it begins with an ache.
\ndefinitely an ache.
\nsomewhere inside you
\nyou don’t know where
\nthe back of your teeth
\nyour feet
\nyour eyes
\nan ache.<\/p>\n
you can be happy. you can feel all the pulses of
\nlife within you, matching rhythm with the world.
\nyou can feel everything continue forever
\nlike the ocean
\nthe mountains
\nthe blanket of night
\nwhile inside you, remains an ache.<\/p>\n
you can feel bigger than everything
\nbigger than everyone
\nsee their hopes and dreams
\ntheir fears and failures
\ntheir shame.<\/p>\n
and you hold their beating hearts in between the edges of your teeth
\nso alive and delicate and vital
\ndemanding of it
\nthe urge to bite down primal but irrelevant<\/p>\n
and they’ll show you everything
\nshow you the blood and sores and abandoned rooms
\nthe sweat
\nthe terror
\nthe everything and anything so much bigger and blacker
\nwith their hands inside of them
\neven in the calm of their voice you can hear
\nthe nighttime anxieties like stones rattling inside glass bottles
\nthey’ll show you everything and still swear they don’t believe in it.<\/p>\n
they’ll see the blood on your hands and they won’t believe you did it.
\nyou’ll tell them that you’ve torn it out, you’ve torn it all out
\nevery last bit that seethed inside them
\nspreading infinite emptiness
\nyou tell them it’s magic. real magic. not the stuff of unicorns and rainbows.
\nbut the things that men go to war over when
\nthe women stoically hold it between cool fingertips
\njust waiting for someone to ask the right question.
\nand they won’t believe you
\nbecause they’re so terrified of the blood they may find on their hands.
\nand that makes you ashamed of their blood on yours.<\/p>\n
and throughout all this
\nit’s the ache. the ache that accompanies you
\nthe ache that has always been there for you
\nthe ache who has never failed you.
\nit is the ache that cries out into the night
\nusing darkness to reach out for familiar hands
\nthe ache searches for its own.
\nthe ache uses you.
\nthe ache renews you.
\nthe ache can only find an equal.<\/p>\n
but the ache is never more vindictive
\nthan when it fears seeing behind a person’s mask
\nand finding emptiness
\na lack
\na void
\nan impenetrable stranger<\/p>\n
the ache fears death.
\nthe ache fears that it has pulsed and beat and
\nlonged for its own echo
\nwhere never an echo has existed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
it begins with an ache. definitely an ache. somewhere inside you you don’t know where the back of your teeth your feet your eyes an ache. you can be happy. you can feel all the pulses of life within you, matching rhythm with the world. you can feel everything continue forever like the ocean the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[69],"class_list":["post-1761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-poetry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sbl5mn-1761","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10025,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions\/10025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliashih.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}