Ashe Vernon's Blog, page 139
October 13, 2015
is that you in the image? if so, you are beyond lovely and fierce. have a wonderful day, take care of yourself x
That is me! Thank you so much, bumblebee
hey ashe what are your pronouns?
Hey! Thanks for asking! I’m genderqueer, however she/her/her’s pronouns are just fine by me.
I keep trying to lose weight and I just can't. I keep trying and trying and nothing is happening. I can't stop crying, I hate myself
You do not have to lose weight to be worth loving. You are perfect as you are. You are enough as you are. You are important as you are. You do not have to lose weight to be worth loving.
I read "I didn't speak at the funeral" every day like a hymn. I think I'm leaning to be less hurt and bite and teeth and bile, and more muted tenderness and furious, aching love. Thank you.
I’m learning too, baby. But we’ll make it. I know we will. Thank you.
Thank you for Wrong Side of a Fistfight.
Thank you for reading it, little dove
"Two years ago, you were all white knuckle and grit.
You abandoned your softness in a cardboard..."
“Two years ago, you were all white knuckle and grit.
You abandoned your softness in a cardboard box
on the side of the road—decided it was
someone else’s problem, now.
Two years ago, your depression was
an undiagnosed monster in the pit of your stomach
and it swallowed everything.
You felt like a cardboard cutout of a person;
you felt like TV static.
You wrote yourself into something ugly
so that you didn’t have to be so soft–
so small, so honey-heart.
It didn’t work, did it?
Take a good look at the person you become
two years from now: look
how she is frayed at the edges
like hand-me-down lace. Look
how her bones are too old for her,
how they creak like a house
full of someone else’s photo albums.
Look how soft she is:
like you could press your hand right through
her stomach and
come out the other side. She knows, that
every boy you fall in love with between there and now
takes you for granted.
Every girl who lets you kiss her
stops texting you back.
That you keep filling your empty bed,
because you don’t know how to fill your empty chest.
Trouble is, you keep falling in love with open wounds
then acting surprised when you are left with nothing
but blood in a lifeboat.
It’s time to stop sinking.
You are important,
even if no one ever likes your poetry.
You are important,
even if he doesn’t love you back,
even if she’s only interested in sleeping with you,
even if he isn’t.
Your voice matters, even if no one listens to it.
Your worth does not come with
clauses and conditions.
It does not disappear
with no one to validate it–
you
are valid.
Even if no one else thinks so.
Two years from now, you will be soft.
You will be all split-ends and paperbacks.
It will hurt.
And it’ll be okay.
These are the growing pains we never grow out of.
I know
you never asked to be born.
But that’s because people don’t ask
for miracles: they are given.
You exist, even though it would be
much easier for you not to. Even though
there are literally billions of events
that had to happen before you could happen,
which makes you
one of the most improbable things in existence
and yet, you are here.
But I don’t expect you to say thank you.
There is too much ache in your upbringing.
There have been too many bad days.
Two years ago,
you declared war on your gentle everything.
It will take the full two years to realize
you are only hurting
yourself.”
- SELF PORTRAIT DRESSED AS A SELF-HELP PROGRAM by Ashe Vernon
You abandoned your softness in a cardboard box
on the side of the road—decided it was
someone else’s problem, now.
Two years ago, your depression was
an undiagnosed monster in the pit of your stomach
and it swallowed everything.
You felt like a cardboard cutout of a person;
you felt like TV static.
You wrote yourself into something ugly
so that you didn’t have to be so soft–
so small, so honey-heart.
It didn’t work, did it?
Take a good look at the person you become
two years from now: look
how she is frayed at the edges
like hand-me-down lace. Look
how her bones are too old for her,
how they creak like a house
full of someone else’s photo albums.
Look how soft she is:
like you could press your hand right through
her stomach and
come out the other side. She knows, that
every boy you fall in love with between there and now
takes you for granted.
Every girl who lets you kiss her
stops texting you back.
That you keep filling your empty bed,
because you don’t know how to fill your empty chest.
Trouble is, you keep falling in love with open wounds
then acting surprised when you are left with nothing
but blood in a lifeboat.
It’s time to stop sinking.
You are important,
even if no one ever likes your poetry.
You are important,
even if he doesn’t love you back,
even if she’s only interested in sleeping with you,
even if he isn’t.
Your voice matters, even if no one listens to it.
Your worth does not come with
clauses and conditions.
It does not disappear
with no one to validate it–
you
are valid.
Even if no one else thinks so.
Two years from now, you will be soft.
You will be all split-ends and paperbacks.
It will hurt.
And it’ll be okay.
These are the growing pains we never grow out of.
I know
you never asked to be born.
But that’s because people don’t ask
for miracles: they are given.
You exist, even though it would be
much easier for you not to. Even though
there are literally billions of events
that had to happen before you could happen,
which makes you
one of the most improbable things in existence
and yet, you are here.
But I don’t expect you to say thank you.
There is too much ache in your upbringing.
There have been too many bad days.
Two years ago,
you declared war on your gentle everything.
It will take the full two years to realize
you are only hurting
yourself.”
- SELF PORTRAIT DRESSED AS A SELF-HELP PROGRAM by Ashe Vernon
October 12, 2015
"My generation is muddied royalty,
like diamonds in the coal mine.
They dragged us through the..."
“My generation is muddied royalty,
like diamonds in the coal mine.
They dragged us through the dirt,
used our names as scandal.
They said we couldn’t, but we
are the gods of the subway—
Dionysus in skinny jeans—
Nemesis in a studio apartment—
Hephaestus with his grandmother’s ashes.
We may not be sacred, anymore,
but we remember Mount Olympus.
When the kingdom of heaven fell, we
were built from the leftover stratus.
Call me whatever you want, but I have
crossed the river Styx with the world
on my shoulders. We were the gods.
We were the titans.
We met Zeus at the base of the mountain;
we were both sides of the battle field.
And tonight, I am Athena with
my keys between my fingers.
When Apollo drags the sun into the sky,
I will follow on foot—
thousands of years, into the maw of the leviathan,
past the fall of Rome, past the birth of civilization.
I will walk backwards into the Big Bang
and take my dark matter with me.
Because when you force two thousand years
of royal lineage into the skin of
a nervous, twenty-one year old girl,
she learns how to tear down the garden wall
and grow her roots into the city.
I left home and took the fall of Troy with me.
My bones took up arms at the battle of Thermopylae.
I was Artemis. I was Ares.
And the warfare in my blood
does not end in silence.
Olympus falls, but the temples
go on beating,
and I am the patron saint of my own survival,
and I have sacrificed everything
except my own heartbeat.
I grew into this voice,
I didn’t have it passed down to me.
And I didn’t last a thousand years
not to go down swinging—because
my generation is the echo of the mountain.
We are Thanatos, Hera, Persephone.
The gates of the Underworld come crashing at our feet.
I am starving for a fight, and I’ve got
winged sandals to steady me.”
- WINGED SANDALS, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
like diamonds in the coal mine.
They dragged us through the dirt,
used our names as scandal.
They said we couldn’t, but we
are the gods of the subway—
Dionysus in skinny jeans—
Nemesis in a studio apartment—
Hephaestus with his grandmother’s ashes.
We may not be sacred, anymore,
but we remember Mount Olympus.
When the kingdom of heaven fell, we
were built from the leftover stratus.
Call me whatever you want, but I have
crossed the river Styx with the world
on my shoulders. We were the gods.
We were the titans.
We met Zeus at the base of the mountain;
we were both sides of the battle field.
And tonight, I am Athena with
my keys between my fingers.
When Apollo drags the sun into the sky,
I will follow on foot—
thousands of years, into the maw of the leviathan,
past the fall of Rome, past the birth of civilization.
I will walk backwards into the Big Bang
and take my dark matter with me.
Because when you force two thousand years
of royal lineage into the skin of
a nervous, twenty-one year old girl,
she learns how to tear down the garden wall
and grow her roots into the city.
I left home and took the fall of Troy with me.
My bones took up arms at the battle of Thermopylae.
I was Artemis. I was Ares.
And the warfare in my blood
does not end in silence.
Olympus falls, but the temples
go on beating,
and I am the patron saint of my own survival,
and I have sacrificed everything
except my own heartbeat.
I grew into this voice,
I didn’t have it passed down to me.
And I didn’t last a thousand years
not to go down swinging—because
my generation is the echo of the mountain.
We are Thanatos, Hera, Persephone.
The gates of the Underworld come crashing at our feet.
I am starving for a fight, and I’ve got
winged sandals to steady me.”
- WINGED SANDALS, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
"In grade school, I pigeon-holed my skeleton
into any crawlspace I could find
because little girls..."
“In grade school, I pigeon-holed my skeleton
into any crawlspace I could find
because little girls weren’t supposed
to have backbones.
I walked to school with my insides
on the outside–I never unlearned
how to be that raw.
That exposed.
I couldn’t fit the bones back
into my body, so with my skull
fitted over my head like a helmet,
I readied my softness for battle.
I was unashamed to be
the flower-girl in the combat zone.
One day, I would plunge my fist
into the pomegranate,
and dare them to make a victim
of Persephone.
I didn’t know that childhood fear
could grow into a rage this mighty,
but I will march with my beating heart
like a beating drum,
through the marshes of it’s own destruction.
I will come out on the other side,
and the blood in my mouth will be mine
and I will go kissing old wounds
with the copper tang of it.
I am scouring the Badlands of my body.
I am climbing the peaks of the words
they used against me.
I am painting pictures of dead men
on the palms of my hands, so
there will be no such thing
as surrender.”
- THE POMEGRANATE, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
into any crawlspace I could find
because little girls weren’t supposed
to have backbones.
I walked to school with my insides
on the outside–I never unlearned
how to be that raw.
That exposed.
I couldn’t fit the bones back
into my body, so with my skull
fitted over my head like a helmet,
I readied my softness for battle.
I was unashamed to be
the flower-girl in the combat zone.
One day, I would plunge my fist
into the pomegranate,
and dare them to make a victim
of Persephone.
I didn’t know that childhood fear
could grow into a rage this mighty,
but I will march with my beating heart
like a beating drum,
through the marshes of it’s own destruction.
I will come out on the other side,
and the blood in my mouth will be mine
and I will go kissing old wounds
with the copper tang of it.
I am scouring the Badlands of my body.
I am climbing the peaks of the words
they used against me.
I am painting pictures of dead men
on the palms of my hands, so
there will be no such thing
as surrender.”
- THE POMEGRANATE, by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
hey guys, I know that I’ve been really bad about answering messages that aren’t related to my books,...
hey guys, I know that I’ve been really bad about answering messages that aren’t related to my books, recently (and sometimes even those have gone unanswered).
Know that I am still here, and I am still listening, and I hope the world is being gentle with your hearts.
All my love, little doves.
