What steps must be taken to unshackle from conformity and find liberation when your sense of self is bound to the taboo?

In a world hostile to all things queer, kinky, and out of place, ‘Soulbound’ is a stepping stone in one artist’s journey to find self-acceptance and forge a path to freedom.

Handcrafted and handwritten in leather and paint; this piece constructs a 3-dimensional poetic landscape delving into the artist’s internal dialogues surrounding self-destruction, identity, and progressive untangling of society’s expectation of ‘normality’.

Only through authenticity and transparency can we dismantle our preconceptions of what a person should or shouldn’t be. The more we bare our souls, the sooner we realize our oddities fuel our individuality.

 

Content warning: mild reference to self harm,
suicide, sex, kink, slurs, blood, and gore

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Bound to my soul since my first memorable day has been this sense that something was just out of reach.

When traversing uneven ground, every wrong step could lead you into oblivion, they say.

You look down at your feet before you and find footprints, others have trodden this land before.
You follow them because that’s how you find home, they say.

The temptation to wander creeps in from time to time. You swear, in the deep of night, you hear distant reveling and echoed laughter. You can’t let your mind drift. Those are the screams of the damned, they say.

You wonder how many feet are tied to this path, how many eyes peer into the surrounding miasma, longing for something else. Don’t look too long, you’ll lose yourself, they say.

Every day you feel a little weaker, emaciated by the unseen voice that keeps your body locked into this unrelenting rhythm. Maybe you’re not built for this world.
You’re weak, they say.

Your entire self starts to blend, with the trees, the grass, the ground. You are indistinguishable and alone. Perhaps you’ll die on this path. Decompose and lay forth the route for those more suitable.

That’s the point, they say.

Drifting through the miasma as a patron saint.
Tired and weathered.

Striated birch trunks find root in a moonlit
grove

In this silence an exchange takes place

A bargain is made

Permanently scarred
But I can finally breathe

I don’t have trauma. Trauma is for war veterans and abuse survivors.

Yet, I have little to no memory from years of my life. I was lost in depression and dissociation.
I was a shell of a person.

The world expected something from me that hurt too much to give.  I learned the way to stay safe was to blend into the void and let shadow of a person I wasn’t do the talking.

That life isn’t sustainable.

That isn’t living.

_

I am alive now.

I still slip into nothingness from time to time. It’s getting better but I am still on a journey, unravelling that pain.

My therapist calls it trauma…

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break from that path in a blaze of carnage
they have no power over you

run and run and never look back
tear your body apart if you have to

just escape

Float downstream

As river banks of birch fade into endless void

Spiral onward, downward, untoward

Drop


Suffocate



Resurface

No longer compliant; adrift in the unknown
Yet, in these alien landscapes echo 
familiar tones

You might just find home in the queerest of 
wilds

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Venus, Aphrodite, Dionaea

Beset crumbling statues of ancient gods
Better suited for flesh and skin

Incarnate love itself
Carve your own pantheon

Indulge in the forbidden
Revel in sin

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You pray to the old gods that this feeling holds true.
Yet you’re undeniably tethered to that place you once knew. 

Only you wield the tools to sever these strands of sinew.
Yet you hesitate, for perhaps these can be woven into something new.

Something broken inside of you still longs for that place,
of a forlorn path, of donning an unfamiliar face.

When the dusk creeps in and the shadows grow long.
It takes its toll, yet finally,
you know how to hold strong.

Wayward thoughts leave wayward lines

Decipher your truth
Fortify your mind

Tenacity becomes clarity; clarity becomes time

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People have such cruel words to describe such beautiful things. They invalidate discovery and vilify change.

Without change nothing can grow.

We’d all suffocate.

 

Drain my blood, break my bones
Sticks and stones

These are my words
and these words cannot harm me

 

Worlds collide, deified
For now, I know

Bound to a world of no constraint, 
tied yet untethered.

Master of your own destiny, god of your own garden 
Blissfully adrift in the Forest of Arden

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I don’t really have a plan.

I expected to be dead by now.

 

The future holds so much for me when I used to think I had nothing left.

I have found my people and I have found my own voice. It joins a chorus of those just like me.

I have tended to those who respect me and cast aside those who don’t.

There is still a hatred and venom, spat from angry mouths. But I’ve learned how to weather the storm, and I don’t weather it alone.

 

I can imagine myself growing old.

That’s new.

No path laid before me
I am surrounded by an infinite potential

A purity in chaos
As I reach my untangled eventual

Devour me, for I am the fruit of the gods.
Feed empires.
I am bountiful


Demolish me, for I am carved of soft stone.
A crumbling edifice.
I am ephemeral


Heed me, for I am the void in between.
Eternity in a single glance.
I am endless

Know me, for I am here to be fathomed.
Blood and bone, flesh and sinew.
I am the result of calamity personified

Revel in me, indulge in who you uncover.
When you are lost,

I am found

    Hell Bound | Soulbound | Spell Bound