The Empty-Handed Hoarder, by Moth Torgunrud continued

I won’t give up spending my glory days haunting the endless labyrinth 
that is the mess I call my memory
​The walls, halls and floors are lined with souvenirs from past yesterdays
The floors carpeted matted after the same ground has been trodden a thousand times before
The wallpaper peeling stained, every surface is covered up 
with a reminder of what the past brought
Past days lived, past moments enjoyed, past looking forward to tomorrow
Because this lifestyle is too predictable to never know what’s coming next
It’s all falling apart underneath everything, I know it is
It’s been too long and I am too old
It is too dark and too cold to make out anything anymore
I guess I should leave, look around
And clean up this mess
But I don’t have the energy.
So I give up and crawl back inside the familiar prison of my mind
​Shriveling, writhing in bed,
It’s home there. I know I am home. I miss feeling at home.
I don’t know where it went, but at some point “home” 
just turned into the “house” I must inhabit
With crumbling brick walls, dripping insulation, barred windows, a caved-in roof, 
and everything you’d ever need.
Rotting from the inside, falling apart gradually piece by piece
Until there is nothing left 
But me and my mind
The remnants in the wreckage of it all
…
I feel as though i’m riding on the back of a horse drawn carriage, watching the sun slip down beneath the waves into the sea 
the farther i get, the smaller it gets, the more it sets,
It’s supposed to disappear, and i am supposed to wait, for the next day it will rise
But I did not know.
And so I jumped off. And started running back. The carriage kept going without me,
Time stops for no man and it never will. 
But I did not know, I thought it would wait for me.
I was mistaken.
What if I would never see the sun again? 
What if that were the very last time?
What if it were never as bright as it had been that day again? 
How could I risk never bathing in the warm rays of the lovely sun again, 
ever again?
If I  had turned around right then and there, I might have just made it back on,
But I didn't, I kept running towards the setting sun
Because it’s what I know, I don’t know the dark, I don’t know the moon, i don’t know the night
All I know is the sunny daylight pouring from up above
Cascading down upon our reddening shoulders
​But then I open my eyes. And the mess surrounding me is the exact same
Untouched, uncleaned, unscathed
There's no sun peeking in my windows and
I couldn’t make it to the front door if I tried
So I don’t
I sit and rot.
Because it’s what I do.
...

Preened, by Bailey Curtin ​continued

But then she is crying, the teardrops streaming down her face shinier than any bauble the raven has ever brought her, and as he attempts to collect them in his beak, her eyelids feel heavy with rage and the earth tilts sideways. Slowly but surely Alice seizes her riding boots off and presses her pure white stockings into the soil beneath her. The woodland is muddy today, and a veil of pine needles and bark stick to her undergarments as she drops to the forest floor. Lace and ruffles smother her face as she pulls her petticoat over her head, and the dense ground absorbs the frills. It is only when she has fully stripped down that she realizes the raven has gone, disappeared into the shadows. She suddenly feels very alone, standing in the woods with the air gnawing at her palms and a strange noise pounding in her ears. The frozen ground stings her raw skin, acorns and pine needles piercing her flesh as she lies down, and oil spill feathers cascade in her periphery as her raven returns. It is beginning to snow, a thin coat of ivory starting to blanket the wintery shore. Wayward frost snakes up Alice’s neck. But she is static now, crystallised holly hanging from the evergreens like garnets over a girl on the ground with her eyes closed. Perhaps when she opens them, the air will be warm again. The raven, stalwart on her shoulder, cannot help but agree.

Self-care Tip, Clean Your Ribs, By Millie Farley Continued

The man takes a wetted cloth. Slowly, carefully, he cleans each of his exposed rib bones and all of the smooth, bendy cartilage. He sticks the cloth between each one and behind them. Cleaning until they are pearly white. Pearly, angel white. Pearly, innocent, elegant white. He is the sweet pulp of pear, the oily mixing of a can full of white paint. He is a god that little people in little white robes in little old white churches worship. He is the white tummy of a tabby, the cream at the bottom of the bowl, the white of your eye.
He lets out a breath, then takes one in, then out, he breathes deeply as he stitches himself back up. Feeling better. Good enough to let go. Good enough to feel good about himself.

To Live is to Love and to Love is to Rot, by Moth Torgunrud ​Continued

Or at least the girl you disguised yourself to be didn’t
​Friendless, there was nothing ever holding you down other than
U, yourself and thou
Careless, cancerous, yet ever so captivating 

Killing everything in your path, anything that crosses
You must be eradicated. If it didn’t exist in your narrative, it wasn’t happening
Oh it was as simple as that, your
Ugliness only revealed itself once you made your final 

Misstep, your final slip-up, 
I am not to be fucked with or over
Let me live, let me be I don’t want 

Anything to do with you, you
Never fail to present yourself as anything but the victim, 
no more lies, I’m too tired to deal with your bullshit anymore,
screw your money

screw your parasitic mold and how quickly it came to take over my naive mind
turning the garden i tried so hard to grow 
into nothing more than a gruesome scene of death and rotting