(Source: emilyafricaa, via waterproofvalentines)

(via unicornfantasyparadise)

karmaalwayswins:

Andrew Wyeth “Marriage” (1993)

(via waterproofvalentines)

(Source: r-mapplethorpe, via girlinlondon)

(Source: solitaria, via hushlittleghostlings)

The envelope rests on scuffed, soiled floorboards, offering salutations like no child, spouse, or pet could.  Its crumpled skin sits stained by its rained delivery, yet dried by the patient expectancy of its found owner’s arrival.  The letter is addressed by ways of etched, quivering strokes breaking ever so frequently to designate a name and location.  The author was never good at hiding his intentions, as the ink alone smells of impressions and lingering hope.  Above the recipient, a portrait of a horse lies embedded in its frame, serving its life’s purpose no differently than his living model.  The horse, however, does not stand alone.  The author normally refuses to acknowledge himself in the appropriate quarters, and the recipient wondered what coaxed him into submitting his name to the far left side of the horse’s grin.  Whatever the reason, his intuition served faithful.  The envelope had clearly failed at its attempt to slither through the postal machines with its lone horse as a token, and had been returned to sender what appeared to be four times.  It took four times until he finally realized his messenger was too insignificant on his own; typical of the nature of the author.  Trailing the watered puckers of the envelope’s seal, leached tape squirmed beneath each run.  His saliva alone failed to keep the letter closed. It probably would have, if he had faith in his throat, but then again he could never quite conceal the dryness of his voice.  The envelope embedded itself in the palm its inheritor, not out of weight, but out of affinity.   She knotted her legs on the weathered floor and curved her back to brush the pebbled refrigerator door.  Her nail slipped behind the horse’s head and peeled up the corner. The tip of her finger followed beneath the seal, which in turn swallowed her knuckles one by one until her finger was once again liberated and the letter freely breathed from beneath the envelope’s skin.

She peeled back the wound to become acquainted with the innards the author had composed.  The error that sent the envelope to revision four times was now revealed to be crushed at the sole, flowers that undoubtedly bloomed into the envelope from the garden at the author’s feet.  Carefully grasping the innards edge, the heir extracted the letter.  In the process of removal, a flower’s stem that had been detached in the journey preyed itself free and fell onto the floor.  She quickly returned it to its original home, and while doing so caught glimpse of the author.  Sitting with his own back kissing a pebbled screen door, feet resting under skinned knees on his own weathered floor.  Flowers truly were growing through his feet from a distance away, just beyond his support’s edge, into an expanse dreamed far too often of from her own nest of city pollution. 

Unfolding the letter, the palpitated inklings spoke in the same voice its skin bore.  Beginning with a now foreign dear and concluding with a prolonged yet not quite sealed affection, all was said.  Acknowledgements to weather, architecture, new friends, and routines, the author spoke of his dreams and retired his longings.  She could feel the pauses when he rested his thought for a drink of coffee or a sprig of mint, and the moments when words were left to the imagination when his movements couldn’t capture all his thoughts had to convey.  She felt his pride in accomplishment by the hurried, uneven folds and the care taken when the vegetation gave itself for her cause.  

Incubated for days, there was no wonder why the ink vibrated so against its meditating skin.  He must be doing the same, with pollen etched in fingerprints and ink stains absorbed through his exterior’s darkened fabrics.  Traveling through such a storm, she wonders if the ink relayed the experiences to its unborn brothers.  The newly entitled mother creased the bones and returned them to their skin.  The wound still open, the paper no longer spilled forth.  The letter coagulated its thoughts in turn for its consumption, and the opening was left for ink to dry up and the flowers to reacquaint themselves with the air outside their forced harbor.  

(December 2011, Fall Final)

A brief encounter with California