To me personally, masculinity is about offering protection, offering safety, holding space, communication, being vulnerable, never making the other feel wrong for how they feel, and now more importantly than ever, it is about listening and learning how to be of service.
Sebastian Stan
photographed by Christian Hogstedt for Sbjct Journal.
The first time he calls you holy,
you laugh it back so hard your sides hurt.
The second time,
you moan gospel around his fingers
between your teeth.
He has always surprised
you into surprising yourself.
Because he’s an angel hiding his halo
behind his back and
nothing has ever felt so filthy
as plucking the wings from his shoulders—
undressing his softness
one feather at a time.
God, if you’re out there,
if you’re listening,
he fucks like a seraphim,
and there’s no part of scripture
that ever prepared you for his hands.
Hands that map a communion
in the cradle of your hips.
Hands that kiss hymns up your sides.
He confesses how long he’s looked
for a place to worship and, oh,
you put him on his knees.
When he sinks to the floor and moans
like he can’t help himself,
you wonder if the other angels
fell so sweet.
He says his prayers between your thighs
and you dig your heels into the base of his spine
until he blushes the color of your filthy tongue.
You will ruin him and he will thank you;
he will say please.
No damnation ever looked as cozy as this,
but you fit over his hips like they
were made for you. You fit, you fit, you fit.
On top of him, you are an ancient god
that only he remembers and he
offers up his skin.
And you take it.
Who knew sacrifice was so profane?
And once you’ve taught him how to hold
your throat in one hand
and your heart in the other,
you will have forgotten every other word,
except his name.
“All human wisdom is contained in these two words: wait and hope.” – Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
“But how could you live and have no story to tell?” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.” – Carl Sagan
“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.” – J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
“You are a burning lamp to me, a flame / The wind cannot blow out, and I shall hold you / High in my hand against whatever darkness.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Lamp and the Bell
“Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.” – Star Wars V.: The Empire Strikes Back
“There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.” – Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel
“If I am worth anything later, I am worth something now, for wheat is wheat, even if people think it is a grass in the beginning.” – Vincent Van Gogh
‘Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin did not die. They simply became music.” – Westworld
“A young man on a nearby rooftop released his pigeons, like dreams, into the dawn.” – Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues
“I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living.” The Times of Harvey Milk, 1984 (dir. Rob Epstein)
“Imagine! Imagine! The wild and wondrous journeys still to be ours.” – Mary Oliver, Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
“At two o’clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen, / You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun. / And the trees in the Shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten, / And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.” – Rudyard Kipling
“Mind you, sometimes the angels smoke, hiding it with their sleeves, and when the archangel comes, they throw the cigarettes away; that’s when you get shooting stars.” – Vladimir Nabovok
“How far a little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world!” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
“But then it passed, as all things do.” – Khaled Hosseini, And the Mountains Echoed
“Goodnight and great love to you. We see the same stars.” – George Mallory to his wife Ruth during the Everest mission, 1921
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