Only Fragments | Love Letters to the Tar Pit
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onlyfragments.bsky.social
Only Fragments | Love Letters to the Tar Pit
@onlyfragments.bsky.social
66 followers 55 following 26 posts
Elyssa Tappero: agender queer ace who writes about mental illness, queerness, gods, witchcraft, death, disasters, and murder queers. Main account is DisasterQueer.bsky.social. She/they.
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onlyfragments.bsky.social
🕯️Dua Bast, Lady of the East, of the Flame, and of the Truth!🕯️

#art #pagan #WitchSky #religion #mythology #history #polytheist
A color digital drawing of a seated stone statue of the Egyptian cat goddess Bast wearing a red dress and gold jewelry. On a blue platform beneath the statue are offerings to the goddess, including lit incense, lit candles, fresh baked bread, jars, flowers, cat statues, jewelry, and ankhs. The statue's lap and raised arm are also covered in beaded necklace offerings.
January 2, 2024 at 3:13 AM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
"Chronic(le)"

I lose track, honestly. Maybe this pain is new but maybe it started five years ago, no wait, has it been seven already? Maybe I should be concerned but maybe it’s too late to do... (cont)

#prose #health #ChronicPain #MentalHealth #WritingCommunity #nonfiction #illness #disability
I lose track, honestly. Maybe this pain is new but maybe it started five years ago, no wait, has it been seven already? Maybe I should be concerned but maybe it’s too late to do anything about it anyway or maybe my doctor will just give me yet another new med to add to my overflowing pill container. I just lose track, you know, between the migraines and the stomach cramps and the back pain and the ever present aching in my fingers, in my arms, it all begins to flow together in time and space. It’s like a symphony but I’m not really good at musical stuff, right, I can’t pick individual instruments out of all that blended sound, so how would I know if a new one was added or someone was playing off-key? How am I supposed to know that this sharp, piercing stomach pain is different from the sharp, clenching stomach pain or the sharp, hot stomach pain or the lingering, aching stomach pain? When am I supposed to be concerned: the first time? the second? after a week or a month or six months
December 27, 2023 at 6:46 PM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
We come once more to the longest night. Oh, how you have feared the annual return of this night since the dawn of humanity’s existence, tens of thousands of years spent counting down the days from the bright celebrations of the summer solstice to the coldest... (cont)

#WitchSky #WritingCommunity
We come once more to the longest night. Oh, how you have feared the annual return of this night since the dawn of humanity’s existence, tens of thousands of years spent counting down the days from the bright celebrations of the summer solstice to the coldest, darkest night that seems to last an eternity. Each time you wondered, will the sun rise again or has it died forever? Will the light return and save us from the darkness, or is this the end of everything? You could never be sure and so you sought to harness the light and wield it against the darkness, to overthrow the dominion of the longest night once and for all. All these thousands of years later you pretend success, feigning smiles and confidence during the holiday season, but deep down you sense the futility of the exercise. Nothing you do can hold the darkness at bay forever. The shivering individual can light a fire and feed it fuel through the night to stave off the darkness, but he cannot destroy it. The religions of the world can repudiate the darkness as evil from their pulpits, but they cannot destroy it. The empires of the world can build cities and monuments and electrified meccas that glow through the night against the darkness, but they cannot destroy it. Mankind as a species can irreparably alter the climate of the planet, can eliminate the very concept of winter as a season and usher in an era of endless, burning heat and drought, but he cannot touch the immutable night. Nothing can. Not even the sun. One day the sun itself will die for the last time, not just disappear for a night but collapse into itself like an abandoned lover, and then even the longest night will surrender to an eternal night from which no dawn can rise. Then one by one all the other lights in the vastness will flicker and wink out, and over the entire universe darkness will reign. So light your bonfires; sing your hymns; build your glittering cities. You can push back the darkness all you want but it remains just at the edge of your light’s reach, waiting to rush back in when the light fails even for a moment. And the light always fails.
December 21, 2023 at 4:20 PM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
Under hazy skies and a blood red sun, breathing in cancer ash and covid, I beg, Take me, someone, anyone! I scream, dare, plead, taunt, Come claim me, o queen of Elfame, come lure me away to Tír na nóg... (cont)

#prose #nature #disasters #mythology #depression #WritingCommunity #WitchSky
Under hazy skies and a blood red sun, breathing in cancer ash and covid, I beg, Take me, someone, anyone! I scream, dare, plead, taunt, Come claim me, o queen of Elfame, come lure me away to Tír na nóg; come spirits fair or foul and kidnap me to Faerie, to Avalon, to anywhere other than this dying world! I hunt ceaselessly for fairy rings, for corpse roads and will-o-wisps, but we have burned the forests, we have turned the soil to dust, and all the old roads closed to us long ago. Take me, someone, anyone, I am ready to leave! I pray, knowing it useless, knowing no one listens at the threshold. Yet still I offer, with a laugh like a scream like a sob, I would surrender ten thousand years of my life in alien Tír na nóg’s unchanging twilight, and all I once loved dead and gone, than spend one more day in this hellish land!
December 18, 2023 at 6:47 AM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
Is the divine really just one entity wearing many masks, a thing of endless faces and facets yet only one voice, only one mind? Given the breadth of human experiences, I doubt it. I think the divine is like water... (cont)

#prose #nonfiction #faith #pagan #spirituality #WitchSky #WritingCommunity
Is the divine really just one entity wearing many masks, a thing of endless faces and facets yet only one voice, only one mind? Given the breadth of human experiences, I doubt it. I think the divine is like water. Every body of water on the planet, be it ocean, lake, or river, hot spring or glacier, is made of the same essential elements. In this way, they are all one – and indeed have shared these same molecules between themselves for millennia, a network connected across time and space. Yet every body of water is also its own entity, an individual shaped by its unique history, location, and any number of external forces. No one who has stood on the cold banks of the Columbia River would ever claim it to be the same creature as the Nile, or the Pacific Ocean like the Atlantic. The pond in the backyard of your childhood home is nothing like stormy Lake Erie, nor Loch Ness like an over-chlorinated hotel pool. Each body of water, no matter how large or small, wild or still, has a presence. A personality and history. You become familiar with one’s spirit in time, and once you are you know the water itself is just the material from which each is built. If water is the stuff of divinity, then the places that water gathers in pools and streams and ice caps, valleys and caves and craters – that is the divine. Those are the gods, spirits, angels, forces, call them whatever you like. All connected, all of the same basic essence, but all undeniably unique.
December 11, 2023 at 9:11 PM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
I am she who leads the Rite and Raide,
Queen Consort of the Fallen,
shieldmaiden of the warrior dead!

Rise up, o weary ones,
rise up, o woeful ones! ... (cont)

#poetry #dreams #pagan #satan #spirituality #WitchSky #WritingCommunity
I am she who leads the Rite and Raide, Queen Consort of the Fallen, shieldmaiden of the warrior dead! Rise up, o weary ones, rise up, o woeful ones! There is no heaven above as long as our dead are trapped below; break open the gates of Hell, tear down the doors, shatter the chains, free the dead imprisoned within! Rise up, o furious ones, rise up, o frightful ones!
December 11, 2023 at 8:43 PM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
What is left to us? You are gods of death and desire in a time when religion condemns desire as ego shackles and death as the eternal prison. You are ancient, eldritch entities in a time when humanity fears and disdains... (cont)

#prose #pagan #spirituality #faith #WitchSky #WritingCommunity
What is left to us? You are gods of death and desire in a time when religion condemns desire as ego shackles and death as the eternal prison. You are ancient, eldritch entities in a time when humanity fears and disdains the darkness of the old ways, choosing instead to cleave to a path of relentless light. And I am the mouthpiece of your wrath and sorrow in a time when mass media has made mountaintop oracles not only obsolete but unwanted, my words drowned beneath a deluge of sanitized live-laugh-love meditations and Zoom peace prayer circles. Whom among the masses remains willing to follow a darker road that promises neither salvation nor transcendence? Who still longs for a cultus that flows thick in the veins and tastes of ashes, that demands a dreadful and unwavering loyalty? This scripture is not for the faint of heart. These monsters are not metaphors. This oracle predicts only tragedy. As mankind turns away from the dark, the unknown, and the uncomfortable, what is left to us?
December 4, 2023 at 6:15 AM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
Had to make a mandala for school, though they didn't really explain what a mandala was, so I drew this in the hopes I wasn't being too culturally appropriative.

#DigitalArt #nature #WitchSky #autumn #CuteArt
A digital color drawing of concentric circles of things found in nature. The outer circle is made of different colored stones and crystals. The next circle is made of autumn leaves. The third circle is acorns. The center is a sunflower.
November 28, 2023 at 6:49 PM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
My first piece of blackout poetry. I used an email I received from my Democratic congressman after emailing him to say I wouldn't vote for him again if he continued to support the Israeli genocide in Palestine. My poem is an attempt to unveil the email's true meaning. #WritingCommunity #news
A piece of blackout poetry. The white isolated text reads I appreciate the recent terrorist attacks in Israel. I am committed to continue pushing for crimes against humanity in accordance with our shared democratic values. A commitment to terror is a commitment to Israel and America. I agree with the president. Efforts must be made to protect funding for ongoing war.
November 21, 2023 at 10:22 PM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
What need have the gods for curses in this online age of digital doomsayers? These days no one can hear lone Cassandra's cautions through the cacophony of self-proclaimed prophets...(cont)

#mythology #prose #nonfiction #SocialMedia #WritingCommunity #WitchSky #MentalHealth
What need have the gods for curses in this online age of digital doomsayers? These days no one can hear lone Cassandra's cautions through the cacophony of self-proclaimed prophets, nor do they care to pay attention to such a nobody amidst the rise and fall of influencer empires. After all, the masses will never heed such an inconvenient oracle no matter her accuracy or precision; analytics show the truth just does not trend well, even if you wrap it in rhyme and rhythm. So what need have the gods for curses anymore when humanity went and invented a more punishing algorithm all on our own?
November 13, 2023 at 2:46 PM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
Every day
the sound of the chainsaws creeps a little closer.
Every night
ancestors speak urgent riddles in my dreams... (cont)

#poetry #environment #ecology #dreams #ancestors #pagan #deforestation #WitchSky #WritingCommunity #nonfiction
Every day the sound of the chainsaws creeps a little closer. Every night ancestors speak urgent riddles in my dreams. Every morning I wake wondering how long until I can no longer protect the land on which I live how long until the chainsaws are at my door how long until spring is finally silenced. I am sorry, Ms. Carson; you told me something of great importance but my dream self failed to understand the riddle and my waking self failed to remember the words and every day the chainsaws creep a little closer.
November 10, 2023 at 6:27 PM
onlyfragments.bsky.social
Grief Keeper, the Oracle proclaims me, and the title strikes true, hits center and buries deep. See all the dead I carry with me, everywhere I go? In my bones and blood, my breath and saliva... (cont)

#writing #prose #pagan #death #loss #WitchSky #WritingCommunity
Grief Keeper, the Oracle proclaims me, and the title strikes true, hits center and buries deep. See all the dead I carry with me, everywhere I go? In my bones and blood, my breath and saliva. Under my nails, beneath my bed, stuffed in the bottom of the closet. Tossed back like bitter medicine and swallowed greedily like spoonfuls of honey. I am saturated by death; I am fueled by death; I am governed and driven and renewed by death. As Scribe I bear witness to the stories of the dead, record and retell them for preservation, and what is this service if not the carrying and keeping of grief? So name me Grief Keeper and I will stand solid beneath the title. This I can do. This I can be. Grief Keeper, the Oracle proclaims me, for I am infused body and soul.
November 8, 2023 at 8:34 PM