Ashe Vernon's Blog, page 135
October 24, 2015
is profane in one of your published books?
Yes! it’s in Wrong Side of a Fistfight!
Hi lovely. Do you have any advice on how to get over a boy, who I dated for almost 2 years, and was my first love? He promised me forever. Now he's gone.
That’s the thing about first loves–they aren’t the last.
You are the only person who can give you forever. That’s okay. It doesn’t have to have lasted forever to be important. It doesn’t have to have been unimportant to be something you should move on from.
Look at what you had, look at what you learned. Next time–love better, love harder, and let go when the time comes.
October 23, 2015
"to the girls afraid of dying
i.
I know that look.
I know what it means to be that kind of..."
to the girls afraid of dying
i.
I know that look.
I know what it means to be that kind of starving—
to fling open your arms and dare the sky
to meet you.
I know the fear of the sky
roaring back.
I do not know you, but I know you.
ii.
He is all false compliments, he is all hands.
But your hips are not an oasis, made for him
to come and drink.
Though his hands seem to sink in
to the sand dunes of your skin, your body
is not a desert.
You will believe him when he says
this is all you have to offer.
Drown him.
You were never sand dunes.
You were the sea.
iii.
Cut off all your hair.
Trade in your lion’s mane for a crown
of your darkest secrets.
Wear it like the proudest thing you’ve ever loved.
Learn to love the soft prickle of the short hairs
at the nape of your neck.
Touch them softly.
Learn to love yourself, next.
iv.
The bed is yours.
Do not ache for him just because
he tried to make a home in it.
v.
The train is coming and you are in it.
The train is coming and you are on the tracks.
You have to make a decision, baby.
Sure, the train has smoke and steel and pistons,
but you are taller,
you, surely,
can make it back.
- TO THE GIRLS AFRAID OF DYING, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
"I made the word “queer” a part of me
right around when I started college
during a time when
nothing..."
right around when I started college
during a time when
nothing really made sense
and I was looking for a place
to call home.
I know what it is.
It know it’s a word with
skeletons in it’s closet.
A word with a past.
Queer is a word with a body count.
And we took it back.
Because queer was the word they threw
along with their fists
when they wanted it to hurt,
and we smiled back,
bruised knuckles, clenched teeth,
“Come and take it.”
Queer loved us
when our fathers looked through us
and talked about grandchildren
we didn’t know if we’d ever be able
to have.
Queer loved us when the law
said we didn’t have the right
to love each other.
Queer loved us when the townsfolk
were setting their fires
and sharpening their pitchforks.
I won’t ask for a show of hands.
I know it’s not safe for some of us.
But I’ll extend my hand to you.
I use this word to stand for love
after all the years it was used to hate.
I use it, because it saved me:
a word like heavy rainfall
on a crop dying of thirst.
I made the word queer a part of me
during a time when no other word
seemed to fit right,
and it’s still the warm hearth I come home to,
and if that’s not revolution,
I don’t know what is.
Because to me,
that’s liberation.
Because if queer can save
that lost little kid
then maybe there’s hope for the ones
who are let down by their parents,
beat up by their peers.
I have to believe that this word can do better.
Because it’s been causing harm for too many years.”
- THE “Q” WORD, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
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October 22, 2015
"The boy in the back room holds the mirror to his neck.
You aren’t in love with him. At least, not..."
You aren’t in love with him. At least, not yet.
For now, he doesn’t know how to touch you
with anything but his hands.
And so it’s almost enough,
and it’s more than you can stand.
He is a Red Light District in and of himself.
When he offers Indulgence like ambrosia,
you lick it from his fingers and he thinks
this is all he knows how to give.
Teeth on his neck, hand between his thighs,
you say you want his heart,
but he doesn’t understand.
He gives his mouth, instead.
After that, the days ferment like apricot wine.
You bite his lips the right kind of russet,
make music of his spine.
And then at night, you dream
of plunging your fist through his ribs
to tear out the songbird inside.
But in the mornings,
you do him violence with
the softest parts of your hands.
You find his sweetness.
You make it yours, instead.
We call this, surviving.
We call this, sin.
You’ll regret it, someday.
But, right now, you aren’t
in love with him.
You aren’t in love with him.
At least,
not yet.”
- APRICOT WINE, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
"Being invisible becomes force of habit,
because I learned young that I needed
to apologize for the..."
Being invisible becomes force of habit,
because I learned young that I needed
to apologize for the amount of room
I took up.
After all, girls are expected to be small
and soft,
and when you’re not—
Well.
At first, they call it manners.
Elbows in. Legs crossed.
But when you’re twelve years old,
crushing yourself into the furthest corner
of the bus seat, terrified of taking up
more room than everyone else,
then—then you know something’s gone wrong.
See, when you’re a big girl,
the amount of space you take up
and the amount of space you’re allowed
are inversely proportionate.
Which means, the bigger you are
the smaller they expect you to stay.
Which means, the more space you need
the less you are given.
I started making myself smaller
years before I ever lost weight.
And so begins a disappearing act
decades in the making,
passed down from mother to daughter
to daughter, to daughter.
Believe me, we’ve perfected it.
We’ll start with a beautiful best friend.
We’ll call her the magician’s assistant.
It’s her job to make sure that no one
ever looks too close.
With someone like her out in front of you,
you already know that they won’t.
But you come armed with a knack for laughs.
Because magic, after all, is half performance act
and you need, you need, you need
the crowd to laugh.
You think this is the only way
they’re ever going to want to like you.
Us big girls, we think our amount of friends
is directly related to the number of jokes
we can make at our own expense.
We think we have to beat them to it.
If I say it first, then nobody else did.
You make yourself invisible by simple,
calculated
omission.
They made fun of me for the space I took up,
but I guarantee, no one knows
how to blend into the wall
at the back of a room
faster than me.
I can be two inches tall in the time
it takes to close your eyes.
I can back gracefully out
of a conversation you didn’t even know
I was participating in.
Trust me—
I know how to be small better
than the tiniest girl you’ve ever seen.
I had to be.
But I’m not small anymore,
no matter what size you see me
Because I decided to take up space.
There is no one who gives me room,
I demand it.
I deserve to.
I’ve got all this reach, and every inch
belongs to me.
Because see, there’s one more step
in the magic act.
You can be invisible long as you want,
but you can’t stay that way.
The audience only claps
after you bring yourself back.
And I brought myself back.
”- THE DISAPPEARING ACT, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
"For an entire month, the Texas sky was nothing but
a broken water-main—and the state that had..."
For an entire month, the Texas sky was nothing but
a broken water-main—and the state that had spent
decades slow-roasting over a pit of Christian gospel
and light-skinned southern values was suddenly
neck-deep in its own baptism.
Turns out that when you have been this starving for rain,
when you have been dry for this long,
the end of the drought only looks like a miracle
on day one.
By day thirty, our cities are drowning.
I know, now, how easily
skin can turn swampland—
that desert soil is the first to oversaturate,
that it only takes two weeks of proper attention
for my body to spill over.
It wasn’t long after I met you that I became
all flash flood and rising water tables.
Understand what torrential rain does
to a heart in a fifteen year drought—
just look what mother nature did to Texas.
I met you and suddenly there were no more dry-spells.
My valleys sloshed with rainwater;
there was nowhere to put all that sky.
It was all the ocean could do to keep up with us.
It was all I could do to keep my head above water.
There’s a reason you don’t give a starving man
a feast—his body has forgotten
how to be full.
He will make himself sick
with this wanting.
When all that Texas drought met you
I flooded my rivers, abandoned my cities,
soaked rot into the walls of my apartment.
For forty days and forty nights
Texas and I became new seas.
I drowned under the weight of what
you thought was a good thing–it’s been too long
since this was freely given and not something
I had to go searching for in the night—too long
since the sky has been anything but clear.
The storm should have been the end to the dry season.
Instead, it was the start of the flood.
You can’t dump heaven on the drought;
all you learn, is that Texas red dirt
can turn quicksand in an instant.
The end of the drought only looks
like a miracle on day one.
By day thirty, I am all tremor and panic attack,
fear flooding the basement. Your smile–
the place where the sky opens up
and pours.
”- I GAVE YOU FLOOD by Ashe Vernon
October 21, 2015
"Oh, little darling, Atlas has nothing on you.
You are all old aches
and forced bravado,
but watch..."
You are all old aches
and forced bravado,
but watch how you sink
when no one can see you.
You wear the posture
of a hundred years–
so warped and winded
not even the mirror
still knows you.”
- LETTERS TO MY BODY: THE SHOULDERS, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
"What a thing,
to be both starving and empty.
To ache for love–
to take the scraps from it’s..."
What a thing,
to be both starving and empty.
To ache for love–
to take the scraps from it’s table,
and yet, run sickly from the feast.
You can’t fathom why I’d
gobble your kisses but
duck your attention, please.
Understand–
Some of us have gone so long
hungry,
the idea of being full
feels worse
than the affliction.
- LOVE DISORDERS AND OTHER OLD HEARTACHES, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
