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last seen 20:47

sometimes i open my phone and i check when he was last online.

i don't ever message, we have nothing to say to each other anymore, we have already said far too much

i just want to know - its a small act of comfort. i picture him checking his phone at clapham junction, or putting his phone away because a lecture is about to start, breifly replying to a text between sets at the gym.

i picture him doing these inane, everyday activities because i don't know anything about his life anymore. i focus on the facts i know irrefutably because the fact that our routines no longer intertwine like smoke kills me.

he always seems to have come offline just minutes before

maybe this means something, something about how we always just miss each other, the timing was never right, tangled miscommunication

'i can't sleep, can i come back in' 'sorry i missed this message, i fell asleep' 'not here, not here, not here'

i sit and i look at his profile picture, and my heart reaction to the last message he sent, and the words 'last seen 20:47' and i imagine i can smell his distinctive scent, like i have entered a room he was in only moments before.

i think i will spend the rest of my life chasing this boy.

insanely late update on how this went but whatever.

☑ tune cello

☑ finish job application for local bookshop

☑ print off emails about work experience

managed to sort out log in so i didn't need to

☑ attend both work experience events today

☑ minimum 40 minutes music practice

literally played three chromatic scales and that was it

☑ try make sure i have to to eat lunch

☑ sort out some files from the stuff i won't need next year

don't even have a good reason i was just being lazy

Also went up to the phone store to see if my phone was nearly fixed which I had been putting off, and I bought myself a boba tea to reward myself, no pics because as above PHONE BROKEN!!

02/06/25

posting this to promise to myself that I will actually get something done today

☑ tune cello

☑ finish job application for local bookshop

☑ print off emails about work experience

☑ attend both work experience events today

☑ minimum 40 minutes music practice

☑ try make sure i have to to eat lunch

☑ sort out some files from the stuff i won't need next year

they hate me for my joy and whimsy. and also the fact that my music is super loud and i am dropping chocolate cookie crumbs on their notes. but mostly by charming and endearing aura. but also kind of the fact that i keep complaining that i'm bored and i want to go for a walk. but at the end of the day its because of the skip in my step, the sparkle in my eye, and the joy in my heart.

i keep thinking about how rfk said that autistic people "will never write a poem." i keep thinking about that, about if humanity is calculated on the back of old verse. how far we measure personhood is in baseball and stanza breaks.

i keep thinking - i have over 7k poems on here alone. language can be a special interest, after all. did you know the word autism comes almost direct from the greek word autos, meaning "self"? self-ism.

maybe he is right - i haven't really played baseball. i was a ballet dancer instead. and besides - my sister once accidentally hit me in the face with an aluminum bat. i'm not sure if the injury gives me half points. am i only a person in the dugout? hand in a mitt? swinging?

does softball count? does cricket? am i a person if i throw the ball to my dog. am i a person as long as the ball is in the air, or do i stop being a person as it rolls into the bushes. i took my girlfriend to fenway recently; was i a person in the sun, with my hands up, with the game laid out at my feet in a diamond. i felt like a person, but that was back in the summer, and i often feel my most person-like then.

am i more of a person because of the sheer number of things i've written? does quality matter, or is it quantity? i used to write entire books every summer in high school - i wasn't doing well. i felt the least like-a-person back then. but then - does any person feel human in high school?

in the library, ink on my skin, i feel personhood shutter at the edges of myself. actually, writing feels blissfully like not being myself. it feels birdlike; escaping into creation so my body dissolves and i survive only by muscle memory. i am not there, i am writing.

but who can deny the falconlike focus of warsan shire, the tenderness of mary oliver, the sheer skill of amanda gorman. those are poets. they are certainly human. you could line them up with the way their words have influenced us and measure their literary shadows like wings.

perhaps it was very assumptive of me to want to be a poet rather than "a [ label ] poet." i wanted the work to fill itself in, rather than be stained by what i am. i do not write in despite of my neurodivergence, i am just neurodivergent and writing.

does the poem have to be in english or can i send it through my palms into the coat of my dog. does the poem have to make sense. does the poem have to love you back.

if i break a glass, will the poem appear naturally? or is the act of breaking the glass human-enough. the shards of my life glittering out beneath me - do i have to write the poem, or is it self-evident in the pile of glass splinters? i cannot grasp this world the way other people can. regardless, i endeavor to touch - even the mess - very gently.

i broke my toenail against my coffee table recently. i released a bug outdoors. i made coffee. i walked my dog.

i didn't write a poem about any of these things.

something else, then. existing without humanity.

he is not my favourite sacrificial lamb, he has no bite

he is least my favourite sacrificial lamb because he is so sweet and innocent. i put the cold harsh blade against his throat and his eyes are so clear when they look up at me. he doesn't even think to reproach me for the horrors i put him through. he forgives and he forgives and he forgives.

my favourite sacrificial lamb fights. he bleats for all he is worth and tries to run away on his skinny coltish legs. his eyes are older than they should be and i can see the anger of every lamb before him in them. he makes me feel sorry for what i have to do.

because that is how it needs to be. i need to feel pain and regret and responsibility for the sacrifice to work. if i don't feel disgusted at my actions then there is nothing to cleanse and purify.

fight and scream little lambs, never let us take you easily. if you die quietly we will never feel the guilt, and it will be for nothing.

and then at night i kneel and i pray, not to the god for whom i commit these atrocities, but to the lambs skipping across the inky sky.

ignosce mihi little lambs, just not for this.

ATTENTION TO THOSE IN THE POETS PORCH COMMMUNITY

PLEASE CAN PEOPLE REBLOG THIS

hi i want to talk about the account versesbyaaliyah, parallax4o4 already did a post on this and they received a lot of hate, but the things they were saying were 100% correct.

almost all of the posts by the versesbyaaliyah account flag up as being mostly or partially AI generated, and a lot of accounts on this community are clearly bots.

i just wanted to warn other new poets that it 100% looks like this community is being used as a way to steal new poetry content for AI's to learn off.

working this out was super upsetting to me because my poetry is really raw and personal for me, i ttalk about very specific experiences i have been through, so the idea that someone was stealing my content was heartbreaking.

so yeah just to advise y'all it would maybe be a good idea to delete your content from this community and leave

also a poem from the new, unreleased collection. very possibly my own all-time favourite.

i hope you are haunted by every mention of me

i see your name everywhere

you surround me in inconsequential settings

the teacher asks me to read aloud from the article, and the authors name makes me choke

my friend talks excitedly about her new tennis coach, and i pathetically, desperately, think that somehow you have travelled 417.8 miles and learnt a new sport

your name is used in a maths problem and i think this is so daft he could run way faster than that, and i sit there like a fool in the exam hall surrounded by shame and silence and the echoes of you

the curse of having a niche name is that i know you will probably never hear mine

you will never stop dead at 11:24 on the train home because someone has just laughed my name into their phone

you will never read a book where my name is the name of a main character, and wonder if i have read this book too

you will never come across my name spray painted in accusing red, begging you not to forget me

but maybe this is a blessing in disguise

you will never become numb to me

whenever you do hear my name it will be brutal and raw and painful

i hope

your brother will say 'i heard she got a boyfriend' and your mum will say 'i called her the other day and she was worrying about her exams' and your grandmother will say 'she might come visit london this summer'

and you will stop dead in the bright lights of the kitchen and watch everyone turn around you

and you will picture me in my blue room with the purple pyjamas i wore that night i was twelve,

and you will know that i will always be a part of you

propaganda a lot of y’all should fall for:

whispering “thanku” to your tea or coffee before the first sip.

telling your friends you love them when they least expect it. especially then.

googling “what kind of flower blooms twice” at 3 a.m. to feel hopeful again

deleting apps every two weeks and calling it a spiritual reset.

naming your plants like they’re ur friends. apologizing when you forget to water them.

believing ur younger self would still think you’re cool. even on your worst days.

using perfume before bed. for no one. for you.

making eye contact with yourself in the mirror when you cry. giving the pain an audience.

taking selfies when you feel awful. proof you existed even when the light wasn’t flattering :-)

sleep hygiene

sleep is so important for both your mental and physical health, i have struggled with sleeping issues for the last seven years, but here are the tips that have helped me.

non chemical sleep supplements it may be the placebo effect, but night time teas and tart cherries have genuinely helped me feel sleepier in the evenings

having a set sleep routine make sure no matter what you are in bed by a certain time and awake by a certain time, it will be difficult at first but your body will get used to it

making your bed a place just for sleeping as tempting as it can be to use your bed as a desk, or a shelf, it is far easier to keep it solely for sleep. that way whenever you are in bed you have the mindset of 'i am going to sleep now'

make sure your room is properly dark invest in blackout curtains, stick plasters over any electronic lights in your room, make sure it is as close to pitch black as possible

leave your phone in a different room this ensures that if you wake up in the middle of the night you won't be tempted to check it quickly, stay in bed and don't shine blue light in your face

make your bed every morning discourages you from getting back into bed and makes it nicer to get into in the evening

wear clean pyjamas as much as possible as tempting as it can be to crawl into bed in your underwear, or a sweaty t-shirt, having comfy and clean pyjamas feels so much nicer

do the same things every morning and evening having a set routine helps you get in the right mindset. my teeth are clean, i've washed my face, i've read ten pages, now i know it is time to go to sleep. the same for the morning, once i've made the bed and brushed my hair i don't go back to bed

fresh air and movement when you first wake up the common tip is sunlight in the mornings, i don't know about y'all but i live in scotland and in winter i am already at school when the sun rises, but going outside or just opening a window and feeling fresh cool air on your face is so helpful. also trying to do a bit of movement in the morning, even if its just stretch and touch your toes, it gets your blood moving and makes you feel more awake

the unsent project

i like to browse the unsent projects messages, and make myself feel sad over all the lost love in the world

i search up my name over and over, obsessively

i search up your name over and over, obsessively

they say we reflect the love we are shown

and maybe there is something in that, because when i look up your name there are hundreds of messages

and when i look up mine

there are two

i sent some of the messages to you

and when i scroll through every dark green one catches my eye

and the really pathetic thing is that i don't remember which ones i sent

maybe what we had wasn't so special if i am mistaking others messages for mine

i dont know

but i do know that you probably never search for my name

and you have certainly never sent me a message

“You shouldn’t self-ID as ADHD/autistic, you’re turning a very real mental condition into a trend” Ok then stop saying delulu. Stop speculating on which cluster C personality disorder the criminals you hear about on the news have. Stop saying “schizoposting” and “acoustic” and “is it restarted?” Stop using “psycopath” and “sociopath” as catch-all ways of calling someone a bad person. Stop saying “the intrusive thoughts won” when you bleach your hair and then turn your nose up at people who suffer from very real, very scary urges of physical/sexual violence. Stop saying “I’m so OCD” as a way of calling yourself neat. Stop treating BPD/ASPD/Bipolar as inherently abusive. Stop saying “OP I am living in your walls” without tagging for unreality. Stop diagnosing complete strangers you’ve never met on r/AITA with NPD.

You first. If you don’t want our disabilities to be treated like trends then stop belittling and minimising them. I’ll NEVER judge a person for trying find labels for their symptoms when an apathetic, racist, sexist, ableist healthcare system refuses to. But I will absolutely judge a hypocrite. Which a lot of you are

obsessed and horrified with the romanticisation of the secret history. why am i seeing 'dark academia aesthetic' edits with the audiobook opening playing over the top, why am i reading posts about what it would be like to date henry winter (he would not date you, he would not socialise with people outside of the greek class), why are you guys talking about how fun it would be to go to a college like theirs and join a cult class like theirs. youu people are missing the point of the story!! morbid longing for the picturesque!!! you guys misunderstood the book!!!!

you don't win any prizes for doing things the hard way.

tw: mentions of ableist thoughts, mentions of self harm

I have been resistant to accepting the extra accommodations and help that I am eligible for, because i was really scared of being seen as stupid. i was forcing myself to use unhealthy coping mechanisms to get the stuff done, and it didn't always work, but i felt somehow superior to others struggling with the same issues because i was taking the maximum amount of subjects, and refusing extra time and extensions.

i thought that by waking up at 4am to get my work finished i was somehow better than other people.

i got to a really bad place where i was struggling so much to concentrate that i would deliberately hurt myself before assignments or exams. so whenever i got distracted or tired i would never be able to ignore the pain or discomfort i was in, and that would remind me that i was supposed to be working.

this was, obviously, wildly unhealthy.

anyway, this year i was given extra time in my exams and assignments for an unrelated issue, and oh my god it was so good. even when i was worried about the exams i was never stressed about time. i came out of my rmps exam without feeling like i was going to throw up for the first time ever! i finished my biology assignment in record time because i wasn't paralysed by stress and indecision.

when i go back to school next week i am going to talk to my teachers and advisors about accepting the extra help i am eligible for, because i've realised that i don't win any prizes for finding it harder than others and persevering despite it. everyones grade transcripts just say what grades they acheived, it doesn't say how they felt or what extra help they required.

accept the help you need. you're suffering does not make you superior.

02/06/25

posting this to promise to myself that I will actually get something done today

☑ tune cello

☑ finish job application for local bookshop

☑ print off emails about work experience

☑ attend both work experience events today

☑ minimum 40 minutes music practice

☑ try make sure i have to to eat lunch

☑ sort out some files from the stuff i won't need next year

I love you for your post about the “I’m just a girl” phenomenon - my eyes cannot roll far back enough into my skull when I hear someone say it in earnest

thank you! i'm so glad people agree with me on this! whenever i've brought it up to people i hear saying this they just argue thats its not that deep, but i think it is that deep!

i just wanted to reblog this to clear some stuff up, because a few radfems have reblogged this with their own thoughts.

i was 100% including trans people in this, i meant to write a paragraph on them but it slipped my mind.

but yeah i have heard stories of trans men in academia who got treated better after transitioning, and trans women who got treated worse.

i don't rlly know how to phrase this i just wanted to make the point that this blog is not a safe space for trans-exclusive feminism, i beleive trans women and women and trans men are men.

btw if you say 'i'm just a girl' you are contributing to the negative misogynistic stereotype that women are silly and ditzy and lesser than men. if you say 'girl math' you are contributing to the negative misogynistic stereotypes that girls are not good at maths. if you say 'pink jobs' or 'pink chores' to describe washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and cooking, you are contributing to the negative misogynistic stereotype that women belong at home or in the kitchen.

i personally am a humanities/social sciences student. frankly sciences and maths baffle me. but i love my female friends in architecture, engineering, medicine, maths, physics, and coding. i think they are so smart and cool!

please do not start contributing to the rise of 'humanities are for girls, sciences are for boys' this is bullshit!

also it should not, and quite frankly cannot, be separated from the rise of the arts being seen as 'useless' or 'mickey mouse' degrees. they are defunding the arts! be angry! they are saying that this what women should be studying and then they are making it harder to chose to study it! they are trying to remove women from academia!

also shout out to men in humanities, y'all are important to!

TLDR: women in stem rock, they are defunding the arts in an attempt to remove women from academia, your harmless jokes spawned from tiktok trends actively contribute to negative misogynistic stereotypes

𝔠𝔯𝔞𝔳𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔬𝔠𝔱𝔬𝔟𝔢𝔯

What prompts you to write poetry?

honestly i don't really have a good answer for this. i'm not even sure what i write qualifies as poetry, it's most just my ramblings to myself. i just think of lines or concepts i want to write and then write it. poetry isn't something we get asked to write in our english classes, so i don't write very much. but every now and again i think of a line and then the rest of the poem just kind of writes itself? in my head?

btw if you say 'i'm just a girl' you are contributing to the negative misogynistic stereotype that women are silly and ditzy and lesser than men. if you say 'girl math' you are contributing to the negative misogynistic stereotypes that girls are not good at maths. if you say 'pink jobs' or 'pink chores' to describe washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and cooking, you are contributing to the negative misogynistic stereotype that women belong at home or in the kitchen.

i personally am a humanities/social sciences student. frankly sciences and maths baffle me. but i love my female friends in architecture, engineering, medicine, maths, physics, and coding. i think they are so smart and cool!

please do not start contributing to the rise of 'humanities are for girls, sciences are for boys' this is bullshit!

also it should not, and quite frankly cannot, be separated from the rise of the arts being seen as 'useless' or 'mickey mouse' degrees. they are defunding the arts! be angry! they are saying that this what women should be studying and then they are making it harder to chose to study it! they are trying to remove women from academia!

also shout out to men in humanities, y'all are important to!

TLDR: women in stem rock, they are defunding the arts in an attempt to remove women from academia, your harmless jokes spawned from tiktok trends actively contribute to negative misogynistic stereotypes

i bring a sort of...locked out... vibe to the study sesh that the haters (my very clever bsf who is going to study medicine and needs straight a's) hate

is anyone on here studying in the scottish system rn? i think i might be in the position where i finish this year with only 3 a's in my highers, because i have really struggled with history and bio, and these grades are lower than what i need. I'm v young for my school year on account of moving from london to scotland, so i was thinking of doing a year of articulation at a local college after S6 to do some resits. does anyone have any experience with this or tips/advice?

why I don't use AI for school work, and I don't think you should either

I have been staunchly against using AI for as long as ChatGPT has been a regularly used tool, not necessarily for moral reasons but for arrogant ones. I firmly beleive that I can write a better essay then a malfunctioning robot. My teacher used it to generate photos of scrabble tiles for a wall display, and despite the prompt spelling the words exactly correctly, ChatGPT spelt them wrong. Why would you want to trust a clearly flawed machine with your grades? However recently the sheer amount of people I see at school using AI and supporting the use of AI is so horrifying to me I felt it was something I needed to talk about

Using ChatGPT prevents you from learning properly. Doing things quickly does not equate to doing them well. I understand how difficult it can be to schedule and make time for everything, but using ChatGPT is just like getting someone else to do your work for you. You will not learn! (Most) teachers are not setting difficult homework for the sole purpose of making things hard for you, they set the work to help you learn and to grow resilience.

People are using it for completely stupid tasks, that they could perform far easier without it. For our English Portfolio Essays the SQA requires us to have a certain amount of sources and so many people asked ChatGPT to find them articles. It was ridiculous and slightly horrifying. Have we lost the ability to simply look things up for ourselves? Or to, god forbid, read a real book? Do not use ChatGPT for tasks that could be performed to a higher level if you simply did them yourself! My mother has a friend who marks Advanced Higher Biology Assignments for the SQA, she recently marked one that had 30 references, none of which were right! ChatGPT is not a good tool!

Yes it can save time, but what would you do with the extra time? and surely there are other ways of saving that time. Don't use it to help format emails, there are human made email templates available online, don't use it to help find quotes, you can just search them up yourself on a normal search engine, whatever ChatGPT does for you, there will be an honest hardworking person willing and able to do for you, please go to them instead. If ChatGPT saves you fifteen minutes a day is that really worth it? and if it saves more time then what do you do with that extra time? scroll tiktok? watch netflix? you are not saving time you are wasting your life!

was it casual when you shoved him off the cliff and then stood over his corpse watching the warmth and light slowly fade from his familiar blue eyes was it casual when his father said you made his son the happiest he'd ever seen his baby boy was it casual when his parents gave you the honor of being the pallbearer when you stood amongst his brothers and carried the corpse you'd made to the hollowed ground was it casual when you were so lost in your own mind standing above his grave that you smeared the dirt of his grave across your chest (you killed him. it doesn't mean you didn't love him.)

it is v important to me that y'all know that Persephone/Proserpina did not go willingly with Hades/Pluto. yeah i love a good greek mythology retelling as much as the next person. i go crazy for those poems about how Icarus might have enjoyed flying and falling, I love reinterpretations of classic stories, please talk to me about your love for Prometheus and how you think his story is still incredibly relevant today.

but there is no actual greek or roman telling of Persephone/Proserpina's story that involves her going to the underworld through her own choice. In all the original stories she is a young girl kidnapped by a man obsessed with her beauty and tricked into staying with him for part of the year.

quality over quantity

there's a story my dad always tells me about a man who is trying to cut a huge tree down. and he has been at it for hours, his arms are aching, hes exhausted, but the tree is slowly but surely being cut down. the problem is that he has been going for so long that his axe is really blunt. so another guy comes up to him and asks him why he is trying to work with a blunted axe, pointing out that it is so much easier to take a quick break to sharpen your axe and then start work again. but the man refuses, saying that he is being productive at the moment, and he cannot possibly waste time sharpening the axe because he has other tasks to get onto.

if he sharpened the axe the tree would come down faster, and he would have time for the other things he wants to do.

it is far better to take a 30 minute break, take time to jog around the block, make a cup of tea, eat a quick snack, than to try and solidly work for hours and hours.

yes technically you spent more time working, but you probably would have gotten more stuff done if you took a break and refreshed your brain.

sharpen your axe!!

babe your suffering is not noble. your self destructive habits do not make you cool. your self loathing does not make you fun to be around. go for a walk. drink some water. wash your hair. i promise you can be happy and loved.

studywithelle pinpost

I am 16 and i am in S5 in Scotland

This year I studied Highers in English, Biology, History, Latin and RMPS (religious moral and philosophical studies)

Next year I will be taking Advanced Higher English, RMPS and Modern studies, and a Higher in Classics

I hope to study English at Oxford, and then do a law conversion degree

I play cello (taking grade 5 exam in a few weeks), and piano at a grade 2/3 level. my sports are orienteering, ski-racing, tennis, and badminton. member of law, politics, debating, and newspaper societies at school.

would love moots!

one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become