If I could go back in time
I would kiss my own forehead.
Tuck myself in at night,
and be there for myself in the morning.
If I could go back in time
I would fight the urge to make myself smaller.
My self needs to grow up
and I will hold her hand while she does.
I would fight the urge to avoid the grazed knees
though I know how much they hurt.
The skin doesn't thicken if it
is never touched.
If I could go back in time
I would tell myself
that I'm sorry.
That this will hurt more than just a bit
that growing pains start in the bones
but don't seem to ever end.
If I could go back in time
I would tell myself that she doesn't have to be so strong.
that she can cry when she wants
that she can scream about how much it hurts
and still be alive in the morning.
Dec 20, 2019
Dec 20, 2019 at 7:27 AM UTC
I moved back into the home I grew up in.
My room is just as i left it:
paintings on the coffee table
and peeling stickers on the ceiling,
broken lamp barely standing
and discarded scraps of paper that litter my floor like autumn leaves.
My room embodies everything I have been
since I inherited it at 7 years old.
It has the fragility of the child I used to be, the reckless mess of who I was when I left, and the solemn shattering of the girl who broke her own heart and never cleaned the shards from the floor.
I still find those shards in the skin at the bottom of my feet
from time to time.
I can never bring myself to throw them away for good
so I put them back on the floor,
making a mental note to be more careful where I step next time.
I find poems I wrote at 13,
poems that were written for me at 14,
photographs of those I once loved and those I no longer recognise.
This room is a hollow tomb,
home to the ghost of the girl I once was.
Jun 21, 2018
Jun 21, 2018 at 8:35 PM UTC
My bedroom has become a mausoleum:
Built especially for my death and filled with things I enjoyed in life,
but are of no use to me now.
I seal myself away in my tomb.
I am hungry but everything I try to eat turns to dust
in my mouth,
the smell of spoiled milk stains my nostrils.
I am the King Midas of decay.
The girl who rots,
and makes others rot around her.
Flowers wilt under my step
and leaves turn brown and fall around me.
I wish I could bury myself in them and became part of the earth I was born from.
May 21, 2018
May 21, 2018 at 9:48 AM UTC
When he plunged his hands into me,
his fingers felt like knives,
cold and unforgiving.
The icy chill spread throughout my body,
freezing me from the inside.
I've lived through so many winters,
and you feel like spring has finally arrived.
I stretch my hands out towards you,
like a flower's leaves hoping to soak up the sun,
hoping to soak up your affection to thaw me.
your eyes are the colour of blue skies
and mine are barren trees.
There is no life in me.
But under your touch, flowers grow
and life springs.
Your fingers are gentle and not at all like knives.
Your skin is sweet like the flesh of the fruit.
Everything moves like when rain first starts to fall
and slowly turns into a summer storm,
a hot downpour that's a relief to burned skin.
You are the hot summer rain and I flourish under your warmth.
May 19, 2018
May 19, 2018 at 4:43 PM UTC
The early afternoon sun shines upon me
as I take in my surroundings.
Birds chirp and gentle breeze
ruffles the leaves high above me.
Young lovers and elderly couples
sit and stroll and laugh and chatter
like the squirrels that dart briskly amongst bushes.
The sky is hazy,
as light, thin clouds begin to creep
high up, settling overhead like smoke.
Amongst this peaceful park,
I tremble.
Although my environment is calm, I still feel
an anxious tremor in my demeanour.
Hands shaking as I turn the page
of a book I have barely been able to take in.
My eyes scan over the lines of words
almost mechanically,
but don't read them.
Anxiety holds me in its clutches even on the most peaceful of days.
Like an overprotective mother
shielding me from the world,
holding me in a panicked embrace
like its just seen me escape from a fire.
Anxiety helps me see fires that others can't.
Or fires that don't exist.
Anxiety extinguishes fires and
drowns me in the process
for I cannot burn in a flood.
I put down my book,
one hand fumbling for a lighter
as the other pulls out a cigarette.
I ignite, and smoke fills my lungs
and I imagine exhaling the negativity inside me.
Of course it doesn't work that way
and I exhale only smoke.
Apr 29, 2018
Apr 29, 2018 at 8:22 AM UTC