My mistakes go retro, I’ve made them before
sometimes I think being forced to talk through lightbulbs would maybe stop it all
all the awkward hello-I-exist moments all the overreactions all the irritated snaps when I can’t snap out of it all the times I didn’t mean to cry out *******,
no, with that limitation I’d only say what I needed to

It’s not like I’m living upside down but it sure does feel like it
hidden away in my head so much that the outside world feels eerie
daylight is bright white and reality is my Demogorgon
I’m too tired to fight it, and standing in supermarkets, bleary-eyed
feels unreal, like a fake body in a quarry
I just wish love was enough to overcome worry

My dungeons are four cream walls closing in on me, infecting me with black slime that weighs me down too much to move
My dragons are adrenaline and exhaustion, they take turns attacking me,
these demons keep trapping me, and I keep getting told it’s too soon
It’s too soon for this, I’m just a kid
lost in the forest, upside down and off-grid
I’m off-kilter, with a faulty brain-filter and my squirming blue fingers
are gripping bike handles and trying to rebuild her

The ******* the wire, the girl with inner fire whose eyes shined like the lights I wish I had to communicate with
that girl would have slain the Demogorgon with idealism and defiance,
now I wish it away in the pretense that it’s a myth
She could whisk objects away into a magical space, a deep forest of brave faces,
seeing beauty in all things through summer dazed rays of romance
skipping along rivers, hair fair and careless, daring to dream of daisies gleaming, just on the lookout for the next rhyme,
unaware that this was the strongest she’d ever be, the least cowardly, unaware that she’d one day be me.

Locked up in the four walls with no fairy lights or lyrics,
Joyce Byers without a reason,
crazy with no spirit.
Months on end immersed in dungeons, fighting dragons,
only to escape and be faced with this deadly Demogorgon:
life without eleven lenses of hope. A life cynical and devoid of magic,
less nightmarish than the upside down but just as bleak,
this is the monster that makes me weak

it’s not the upside down, but my own reality.

I’m still waiting for my sling-shot, sleeping until my powers are restored,
there’s nothing worse than seeing the world and being bored,
in eleven days I’ll try again,
I have at least eleven days of hope left,
I’ll get out of this swimming pool, hop over the barbed wire,
eleven days to find that girl again and turn my gasoline fire inwards,
to escape the wasteland once and for all,
for the world to be big enough that I don’t hear the Demogorgon through the walls,

Eleven days to fix my sanctuary in the forest,
so I can light up both my outward-looking eyes like the aurora borealis.

You look

down

at me from a skyscraper rooftop,

throwing stones casually

from your glass tower

smiling,

you sip coffee

as they shower over me.



Falling over myself

to please you,

I climb every flight of stairs,

dodge every stone,

smiling,

just to find that you

have built ten more floors

‘Come on,

it’s just a stone’s throw for you’, you say

as I dawn another doorway

clutching my gut,

only to find it cemented shut.



You always love to remind me

no matter how much I grow,

I am still ten floors



below

and it will never be as awe-inspiring as your growth,

the doors I could open; you close.



Thank you,

for showing me that there

is no limit



to the floors I can climb

and stones I can take on the chin



I am so far from the dirt

you would put me in



But I think it’s time I built my own skyscraper

with no stones

no stairs

just elevators

for those within.

Mama told you when you were young
that people would treat you like a library,
come and go as they please,
sometimes leaving you a little more
empty,
sometimes curling up in a corner, immersed in you
an ark, strong and safe, for some
as they talk over you and
leave two by two,
fidgeting hands leaving gaps in your armoured rows of memories
as they drag fingers along book spines
unsettling old and stubborn dust
in neat little lines.

Sometimes they will come only to put you back on the shelf
in order to move on to some brighter place.
You see, your dim warm lights will comfort some and depress others,
and that's alright, she said,
some will risk it all to stay all night.
Still, knowing this,
you sit lamplit on the patio
buttoned up with regret
wine red lips pursed
burden on both sleeves
tired of the world already at twenty three.
She never told you that torn pages and unfinished stories
would bleed and hurt like real wounds
that some visitors would leave you
collapsing behind them,
crumbling, folding,
the threat of closure looming
like an unsatisfactory ending--
she didn't tell you that libraries are also oceans
stretching fields
and cities
burning crashing and fading into bittersweetness
and balled fists

she didn't warn you of plot twists like this
or what to do when they arise
your big moon eyes clouding over
like a stormy night
in front of living room lights
that have turned their back on you
or that sometimes peter pan at the window
would have more luck than you at getting
through people's frosted glass

You have to learn your own fresh start
you have your own paintbrush, you have your own heart,
So, paint your insides, watch them dry
under the new moon.
That sinking feeling is just
a new room,
no bookshelves in it yet.

Remember this moment

remember this, because I tend to forget her upturned
lips,
upturned wrists

and the way she rendered lists of reasons why it's splendid to exist,
reasons why living and loving and giving a ****
are only ten per cent struggle,
ninety per cent bliss

see, she made all the small things seem so massive.

Still,
I forget this
others haven't been there like I have
haven't seen her like I have.
Still, I forget this
how easy it is to push someone away because
I never thought I could,
but somehow did.

So then,
I can't forget again

not while we're still here

because it's never clear,
but through the moments between now and then
when I was drowning in my pretense
when I felt like I was losing the battle between myself and my health again,
drowning in premonitions of tense
fists,
blood spit
I shouldn't have quit
on her

But I had a bad habit of treating her like a forget-me-not
it's never something you can feel yourself regretting
until it's lost.

So, note to self,
remember this moment
and don't try to own it or clone it
possess it or test it
just let it rest
and quietly remember,

The reason you're not spinning out of control in the black hole that comes about when you're spaced out is that she

she remembered you.

Duct taped you back together with words
and you'll never really be brand new
but no longer on red alert
you can sit for a minute
and breathe a little bit.

Remember that she taught you to breathe again when you'd forgotten.

My beautiful oxygen mask,
I don't think for a second I could ever forget you,
but I won't pretend anymore
that I never did before
a forget-me-not that I swore to protect
and then stopped

when I poured out of myself,
helpless,
like a demon possessed,
like a woman on the edge.

I shattered glass and broke floors
like a decade-long hurricane,
now weak with relief, I piece together window panes
glue chests and drawers,
and lightly, lightly close the door
on dewy mornings, grey skies and marshy moors

I blow the bad energy out of the room
and swirl incense smoke around me and you

lifting your delicate face
with my well-meaning hands
I'll never, ever hurt you again.

When did I become so numb that I don't care about this?
You, with your arm around a girl that isn't me,
lipstick on your cheek,
me, seeing it the next day, wishing I hadn't
but telling myself I'm not sad and

I'm not yours anyway.

I always noticed the details, never missed,
like how you don't speak the same these days,
sentences rearranged in harsh beats like they've been set out all fast and neat in your brain,
like how you don't think of me in the mornings anymore
and it feels like I have to claw for the attention that a fortnight ago I couldn't have asked for more of,
like how talking to you had me leaving clothes in crumpled piles across my room, which I don't usually do
and now I feel like a shirt you've folded up and put away,
still stale sweat on me like you'd used me for a day
and then decided your style had changed

or maybe I was never your style in the first place.

But it's okay, because you never promised me ****,
and I'm so numb I just don't care about this.

Our disagreements weren't part of this agreement
that unspoken, poked at the little ropes looping tight my self esteem sheets,
that I use as sails to wail and bellow into
so that my pain might be just for me and not reach you.
Our disagreements weren't part of this agreement
not to let anything get too serious,
they were never epic swelling storms set on swallowing us whole
but listless clips of me checking my phone
to see that you still hadn't made an appearance,
a punishment, I assume, for my flagrant disobedience
for stepping outside of casual too soon
boundaries so fragile even I could break them
and I can do just about one press-up

Yeah, apparently that isn't gradual enough.

But I'm grown, right? So I'm not going to dwell on it.
I'm told it's dumb to care about this.

Just chill, you said,
don't get too intense,
so I don't -- I close my mouth, my message is bottled up until it drowns
and I paint my smile on like a clown
because hope comes hand in hand with fear
and hands down,
head up,
I'm as chill as the atmosphere
that's crept in
chill as the bed
you never slept in
chill as the threshold
you never stepped in

See I'm cool as the ice-caps
because I too, am having a meltdown
so don't call someone a flood,
when you broke the dam,
don't call someone a tsunami,
when you caused the earth quake,
and don't call somebody crazy
when you made them ******* crazy.

There's a disconnect here, between the real
and the face you must pull when you lie
maybe it's like mine--
but you swore --
--not that I'd know what to look for,
I see only what you want me to see,
on a screen,
disconnected from reality,
like a dream

I'm not a girl, I'm a dream

I'm not a human, I'm a dream.

We've created an art of not caring, of casual heartbreak
and never daring to talk
about the feelings or the fallout
because it's not cool to care, is it?
**** feelings, am I right?
those flames that shoot right through your veins and cause
unnecessary pain,
but hey,
let's reload the page and hope
that our burning hearts don't set alight our freeze-frame brains.

**** that.

It's not good enough.
I want the impossible: no ******* games,
I want to feel the flames
feel all the passion and all the rage that we have the ability to retain,
I want the embers in your heart to be the fire in your voice
and I want the feelings I express to be an easy choice,
that I get to make,
I want nothing to be faked
I want feelings so hot they burn at the stake
I want you to feel safe, but heightened, when you feel the light and
I want a love that shines so bright I have to shield my eyes
I want you to have the love you've long denied,
and if it hurts, I want you to cry
but not the single salty tear that nobody sees,
the tear that's allowed,
the tear that dies with the slightest breeze,
cry hot, fast, angry tears that your cheeks must make way for
you have to hurt like you love, you see,
and love defiantly
before we all freeze each other out silently.

Because people are burning up from within, smoke pouring from their skin and steam from their eyes,
time flies under dark skies
under the guise of 'it's alright',
a snapshot romance becomes a wretched glance back at you
knowing you still don't know the things I want you to

we treat people like they're disposable,
forgetting that tinder isn't frozen, it's flammable
we're human beings, we run hot, that's the way that it is,
when did we become so numb that we don't care about this?

I once stood in the middle of a motorway at 3am
just for fun,
I told myself, just for fun -
But I don't think it was, now I'm okay
I still sway, dream of far away but I get my exams done,
so I don't let my mother down again
so I don't hide inside from remaining friends.
I keep myself planted, smile slanted, half frown -
and I don't make a sound until I mean to,
until I breeze through,
until I need to,
this is the studied truth of the newly grounded.

I'm not into rushing things these days,
I mean I still do but less so in less ways
and my mind's all curly wurly and I have resting ***** face
and skin like a coffin -
I still can't get up early, still feel displaced
a little too often -
but this is my city now and I don't want to leave or get out,
because this time I am okay
and I'm dealing
and my anxiety still leaves me reeling
but I'm not panicking as much or screaming
and my pillows are the only ones who don't believe me.

Still,
everything is temporary, in constant flux
fresh cut grass and students in class
sunsets and sunrises
church bells and waist sizes
metal and petrol and monster trucks,
and it's all beautiful,
that's the most important thing you'll ever find out -
it's better to shine bright without background doubt
than to disappear into the darkness,
the dark mess,
I mean, I still want to run and shout but now
it's more writing my thoughts down and actually seeing the day
and not 3am standing in a motorway
telling myself, just for fun.

This is not the barrel of a gun, hard and cold
it's not the answer it's not made of gold
it's not a solution, it's the end of it all
and I don't know if we rot or acsend,
but it wasn't just for fun,
it was leaving the motor running,
it was something I was running away from -

Life,
it isn't easy, it's not like saying 'it's okay'
when it's not yourself you're telling
and when it's you, it can't be told or shown
you have to push hardest when you're alone
because finally, once clear of fear's icy gripping hands
I came to understand
that life is beautiful, even when it's sad,
it's the best thing I never knew I had,
so I started living,
just for fun.

I'm not done, you see?
I'm not done.

In primary school I learned the origin story of the forget-me-not,
a flower so small it cried out to be remembered and was named as such,
the forget-me-not,
ironically forgotten a lot.
Not romantic like roses nor symbolic like lilies,
not rare like orchids nor poison like ivy,
but some still remember and some still notice,
even if others prefer a marigold or lotus.
I always noticed
the forget-me-note
that dotted our gardens on Irish mountains
that smiled up at me during my first kiss on a camp site
that were ****** toward me in the balled fist of a boy who said he loved me,
at thirteen,
my first ever flowers.

He said he liked them because they were like me,
small and unusual. And purple, he added,
because purple is an unusual colour.
Forget-me-not,
except, he did, of course
I am worlds away from those mountains
and in every world since,
I have cried out to be remembered
by those who play on loops in my mind,
but been forgotten every time
until now.

I found other forget-me-nots floating through worlds like me,
girls with hard humour and soft hearts
who had been dropped and forgotten just as fast
and I remembered them,
and they remembered me,
and now I know what it’s like
and I am free —
thirteen again, a flashback to the past,
loved completely
in a moment.
But the moment lasts and lasts and lasts.