sweltering palm as the blue rays from the television try to eat the flesh off my face. Blankly, letting the tungsten light blink for me, I try to figure out why I am sitting alone with my hand exactly where you should be.

Where have you gone? We were together once, somewhere in time.

There's a possibility I crushed you somewhere underneath my fat ass hand. So I lift my hand, scared that I'm suffocating you, but you're not underneath the mess I've crumpled. This is psychotic, but I learned a trick from the senior that taught me about sex. My numb arm retracts from underneath my thighs, and I move it, not feeling a thing. You can break the heart on my sleeve and I won't know the pain. All I think about ... I stroke the back of my own hand to pretend that this Sleeping Beauty touch belongs to you. I don't know a more fucked up way of missing you.

Muse 34: Her Sadness

donnie darko, 2001

Like a beast crawling in the pits of my stomach, I am what you would never notice twice, and you are the gift lion that I dare not look into. Am I to find a black, bottomless hole where I will fall endlessly? Forever, I feel the pain, slowly scraping away with a sadistic desire to make me feel each growling stretch as the pain rips my womb open. The hysteria is set loose, but I'll keep these emotions hidden just as you wish, when I'm around you. I won't be able to bear the fear on your face, even if this heart is killing me with a slow suffocational suicide. I want to leave you, but that's such a tragic ending. And if I stay, I will be forgotten. Death is the only answer, and maybe, at least, I can die beautifully. So I trap my heart in the attic, trap it underneath the wooden floorboards, as I watch you love another.

Muse 33: Catatonia

found via Nick Gentry

Her catatonic eyes hold my gaze and I feel it piercing through my retina, down the very center where there are no veins, no vessels, no chance of dripping blood or pain. I grow rigid, frightfully so, as a slow beating overtakes every pore of my body. Keep my eyes on her, keep my eyes on the goal and never look away, I chanted devoutly, knowing that once my eyes shift, the silvery needle will not break, only move into the flesh that can bleed and stream red tears from these eyes.

Muse 32: Do Us Part

found via edwardolive

He figured wearing his wedding suit was not a form of bad luck. In the crowd of seemingly confused attendees, he easily blended in with the costumed columns of black and white that weaved around the room. The same colors in the wedding photographs. Pinching the hem of his sleeves, which had lengthened greatly since the news, he saw no difference between the silk of his suit and the cotton of others. As strangers passed him with a cowardice familiarity, he let their sorrowful eyes rest their words on his shoulders. Like tradition, he was waiting at the end of aisle but she had arrived much earlier, carried in by four men.

Muse 31: Tinkling

found via flickr

I wanted every copy to remind me of my youth. Every unbroken page, perfect before the breath of adulthood, would be just as fresh to the touch, like the very first novel of Barrie's I took up. My eyes flickered frantically across the page, consuming each word with a fierceness only age could give a person. As if the pages, the story, the magic dust could disappear as easily as youth. Budding with excitement, I straightened my back as the island invited me deeper into plain Indian lands and jagged Skull Rock. Lost Boys weaved me through the twisted forest, and I ran for miles without every growing tired. I flew across oceans on kites, with no fear of death, to greet the sun with a loud crow. Then, like the stabbing daggers of Hook's evil, the knowledge that every page led me closer to the pending ending wretched my stomach with bile, but I could not stop - I do believe in fairies, I do. I do. Surviving whips and lashes of the battle on the Jolly Roger, I cried as the pages brought me back to the darling window. The tears fell incessantly when Pan returned, just as he did each time, never to remember Tinkbell and the adventures that had been had. To die would be an awfully big adventure, but to die is better than to forget. Maybe tomorrow, there will be another copy sitting on the shelves for me, for that is all how far I dare to travel when it comes to Neverland.

Muse 30: Heartbreak Method

found via =Soyismyhomeboy

I don't want to tell you, but if you look into my eyes you can see it. I don't want to break your heart now - but understand that our relationship is built on the medication I feed you. And so, you ask me why I'm gone all the time, why I only fickly come and go so, lasting only as long the bewitching hour of twilight. Why, there's a reason I cannot keep my promises, cannot let you trust me completely, and this reason is a knife that tears scars.

But for now ... we have so many more years to go before the red sea crashes back down on us, so I won't break your heart now. It will mean breaking mine in the process, but I'm already so gone, so broken, it hardly matters anymore. For now I'll just silver spoon you with happiness before the time comes for me to fade away. And then the spell will work, and you won't notice that I have left your future. This coming and going is permanent. And you will learn that I am slowly preparing you for a life without me.

Muse 29: Redlight

found via =L-N-E

Stop. I want you to just stop.

Can't you just see that I am standing here, lying here in this emptiness waiting for you to notice? My head bangs, echoes against the car's hood, and the echo is repeating softly, the sound in my mind. Without you, without you, without you. It's like you are driving at the magic limit where all traffic lights stay forever green. The glowing emerald brightness haunts me because I am standing at every block, watching you pass. This emerald city is not what everyone seems, what a lost world. Stop. If you stop, you can see me. And even if you do see me, will you stop? I don't want to know the answer.

Muse 28: of God

art by erica altosaar

She had asked, once, long time ago, "Did you know that beauty could be separated from the beautiful?."

....

He put her arms over his shoulder, and she rested like a babe swaddled by its mother. With a rough bump, her body jumped up until her buttocks rested gently in the crooks of his arms. Then he proceeded to carry her still-warm form over the fields, where the tall grass brushed against her pale, blueing legs. His hands caressed what it could as the body slowly grew cold, and the colder it got, the more he found himself trying to run home. To save her before she froze, to save her before she was completely gone - the blood ran freely from her wound, like the fragrance of a flower slowly separating away, like the silence growing louder with sound, like humans living on the outskirts of humanity.

Muse 27: Interlock

found via liebemarlene

Sometimes, when the park is desolate, we are inseparable. Sometimes, when the park is overflown, we walk apart like secret strangers. But now, all the time, I keep my hands close together, letting them kiss and touch with gently flurries to remind me that you are consciously near.

Once, I have missed you during the in-between days. They are the spaces between my fingers. The spaces between us compliment the way we spread apart only to bring more of us together. In a compacted fist, the net has caught only love, desire and longing.

This distance is bearable - like the way the Atlantic Ocean are the fingers for Europe and America to touch - the only distance is the one that melds our soils together into one wholly pure foundation where the most heavenly garden will grow.

Now the abyss between slumber and silence is the one I recall. In the twilight of my mind, before I drift away to the nights, the world, in its entirety, urges me into a trance where I find you, waiting for me beyond the reality of this world. I see you in my dreams, I will meet you in my sleep, but not until this separation is incomplete will I fully kiss you, once more eternally.

Muse 26: Rexia

found via fuckyeahskinnybitch

She had a theory that if she never ate or ate never enough she would digress in form. Her body would shrink to fit into the boxes that people put her in, and it would contort to shapes unknown to man. In this way, she could be uniquely beautiful and rarely seen, rarely noticed by the curious onlookers, the pretentious bystanders or simply voiceless friends. The stars would continue shine in their permanent positions as the world revolved with trickery. She would become the forgotten idea that everything seen first has already been seen twice.

Maybe if I don't eat, she decided while staring at the blinding fridge, I will disappear.

And she never disappeared, faded, not ever physically with her frail, spider limbs hauntingly placed in the coffin - but I remember that I can hardly remember her after she was determined to starve.

Muse 25: Existence

found via weheartit

In a sea of shapeless, shadeless greenery, the brown box dropped slowly into a hole of oblivious existence. The finality in the wires creaking, the ropes itching and worldly physicality itself threatens to let the coffin drop with a disrespectful thud. But what is inside is not human. He is alien. He is a wax replica of the man I love - a filtered, massacred replacement to comfort my soul, and I must reject it. My attendance is merely symbolic; my mind is distantly near - Do you think that when people die, their corpses shrivel up because something beautiful has been forcibly sucked out of it? It's like the form itself suffers an inexplicable loss, so complicated and violent, like the shape has been raped and must be reassembled by human hands for the sake of soothing the human mind. We make, we exist, and we lose.

Muse 24: Snow Dress

Edward Gorey

She was wearing pure white with a soft golden glow that layered over her gently like untrodden snow. In fact, underneath her dress was a large, unnecessary mess, where globules of blood seemed to flow. But the snow continue to fall, and she was so small, that the world remained a world and ignored her raw.