Melissa Perri Smith's Blog

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe fireworks look like bombs, I say, and you saythat’s how they’re supposed to look. We won thiscountry with blood, with bombs, with limbs brokeninto toothpicks bright white, bone shattered smallenough to pick from ash.Wow, you say. Look at that one. Beautiful.It really doesn’t matter about the EpsteinFiles, I say. He’s a convincted rapist, and lookwhere he is now. Slaughter something beautifulenough, and we will...

I’m up waiting, and for what? Waiting to be wanted, I think. For me, that’s always how I’ve taken gratification out of life. It’s 12:34 a.m., Wednesday, 7/9. I’m waiting for you to want me. Want me. Please. Want me.

Want my writing. Want my voice. Want my body. Want my brain. Just want and want and want.

Selfish.

I want to say something. I like the look of a blank page. It makes me feel fuller. Like we share a secret, you and me.

Photo by Indieground Design from Unsplash.Text within this block will ...

Later tonight, you will lie in bed and think of me. Your lips will bury the syllables of my name beneath your tongue, a grave for all the ways we never knew each other. Think of it like this: Until we meet again, the memory of me will creep up your spine, ivy to the column of your casing, your home.

Tell me, do you like that thought? If you closed your eyes now, what would you see? Bones stripped of tendons? Fat-slick meat, marbled slabs beautified by slaughter? I manifest the morbid. What do I h...

To begin to describe choice is to stand along a fault line. I am that crack, a miracle of nature so unmade by man that language describes me as a disaster.

Today, I am sad. Poetry and humor aside, I am sad.

Today, I’m just going to write for a minute. No thoughts, just words, no tenderness for language, because too often it beats me into the ground, thankless.

Today, a client told me my writing was flat.

Last week, a piece I loved was rejected. Time and time and time and time and time—

Today, all I c...

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Ophelia by John Everett Millais, Oil on canvas, 1851-1852.

M: “You’re sure?”

Y: “No.”

M: “No?”

Y: “No.”

M: And you’re holding me how water holds bubbles, but I can’t say that to you, so I wrap my seaweed legs around your drowning waist, rock-ed pockets, and you don’t push away.

M: “I love you.”

Y: “I know.”

M: “You know?”

Y: “I know.”

M: You know, you know, you know, you know, you know

M: “Are you—”

Y: “No.”

M: “No?”

Y: “No.”

M: You’re not drowning, I realize, you’ve just always been submerged. I’m the one und...

When I was twenty-two, I started going to therapy. Call me enlightened (please, do), but I was having issues at work so I decided to do the rational thing and utilize the USAID-provided therapist.

Next thing I knew, instead of tackling my issues with confrontation and conflict management, she was asking about my relationship with my parents. Ah, the age-old conundrum of a childhood marked by fat shaming, alcoholism, and an emotionally abusive household (for legal reasons, this is a joke). I swear...

Daydream with me for a bit.

You’re walking down the street, any street really, but it’s the street near your childhood home, let’s say, or your apartment, or your favorite coffee shop, or where you work, or—

Cars plow close to the curb. Tires skim the pavement in a desperate reminder that we are bound to the earth by the thinnest of threads. If we are barely connected, it would barely hurt, right? You push that thought away because it’s a dangerous one.

But we’re daydreaming, so think about it anyw...

Don’t worry, I have my screen brightness lowered to the point where I can barely see the words I’m typing. Salacious nonsense, like ‘you look so pretty on your knees’ and ‘loosen your throat for me, sweetheart.’ You get it. We all fall for it, don’t we? I think sucking dick is hot until I’m actually doing it, but my characters aren’t dissuaded, no, not at all.

Dick-sucking preferences aside, it was at the moment when I was writing above salacious nonsense (see also: ‘If it’s too much, tap my leg’...

I’ve lost twenty pounds since October 2024. A crazy number if you think about it, especially because I didn’t notice.

Sure, my pants became looser. My shirts are too big. I can play tennis for an hour straight without breaking a sweat. But I look in the mirror and see the same woman, face swollen, flabby stomach, jiggly thighs. She isn’t beautiful. God, I fucking hate her.

We don’t need to get into the self-loathing bit. I could sit in that space for hours, could tell stories about days spent stan...