My body starts shaking. My fists clench, my teeth clench, my body as a whole clenches as if to absorb the mental shock. My palms are sweaty, I can feel my cheeks flush, and the feeling of apprehension soon follows. My stomach is sick, it turns and twists and I can feel a knot forming in my throat. My vision gets cloudy and the tunnel vision effect starts. Lost and rattled.
My bodies starts shaking. My fists clench, my teeth clench, my body as a whole clenches as if to absorb the mental shock. My palms are sweaty, I can feel my cheeks flush, and the feeling of apprehension soon follows. My stomach is sick, it turns and twists and I can feel a knot forming in my throat. My vision gets cloudy and the tunnel vision effect starts. Lost and rattled.
You rattle my soul. With every strike. With every overbearing comment. Every recoil when I’m near. Every time you feign sweet nothings. The mendacity in every word that flows across your lips. You’re a snake. A rattlesnake. With every slick, slimy, move you make.
Why is it so easy, considering I’ve accumulated 22 years of my own thoughts, experiences, loves, and self reflections, to be rattled by the disapproval of another?
bamgrimja
The memories rattle in my mind and the blood drips down the insides of my brain. I cannot think about anything but that day, that time of night and the way that my hands felt around her arms, as I pulled and ripped and broke apart the things that I knew the only things that I had known in my life, and the only things that kept me going. I felt her bones rattle against mine.
Caroline Josephine
Her chin rattled, in a way that babies could not understand. Simply, the rattle becomes her chin, became her face actually, in all the babies that watched her and that she watched. The leaves outside were frisky, staring down into the window and her gazing at the tiny sleeping baby that only moments ago, was playing with his favourite toy. Her face broke into a smile, and she was happy, chin no longer shaking with pity and sadness.
K
When I passed the woods I was afraid to see a snake that would rattle at me and go to suffocate me and later on eat me. So I hurried to the emergency stop.
Arneole
They’d rattle on about me, mostly with snarls and whispers. It’s not like they didn’t want me to hear it though, they’d do it purposely in front of me in a voice I can clearly hear. The voices were filled with added-on sarcasm and deliberate mockery. I could only ignore them, but I’m never immune to being insulted. No one can ever not care about it completely, it’s just that they learnt to let go and forgive, because no one’s there to save them but themselves.
You’d have to save yourself in your own ways, if no one’s reaching out their hands.
Zeoru
Rod took the time to look deeper into the death of his best friend’s son after about a year. He knew it was not an acciednt. Something was telling him to search for clues in his fish tank. He was right, there it was…the glue…hidden inside the filter. His rattle snake was dead too.
The rattle of the keys in the door signalled his arrival. All the house went quiet. We all froze. We always did. And waited. The door burst open and it was slammed shut. Then came the usual outpouring of expletives. Clara was closest to him this time and she took the brunt of his rage. She parachute-rolled across the front room carpet without uttering a sound. The acrid whiff of whisky and stale sweat hung heavy in the air. We dared not breathe. We dared not hope. It was going to be another bad and violent night.
I feel it rattle inside. The unkempt emotions moving around. Like a child’s toy, they keep me distracted. Everything that happens is heard through the din. The sounds of these things rattling inside.
Milana Jordan
When the rattlesnake chokes on the baby’s rattle, it gives its death rattle not from its throat, but from its rattle, and the rattle of its rattle does serve to tattle of the end that befell the snake by a rattle.
bones, jarring. feeling as though coldness will shred through me. up my spine and through my skin. one thing i don’t want is this. right now. i don’t need to feel shaken. my toes will melt into the ground as i tread towards you. my teeth my heart. rattling.
Alice.
There was a sound, somewhere downstairs. A knocking… No, rather a rattle. Someone or something rattled down there. But where exactly. There wasn’t anything able to rattle in the cellar.
I have never seen a rattlesnake. I ponder this. I have hiked the mountains with their brown bodies and the grass, dry as my eyes in wind, and I have not spotted a snake rattling its gift, like a baby to the earth.
Rattling my bones. Everything was. I couldn’t- can’t think straight anymore. I wonder if it’s possible to continue functioning like this. I feel like I’ve lost my grip on things a little. Letting things escalate too quickly. Letting things slide just barely out of the control of my hands. My bones. Ache.
Jed
THE RATTLE OF THE SNAKE IS A DANGEROUS SIGN. YOU ARE IN HER SIGHT, YOU DON’T HAVE TO FIGHT. LET IT BE, IT WILL NOT HARM YOU. SHE WILL MESMERIZE YOU. SHE WILL HUNT YOU AND SET YOU FREE. HER FIRE MIGHT CONSUME YOU BUT FROM THE ASHES NEW FLAMES WILL ARISE. YOU ARE IN HER MIND. YOU ARE IN HER BLOOD. YOU ALREADY ARE. THIS IS WHO YOU ARE.
Pablo
One harsh stare and my body is shaking, you’re walking forward now and I know what you’re going to say. My heart beats fast in my ears and my palms sweat and my brain goes fuzzy and then you’re right there, in front of me, cussing, yelling, and I feel your palms push into my shoulders, hard, and your words are like knives. I fall to the floor, lost, rattled.
Rattle
Rattle
Is all I heard and I knew Death was near.He was going to kill me.
Rattle
Rattle
Rattle
He was closer and it was going to be all over.
Rattle
Rattle
Rattle
Rattle
I shouldn’t have aborted the baby but I couldn’t let him be the father of my child.
Rattle
Rattle
RATTLE
RATTLE
RATTLE
He was incapable of loving anything without destroying it.
RATTLE
When he was right above her he stopped rattling the child toy and rattled her until her body lay limp…
It was cold and I was hungry but I needed to land this guy’s wallet before I could taste a carb. I was determined to drug him. Maybe knock a couple drinks back. He looks like he can stand to lose a couple hundred dollars. That was quite a high class bar Leslie got us into, nice enough to land me a patron who owns a condo overlooking the hills.
I’m the kind of person that will stick around for the company,
while everyone else slowly fades away to follow their dreams.
I’m the kind of of girl who doesn’t fall in love that easily, but when I do, it’s consuming. There isn’t a switch to turn it off.
I never used to understand those songs about time, but now I do. I get why you left, I get why you freaked out, so please come back soon.
Coral
“Stop thinking!”
I had to stay focused. The lights were switched off. My teacher sat in the far end of the stage.
She told me that I had to stop thinking while playing the piano.
The chains shook violently in the hard win, as the rain crashed against the window. I was afraid. I never liked the rain. Ever since my mother crashed on the slick highway that day. Pushed around like tissue paper. It worried me. Not for me; for her…
Alysha
thoughts so powerful they will rattle your brain. love so powerful it will rattle your soul. embrace the rattle of breath evading your body; ascending your spine. hallelujah to the one in our bones.
production and means of consumption
here we are, mass producing, with machines of the highest technology, shit of the worst quality. as much as we can. We kill a thousand snakes to fill one rattle. Nature has become our bitch. But in exchange, we manufacture our own hell. here, there is no need to search for idiocy and shallowness. it permeates the air. it is the blood of our culture. Narcissism is law, and kindness… is our only hope of redeeming mankind.
Garrett4
The rattling of the walls was apparent; even though this house was constructed more solidly than most of those in the area, it was still not free of the constraints that building with pine left them. They had all this stonework, so beautifully carved, and couldn’t use it on their own houses.
She shuddered and pulled the blankets over her shoulders, fitting her body to his, and she found warmth – but not quite enough.
Zoe
only you own
and rattle my bones
you turn me over and over
til i can’t control myself
(can i?)
(you) make me a liar
one big disaster
baby, you make my heart beat faster
(&iloveyou)
-matt nathanson
*some added context
She awoke to find she had the shiny, silver rattle clutched in her hand, as it rested quietly on her chest.
Dawn
The baby has one. The car does too. I think the baby has more fun. I also think that bones rattling at halloween are kind of fun too. Really takes not much to find fun in stuff that rattles. My piggy bank rattles, but only when there isn’t much in it.
They say that your life flashes right before your eyes before you die. And it’s true. I’m starting to see all the good times. The smiles, the laughs, with everyone I love. A gargantuan montage, leading back to me with my first rattle. It makes laying here, in pain, almost bearable.
I jingle the string of bells so gingerly tied to my wrist. Its ringing is stabbing my eardrums, though I know it’s a soft and frothy chime to them. I open and close my eyes, blinking rapidly, hoping to draw some attention – that yes, I’m here. Yes, I’m alive.
But I as I do these things, I slowly remember. My movements are not slick to them. They are not even recorded or recognized.
Because sometimes I forget I’m paralyzed.
The earbuds rattled in my head. The better to block her out with. I have other friends that stick around anyway, and I’m getting a band together at last. It’d still be nice if she ever poked her head back in, even if to just put a calmer ending to the raging tide. Alas, I shouldn’t dither on what is and should ever be.
I think a baby rattle is fun to play with. I remember making and shaking it around. It was fun. Have you ever played with a rattle. Not a snake, just a rattle? Bye
Mark Salzer
“Your name’s Sparrow?” he asked, sneering. She responded only with a glare, but he continued to his punchline: “Mind if I rattle your birdcage, Sparrow?”
I always know when he was near. I could hear the rattle of spare change in his pocket. Sometimes, if I was quick, this gave me just enough time to duck into a class room, or run up the nearest stairwell. But usually, his Chuck Taylor’s caught up with me, or I got caught in the dirty smell of the cancer-stick hanging out the side of his crooked smile, or his gravelly baritone voice coaxed me back. And then of course, it was all down hill from there, there was no avoiding that steep drop.
But sh*t, the rush was unbelievable, and in that moment, I could make myself forgot what happened when I would hit the f*cking ground.
The red pickup rattled down the potholed road, euphoric in its bumps and jostles as its tires slid in the mud. Grace bumped along in the back of the pickup, clutching her puppy, Joseph, to her small chest.
Elinor New
scales that grew in the thick unknown
of past fields is put down as delicate
as a page of ancient text
in a thin shed of snakeskin that is
a shroud shrining what was, has
and will emerged from the elapse;
as are we, a shedding of time in vast
past dark fields of space;
a memory of an earlier and
still growing, and both infant
and ancient, cosmos.
shake me, you told me you would once. will you rattle me? to my core, my core my seeds melt, meld into zig zag see saw puzzle pieces that need and need that match. come, piece me together again. with you.
Some nights, I have long staring contests with my ceiling that are not inspired by any sort of insomnia. My house isn’t terribly large–sound travels. So night after night I am assulted by the symphony of sounds escaping from my little sister’s room down the hall. Rattling mucoid coughs, feverish sounds of discomfort, wet retching. Trip after trip to the toilet.
So I lay and stare and worry.
If too many nights like this pass, I’m afraid there won’t be anything left of her.
My body starts shaking. My fists clench, my teeth clench, my body as a whole clenches as if to absorb the mental shock. My palms are sweaty, I can feel my cheeks flush, and the feeling of apprehension soon follows. My stomach is sick, it turns and twists and I can feel a knot forming in my throat. My vision gets cloudy and the tunnel vision effect starts. Lost and rattled.
My bodies starts shaking. My fists clench, my teeth clench, my body as a whole clenches as if to absorb the mental shock. My palms are sweaty, I can feel my cheeks flush, and the feeling of apprehension soon follows. My stomach is sick, it turns and twists and I can feel a knot forming in my throat. My vision gets cloudy and the tunnel vision effect starts. Lost and rattled.
You rattle my soul. With every strike. With every overbearing comment. Every recoil when I’m near. Every time you feign sweet nothings. The mendacity in every word that flows across your lips. You’re a snake. A rattlesnake. With every slick, slimy, move you make.
Why is it so easy, considering I’ve accumulated 22 years of my own thoughts, experiences, loves, and self reflections, to be rattled by the disapproval of another?
The memories rattle in my mind and the blood drips down the insides of my brain. I cannot think about anything but that day, that time of night and the way that my hands felt around her arms, as I pulled and ripped and broke apart the things that I knew the only things that I had known in my life, and the only things that kept me going. I felt her bones rattle against mine.
Her chin rattled, in a way that babies could not understand. Simply, the rattle becomes her chin, became her face actually, in all the babies that watched her and that she watched. The leaves outside were frisky, staring down into the window and her gazing at the tiny sleeping baby that only moments ago, was playing with his favourite toy. Her face broke into a smile, and she was happy, chin no longer shaking with pity and sadness.
When I passed the woods I was afraid to see a snake that would rattle at me and go to suffocate me and later on eat me. So I hurried to the emergency stop.
They’d rattle on about me, mostly with snarls and whispers. It’s not like they didn’t want me to hear it though, they’d do it purposely in front of me in a voice I can clearly hear. The voices were filled with added-on sarcasm and deliberate mockery. I could only ignore them, but I’m never immune to being insulted. No one can ever not care about it completely, it’s just that they learnt to let go and forgive, because no one’s there to save them but themselves.
You’d have to save yourself in your own ways, if no one’s reaching out their hands.
Rod took the time to look deeper into the death of his best friend’s son after about a year. He knew it was not an acciednt. Something was telling him to search for clues in his fish tank. He was right, there it was…the glue…hidden inside the filter. His rattle snake was dead too.
The rattle of the keys in the door signalled his arrival. All the house went quiet. We all froze. We always did. And waited. The door burst open and it was slammed shut. Then came the usual outpouring of expletives. Clara was closest to him this time and she took the brunt of his rage. She parachute-rolled across the front room carpet without uttering a sound. The acrid whiff of whisky and stale sweat hung heavy in the air. We dared not breathe. We dared not hope. It was going to be another bad and violent night.
I feel it rattle inside. The unkempt emotions moving around. Like a child’s toy, they keep me distracted. Everything that happens is heard through the din. The sounds of these things rattling inside.
When the rattlesnake chokes on the baby’s rattle, it gives its death rattle not from its throat, but from its rattle, and the rattle of its rattle does serve to tattle of the end that befell the snake by a rattle.
bones, jarring. feeling as though coldness will shred through me. up my spine and through my skin. one thing i don’t want is this. right now. i don’t need to feel shaken. my toes will melt into the ground as i tread towards you. my teeth my heart. rattling.
There was a sound, somewhere downstairs. A knocking… No, rather a rattle. Someone or something rattled down there. But where exactly. There wasn’t anything able to rattle in the cellar.
I have never seen a rattlesnake. I ponder this. I have hiked the mountains with their brown bodies and the grass, dry as my eyes in wind, and I have not spotted a snake rattling its gift, like a baby to the earth.
Rattling my bones. Everything was. I couldn’t- can’t think straight anymore. I wonder if it’s possible to continue functioning like this. I feel like I’ve lost my grip on things a little. Letting things escalate too quickly. Letting things slide just barely out of the control of my hands. My bones. Ache.
THE RATTLE OF THE SNAKE IS A DANGEROUS SIGN. YOU ARE IN HER SIGHT, YOU DON’T HAVE TO FIGHT. LET IT BE, IT WILL NOT HARM YOU. SHE WILL MESMERIZE YOU. SHE WILL HUNT YOU AND SET YOU FREE. HER FIRE MIGHT CONSUME YOU BUT FROM THE ASHES NEW FLAMES WILL ARISE. YOU ARE IN HER MIND. YOU ARE IN HER BLOOD. YOU ALREADY ARE. THIS IS WHO YOU ARE.
One harsh stare and my body is shaking, you’re walking forward now and I know what you’re going to say. My heart beats fast in my ears and my palms sweat and my brain goes fuzzy and then you’re right there, in front of me, cussing, yelling, and I feel your palms push into my shoulders, hard, and your words are like knives. I fall to the floor, lost, rattled.
Rattle
Rattle
Is all I heard and I knew Death was near.He was going to kill me.
Rattle
Rattle
Rattle
He was closer and it was going to be all over.
Rattle
Rattle
Rattle
Rattle
I shouldn’t have aborted the baby but I couldn’t let him be the father of my child.
Rattle
Rattle
RATTLE
RATTLE
RATTLE
He was incapable of loving anything without destroying it.
RATTLE
When he was right above her he stopped rattling the child toy and rattled her until her body lay limp…
It was cold and I was hungry but I needed to land this guy’s wallet before I could taste a carb. I was determined to drug him. Maybe knock a couple drinks back. He looks like he can stand to lose a couple hundred dollars. That was quite a high class bar Leslie got us into, nice enough to land me a patron who owns a condo overlooking the hills.
I’m the kind of person that will stick around for the company,
while everyone else slowly fades away to follow their dreams.
I’m the kind of of girl who doesn’t fall in love that easily, but when I do, it’s consuming. There isn’t a switch to turn it off.
I never used to understand those songs about time, but now I do. I get why you left, I get why you freaked out, so please come back soon.
“Stop thinking!”
I had to stay focused. The lights were switched off. My teacher sat in the far end of the stage.
She told me that I had to stop thinking while playing the piano.
She didn’t know how hard it was to do that.
The chains shook violently in the hard win, as the rain crashed against the window. I was afraid. I never liked the rain. Ever since my mother crashed on the slick highway that day. Pushed around like tissue paper. It worried me. Not for me; for her…
thoughts so powerful they will rattle your brain. love so powerful it will rattle your soul. embrace the rattle of breath evading your body; ascending your spine. hallelujah to the one in our bones.
production and means of consumption
here we are, mass producing, with machines of the highest technology, shit of the worst quality. as much as we can. We kill a thousand snakes to fill one rattle. Nature has become our bitch. But in exchange, we manufacture our own hell. here, there is no need to search for idiocy and shallowness. it permeates the air. it is the blood of our culture. Narcissism is law, and kindness… is our only hope of redeeming mankind.
The rattling of the walls was apparent; even though this house was constructed more solidly than most of those in the area, it was still not free of the constraints that building with pine left them. They had all this stonework, so beautifully carved, and couldn’t use it on their own houses.
She shuddered and pulled the blankets over her shoulders, fitting her body to his, and she found warmth – but not quite enough.
only you own
and rattle my bones
you turn me over and over
til i can’t control myself
(can i?)
(you) make me a liar
one big disaster
baby, you make my heart beat faster
(&iloveyou)
-matt nathanson
*some added context
She awoke to find she had the shiny, silver rattle clutched in her hand, as it rested quietly on her chest.
The baby has one. The car does too. I think the baby has more fun. I also think that bones rattling at halloween are kind of fun too. Really takes not much to find fun in stuff that rattles. My piggy bank rattles, but only when there isn’t much in it.
They say that your life flashes right before your eyes before you die. And it’s true. I’m starting to see all the good times. The smiles, the laughs, with everyone I love. A gargantuan montage, leading back to me with my first rattle. It makes laying here, in pain, almost bearable.
I jingle the string of bells so gingerly tied to my wrist. Its ringing is stabbing my eardrums, though I know it’s a soft and frothy chime to them. I open and close my eyes, blinking rapidly, hoping to draw some attention – that yes, I’m here. Yes, I’m alive.
But I as I do these things, I slowly remember. My movements are not slick to them. They are not even recorded or recognized.
Because sometimes I forget I’m paralyzed.
The earbuds rattled in my head. The better to block her out with. I have other friends that stick around anyway, and I’m getting a band together at last. It’d still be nice if she ever poked her head back in, even if to just put a calmer ending to the raging tide. Alas, I shouldn’t dither on what is and should ever be.
I think a baby rattle is fun to play with. I remember making and shaking it around. It was fun. Have you ever played with a rattle. Not a snake, just a rattle? Bye
“Your name’s Sparrow?” he asked, sneering. She responded only with a glare, but he continued to his punchline: “Mind if I rattle your birdcage, Sparrow?”
I always know when he was near. I could hear the rattle of spare change in his pocket. Sometimes, if I was quick, this gave me just enough time to duck into a class room, or run up the nearest stairwell. But usually, his Chuck Taylor’s caught up with me, or I got caught in the dirty smell of the cancer-stick hanging out the side of his crooked smile, or his gravelly baritone voice coaxed me back. And then of course, it was all down hill from there, there was no avoiding that steep drop.
But sh*t, the rush was unbelievable, and in that moment, I could make myself forgot what happened when I would hit the f*cking ground.
The red pickup rattled down the potholed road, euphoric in its bumps and jostles as its tires slid in the mud. Grace bumped along in the back of the pickup, clutching her puppy, Joseph, to her small chest.
scales that grew in the thick unknown
of past fields is put down as delicate
as a page of ancient text
in a thin shed of snakeskin that is
a shroud shrining what was, has
and will emerged from the elapse;
as are we, a shedding of time in vast
past dark fields of space;
a memory of an earlier and
still growing, and both infant
and ancient, cosmos.
the snake shakes his rattle of a tail,
to warn me to stay away.
if only all of life’s dangers were that easily identifiable.
shake me, you told me you would once. will you rattle me? to my core, my core my seeds melt, meld into zig zag see saw puzzle pieces that need and need that match. come, piece me together again. with you.
Some nights, I have long staring contests with my ceiling that are not inspired by any sort of insomnia. My house isn’t terribly large–sound travels. So night after night I am assulted by the symphony of sounds escaping from my little sister’s room down the hall. Rattling mucoid coughs, feverish sounds of discomfort, wet retching. Trip after trip to the toilet.
So I lay and stare and worry.
If too many nights like this pass, I’m afraid there won’t be anything left of her.