This nature of me,
the skin over my bones over my poetry,
I've missed this tender discourse,
the rhyme and reason of my slight frame held against glass.

I see myself better when I'm not trying to cry,
and I'd left this naked art so long
I could no longer tell the difference between
a night with stars and a night without.

This is buttermilk to starvation,
drowning twice and coming up for air.
The first mouthful aches like forestfire,
by the third I am a gulping animal.

Yell into my mouth the instructions for caramel,
please mishka,
my insides don't feel sweet, they're bottles of painkillers eaten with a raw hunger swelling and grazing all my skin. I feel pretty with you
and entirely worthwhile
but here
and here and here
I still hurt.

Your loveliness was never warm ginger in my stomach, it was the lily scent
to cover my decay.

Atlas and the daughter of unknown origins*

My world revolves around you,
father,
you held the sky when I was born,
small goddess, I lay,
at your feet.
You cried and it was raining in my atmosphere,
I think you said I was lovely,
though my small ears could only hear
so far beyond the clouds.

I don't know what you've done,
some dreadful deed unrealised,
until I asked for you to kiss my cheeks
and you couldn't reach
so low.

I thought of you,
Atlas, Atlas,
protecting a face you'd never seen.
Stretching space into itself
so that I could breathe.
I thought of you,
Atlas,
when you didn't think of me.

I found Odysseus floating in the sea.

He looked like you,
he looked like Zeus and all his long-haired wives
and all their children too.
Odysseus the bravest,
the true.

(I loved him far too much,
before I knew what love could be,
a thing of claws and teeth).

Father, that man stole away
with all the bitter-sweetness of my name,

"I cannot do this anymore,"
Calypso, hide,
"I will tell them all you lied,"
Calypso, hide,
"you are a thing of shame."

Odysseus broke my heart,
Atlas missed the beat.

a thin rusting frame
is held up against broken glass,
frosted over by years of
sea salt

thick to breathe as snow,
South-easterly tangles my hair,
glosses my cheeks a cold rose

I cannot see myself
anywhere

One day
You will wake up and the sun will
look exactly the same,
the clutter downstairs
will sound like every other morning.
Your back will ache
in the same place,
the dishes will lie comfortably
on your desk,
dust will continue to collect
around the books you touch
mid thought.
But your father will leave
and it will feel absent, not dutiful,
your mother will smile
and it will be empty and served with
cereal,
you'll find your dog lying cold and stiff in the laundry.
You'll know, undoubtedly,
though it will take years to settle like rocks
in your stomach.
You'll know
that for every other moment following this, until you die,
it will be a raw knife edge you tread,
between Awake
and Asleep.

I hope this reaches you,
somewhat crumpled and embittered,
but soft on the inside and still smelling of my fingertips and hair.

I think,
most often,
a daughter's heart is first broken
by her father

The rain pounds on
as though to carry some of you
to me
but everything gets confused
when we hit the ground.

I'm not lazy, I'm depressed.
My hands are swollen,
my mouth is empty,
I am a void with shredded skin.

Don't tell me to pray,
I'm drowning, I need air, not words.
Not these words.

I would just give you all my words
if I could,
even if it meant
emptying my veins into your hands.
I could open up,
a thirsty river,
and thrash every syllable
my tongue knows
onto your chest.

Do you know
divinity?
Finding water under dirt,
looking at me,
and speaking "snow."
I am not soft, nor clean,
but I am gleaming white
to you.
Speaking "pearl"
strength and beauty,
in a depth of ocean
no one else dares to look.

Divine me towards something worthy,

being
something worthy.

Here I am,
not quite at home here,
but comfortable in this pale skin.

I am here,
to tell you that things can feel better
and that when they say
'Look for the Silver Lining'
they don't mean it'll all be okay,
but that enough will be okay
some mornings you won't think twice
about waking up.
You just will.

Because tomorrow I am going to a wedding,
tomorrow I pick up a puppy named after a Russian Tsaritsa,
tomorrow is tomorrow is tomorrow.

It can be dark on this side of the moon,
but there come crescents
and there come full circles of light
and there comes morning once again.

It's worth it, no matter what you tell yourself.
It really is.

nothing is safe from these hands

how many know i used to write
in lowercase when
the senses died in my fingertips
do you remember
a time when i thought that it was better
you hated me than loved me
because i didn't have to fight it?
tired
has always been code for depressed
stressed has always been code for
undressed in front of the mirror shaking at the knees
because i don't like what i see.
i have been in denial
as to whether i am fine
for a few weeks because i don't have the option
of weakness right now

why
how
why
how

i don't know
who i am and i'm sorry
that you don't either and it confuses you.

It's a sedative,
a heavy dose of morphine,
and I am falling into the slow-
bleak.
It cleans out my veins
of all the dirt,
scrubs my throat soft,
spilling out my mouth
in blurs.
Pulse static under my eyes,
oh the little voices
speak quietly now.

I have nowhere to go,
afraid of my own home
and the creaks,
the way my mother looks at me,
a half starved love,
and my father with his scorn.

Do any of us sleep
besides him?
Keep our eyes open in the dark
for forming faces
over our heads.
He'll slip
like deadweight
into his reflection,
look at us like fleas and roaches,
to scurry at the sound
of footsteps.

Girl in pretty pretty colours with her hair all wild and bleach yellow like sunflowers, dress to her knees and a sunday school smile, she knew all the right ways to be young. Easier at 8 for a little girl to kiss her daddy's cheek and talk like a happy hurricane, easier to be weak and cry at all the right times, to grit her teeth at the gravel in her palms. Then boys became glasses of lemonade and she always poured too fast in her haste to be told she was pretty pretty in grey no matter that she didn't smile. She wanted them to love her anyway. When colouring pages became subjective and the colours she chose dejected, she gave up on that solidity and dove from the ledge that was innocence. Little girl became a vanilla queen of lies and solitude, loving the boyfriend with the razor blades for hands who only persisted to cut her open and ingest her youth. Girl is older now and sees memories like black and white photographs except the ones that are scored in red crosses and 'take your shame like pills, slide your fingers like a gun against your forehead.' She doesn't want to be alive but she doesn't want to be dead, for the sake of that father she used to kiss goodnight and the mother she remembers in a blue t-shirt with oven cleaner smeared on her left cheek. It's almost enough to make her smile again, thinking of the time the moon had come down from the sky to hold her heavy head to his chest, almost enough to be one more reason to stay. But not quite.

A pair of shorts,
two cord strings entangled
and the pattern
my mother's hands shook
gently
to draw;
cities,
a landscape,
a cross.
"I have no eye for art,"
she'd say,
but my mother's hands
made something for him, a husband,
The Husband,
and he wore them for a while.
Perhaps childish,
the colours slightly faded,
maybe her devotion
embarrassed,
I don't know,
but he pushed them to the back
of the cupboard in a corner of their
bedroom.

My mother is unhappy,
she doesn't know it,
or why,
but maybe it has something to do with
those shorts on the shelf
collecting dust.

Closet cold,
no closure in the dark,
I wait and wait
in silence,
for some kind of
curtain call.

The dog sighs at my feet,
asleep rolling eyes around,
does anyone
see me at all

And would it matter

Kick it,
tell your little girl you don't like her hair,
you built her a home
just to say
"don't you dare flinch,
or i'll tear it down"

She'll crawl away
the first time you yell
"useless!"
with a
*******
smirk

But she'll keep coming back
to you,
won't she,
because a beat dog doesn't know
when to quit.

First and foremost
let us talk about the ink,
I haven't seen you for 3 days
and all it does is spill
in aimless sketches of your hands.

Does the rain come anymore?
I haven't touched my favourite book in months,
I can't tell you how the pages feel,
I'm a sorry excuse for a writer,
I get so confused on my way to a story,
So here is a full stop.

-

I get ghosts touching my neck when I think of you,
"Sh Sh Shh,"
a pillowcase to smother me to bed.

deer,
entangled,
deer with antlers touching,
us with horns,
hand in ochre hand
an ampersand.

you,
wearing the crown,
deer with antlers touching,
one head hanging
on,
you pull away
and im still here;
I end at the neck.

All I want to do is listen to La Dispute
and tell you I'm sorry
for crying during ***.

Car rope whiplash,
the snap of my neck
to the right,
a crush of bones, a clatter
of clavicle,
all in a mash of brain fluid and grey matter.
I want to hate you when you tell me I'm beautiful
because I feel like
nothing.
I feel like flies buzzing
in a corpse.

the grey day
Beloved,
you and I at the cliffs,
holding hands over
a fervent sea.
You and I, autumnal rift,
pocketed by rocks,
swapping a storm
between our teeth.

Are you home?
I want to beg you to sleep with me,
touch my hair,
my cheeks.
I don't think
you want me like I want you.

I want to say goodbye first this time,
can i hang up the phone on the giving end?
smash it down,
no ****** fingers or wincing.
If I cared less I could
i would've forgotten your name already,
if i could.
love is a wreck, always.
that's what it means, to be in pieces.

to love to absolute
                                              *******
pieces.