Hello dear reader! Welcome to our Valentine’s Day edition! Inside this edition we have a playlist full of LOVE, a love letter to being a teenage girl, an anonymous poem, and part 3. Please enjoy and comment one thing you love!
✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・
crushed it by kate crescenzo
There are few things more deliciously tortuous than a crush, and I’ve been a masochist. Even now I’m crushing on this guy who’s living in my house, wearing this shiny ring on his finger, and keeps calling me sweet names like “My Wife”. Do you think he likes me?
What’s so intoxicating about a crush is the wishful thinking that can only be satiated by more delusions and daydreams. For me, nothing hits like a song that makes you think of the person you like.
So whether you’re earning, yearning, or burning for someone, here’s 100 songs that I’ve personally used for crush material….for better and for worse.
✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・
teenage girl by ashlon
A love letter to my teenage self and my little sisters, and anyone else who needs to hear it.
Being a teenage girl feels sticky sweet and like scraping your knees on the concrete. It feels like no one understands you, and no one could possibly know how complicated all of your problems are. It’s making mix CDs for your friends and doing your eyeliner in the front seat. It’s hoping he notices you. It’s hoping no one notices you ever again.
It’s never knowing if your friends love you more than anything or literally hate you. It’s trying things for the first time and not knowing if you like any of it. It’s wishing you could take it all back and start all over.
It’s a secret club that feels like magic and sneaking out and keeping secrets. No one could break in even if they tried. It is so scary! You’re a teenage girl for the first time ever. You’ll never feel this way ever again.
Once you’re out of the club the magic isn’t gone, but it doesn’t feel scary anymore. You are so loved and full of love, and I know this is true because I love you so much. I am so proud of you. I can’t wait to see you become even more you.
✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・
everything by anonymous
and while misery loves company, i think I’ll just see myself out. maybe the mirror is wrong. or the boy is lost. one cup empty, the other endless. eventually a well dries up. a question is answered, regardless of asking it or not. take the answer. grab the reigns. a map can be studied, so learn it. enough lefts to make one right. and while it was never meant to be, it did show you what you’ve always had. so take stock, spread out, change the question. because it should have never been “what do I want” but only “what do I deserve?”
✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・✧˚ ༘ ⋆。𖧧・ 𓂃˖₊⊹・
False Light: Part 3 by Hannah Wolfe
I followed her footprints for miles, until I reached the edge of our valley. Before me, an unknown, vast, dense, and deep forest yawned, and my sister's shoes walked right towards it. Snow continued coming down steadily, and it coated the branches of the oaks and pines. Upon crossing the tree line, I entered a haunted world of skeletal, sterile, unfamiliar trees.
I trudged apprehensively a length or so into the woods, my feet dragging as my stomach growled. Suddenly, knocking me from my thoughts and face-first into the fresh snow ahead of me, something hurtled into my back. Panicking, I mustered my strength to shove it off and roll over.
My face was numb and melted snow dripped needle-point cold from my chin onto my chest. Stunned, I watched Katarzyna prowl around me, laughing excitedly.
“Kasia, how-”
“Follow me!” she interrupted, and then she ran. I jumped to my feet and began to chase her, finally managing to corral her and wrap her in her fur as she giggled mischievously. I looked at her closely. She was cold, and blue, and her teeth chattered, and her hair was wet with melted snowflakes, but she was intact. And happy.
I scolded her, but was secretly grateful she had at least kept her other layers and her boots. Once I was certain she wouldn’t run off again, I followed her through the trees. She insisted she had found a house for us, and people, and food, and my exhausted body followed.
As we walked, I looked around us and thought how this must be the same woods our father and brother hunted, and how sterile it seemed now in the driving snow. No birds, no squirrels, no bears…only that same deep silence from our valley. Nothing–and yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was there, just behind us, just out of our view, prowling around us and waiting for nightfall.
It was only a few miles to the house Kasia promised: we came to a small clearing in the ghostly woods and there it sat. The house was larger than anything we had in our valley, much less our village, as it was tall and wide and a grand porch wrapped around the structure. A smaller, thatched building lay behind the house and an enticing smoke billowed from it, matching the puffing chimney of the main home.
As soon as Kasia and I entered the clearing, the front door of the house opened and out came a woman wrapped in a fur shawl. I hesitated, but she waved us over and her smile beamed from yards away, so we approached, Kasia sprinting and myself cautiously lagging behind.
As I got closer, I saw the woman was about my mother’s age. She had her graying hair tucked inside of a beautifully dyed scarf that wrapped delicately around her head, and her blouse and skirt were elegantly starched; simple, free of dirt, not a patch or hole in sight. When Katarzyna reached the porch, the woman embraced her warmly.
As I made my first step on the cleaned and waxed wood, the front door opened again and a man stepped outside to join them. He was the same age as the woman, with similar greying hair and an equally elegantly starched blouse. He stood tall, taller than my own father had, with broad shoulders and a thick moustache. They both smiled at me. It was the same smile my father and Abram had when they returned from a successful day of hunting, or when my mother grew her first rhubarb plant. Yes, they gave me the same smile she had when she unearthed the rhubarb stalk and revealed that pink, plump bulb.
“Eliaw, this is Lucja and Edmund Sztuczny. They said we can stay with them!” Katarzyna exclaimed giddily, and the woman, Lucja, smiled warmly.
“Your mother has taught you well,” she said, sensing my hesitancy. With the flick of her head, Edmund went inside and came out with a young girl by his side. “This is our daughter, Aniela. She is your age. You should speak with her, and you can decide later if you would like to stay,” she said.
*******
The house seemed even bigger inside than it did out, and the warmth from the fireplace wrapped around me like a woolen blanket. The fireplace was a masterful piece of craftsmanship in itself. Edmund went into great detail: he imported the white marble from over the sea, cut it himself, and carefully chipped away at the soft rock until it transformed into a grand hearth.
He was outside now, chopping wood, and the muffled cracks floated into the kitchen where Lucja was working quietly. Before the grand marble fireplace, Kasia and I lay on our furs and spoke with the girl.
She had the same delicate face as her mother, with deep black hair that poured down her back like a dark river. Her eyes, too, were like dark pools, and I was drawn in by their cryptic opacity. We talked of our parents, our brother, our village, and even the valley (or what we knew of it). Aniela webbed wonderful stories for us about the creatures that roamed the woods, and of her mother’s cooking, and we spent hours by the fire teaching her how to play with our wood beads.
It wasn’t until Lucja announced supper was ready that I realized it had grown pitch night outside, and my stomach was painfully empty. At the table, Kasia and I were greeted with a stunning display: pierogies filled with mushrooms and potato; a vat of savory rosol that simmered on the stove; kielbasa; borscht; even a roll of makoweic that rested under a delicate blanket of sugar.
We ate ravenously, greedily, without control, without even tasting what we were putting in our mouths. My body seemed to beg for the food before me, and I realized I had never felt hunger like this in my life.
When we were full to bursting, I realized how gluttonous my sister and I must have appeared. Katarzyna’s chin dribbled with grease, her belly rounded, and I thought we must look like the greedy pigs from our mother’s old bedtime stories. Before my apologies could escape, Lucja and Edmund burst into laughter.
Aniela gave me a smile. “Did you enjoy the pork? We raise them here. I can show you tomorrow.”
The question gave me pause, and I looked over at Kasia. Without my realizing, she had fallen asleep right at the table, her head lolled to the side and drooling peacefully.
Lucja smiled warmly. “Yes, would you like to stay?”
*********
She made a pallet for us in Aniela’s bedroom, and the winter chill seemed to seep into the room without the fire keeping it at bay. Aniela instructed me to keep Kasia fully dressed so she wouldn’t catch cold in the night; I bundled her in the coyote coat, and once I was sure she was warm I wrapped myself in my own fur.
Aniela did not lay down: she instead had opened up her wooden shutters and was gazing out of her window into the snow driving down outside. I found myself again captivated by her flowing hair, black as a crow’s feathers, and in the winter moonlight it was gossamer. I came to sit beside her at the window. Her face was serene as she watched the snow, and she seemed lost in thought until, suddenly: “Eliaw, I want to show you something.”
A short tromp through the glistening woods brought us to the bank of a river. The soft rush of water filled my ears, and I smiled for the first time in many weeks. Not because I was hungry and presented with food, not because I was faced with a beautiful girl, but for the simple fact that the river flowed, and it was dark and glacial, and the water passed by me for only a moment before it continued towards its destination, whatever that may be.
“Thank you for showing me this,” I said, and she smiled. I pulled my sundial from my pocket, admiring how it captured the moonlight, too.
“What is this?” she asked, coming to sit down beside me.
“A sundial. My father helped me make it out of stone. It helps me keep track of time, and days.” I thought for a moment. “It’s been fifteen days since my parents took their last breaths. Thirteen for my brother.” I found the thought wasn’t so alarming, saying it out loud to Aniela, and she put a soft hand on my back.
I could feel her warm palm on my spine through my fur and my clothes, and I blushed. “I mourn your parents,” she said. “I don’t know what I would do if anything happened to mine. But they approve of you, Eliaw! Both you and Katarzyna should stay with us. We will be your new family.” I nodded, and resolved to ask Kasia in the morning what she wanted to do.
The walk back to the house was quiet, and I couldn’t shake the oddest sensation. Despite us leaving the river behind, I swore I could still feel the rushing of the water. I felt it over my face, my chest, my legs, and it was both odd and a comfort. Even when we settled for sleep and I curled next to my sister on our pallet, the sensation didn’t go away: the rushing of the river lulled me to sleep, and that glacial body appeared in my dreams.
Days went by. I’m not sure how many exactly, because the night after our outing at the river, my sundial disappeared from my pocket. What I knew for certain is that the sun rose and occasionally peaked through the cloud cover at daytime, and it fell into absolute black at night. I also knew that Katarzyna had returned from her sullen state, and she always wanted to play with our beads or help Lucja with the cooking or join Nell in her sewing lessons. I knew we ate rich, hearty meals three times a day, and Edmund taught me how to tend the pigs (fat even in the relentless winter) and pluck the chickens and remove the scales from the fish we caught in the river, and he even let me try chopping the firewood.
I also knew that I had fallen in love with Nell. We began sneaking out to the river at night when it snowed, and we would sit by that water and catch snowflakes, relishing those miniscule bursts of icy cold on our tongues and faces. The river calmed me. When Aniela and I spoke there, I felt at peace; my inner turmoil about the death of my village didn’t haunt me. My village, and my people, were far away and gone and never coming back, and I thought often that as soon as the spring came and the snow melted, I would go back and give them all a proper burial.
It wouldn’t be spring for some time yet: it was brutally cold, so much so that we always wore our boots and furs in the house, even to sleep, and the fire in the hearth never went out. Nell became adept at sewing and knitting and made herself a fine quilt, and then one for me and Kasia. And so every night, bundled in our blankets, we slept. Every night, I tried to remember to say a prayer for my parents, for my brother, for my village, and form a plan to bury each of them when the ground became soft, but every night became every few nights, and then even fewer, and then almost not at all.
love love love
this playlist tho … ❤️🔥🕺🫡