Author Archives: Trista

About Trista

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Femme Fetale. Classy Trash. Nihilistic Youth. Unaudacious Warrior. Cognizant Dreamer. Somewhat similar to Hamlet's Ophelia.

emp·​ty \ˈem(p)-tē – adjective; containing nothing

Posted on by

You grabbed my face, cocked it to the side, and tilted it so that your words would slither into my ear and penetrate my limbic system. A heavy tongue, sour and acidic, filled with venom and thick with saliva. Poisoned, intoxicated – I was alive. You wanted more.

You whispered to me that our connection was unrivaled. You breathed that our love was unmatched. Our energy, our intensity, our spirits – you claimed they knew no bounds. Unsurpassable. These sentences clung together like a double helix and took form as the shape of a brittle heart. The heart, tattered and fraying, crashed on to the earth, only to be pulled by a stormy breeze and then lost in the vast and colossal oceans of the universe. We watched as the sky swallowed these broken sentences. The clouds turned their backs and concealed the opening from which the sentences were devoured. Not enough, you craved more.

We laid our bodies on a rock and observed the ferns unfurling in the sunshine. All the tiny faces in the trees surveilled our intimacy. I felt our auras blend into each other and create a deep vermillion color that turned to a liquid, trickled down our flesh, and then on to the stone beneath us. I rounded the palms of my hands to scoop and carry the color. I painted with the crisp aegean of your irises. I blended the vermillion and the blue. A palette unparalleled and nearly psychedelic until fused. I glanced at you with a pinching sensation in my body and a nagging in my soul. The varnish coalesced to a shade of black unseen and undocumented. Muddied with the dying auras and ladling the last bits, I fed them to you. Devoid, you regurgitated. Depleted, you retched. Empty, you never wanted to be full.

A trick.

Posted on by

Pleasantly lost. Something new. The ropey trenches of your fingerprints have me walking in circles. These miniscule loops bring joyful tears. I am careful not to dampen you with my saline. I wipe most away, but you nod to me. A guarantee from you that I can leave a few as a trail to get me home. Please do not let me drown myself in my own pleasure. You are kind as you allow me to traipse.

It is soft here. It is delicate. I may have wandered here before without recollection. The warmth radiating from your fatigued hands. Please do not enclose them while I drift. The tiny bit of clamminess from your unreasonable happiness – a moisture so sweet, I can hardly prevent myself from giving it my tongue. My legs are buckling from your pulse. My thighs are dewy. My mouth is dry. Dizzy and dumb with distraction, I let myself lie here. Please let me stay here forever.

You are disgruntled and testy. I was not to sleep here. I was not to stay. Your hands lift to your mouth. Each finger is licked clean and polished. I cling and lament as you taste me. My aroma was not to your liking. You quickly cup your hands and place them on the floor – a path for me. A signal to leave. A trick. 

Before I depart from your fingertips, you decide that it is not enough and all too much at once. You clap your hands and laugh as you smother me. My body is flattened. The blood and organs and bones only as small as a pin prick. You clean that off in a rusty sink without a single iota of remorse, only a smirk on your face and a smugness wafting from your being.

Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Posted on by

I felt my entire being shudder and then a myriad of calmness. Entering a new season enables every thread to reset – to reawaken, rouse. I peeled the wintered, decaying body tissues off of every limb and as they fell, my existence became unblurred and luminous. The cigarettes in the ashtray were resting – calmly shriveling, soaking up the white sun. The begonias were inhaling the pleasant warmth. They fanned their petals and averted their gaze. I wanted to clasp this sensation and bottle it for you, but the moment had passed and the excitement had slipped through my fingers.

The Human Mold

Posted on by

I wanted to let you and your drab, insipid heart know that every single human being deserves their space. All of us. We deserve that. I wanted to let you know all of this. I think it may have slipped your hazy mind. Tread lighter on others or do not tread at all.

Who are you when you are a stranger to yourself?

 

We deserve our own little bubble to recuperate and rejuvenate. We deserve our personal time where we can shut the world out and let ourselves delve deeply into our own. We are allowed to switch it off. We deserve to shut off everyone and everything for a few breaths. We are allowed to sort ourselves out. We are very much entitled to feel sane and okay. We owe ourselves. We owe ourselves for letting every piece of the outside world into our racing minds. We owe ourselves for taking action on the portions that bother us and for swallowing the enjoyable portions. We open our spirits to all of it. We acknowledge the chaos and clutter of the people we surround ourselves with – we acknowledge the disarray and disharmony of the world. We breathe this in and we mull it over. We bury it inside ourselves instead of letting it all go. We deserve to let it go.

This is for us. This is our sacred territory. You are welcome to it because we granted it to you.

We allow our whole beings and our energy and our auras and our souls and our essence and our spirits to be taken in the greatest hopes that these segments will replenish on their own. We shed that nourishing exoskeleton in hopes that it will grow back tougher and more giving. We do not expect anything in return from others. We are sincerely sanguine in that these fragments will refill and that we can be less tired when they do so. We allow all of ourselves – every tiny, dewy drop –  to be devoured and digested by anyone who is in need. We let them soak it up. We let them drink it in. We watch them absorb it. We let them do what they will with it. We do this genuinely believing that we can quell their deeper, emotional pains and worries. We want to aid them and give back. We want them to have love. We trust that they deserve this love and will pass it on to the next person who deserves and needs and wants. We are givers. We are lovers. We are generous. We are true. We are kind. We are empathetic. We are yours for the taking.

 

I gave this to a human once. I gave them everything I had. I heard the cacophony of my popping cells as I gave bigger bits of my whole, true self away. I carried this particular human’s little bird heart in the palm of my hand. When it started to crumble, I glued it up and watched it heal. I placed this heart in the sun to warm it. I felt my shoulders become heavy from everything that this heart needed. I acknowledged that the sinews of my body began to feel led-filled but I carried this little heart. I defended it when it ached. I fought for it when it bled. I believed in it when it felt hopeless. I caressed this heart when it began to break into fragments.  All of this heart’s needs and wants and worries – I took those. All of this heart’s pains and inner turmoil – I grasped those. All of this heart’s suffering and deep sadness – I held those.

I thought this heart was gold. I thought this heart was pure. I thought this heart had meaning. I thought this heart had depth. I thought this heart would reciprocate and give back and love.

I let this heart steal my words and follow my lead. I watched this heart slowly attempt to morph into me. I heard this heart disregard my unconditional love. It devoured and destroyed. This heart took too much. This heart had no soul or empathy or love. This heart did not even give the body it belonged to a pulse.

My mental vigor was fading. My patience was a tiny piece of thread that needed to be cut cleanly and nicely. I cut that it immediately before it tore. You did not deserve me. You do not deserve anyone. You had your chance and you took advantage. All eyes will see when you self-destruct. All ears will hear you calling and ignore it.

 

I watch you and your puny heart pour yourself into an act. I watched the entire show endless times. I watched you make vast attempts to be me. You do not know who you are.

Who are you when you are a stranger to yourself?

I watch you blame every person and feel sorry for yourself and scream murder and play victim. I watched your mania explode. I watched it skyrocket. I watched you try to ride that high and fail. I watched your brain try to do a thousand things at once. I watched you try to be the angel in every situation that you are at fault. I watched your heart darken and shrink. You infect and infest. You are a thick and heavy mold that blackens our lungs. We cough. We choke. You make these ludicrous attempts to mold into others. A human mold. Are you a human? Perhaps a poor excuse for one. I cannot help but wonder – do you even have a heart or are you some type of robot playing house and pretending to be human?

Who are you when you are a stranger to yourself?

May 15, 2016

Posted on by

The blight enters the lips, hits the tongue, smacks the teeth and makes its way through the esophageal tunnel – at last quelled and lulled to a somber, sepulchral slumber. The light slips in and it is blue and achy. Blue and sad. Blue and pure. Blue to white to a deep crimson. Little poly-chromatic patterns and shapes in the eyelids.

Wondering

Posted on by

Your eyes are the color of a dimming autumn sun, coppery with a soft gaze. The freckles around your upper lids and lower eye are little stepping stones or a miniature, clustered galaxy on the skin or a connect-the-dots game for my pleasure. Your lips are parted and inviting and you have freckles on those too and they are for my pleasure. The freckles on the upper lip are waiting to meet with the lower lip and both are impatient for my kiss. Hungry eyes and greedy lips and all for my pleasure.

My pleasure. It’s my pleasure. I stand here astounded and nearly choked on the mere sight of you. Asphyxiated by your gentle beauty… I wonder if you even know.

Sustenance for Contemplation

Posted on by

Mind’s a garbage can. Rotted thoughts. Dead vermin burritoed in mildewed newspaper. Broken conversation. Diluted sentences. Almond eyes & cashew skin. Creamy vanilla & lavender. Honey dew & grape seeds. She ran out of voids to cement and silk to shred. The petals fall beneath her toes. The beauty does not disappoint. A vision soft on the pupils and a touch rough on the finger.

This is old – “Untitled”

Posted on by

His gray flesh used to resemble the soft shade of almond, the pigment of his cheeks was a rosy hue which complemented the pallid saturation of his dim irises. Quite pleasing to the eye, his beauty could not be summed up and tossed around casually. He was merely the pinnacle of pulchritude, not only for his alluring appearance but also for his compassionate actions towards any single being or creature. As I gaze out of my window and peer into the abyss, I allow my pupils to dilate, enabling my focus to fade and become foggy. My mind wanders ceaselessly as I tap my foot lightly to a contingent rhythm. I remembered seeing the others. They almost appeared to be diminutive replicas of him.  Their faces were worn out and expressionless—emotionless rather. Flecked with a combination of dirt and grime, streaked passageways that carried thick tears, their faces were sullen—guilt ridden. Their body tissue was threadbare, almost incandescent as well as translucent. I could see their blood cells rising and falling—a routine that captivated my attention for a long while. Their lungs struggled relentlessly to persist, their organs slowly shutting down one after another. Their capillaries and veins would bend with every harsh movement they were expected to proceed with. In their minds, I could almost sense their biological clocks expiring. The time seemed to lack minutes, even seconds. I wanted to save all of them, but I remained helpless. I wanted so badly to salvage him, but I was incompetent. All of my insides ached to compress him into that of a tiny seashell, cup my hands, and carry him out of this malignant dominion.

Jean-Paul Sartre – Nausea

Posted on by

“What if something were to happen? What if something suddenly started throbbing? Then they would notice it was there and they’d think their hearts were going to burst. Then what good would their dykes, bulwarks, power houses, furnaces and pile drivers be to them? It can happen any time, perhaps right now: the omens are present. For example, the father of a family might go out for a walk, and, across the street, he’ll see something like a red rag, blown towards him by the wind. And when the rag has gotten close to him he’ll see that it is a side of rotten meat, grimy with dust, dragging itself along by crawling, skipping, a piece of writhing flesh rolling in the gutter, spasmodically shooting out spurts of blood. Or a mother might look at her child’s cheek and ask him: “What’s that, a pimple?” and see the flesh puff out a little, split, open, and at the bottom of the split an eye, a laughing eye might appear. Or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies, like the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river. And they will realize that their clothing has become living things. And someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth. He goes to the mirror, opens his mouth: and his tongue is an enormous, live centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He’d like to spit it out, but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with his own hands. And a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names, stone eye, great three cornered arm, toe crutch, spider jaw. And someone might be sleeping in his comfortable bed, in his quiet, warm room, and wake up naked on a bluish earth, in a forest of rustling birch trees, rising red and white towards the sky like the smokestacks of Jouxtebouville, with big bumps half way out of the ground, hairy and bulbous like onions. And birds will fly around these birch trees and pick at them with their beaks and make them bleed. Sperm will flow slowly, gently, from these wounds, sperm mixed with blood, warm and glassy with little bubbles.”

Eyedea’s Idea

Posted on by

“Isn’t a person just a collection of their mistakes, and also their, kind of, undoing of their mistakes? I mean, what else are you? You know, you’re always…you’re always just the reaction to the bad parts of yourself, I think. And I think that’s what is kind of like, a driving motivation behind any human being that’s…who wants to continue to grow and live life. ‘Cause they’re looking at their flaws and trying to, go beyond it. And I think that a person, you know, essentially dies when they think that they found themselves, ya know? Unless you want to admit that you, yourself, are not an individual, and are just part of a whole…movement of ideas, and thought, and culture, and humanity and, furthermore, the universe, and everything — unless you really feel like that, and you’re walking through walls, you know, you are always trying to find yourself. And it’s usually a person who believes that they’ve found “the answer” — found “the end” — that there actually is a psychological end. And then what’s the point of, you know, doing anything after that?”