dulcet

volume two

an atlas ofsecrets & dusty attics

maggieraspberrypie.infodominikaseabois.tumblr.comjaclynnavajobodies.tumblr.commiloumiloucrashcouture.tumblr.comlunaporcelainfawns.tumblr.comlaurenmicino.tumblr.com

carinaiwillbeyourfairytale.tumblr.comvaleriecrookedhearts.tumblr.comeveyflickr.com/photos/eveymillsmorganmorganholdsalotofrain.tumblr.comkim011285.tumblr.comzoeislands-and-cities.tumblr.com

volume authors

by dominika

by jaclyn

When I saw you with herI only wonderedif your face showed the same gloomily smileas it did when you held me.

words by milou

by dominika

There was a seemingly never ending library, the clit-a-clatter of my heals running through the passages woke the ghosts buried beneath the floor boards; a symphony of shushes condensed into coughed clouds of dust “we have heard nothing for a hundred and one years, now you have come and shattered our dried out ears”. I mur-mured a heartfelt apology as they slipped my shoes from my feet. I dislocated “The Language of birds” from its perch,

as I opened it a curious chill escaped from within its leaves, inside there were two hidden rooms: one stacked to the ceiling with of precious rocks, glowing like stray moonbeams; in the other an unfriendly tea party was being held by two gentlemen who stared for too long, they sipped from translucent tea cups that moaned moumournful sonnets.

I Wish Merricat was there with me, she would loved it. 'It must be very powerful' she would think, 'maybe I shall bury it or nail it to a tree.' I would not let her though, instead I would ask Constance to concoct us a sweet juice to make us into Lilliputians and the pretti-est little cakes to tuck in our front pockets (to make us bigger again).

We would climb through the window into the book, and nobody could stop us, not even those unfriendly men. We would rescue their poor little tea cups and go on to such adventures, bringing back the most valuable treasures: Miss Havisham's cold porcelain heart pickled in a jar; Dorian Gray's portrait hidden under Susan's old fur coat; Han's accordion, carried so so gently; Macbeth's dadagger (which I will carry locked in a box); finally Anne Frank's pen, which Merricat would slip into her pocket before the officers could crush it with their boots. Words would run through our veins, we would breathe the spaces; eat the full stops; slip through the covers. We could become stories.

p.s. What would you take from story-land?

by luna

the distance in your eyes is a thousand times farther than anything my trembling hands could ever reach.all I touch is illusion dripping fromd is m a n tlin g

constellationconstellations.

words by maggie

Sometimes I miss him so very terribly. When I listen to certain songs on my record player and I can hear the musty keys of the piano… I just want to dress up in old clothing and go out to dinner and come home and just kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until we’re too tired to kiss any longer and we fall asleep under the sheets with our fancy clothes on the floor. I want to wawake up early in the morning and make him waffles with scrambled eggs and coffee (because he only likes the coffee I make). I want to bring it to him in bed and eat some strawberries while he raves about what I cook I am, when I really am not a cook at all. I just love him, so I tried extra hard. Then I think about how thats not him. He would never do that with me. I can’t wait to meetmeet the man who calls me beautiful when I don’t have makeup on. And buys me fancy dresses to wear to fancy dinners. And then that very same week, can find the beauty in simply eating strawberries and waffles and coffee in bed. I miss him because I have no idea who he is yet, but I know one day I will and I won’t know how I made it so long without him. Until then, waiting.

words by lauren

Her heart felt like the titanic after its fatal hit to the iceberg. It slowly sank beneath chilly waters, numbing its passengers of frenzied feelings; confusion, grief, pain, loss of hope and loss of love. But just like sunken treasure, her sunken heart would be rediscovered. It would resurface once more and regain it’s former glory, despite the tragedy that it had enduendured.

words by carina

It’s Friday and the aches in our muscles show it. Today feels like the end of days and I don’t know why, except that when I kiss you there are explosions behind my eyelids and I feel the need to shelter us from the world. Your bathroom is the perfect place to hide away, so we lock the doors and barricade ourselves with your dresser and your elbows and your ribs. I know you so well that well that your bones feel like furniture.I construct a little house in your arms. I want to live

here forever, smelling the salt on your skin, cleaning the floors and dusting the rafters and sending my voice up into the hollow of your neck to scare the ghosts hiding there. I run a bath of yellow light and flowers and steam. While the tub is filling you tell me that soap bubbles are the thinnest things visible to the naked humanhuman eye, and that makes me love them all the more, these fragile little spheres accumulating against the tile.The mirrors are fogged over and as you take off your

clothes I catch you looking through the steam. Always with such a critical eye, you, as you peel layers of exhaustion and tension from your body and become more and more exposed. I want to tell you you are perfect. If only you could see yourself the way I do. Glowing like a sunset too big for this tiny room. I think for a momentmoment you’ll burst and consume me in flame, but even if you did, I’d forgive you. That look in your eye absolves you of everything. I bear it no resentment. I just hope that someone as pure as you can find something, somewhere, in me. You let me wash your hair.

Friday—a story in three partsPart I: morning

words by valeriephoto by evey

Friday—a story in three partsPart II: noon

words by valerie

My joints are aching, you whisper to me, beneath our canopy of sheets. I reply, maybe it’s the rain, but your little face is distressed, like maybe it’s more than that, like maybe your joints ache to match your heart, like maybe your soul is as heavy as these bedsheets are light. I tell you that the best cure for aching is splashing in puddles. So we bundle up (I button your coat, your handshands are shaking) and we face the day, putting smiles on like we’re normal (if only they knew.)There is a low rock wall surrounding the

rain-swollen lake and a ladder that goes down into the water, like magic, you say. I wonder what would happen if we climbed down into that rusty, ancient space, you and me, pretending a man-made hole in the ground is the greatest mystery on the earth. We all have to do a little pretending to get by, don’t you think? We have to bloblock out the fact that I drink too much and you smoke too much and my hands are raw and you’re clumsy when you kiss me.I go over first—you are aching, clenched hard inside

yourself and quiet. My shoes are thin and full of holes, no match for this wet weather. My feet are cold. The ladder has seen better days, it protests beneath my weight. I snag my dress on rusty metal, I scrape my knees, I am soaked and miserable, all for you. Come on, I say, but you don’t respond. I fear you can’t hear me overover the rain. I fear we’ll never hear each other over the noise inside our minds. If only I could see inside yours, repair the frayed wires and build you a palace out of that static, an ocean of bright glass and sunlight and music, only music, played softly so you could hear me, played softly so you could sleep.

photos by kim

By the lamplight, love, you look to be as pale as the moon. There’s a certain beauty in the way you’re lying there, looking up at me, a smile stretching across your face. I do my best to return it but my face feels stiff. Sometimes I think you are made of burnt-out stars, so brilliant, bright and sad, a stellar tragedy before my very eyes. How romantic to think that tonight, you are mine.mine.

But like the luminary body that hangs swollen in the night sky, there is a shadowy side to you. How quickly I forget that you can catch the light and fling it back like it’s your job, but when the sun pauses to blink and rest its eyes, there you are, nothing more than a cold, dark core, floating in space where there is no sound, there is no light.

II am faced with a choice: flee to the warmth of the sun, or embrace the darkness, my own lonely galaxy. I look to the east. it will be a long night.

Friday—a story in three partsPart III: night

words by valerie

The Curator’s Girl—a short storywritten by Zoe

She was a recurring dream for the first three seasons of her life. At the foot of winter, her wings blossomed and she tore through the membrane between illusion and actuality. Kneeling at the foot of his bed in a nightgown, hazel-eyed, brought to life by the moonlight, she pleaded in lullabies.

His voice cracked as he yelped, most unsettled. He drew the quilt very close to his chin, his vision became stunted as he blinked with vigor, trying to erase the strange figure from his sleepy retinas. Please leave, ghost, he told her. But I’m not a ghost, the dream told him. I’m a girl. An exasperated noise, he must still be dreaming. The moon slipped behind a cloud and she fadedfaded out of sight. He went back to sleep in order to wake up, and so he did, dreamlessly, until morning.

The dream sat at his breakfast table. Please leave, ghost, he told her. But I’m not a ghost, the dream told him. I’m a girl. She pulled the curtains and let the sunlight touch her skin. Shadow and dawn painted all of her pores, and she looked so, so real. Her hair hung in messy tangles and a fading scar outlined her forearm. An exasperated noise, he must be hallucinating or somethinsomething. He loaded his briefcase with papers from the desk, buttoned his tweed jacket, and left the dream behind, apartment locked, lights off, thank you very much.

She chewed on the crumbs of shadow, pondering, becoming existential, biding time. The hours stretched, and dusk breathed coolly over the city, spreading a threadbare pale blue overhead, tucking the blanket at the horizons. The dream treaded carefully, the time of sleep within sight. May dream thrive in absence of dreamer?TheThe museum gala boiling over with life. Orchestral

opuses swinging around the rafters. The portraits observed slyly from their frames, the landscapes reverberated with the sound. Dipping, swaying, turning, slipping, the guests danced, unaware of the antiquity of the day. The time for dreams approached. But. The wrinkling corners of eyes, the upturned mouthmouths, there was too much pleasure in reality to succumb to sleep. He was elsewhere, meandering through

impressionism, watching the paintings become abstract as the shadows grew. His thoughts were poetic and loose in his sleepiness. Shadows mirrored his spindly limbs, they worked smoothly on the floor with his careful gait. He tried to appreciate his distance from the party and ignore how much he desired to see a human face. The distinctiondistinction between loneliness and aloneness flickered in and out of existence there in the shadowy hall. He kept walking. The orchestra grew fainter as the new footsteps grew louder. The dream was a vision in black, a glimmering onyx

gown. Silence fell. She paused and watched him, half-expecting her existence to be discounted. The music blazed to life, again. He said, Would you dance with me?SheShe took his hand and so they stepped and turned

around the open hall to the hum of distant horns and strings. He held the small of her back, and she felt his trembling hand between her fingers, and they hypnotized each other, the vision and the visionary.

This was their daydream. They read two books at a time. He brought her flowers from his sister’s garden whenever he visited. They watched films on mute and invented the characters’ voices, unless they were particularly interested in the storyline. They wrote each other letters, he pasted clipped pictures, she included off-beat poems. She bought him a bird. He let thethe bird go the next day. He played her tunes, she invented lyrics, and their music turned to giggling and talking and humming into the cavern of the guitar, listening to the woodsy buzz, his calloused fingers on her knee. She loved his tweed blazer and boat shoes, he loved her knee-socks and vintage pearls. And they loved the way their hair curled when they went too long withoutwithout haircuts. On the first evening of winter, the sky was nothing more than a pale blue blanket. Flurries like powdered sugar sprinkled over their shoulders, and they thought it was a good moment to kiss for the first time. It was very cold and sweet, inside and out. The dance ended, and he rested his head on her

shoulder. He was becoming so sleepy, and right then, she was little more than moonlight and shadow, her wintry skin cold on his cheek. The words came to his ear slowly, he processed them groggily: Darling, need I still be a ghost? In the hall, her voice traveled in a trembling timbre, as if transmitted through a guitar. DonDon’t leave me, if you can help it, my girl, it’s a nice dream… Sleepily, groggily, drawing the quilt to his chin… She drew her gossamer wings around him, hugging him carefully, quietly with her starry feathers, pulling him deeper into the shadows…

words by zoe

c o n s t e l l a t i o n s . listen

la petite fille de la mer Vangelissleeping with the insects Memotone

book of frost Orla Wrendance of the sugar plum fairy Tchaikovsky

33 fainting spells Orla Wrenfür elise für elise Beethoven

moonlight sonata Beethovendance of the swans Tchaikovsky

mixtape by maggie8tracks.com/raspberrypie

by jaclyn

days and years passed beneath the shade of a moment and a bewildering pair of dark eyes. a moment with no start, with no end but lost within the infinite universe of remembrance.

photo by morganwords by maggie

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~ an atlas of secrets & dusty attics ~secrets-and-dustyattics.tumblr.com

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