The figs we ate wrapped in bacon.
The gelato we consumed lustily:
coconut milk, clove, fresh pear.
How we’d dump hot espresso on it,
just watch it melt, licking our spoons
clean. The potatoes fried in duck fat,
the salt we’d suck off our fingers,
the eggs we’d watch get beaten
’til they were a dizzying bright yellow,
how their edges crisped in the pan.
The pink salt blossom of prosciutto
we pulled apart with our hands, melting
on our eager tongues. The green herbs
with goat cheese, the aged brie paired
with a small pot of strawberry jam,
the final sour cherry we kept politely
pushing onto each other’s plate, saying,
No, you. But it’s so good. No, it’s yours.
How I finally put an end to it, plucked it
from the plate, and stuck it in my mouth.
How good it tasted: so sweet and so tart.
How good it felt: to want something and
pretend you don’t, and to get it anyway.

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, “July” (via oofpoetry)

idionkisson replied to your post “all of the dreams i’ve had about my friends have also been dreams…”

ok i know this is not rly a Serious Post but i legit just got so excited abt this Concept, PLS write lots of poems abt this & send them all to me, pls & thank xoxo

michelle i want you to know that this prompted me to go back and reread every poem i’ve ever written about/based on a dream, all of which predate me having this revelation, and it turns out that they’ve literally all been About Physical Spaces in ways most of my poems are not and i am so thrilled to have made this discovery. & also this comment was such good inspo for me to write more, i have been needing a high-level prompt lately. i will send u them once they have been made!!

Alden Nowlan — Great Things Have Happened

allyourprettywords:

We were talking about the great things
that have happened in our lifetimes;
and I said, “Oh, I suppose the moon landing
was the greatest thing that has happened
in my time.” But, of course, we were all lying.
The truth is the moon landing didn’t mean
one-tenth as much to me as one night in 1963
when we lived in a three-room flat in what once had been
the mansion of some Victorian merchant prince
(our kitchen had been a clothes closet, I’m sure),
on a street where by now nobody lived
who could afford to live anywhere else.
That night, the three of us, Claudine, Johnnie and me,
woke up at half-past four in the morning
and ate cinnamon toast together.

“Is that all?” I hear somebody ask.

Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness
and, under our windows, the street-cleaners
were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and
everything was strange without being threatening,
even the tea-kettle whistled differently
than in the daytime: it was like the feeling
you get sometimes in a country you’ve never visited
before, when the bread doesn’t taste quite the same,
the butter is a small adventure, and they put
paprika on the table instead of pepper,
except that there was nobody in this country
except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder
of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.
 

 i do really love being able to see other LGBT+ people just like, living life? doing things, talking about their experiences, looking visibly gnc in a whole variety of ways, idk. i mean this in real life but also in terms of just like, seeing everyone i follow on tumblr talking about their lives/posting selfies/etc. i appreciate you all! i love being gay and nb in a community of other LGBT+ people. it makes my life appreciably better to know you all and see all of the ways that other people are doing their lives.

9, 20, 41?

answered 9 but i’ll cheat and also brag about this beautiful scarf. when i bought it i thought it was going to be a gift for someone else, but as soon as it arrived i realized that 1. they wouldn’t really appreciate it even though i was correct that it would look good on them and 2. i wanted it intensely. so now it’s mine:

20. Did you develop a new obsession?

i went All In on tatterpigs, which i think is the most obvious one– started my first game ever in january of this year and now have played many, run one, and am in multiple different rpg groups of various commitment and frequency. this is on the whole a good thing, i think, even if for some reason i can’t quite figure out why i’m doing it. certainly i’ve met a lot of really great people as a result of this, and i do like playing, and i like playing WITH those people, so that’s probably enough, i just can’t shake the feeling that somehow i’m only pretending to be a(/the kind of) person who plays ttrpgs. ok no, i know why this is, it is because the specific context in which i developed my initial intense devotion to the hobby has since [personal circumstance change redacted during this period of evaluation and quality assurance] and ever since i’ve been on the comedown of just “having fun” as opposed to “being creative-collaborative manic and filled with an extremely stupid version of love”

41. Did anything happen to you that you were sure wouldn’t change you as a person but it did?

er, therapy, actually, which despite consisting of really just me narrating things i already know about myself to my therapist while she frowns and refuses to diagnose me with things, has correlated neatly enough with a significant drop in suicidal ideation that i am at least cautiously willing to connect the two, especially since i don’t think my overall life circumstances changed enough to justify the drop compared to, let’s say, last january.