Booby-trapped mind

The theme for this collaboration was limiting beliefs. Being stuck in your own ways, living with blinders on, maybe wanting to break free from old thinking patterns, trying to escape the trap that can be your own mind.

Thank you to everyone who participated, I hope we can keep doing more group projects like this in the future !

Marie Rose 🥀:

There’s an enclosure around the meadow of my mind.

I comfort myself by thinking at least I am safe following the beaten track, and the grass isn’t always greener in lands unknown. But as I look down, I realize there’s no grass at all beneath my feet. I just gather dust behind me, and nothing grows here anymore.

I think myself brave when I decide to take a slightly different path, but minutes pass and I’m not closer to the exit of my paddock. Nevermind, today you were courageous and tried, didn’t you ? Courage the cowardly woman.

So much time wasting time. So many suns, so many moons dragging my feet until I’m limping in trenches and forgetting the color green.

I look up from my early grave and finally notice the shades of blue. The landscape changes and I’m now walking on cotton clouds.

How long until I turn the sky into a prison too ?

𝄢 Juan José 🌷 :

You have given me everything
all that my feeble soul could want
You filled my heart with passion
And ravaged my mind with pain

A childhood sense of wonder
And dreams of grandeur
Perfectly balanced
With this agony of self

You taught me to play the strings
To bring forth precious harmonies
Only to break my fingers
so beauty would only birth from agonies

You showed me how to sing
A song that would conjure spring
But you cut my throat
And left me to scream in silence

How merciful of you.

And yet-

I still find myself dancing
My soul exalts at the songs’ climax
This rapture is ever-clear
And I only want you more

so tell me
TELL ME!

What did I do?
...what didn’t I do

Fiona🌻 :

you know what they say, no screens one to two hours before bed for an optimal sleep.
that’s what’s on paper.

but the paper does not include spiraling thoughts that drown your brain once it hits the pillow.
it does not include all the fears, the dread and the anxiety overwhelming everything.
it does not include the tears in your eyes, because it is the only time of the day that you feel like, maybe it’s okay to have a little cry.

but the mind and its thoughts are stubborn.
they destroy what you built, and you turn into sisyphus and his boulder.
you get all the way up that hill.
but then you make the mistake of turning around to see how far you came from.
and in your precipitation,
you trip on a pebble,
which triggers your way down,
realizing your mind is the underworld after all.

Em :

The moment you realise your anxiety is anxiety and now you’re… well, more anxious. A blender for a mind that’s lost its off-switch; every flaw and wrong-doing of yours getting ground and crushed, spinning through your head at a speed you simply can’t keep up with. When did you last take a deep breath? You try to breathe but the air tastes like the past. It smells like mistakes and repetition and ridiculous, irrational fear – all mashed up in this whirring mental machine.

Your lover walks through the door and turns off the electricity. As noisy destruction diminishes, you realise everything that’s been blended has lost its shape and colour. You can’t remember what was real, and none of those things are here anymore. They exist in a liquid that could be poured down the sink. Worse times, and fictional fragments, are gone.

But this is real and present: the hand cupping your chin. The lips pressed into your forehead. The patient murmuring and a look of unconditional love in kind, concerned blue eyes.

Try again: take a deep breath. Believe in what’s in front of you instead. Coffee, the lingering scent of her shampoo, and a way of holding and loving that’s far more powerful than a blender.

✮˙₊ 𝕞𝕛 ₊˙✮ :

a tiny lumberjack walks the tunnels of coiled mass that float within my skull -
a labyrinthine path, once presumed to be a maze.
fleshy ground, solidified by the repetition of her soles,
paved by idiosyncrasies,
synapses firing somewhat predictably.
this mind, once covered in blight, functions surprisingly well
though it houses secrets still,
deeply lodged in forgotten crevices.
the lumberjack has worked tirelessly:
felling tall trees that seem to have steel trunks,
hacking through briars and thickets,
creating new trails, and letting the light in.
all the while, burrs of pain and bitterness cling to her.
she removes them one by one:
naming them,
turning them over in her hands,
thanking them,
letting them go.
they, too, become part of the path she’s paving.

MackaroniArt :

The mosquito that flew behind my eye
has not been seen since
Now he is trapped in the labyrinth
of my insides

I wonder what he thinks of it in there
Does he hate it as much as me
Does he love the warm embrace
of blood
or is too much of good thing
not good anymore?

does he see the repetitive thoughts,
the scratches on the walls
of my veins?
Does he also feel my heart beat faster

Does it matter?
We are both stuck in here now
that is that.
might as well stop whining
and move forward with the body we share

emma 🐞⋆˚꩜ :

peering through the misty haze in a maze of stalks. the leaves whisper as wind touches them and hush for the moon. I’ve been here before. my legs always lead me back. I eternally consume the path. when I attempt a break and start to run, the walls of crops grow taller. digging through the dirt beneath never worked either. all I found were bones. the roots corralled me into the labyrinth once more and a thousand times over.

Lexie 🐰🌙 :

substack opens: a green moth in my palm,
warm glass taps milk teeth into my thumb.
i drop in poems, tea-sour, rain-bright,
with ink on their paws, my face wrapped in paper.

other names parade, sugar-lit and clean,
their rooms pour honey through comment chimes.
my page comes barefoot with a bruised plum,
and asks the feed to taste its little heart.

friends say my pen warms bread in winter,
but numbers arrive in blue gloves.
i count; brass blooms under my tongue,
envy turns overripe in my chest.

maybe my lines are locked lunchboxes,
sweet inside, impossible to open.
maybe my mind is a goldfish in perfume,
kissing glass, calling it weather.

at two a.m., the cursor bares one tooth,
i salt the vowels; the room tastes faintly burnt.
i delete the line that wore my real skin.
no bell. no hand. only the screen breathing.

Thank you for reading us !