My mother unravels her ball of yarn.
Her fingers; wrinkled and sallow
tug between the threads of negativity
until she finds a strand thick enough
to weave me into.
She is familiar with how it feels to hold me,
so it takes mere seconds.
And she begins to knit.
A web of negative thoughts,
spiralled patterns of negative action.
I'm trapped behind a blanket of unpleasantries that you knitted for me
and it's heavy
and it hurts to hold
and it's beginning to suffocate.
Who'd have known it would be my mother's own handiwork
that collapsed my lungs.
Her craft knots itself around me
and I'm shackled.
The heart she gave me begins to slow.
The organs she grew for me are failing.
The breaths that she waited nine months for are weakening.
I shrivel, like a newborn again.
Like HER newborn again.
Maybe, like this, she will want me once more.
Apr 2, 2019
Apr 2, 2019 at 5:08 PM UTC
Being with you encapsulates that feeling
of trying to walk with pins and needles in your feet,
knowing that it's utterly preposterous to think
that you could fall,
but your legs stumbling aimlessly suggest otherwise.
Dec 30, 2018
Dec 30, 2018 at 12:47 PM UTC
I hate what I'm writing
what if my brain is ******* me over
what if finally it's learnt from the others and packed it'd bags on me
what if my brain joins with the forces much greater than us
that I talk about
and together they plot their treason.
My thoughts are loaded gunpowder and my body
comprised of brick and cement
is the parliament building.
Maybe this poem is me
catching the rebels redhanded.
Maybe it's too late.
What if this is it,
the demise of my inner government,
the seats given to the opposition,
the monarchy going up in flames
(it certainly feels like burning)
I beg,
have me hung drawn and quartered
and feed my limbs to the birds.
And then,
from deep within the innards of a birds *****
my last request is to
at the very least
make my severed head look pretty
Dec 30, 2018
Dec 30, 2018 at 12:29 PM UTC
I birth a litter of verse
and you're the runt of my
gritty, ****** poems,
and for that deed alone, I'm sorry
Dec 17, 2018
Dec 17, 2018 at 12:16 PM UTC
i truly hope that your skeleton festers beside mine
and our dirt clogged fingertips mould together
even after we lose the ability to grip.
wouldn't it be nice to rot with you.
Dec 9, 2018
Dec 9, 2018 at 4:58 PM UTC
To the two boys who think I owe them something.
My heart doesn't belong to either of you,
and your spindly fingers clenching it
don't look enough like ribbon
to fool me into thinking that
my love is a gift to you.
To the two of you,
so willing to give me
your monthly allowances of text messages
yet not your loyalty.
For thinking that an "honest" apology
fixes me having to question why
just me was never good enough
for either of you.
You were both greedy,
you always wanted more.
Now run free and fill your stomach with all the flavours that will burn your taste buds and scorch your tongue.
To both of you for being willing enough to open my box with a key that I never gave you,
rifle through my thoughts and feelings,
and not even open your ears to them,
leaving the lid off
and the contents strewn across your floor.
For offering to help me pick them back up again,
but only because my "small, little arms" are not strong enough to carry my own weight that I've carried for
fifteen years on my own.
Here's to both of you for putting me down about being small.
That is NOT my fault.
I have a mighty big cathedral for a heart and a generous brain
and that's all within 5"2.
It doesn't make you any bigger than me
(metaphorically).
Your few feet advantage doesn't give you
the power above me,
even if you can see the roots of my hair in more detail
than you would ever care to observe
the fault lines of my cracked smile.
Boys are being taught that
to love me
is to fix me,
that I am some kind of messy enigma,
a project, a goal.
I'm just a girl with a family, a girl with a head, with a spiders web of veins and a lifetime of lessons that I'm opening my arms and my heart to.
You mistake yourself for a lesson,
when I'm fully qualified to teach myself.
You diagnose yourselves
as "depressed".
Mental illness is not an accessory,
nor a quirk to make you seem more vulnerable to me.
Don't brandish it in the air,
it is not a weapon against me.
It doesn't make you adorable,
or some kind of cuddly bear boy.
Everything that's
"killing you"
is just as toxic to me.
You set my skin into blue flames
because I won't give myself to you.
No,
no,
no.
I'm tangled in my rejection,
and it thickens.
I can't be with you out of pity.
My guilt, raging deep within my bowels,
marching violently through my organs,
exploding into a supernova of
thinking that love and guilt are almost the same thing.
"I'll do anything",
I don't want anything from you.
"I'll write you a poem because I know how much you love that."
I also love being respected but neither of you ever gave me that.
My craft is not a tool of trickery,
and your words not a trance.
"I'm not like him".
But you still act like my skin is a carpet to your home,
and you walk across it with muddy boots.
You think you're a blanket to keep me warm,
but you ended up suffocating me.
To the boys who think I owe you them something,
go home.
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 7:35 AM UTC
I promised myself that was the last poem about you.
But,
I've always been one of those people who
plays the same song on repeat
until it syncs with my heartbeat
and rattles my bones to dust.
or who
re-reads the same books until
the lines become my holy scripture,
the plot become my genesis and
my body becomes a canvas for a script I know by heart.
My head is filled with drafts for poems I've never written,
and hands I've never held.
I should blame it on courage but I blame it on you instead.
Maybe I'm just one of those people who
gives everything to one boy, forever.
Maybe he's just my routine,
like in the military.
Bright and early awake then straight to the battle field.
My body is adorned with marbled bruises
and crimson gunshot wounds
and when I rest for the night,
I'm shackled to a mattress of stone,
stained in the thick wine that pulses through my veins,
until the next morning,
when I must do it again.
The sunrise is my enemy.
She tugs at my eyelids
with raw fingernails each new day,
and I still fall asleep with
you as the only thing on my mind.
They say that you can't quit the army.
The cowards way out of a few wounds.
"Stay and it'll be a lifetime of glory".
And that's what he promises me.
Jul 18, 2018
Jul 18, 2018 at 3:29 PM UTC
I don't need a daisy
to tell me
he doesn't love me,
each sharp pick of a petal
of my skin
gives me a new answer
as he throws the ripped white
rubble of my body
over his shoulder
until I am nothing but a yellow core
full of the recipe for the
sweetest honey
you'll ever taste
Jul 8, 2018
Jul 8, 2018 at 5:44 AM UTC
I'm going to cover your heart in bubble wrap,
shout to the universe to never dare to drop it again,
and carry it in my arms
so tight to my chest
that your heart may just merge into one with mine
and we can just beat together.
we'll share a duvet of bubble wrap
and I'll let you pull the whole thing
so it covers you,
and I'll still be warm
from the closeness of our
intertwining arteries
and the silkiest blood we pass between them.
I'll be lathered in your crimson fuel
and call it the race of our love.
I don't think you need to be shielded,
and I know you don't need me to shield you,
but just one layer of bubble wrap
won't hurt anyone,
right?
Jul 8, 2018
Jul 8, 2018 at 5:40 AM UTC
teach me to light up a room
douse the floor in my spirit
and
watch
it
burn
Jul 1, 2018
Jul 1, 2018 at 4:59 PM UTC