Growing up is becoming a haunted house on legs,
full of ghosts,
wisps of memory fading in murky bogland, secrets spoken under cover of darkness and sheets -
It is learning to live in the creaking halls,
to unpack the boxes you can and occasionally, dust the remainder,
unraveling the dialects of the wailing in the knowledge that not every ghost you harbor can be understood,
you are the first and the last - each unearthly door to nowhere that trails through your rickety frame
a mirror constructed in your image -
All my love to the ghosts who have taught me everything I know,
Like just how heavy the light can be.
Oct 23, 2020
Oct 23, 2020 at 8:21 PM UTC
I never say sorry when I mean it
Just vomiting it out into the clean ceramic
After a binge
Of misunderstanding and bone shaking rage
My stomach drops sorry into the moments where I need the screaming to stop
Sorry is a pacifier
A ramp onto the high road
anything I can say to be left alone
Conflict running like tracks leaving bruises over my body
Familiar as the desire to hide and never be found
Yet I am always the one who spills sorry
A snake handler under the bed again
Yesterday I was not sorry
and my sorry could not stop the water from sluicing down the drain to leave me shaken and shaking
in the bath
But your sorry, hours later, after the trees felled have sent the electricity wires writhing within me
After you have manned the tank and rolled over me only to reverse and do the same again
After I have prostrated myself for your flagellation that continues through the night
your sorry means This is over.
Your sorry is a demand for a sweeping brush and a rug, for untempered forgiveness.
And I am not sorry
That my answer is no.
Jun 9, 2018
Jun 9, 2018 at 7:51 AM UTC
We were one man
Or woman
Or something -
Whatever it was?
We were one of those-
Small pockets of dust and skin and old receipts that linger behind the bookcase
All the pockmarks on the face of the teenage universe
Still learning how to drive
with shaky hands
A face breaking through the taut plastic shield of the lake surface
to gulp down air
An old house creaking in the wind
Singing its occupants to sleep
We were all of them
One man
Or woman
Or something else entirely
We were us and more
Apr 23, 2018
Apr 23, 2018 at 8:53 PM UTC
My mum tells me to be careful as I close the front door
Every footstep the tick of a bomb about to go off
And I know that she will worry until she hears me return
That maybe this time I wasn’t careful enough
But I know Careful
Careful is a woman who walks in our skin when the door shuts behind us
Faceless and watchful
With keys jammed between each finger
And her honey voice is flowing through a perpetual conversation with the home screen of her phone
Her gait wide and her hood up,
hair down but tucked away
She never looks up
only shifts her eyes from left to right on a pendulum trajectory determined to read the cadence of the shadows
Like they are palms or tea leaves or a CCTV in operation sign on the front of a shop window
On the walk home
She is always moving
A waterfall rushing down the steepest drop to get back home with all her foundations in tact
Careful is always waiting for the other shoe to fall
She is texting texting texting details of her plans
Where she has been
where she is going
what is the license of the taxi she is in
Are the doors locked as soon as she shuts them?
How salty is too salty for a margarita or a tequila or a glass of water
Can anyone vouch for the milliseconds that her drink was out of her sight?
She has a pair of earphones attached to nothing jutting from her ears
and her key clawed hands wrapped tightly around a can of pepper spray
And her car is parked right outside the building
Careful is always a woman living in a war zone
where the enemies can be the ones that she has trusted most
Or strangers that cast long shadows
She is a landmine that is always in danger of being stepped on
She is made into a three star salad that the jury reject because she was underdressed
Overexposed like the photos that Careful should never have sent
Because even she knows that she cannot exist
A woman is always careful
But never careful enough.
Mar 28, 2018
Mar 28, 2018 at 2:27 PM UTC
What is the name for the feeling
Of being swept out to sea,
clinging to a jagged piece of your old self?
Migration always brings things back-
In time...
-full circle
A shadowy maw spits
Unfinished creatures squalling
to life from my chest
only to freeze and shatter in the morning sun
Burning is just like heartbreak - hurting until it doesn’t anymore -
But fish don’t cry;
They can’t,
Already choking salt water through camellia wounds gaping,
Swords rusting on a lake bed
Where they fell
Trampled through the forest of you-
Making room for rows and rows of boxes
All empty -
You needed the space to grow into something useful -
Pushing yourself out of the way,
A door cloven into a thousand dull fragments by an axe
Shining,
And swept out to sea to watch the
Walls, constructed, take shape-
Fish can’t cry even when they are burning in the lake
Blowing empty bubbles at an orange sword -
Pulled to the gaping mouth and deposited at the shore,
And chains of empty spaces take their home,
A conquest from within -
What is the name of this feeling?
Of being thrown overboard by your own hand,
Clinging to the last remaining piece of your old self,
Waiting for the gaps you left
to be filled?
Mar 10, 2018
Mar 10, 2018 at 8:38 AM UTC
The Devil has loved Eve since before she was formed
Drawn to Eden like a magnet
By the pull of her stardust
He speaks her name on the breeze
Planting a seed to see the harvest bloom
And Adam is haunted by his whisper
Until his father weaves a tapestry to life in his hands
And Then
Eve;
As radiant as hell’s deepest fires and thrice as lovely
Wandering through Eden growing flowers in her wake
Smiled down upon by a Heavenly Father
But the Devil loves her
The curiosity of her mouth and the strength in her limbs
How can he have dreamt of something so beautiful
And still burn within?
Forever
Eve;
The Devil cannot touch Eden
Only send his will outward
Could never hold Eve in his arms
without condemning her to his fate
And he burns as Adam explores
an eternal utopia with her by his side
Honey sweet
Until the Devil sends a messenger
And his will
Into the garden
A magnet pulled to stardust
growing fruit that dangles from the tree like jewels
One touch of her mouth to the skin
Just one bite seared into his soul like her lips had met his
There is no smiling from that father now
And she is banished to where he might find her in the dark
Eve Eve Eve Eve
Eve
Made of stardust and desire
Steel and sunlight
Mouth that tastes like the dripping vine
The Devil has loved you since before you were formed
A breath on the wind that took shape in electric colour
Loves you still with fruit punch lips
And the curse of mortality
he calls to you in the night
And presents you with flowers of his own in the day
Blood red roses wreathed in thorns
And you adorn your hair with the blooms
For Eve is already ******
And this is the first
you have loved
of harvest.
Feb 11, 2018
Feb 11, 2018 at 1:51 PM UTC
It’s been three years
But your birthday is still programmed into my calendar
And even now I have to fight back the urge
To text you and say
Happy Birthday
and
I hope you’ve been doing good
and
How are your family?
It’s been a while, are you still you?
- I wonder why you’ve been avoiding me for so long -
If there is a crime I could have committed that I forgot but you never will,
And I don’t want to be friends again:
We are both too far adrift from the familiar shore that had bonded us in the first place,
But it goes against my nature to leave this stone unturned,
and I have seen you turn your nose up, turn tail on sight of me,
Like I am a disease you could catch just by saying hello,
As if you have never been part of my life before,
And I am baffled every time just the same as I was the first day you decided we were both finished with the other,
But somehow,
through it all I have kept a reminder of you in my calendar,
Three years later, worlds apart,
Even now I type out the message,
Imagine pressing send,
Knowing full well that you wouldn’t respond - if you read it in the first place,
So I don’t.
I delete every word and send them out into the universe;
Tonight, this one is for you.
Happy Birthday, G, and many happy returns.
Feb 4, 2018
Feb 4, 2018 at 7:09 PM UTC
Two of my baby sisters get their period on the same day,
And I did not think
I could be so proud
Of two bodies for learning to perform a task they were bound to perform,
Nor so scared of what it meant for
The worry in my heart
Every time they walked out the door.
I did not think it was possible
To be so in love with a person -
to feel their fear and shame so keenly as if it were my own
In that moment of contrite confidence:
I need your help.
Is this how it feels to be a mother?
Mariana’s trench gaping with feeling so explosive it could topple buildings?
The instinct to protect and shield and teach,
To share the knowledge of a sisterhood that binds,
while praying that this would be the worst of their pain,
To see stretched out interminably before you their growing and leaving?
But above all the love that demands to make itself known,
That rails against the stall door and crashes feral onto the stage,
Heaving through your skin in a thousand pin ***** moments
That just about stop the tears from welling too noticeably,
As you take their hands and lead them to the bathroom door.
Jan 28, 2018
Jan 28, 2018 at 9:55 AM UTC
Can you breathe yet?
Swallowing shards of glass like they will give you clarity
Or closure
a screen door that slams on their way out of your heart
Here it is
Splayed out between your fingers
Nails filled with packed earth
Stained lime green and screaming
From the graveyard that is your home
This is who you are
But can you breathe yet?
Watching as the bars of your gilded cage
Melt together in the burning heat
And inside you a skeleton dances
In the same ocean that will drown your heart
The end of watch is nigh and you have nothing to show
For the quest to find yourself
The one that pulled the world apart
But you
And all the scars that entails
So can you breathe yet?
You have made it to journey’s end and still your lungs can’t accept the air
So sure that there was to be something more
Another monster to run from
or a *** of gold
Or a princess in a tower
I have been the monster and the princess and the grass stained hand
I have found that all those rainbows and all the thorns
I spent years trying to unwind
Always end in my own arms
And it is you who will hold yourself in your own muddied hands
And allow your lungs to breathe again.
Jan 21, 2018
Jan 21, 2018 at 5:46 PM UTC
It is the midnight
of another year
That stole so much
from so many
And tore like rabid dogs
At our skin
And will leave us bleeding
On the asphalt
As the earth completes its race
Around the sun,
But this year I learned
What it means to be a fighter
Sweat dribbling in my eyes
Muscles screaming from the effort
Even when I have fallen to my knees
I am still here
I am a fighter because of this year
A warrior
And as the sun rises on the first dawn
Of the new year
I will raise my fists and widen my stance
I am ready.
Dec 31, 2017
Dec 31, 2017 at 12:13 PM UTC