THE 5LIGHTS PROJECT

Muscles Better and Nerves More

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I think, No wonder you didn’t, couldn’t love me.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I think, Look who I have become.

Sometimes I look in the mirror and I take off all of my clothes and I turn around and I slide my arms up the wall and stick my ass out just so, just enough, just the way you taught me. I’m already wet by the time I look over my shoulder and into the mirror and crane my neck to see what you see.

What you would see.

I’m sure I don’t always look like this, perfect like this, done up like this; I’m sure my cheeks are redder, my hair tangled, my eyes more desperate and unthinking, my thighs— oh my thighs, and the way I try to cover them when you’re watching, that moment when we’re entangled that I dismiss but is always there. I wash it away here. I brush it off now, in the quiet of my room, with the lights on and the blinds open; my eyes open and my legs open and it’s dark out and you are every man that walks by.

I hold them up and push them together and let them go, again and again and the only conclusion I can come to is that I’m not sure my breasts were my breasts before you looked at them. Before you put an errant hand down the side of my v-neck and held them, one after another, without looking. Before you looked. Before you lifted me up closer to you and I unhooked my bra before you could and, “Aw, that’s the best part,”you said and I laughed and let you take it off and then let you remember, let you be reminded, that the unhooking, well, that was never really the important part. Other men, too, my love, other men before you and my own two hands, but my breasts were not breasts before you took each one into your mouth and made me wonder, still sucking, wetly now, deliberately now, how long this could go on. How long before you touch me, before I come undone beneath the lack of you? And on it went with your face buried in my chest there and my eyes and my fists and my toes all waiting, all wanting, and you, nearly forgetting yourself, but merciful at last, your hand up my skirt now, and around my panty hose, and into my pussy now. And then you kissed me more and I wondered how you knew exactly what I wanted when I wanted it and then you gave it to me and wet, wet, wet, I no longer wondered anything at all.

And what I’m trying to tell you is, that sometimes, now, alone in my room late at night with my lights on, I stand at the mirror and I pull off my shirt I stare at my tits and I pretend I am you, looking, maybe, for the first time.

by Meaghan O’ Connell

WE'RE BACK!!! (next week)

Next week Month 2 of 5Lights kicks off.

Boy, that sentence was slightly less than explosive. Hm.  How bout:

MONDAY MONDAY MONDAY!!!!! WE’RE BACK, Y’ALL, GONNA RUN THIS WEBSITE RIGHT DOWN YOUR THROAT WITH A STEAMROLLER OF AWESOME!!!

BE THERE, UNLESS YOU’RE IN JAIL, AND IF YOU ARE, BREAK OUT!!!!!

Yeah, that’s better.

Monday we’ll be starting up with a whole new crew of artists, all geared up and ready to knock your socks off.

{We would humbly request you put on socks, that we make knock them off}

The Crew of Month 2 (or, as Katie West calls them, Team Voltron, because…well…she’s nuts, BUT ADORABLE):

• Chad Michael Ward (photography)
• Star St. Germain (music)
• Laura Taylor (video)
• Ray Fawkes (illustration)
• Meaghan O’ Connell (writing)

If you know the names, you know what you’re in for, and you’re already thinking about what to do with your socks after they’ve been knocked off.

If you don’t know the names, THAT’S WHY WE HYPERLINKED ‘EM.  We’re all in this together, see.

Y’all have yourselves a good weekend, fireworks and barbeques or laughing at the crazy folk in that weird country with the cowboys and the guns.

Be seeing you.

P.S. reblog this, if you please, let your friends, lovers, family, enemies, that kid you hate at the market, let ‘em all know.  Let ‘em know we’re coming. And HELL’S COMING WITH US.

HELL’S.

COMING.

WITH US.

The Story I Would Never Tell

This is the story I told myself I would never tell, no matter what. You’re so young, so very young and sweet and trusting. You cry at the thought of us not spending our lives together. You’re searching for a home because you don’t feel like you have one, not that house on the hill and not that place across the tracks. And I’m stopping by your work at night, after you close the store, and the streets are wet under the lights and the parking lot is dark but we’re together, alone, for just one moment.

And there’s the part where I follow you home in that blizzard, and your mom thinks maybe I’m an okay guy because I just want you to be safe. I’m watching the snow fall thick across my windshield but as long as I can see you, you’ll be okay. And I’ll be okay. Now it’s summer and we’re going to spend every day together, and we do, me chasing you through the park, you reading my silly poetry out loud, us talking in my folks’ sun-filled living room until you’re asleep on the couch. Now I’m buying those flowers from that stand on State Street, those Shasta daisies named for you. We meet on a hill in the park that day, and I can see you under the trees like a little princess, waiting for me to appear on that little stone pathway where princes might walk.

Now we’re listening to our song, the one where you fix me and I’m the light that guides you home. And we’re blind with love, you say, and people call us silly and young and trouble, and cute and meant-for-each-other too. Now you’re giving back those letters, the ones I wrote over weeks turned months, penned in medium black ink. These are for you, you say. Give them back to me when you mean it. Hopelessly devoted, they say. But never doubt, they say. I still have them.

Now you’re in Europe, just for a few months. We talk over the phone late into the American night and Parisian morning. I love you, you say, in the snow, under the moonlight, outside your brother-in-lawís house. I love you, you say, on a jittery camera, with the wind blowing outside, from France. I love you, you say, in the dark, over the phone, in the early morning hours. I love you.

Now you’re back, looking up at the winter sky with its wispy clouds, hands tucked into a dark peacoat, neck hugged warmly by a white wool scarf, cheeks flushed with cold, feet in bow flats. You havenít yet seen me seeing you, and I enjoy it for one more moment.

Now when I see you it’s like seeing ghosts, outside my window in your wedding dress, asleep in the passenger’s seat while I drive, waiting under the trees of every park with a stone pathway. This is the story I told myself I would never tell, no matter what.

By Sam

There Have Been Some Complications

This is a new thing, see? And new things sometimes do not go/happen/operate/act the way we want them.

You were expecting to see a video here, today.  Yep.

And yet, there is no video.

You’re surprised, maybe a little confused, your brain is reading this text, very aware of the fact that it is, in fact, text, and not video.

This is not a mistake.

Video didn’t happen this week.  Life intruded, as it does, and because this thing is new, we (and by we I mean us, us what runs this here new thing) didn’t quite have any contigency in place for what would happen if, indeed, one of our things didn’t happen.

There were attempts to make a substitute thing for this missing thing, but the thing of it is, yeah, didn’t work out.

{insert Home Alone face here}

We apologize, we’re still working the kinks out of our project, and learning a bunch about running a project along the way.

Sufficed to say, we’re almost positive we’ve come up with ways to prevent an occurance such as this from coming up again.

But for this week, today, specifically, we’ll take this moment to, instead of entertaining with a video, thank each and every one of you for following this project, showing some interest, telling others, letting us into your lives.  We are having loads of fun, and hope that is coming through in the work.

So, thank you.  And oops.  And hugs.

See you tomorrow.

Easy To Please King

This was the sun: a broken blood vessel on the arm of the horizon, red and orange. This was the sky: purple and gold and blue, clouds swollen like great bruises. This was the rain: the touch of soft fingertips, the sound of a distant crowd, the smell of damp newness.

This was the king: young and ashen and once handsome, tarnished scepter in one hand, hem of ragged cloak in the other, mud-mottled boots resting with him under a tree. This was his crown: long lost, the jewels stripped from it by his enemies, the gold burned from it by his friends. This was his horse Bravo: once white now gray, head held low to graze, hooves chipped and rough, tail wet and mussed by rain.

This was his castle: not one stone left upon another that was not thrown down, an open field charred with torches, the flags of heraldry flapping from spears in the dirt. This was his damsel: long lost, blue eyes and blushing cheeks and puckered lips, brightly brokenhearted, soft and feminine and delicate.  This was his knight: armor a curious rust color, sword broken at the hilt, shield with coat of arms struck through, heart stopped by an errant arrow, eyes closed by his king, his body stretched on the other side of the tree like a great granite monument to long dead heroes.

These were the stars: misaligned, no constellations to sail by, no signs to pray by, no bright light but the moon. And this was the moon: God’s faded thumbprint on a cobalt canvas, a half-closed eye afraid to look, a holy teardrop dropping, a silver dollar on black paper, a stepping stone in dark water.

This was today: a hill with a view, his brave horse Bravo, and a place to sit in the shade. He was pleased.

By Sam