EXHALING CATALYSTS

Side note: This is really beautiful.

jenkohan:

There w­­­asn’t ever a time when she relaxed.  In fact, deep breaths made her feel caged – her lungs expanded with air and yet they didn’t fill all the way and when she tried to exhale, it was work. The air hung in her lungs like the pause on a backswing and then it was pushed out too quickly.  Too fast, until the lungs were empty and waiting again.  It was exhausting.

She really had to concentrate for it to work, and then that wasn’t very relaxing at all.

Staff Note: I absolutely love shorties like this. So profound!

riotinreverie:

reservation, trepidation
and burning indignation.
just a worried mind gone cold.
nothing here but empty words.
take whatever you want.
i’m just a haunt-
ed, blank
space.

I’d like to welcome Lexi to the E.C team and I’m really excited for her input & re-blogs!

<3

I’d really like to find another person or two people to join the EC team because posting has slowed down a bit recently. So please feel free to apply :)

Side note: I love this.

the-peony:

if you asked

i would do
anything for
you, my dear

i am tucked
safely into the
seams of your
bursting heart
i find your lips
matching the
depths of mine

i store you
in places —

i bookmark you
in volumes
lining my shelves

i find you
sitting in your
favourite chair
reminding me
of the god
i see in the world

for you, my dear
i would
give my soul

Side Note: The imagery in this evokes such a classic scene, yet new in ways. A rather nice read.

evilseas:

amplified night murmurs 
through loud speakers,
calypso incarnate crooning 
from sky-high stilts of turquoise,
an ebony robe of chiffon & lace circling her thighs, lit cigarette 
suspended from her red lip.

raspy trill beating along 
to the holy breaking of dawn 
swaying rhythmically to tribal beats 
& lyrics of a teenage misfit banging 
repetitious riffs out from a six string, 
until our limbs grow numb until the
sun comes to whisper stars into oblivion.

behind the bar, drunk on body heat & fist fights
drinking blood from split lips battle scars 
of a raucous jaunt with the rebels 
of empty streets & back alleys, 
we lurk, mingle, taunt every 
heartbeat collected
as proof

we are alive. 

Side note: This is just beautiful.

fawnsparrows:

We waited for the horizon to melt off of the Earth’s forest floor, watched as it escaped through the clay crevices of silver fox feet just before skyrocketing upwards from the womb of north-eastern seas and in a gust of snowy breath, it spun streaks of raspberry skies with the swift movements of a barnhouse spider’s fingertips. A few nights had passed without a single wolf howl so we rolled out sleeping bags by the lake’s shore and invited slumber as it eventually found us in a twilight vapor, carrying the tidal heartbeat of turquoise waters. Between the mild breezes of a summer morning, I thought about how your warm palm had mingled with the coolness of my cheek and then floated down softly to rest against the base of my creamy-toned wrist, in the hours leading up to dawn - but I pretended not to notice, I pretended that I hadn’t seen your hazel eyes flutter open periodically to catch the atomic dust of a shooting star.

&

At a quarter past noon, we were quietly buttering uneven slices of stonefire baked bread, exhaling sighs each time our tongues danced with the fluffy freshness and every so often you would fold back the plaid collared sleeve of your sweater and bring it up to your lips to swipe away the tiny droplets of dew pooled at the corners. I found myself lost in those simple actions of yours, beginning with the swaying of your knees while you hummed and ending with the occasional arch of your chocolate brows, because if perfection was a human - it was you and you only.

&

We hiked to the top of the cliff and squinted to gaze at the little white house below, with it’s wrap-around porch and decades worth of the rotted bones of autumn leaves stuffed along the rusted gutters. There was a mixed scent of pine and velvet violets lingering in the crisp air, the kind of fragrance that could be remembered if worn by the right person. And we were right for each other - at that moment. We were right for each other like how the cardinals were right for the bluejays and the pigeons were right for the sparrows.

I’ll never forget the beautiful dip of your voice when you first said that you’d be mine. You swung your arms around my waist and we listened to what sounded like the distant cries of an abandoned coyote.

Side note: Just lovely.

lucyisadreamer:

Some days I’ll sit in awe and feel my lungs contract and expand and feel the aching murmurs of my heart and just be still, so still, so silently still. This is the only time that I realise that I truly exist, that I am a human being, that I am bone and skin and ligaments and flesh. I realise that am not a bump in time, but a tangible, real object. I am alive. I am alive. Here’s a heartbeat to prove it. 

Side note: I love the way every word just rolls of the tongue.

thefinalsin:

Her cadence was candescent, voluminous waves of veneered bliss sparking giddy excitement with every lilting sentence, every tilting turn of phrase that set his drunken eyes aglow amid the chaos of the evening, the moon seeming pale and small beyond a foreground of intense neon luminosity, the night air veritably alive with the play of laughter upon music and the muddled chatter of a dozen conversations, blending together to create a sublime cacophony that spoke of a care-free abandon, of chains fallen free from aching limbs, that tested freedom with broad strokes as the night coalesced gently around them, like the arms of a lover, who in it’s embrace comforted and consoled and made them forget their worries, but for an evening.

Side note: Lovely combination of sadness and sensitivity.

matt-is-just-around-the-corner:

What’s left of you
became a splinter
 that pierces my heart—
a transient pain every time
I draw breath,
     
a memorabilia 
 I’ve kept
to remind me
of the past

how it’s the 
perfect cocktail
 of bliss and
      depression

I keep it embedded
 in my pulse,
fully aware of the
fact that if I
attempt to remove
that spec of a
shard 

 it would sever
arteries and veins—

 leaving me to bleed out
dry and flat line.

Side note: Just sigh…heart-achingly lovely.

mister-selfdestruct:

You are a quiet murmur
a voice that scurries
so quietly and politely
into long dead skulls
that no longer have
any ears to hear you

You are softly spoken
clicking of the tongue
that echoes so loudly
inside the empty space
the hollow you occupy
no words of complaint
ever escape your lips

You are sign language
fingers cutting the air
to form untranslatable
and foreign gestures
they’re all staring now
but they’ll never know
just how much it hurts
to be the silent one. 

Side note: Breathtaking.

subtlebones:

Car crash after maths living in the
drips of my sweat, raining down my
wrists. My veins drink perspiration,
sending the fear to my heart and
my heart beats raggedly, refusing to
pulse for my lungs so I can breathe.

I can’t breathe.

The world dances before my eyes,
turning my position in several angles
even if my limbs are too tight to
expand. Time in an hourglass — the
grain draining itself, looking for
a way out but the seconds and minutes
melt before me. All there is is 
time and I cannot tell the hour.

I grip safety with my fingertips and
it abandons my reach until I’m paper
thin. And there’s no leisure between
what’s right and what’s wrong. So I
am yellow, I am neutral.

I won’t go or I won’t stop.

Side note: So delicate, there’s something beautifully fragile about this piece. 

ethielswords:

born with fragile wings

under funereal clouds,

a flattened soul not meant

to shimmer, 

just a cheerless bird 

attempting to fly;



still - favoured by the 

unselfish whispers of the wind -



i am soaring.

Side Note: I know a lot of people get put off by long reads. But this one - by the gods of Asgard JUST READ IT ALREADY. DO IT. I haven’t been impressed like this in a long time.

needless-verbosity:

I. 

The early bird risers come out
  and clutter the dust covered streets
       at dawn, praying that they may
        catch the worm at last - Alas
the poor creature, that disgruntled 
  too-juicy earth worm, born from 
     necessity, was snatched up yesterday
   by some starving artist type who
  digests it slowly, for use as metaphor.   

Perhaps he’ll write once more of
  capitalist terrors and bourgeois 
 contentedness, or just bemoan the
   mere existence of ‘first place’ and
     goal-oriented games of ‘finders-keepers’ 
     in a modern world of modern art and 
    modern artists, told to follow modern
  standards of production or die out
among the former rulers of the Times’ 
     Best Sellers List.  

Read More

Side Note: This struck me. Hard. It is beautiful, and so so… full, in a way.

thebookdoctor:

2,000 miles away,
your words travel along the Interstate—
crossing stretches of desert
stretches of woodland—

to find me, tell me hello, tell me
you miss my breath under yours, tell me
you miss my sighs under yours, tell me
you miss me

me—
—with you—

me, in hot brown sheets over the
metal rack—your bed—
over the creaking mattress
under the creaking fan—

me, undressed, unprepared, you miss
me, unwoman, unman,
me, the word means

whole: myself and I—

you miss

me.

2,000 miles away, I
whisper back, hoping it carries across the
blaring of the horns and the
screaming of the citizens—

imissyoufuckingmetoo. 

Side note: This. I can relate so much to this piece. 

ponderingcomplications:

She is misinterpreting my silence.
(Coloring it for complacency)
My stature for carelessness.
She shed tears for me -
Weeping for a life I haven’t lived,
And probably never will.
Her heart broke for me,
(And I hid mine away!)
and she cried,
                and cried,
                           and cried.

I didn’t feel her loss -
I only felt that Winter’s fire
that was held in every tear.
I felt the gentle slope
of her chapped lips as they
Fell like stars,
           Cascading from the sky.
       Mama, Mama,
                     Please,
                          Don’t cry.


I didn’t feel her break -
(my hands were holding my heart,)
My heart was keeping
that boundless ocean of sorrow,
(comprised of my tears), contained.
I couldn’t reach her -
(sorrow was too heavy to share),
and I couldn’t hold her
I couldn’t
        I couldn’t
               I couldn’t.

I watched her fall
        I watched her fall
             I watched her fall.
when she saw my future,
(Don’t look, mama,)
          (Don’t look)
                 (Don’t look)
                     (Don’t look.)
and realized
that it was empty.

She fell apart before me,
Her iridescence fractured
into another reckless sea
of sorrow and distorted hope
And wishes
        And dreams…
              And oh how she had hoped!
and I couldn’t bare to…
            I couldn’t..
                  Wouldn’t…
I couldn’t bare to add to it…
So I chained my wrists
to the shackles already on my tongue
and mourned it all in silence,
watching voicelessly
as she was undone
but my future’s impermanence.
                 Don’t cry, mama.
                         Don’t cry,
                               Don’t cry,
                                        Don’t cry…

                    I’m sorry.

Side note: Sad, but I think most writers can relate to wanting to leave a legacy and for their words to be found

blueskyemergency:

After the door shuts and the footsteps fade, I rise from the bed, letting the sheet drop to the floor.

I walk to the door and open it slowly, peeking out a bit, making sure she is gone.

I shut the door and turn the lock until I hear the soft click letting me know it is in place. I open my closet and reach up, moving shoe boxes until I can see my journal. I pull it down and blow the dust off the cover. I take it to my desk and lay it down, opening it to the first clean page I find. I pull open a drawer to find my quill and some black ink and I begin to write.

I’m sick, diagnosed with terminal cancer at age seventeen.

No one knows I write, and no one will know until I die. I hope that when the day comes that I can no longer rise from my bed, someone will find my journal hidden on the top shelf of my closet. I hope that they see how happy I was and how passionate I was. I hope my writing touches someone, somewhere… someday.