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Girl vs. Whale

@girlvswhale / girlvswhale.com

I am Kristen--a writer, full-grown adult and MFA graduate turned accountant. I consider myself a connoisseur of video games, 90's hip-hop and The Price is Right. I am from New York, but I make my home now in Austin, TX with my dog Colin Firth. He is the love of my life. We hope to one day live in Alaska or at least near a place with mountains we can climb.
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Game - Set - Match

This should be a poem about your fragile clavicle or your casually elegant fingers or your delicate neck--about how whenever I kiss the skin on your hips it feels like pressing my lips into silk. This should be about your smirk and your uncreepy wink and the way you text me at 2 AM and how you kiss me in public like we are the only people in the room. Instead it is about how I should have never memorized the shape of your palms; about how now when you are gone I can't seem to forget how they felt on the curves of my hips, the back of my thighs, and the edge of my heart.

I am not scared of heights. Standing on the roof of a 100 story building does not take the wind out of me or give me pause. True fear is standing with my feet firmly on the ground, realizing I can't wake up without thinking of you that is the the most terrifying.

This should be a poem about how much I want to fall in love with you one day and wake up with the back of your neck in my mouth. Then do it again. And again. For as long as you let me.

This should be a poem.

I guess, maybe, it is. Maybe we are.

Or perhaps, one day we will be.

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Oh, my.

I still think about you. I still think about your hand in mine. I still think about your mouth on my neck. I am over it. I am over how it all felt like the right thing at the very worst time, but sometimes I still think of the way you said I was beautiful, how desperate you were for me to believe you and how when you said it, I felt like I was being blown apart and put back together all at the same time.

I am over it, but sometimes I still think about it and sometimes I still hope that you do, too.

Reblogging old feelings.

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Paper cuts on your eyelids.

You learn to swallow glass every morning. You teach yourself to chew cement during the day. You condition yourself to drinking toxic waste at night. And it all burns and bleeds. It carves out sores in your stomach and forms tumors in your intestines. You learn to survive it. You learn to endure.

Every decision is just another day of regret. 

You learn to swallow glass, eventually.

Trust me, you learn.

Let's go back to this internet, where I got 4k likes on the regular and I wrote every day and I was so close to being done with my novel.

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Thoughts: A Good Investment

I want to love you. I want to hold you. I want to know how you like to be touched.  I want to know what it is like to wake up and know you are mine. I want to spend a winter living underneath you, above you, beside you; spend the coldest months doing nothing but keeping each other warm.

I’d touch you first. I’d kiss you first. I’d love you first and I wouldn’t ever regret it. I wouldn’t wait for the right time or the third date. I’d fuck it up, do everything too fast, do everything without worrying if you were going to call me in the morning.  I’d throw myself into you and never pause to worry about where I’d eventually land.

There are things worth splintering into a million pieces for and I am absolutely certain you are one of those things.

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Thoughts: The Last Unicorn I Never Knew

Write love letters to people who can’t love you back.  Tell them how wonderful they are even though they will never hold you.  Tell them you think they are beautiful and kind and magical–a fucking living, breathing, Unicorn that you will never get to have and that’s ok. Tell them that you wish your body could be their bed at night and your heart could be where they rest their head.  Tell them that you dream about them at night and that in another world the two of you are being better people for each other while naked and pressed into each other, big spoon holding the little spoon. 

Write love letters to people who will never trace the slope of your neck with their tongue; never smell the sweat on the backs of your thighs, never rub your palm with the side of their thumb. Learn to give your love without expectation. Learn to break your own heart without any sign it will ever heal.

Learn to walk away from someone you want–someone you think you need–and finally accept the fact that they will never be someone you will ever get to have.

Reblogging broken hearts again.

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“I dreamed this morning that I woke up next to you. I held your hand, wrapped my fingers through yours. I pulled your arm across my ribs, settled my spine into the soft flesh of your stomach. You pressed your lips against the back of my neck. You rubbed the tip of your nose across my shoulder, pushing away my hair until you got to my skin. You inhaled so deep I could feel the heat of your ribs move away from my shoulder blades. You ran your thumb over the back of my knuckles, up the inside my arm, held me by the elbow. You whispered, “Good Morning” and your breath was warm and sweet against the edge of my ear. I dreamed this morning that you knew how to hold me; knew how to turn my stomach inside out; knew exactly how my chin became my neck and my neck became my heart—that you were mine. I woke up and my hands were empty; my skin was cold; my mouth was dry. I woke up and you belonged to some other place that wasn’t here; some other bed that wasn’t mine; some other space that I only wish I could get to. Maybe, one day I will get there. Maybe, one day I’ll open my eyes and when I reach out for your hand, you’ll be right next to me, reaching out for me, too. Maybe, one day.”

Reblogging old feelings.

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Baby. Baby. Baby. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp8OQ0DHn4-/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1b7w7bcgu09rj

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My dog Colin Firth will forever be the love of my life. I trust him completely. He is always excited to see me. He misses me when I am gone. He likes his alone time, but always checks in when I ask.

He's also a great addition to any photo.

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You wonder though why love feels like laying down and letting someone roll over you - why love feels like agreeing to lay down and die.

Kristen Fiore“Wrong Ways To Say I Am Not In Love With You” Chapter Three (via in-finitus)

Maybe I should finish this novel, huh?

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One Day You Will be Beach Glass

Have you ever been heartbroken at the sight of someone? Just watching their chin turn from left to right as they cross the street or the way they twist a pen between their first finger and their second, breaks me into these tiny pieces that I can never get out of the carpet.  

I skate from one room to the other, trying to move on, move up, move past and the invisible shards of someone’s memory dig into my soles; thin trails of blood lead from the kitchen to the couch, from the bathroom to my bed, just so I know where my heart has been that night–just so I know what color I am on the inside.

I know you’re never going to love me, never going to hold me in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, never going to feel anything for me but lust between the place where your heart thumps into your ribs–you know all the places I am dark and heavy. You know all the reasons I am a bad investment. 

One day, I will meet someone who doesn’t look at me and see a crumbling foundation and a weak roof. One day, I will meet someone who sees a home in me, someone who knows that under the chipped paint and bad days and weak moments, are strong bones and a strong heart. 

I still drag my soles over the tiny pieces you made out of me once, still gush red when I brush up against you. 

But I spent my life a few feet from the beach. I know one day even sharp shards of glass lose their edge–one day dangerous things become just another something beautiful people collect, carefully place in a jar on a bookshelf and never ever think about again.

REBLOGGING OLD FEELINGS (A MEMOIR)

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Somewhere Else, We are Love.

Tonight, in some other world, the two of us are in bed and the tops of your thighs are pressed into the back of mine. Your mouth presses into the curve of my shoulder; your tongue tasting the freckles there.  Your hands grip the width of my hips and pull my lower back into your waist. In some other world you say my name into my skin as if it is the only word you know and I glow from the inside out like a gently stoked fire. I can survive this world without you. I can survive this world where we will never fall in love, because I know in another place–much like this one but just a little to the left–we fall into bed together every night and I am the last thing you taste as the moon chases the sun across the sky. In some other world we are the kind of love that people write love songs about–the kind of love that people say doesn’t actually exist, but every night, in some other place, we prove every single one of them wrong.

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How to Love a Storm

I held my breath when underneath your mouth.  I paused more than once to watch you walk away from me.  I thought of you in the morning–pretended a blanket covered lump was your body and wrapped my legs around the thought of you.  I left you notes in strange places: a folded letter in your back pocket, a post it note on your computer, a heart on a foggy mirror.  My stomach somersaulted every time you would sway your hip into mine as we walked down the street, every time you rubbed the inside of my wrist as we waited for the train.  

I held your name in my mouth at night. It grew roots around my tongue.  

I trembled when your hands cupped the backs of my thighs. I felt lit on fire when you grasped a length of my hair and didn’t let go.  I liquefied every time your mouth devoured my ribs, my neck, my hips. There were moments when we would curl into each other, completely naked, that I felt the safest I ever felt in my life.  You made my naked body a home. 

Then one day, I looked up and you were gone.

You were lightning, eventually. I searched the horizon, waiting to catch a glimpse of you, but every time I turned my head I missed you by a few seconds–the only proof you were ever there were scorched spots of earth and the echo of you cracking open the sky bouncing around all the empty spaces of my ribs, my heart, my thighs.

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“If you were here, I would sit with my chin on your chest, listen to your voice rumble down the length of your body as you tentatively tell me the story about that one time you did something embarrassing. I would run my fingers over your shoulder, down your arm, stop at your wrist to feel your pulse. I would laugh at all the funny parts, bite my lip through the uncomfortable parts, suck at my teeth during the sad parts. I would kiss the center of your chest, press my mouth against your ribs, taste the salt of skin. If you were here, you would press your fingers through my hair, drag your nails over my scalp, rub the lump at the nape of my neck. You would touch me like someone who knows my body, like someone who is sure of themselves—sure of where I hurt, where I ache, where the slightest pressure makes me melt. If you were here, we would fall asleep together—with my cheek on your chest, your palm on my neck, and my heart in your hands.”

Girl vs. Whale // If You Were Here  #reblogging old feelings

Oh. I hate myself.

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Note to self:

Not everything you put your heart and your hands into works out. Love dries out. Art gets muddled. Novels go unwritten. Things fade away. People are cruel. Hearts get broken. That is all true.

It is also inevitable.

But not putting all your heart into something is worse than any of that. Waking up one day and realizing you didn’t love someone completely. You didn’t work hard enough. You didn’t get to the end. You didn’t open up enough. You didn’t say all you had to say.

That is way worse than anything.

Do it. Say it.

Take a chance. 

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Before and After

Get someone to hold you. Get them to slide into your bed at night and press their mouth into your back.  Get someone who clicks into you like a key snapping into a lock and get them to fall asleep with you. Get someone to learn the outline of your sleeping body. Get someone to teach you the outline of theirs. Get someone who dreams about you at night. Get someone who hides with you under the sheets from the morning sun. Get someone who groggily talks about their dreams with their eyes closed. Get someone who pulls you back into bed when you get up, just for one last kiss. Get someone who curls up into the warm spot your body just left and falls back asleep before you even make it to the shower.

Spend your nights next to someone who touches you like they are a 6 AM wind in the middle of May–gentle, cool, and familiar.

Mornings are never the same after a breeze like that–waking up feels so empty when you one day you go from two bodies together to being nothing but a single body alone. 

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