How long has it been?
Four or five months now?
It feels like forever and nothing at the same time,
So go and take a bow.

I see pictures of your face,
Tear stained and smudged,
From fingertips gripping desperately,
My heart still holds a grudge.

Those pictures, your pictures,
My heart feels like it'll break,
Shards of ruined glass,
Shattered open in your wake.

Except you won't,
                                                    You
  ­                                                                 ­    w o n ' t

You'll stay sleeping,
Leaving our eyes weeping,
Allow the Grim Reapers reaping
And ignore the blood seeping-

Your life bloods flowing from your wrists now,
You're getting colder now,
I think of those photos now,
My heart breaks again.

It's the night before an exam,
And the rhymes and rhythms,
are screaming in my head,
as the mountain of rejected paper,
grows around me.
Because as I try to voice,
my horrors and hatreds,
my love and life,
politically and emotionally,
all I can think about is that,
at thirteen I was scrawling,
pretty patterns across my skin,
and using my blood as the paint,
                                                          ­      how messed up is that?

The thing about privilege,
Is that it is not our fault,
Like our biological ***, our name, our lot in life,
It's handed to us the moment we're born,
Wired in DNA and red strings of fate,
Strings that form a safety net for one and a noose for the next.

It's our advantage,
Head starts while the rest have handicaps,
But this advantage against the disadvantaged,
It makes us lose our vantage point,
It's not our fault, it was handed to us on a gold platter,
And it's our job to make the changes,
That make the world fair.

Dealt the tattslotto number of existence,
Our road smoothed down,
The right race, the right gender,
Right religion, the right neighbourhood,
Things we didn't fight for and disregard,
Diss and say is too hard.

But the only race that should matter is the one of life,
And helping those who fell behind, forced behind,
And to help them cross the finish line,
I don't want to stand on the mountain top alone,
Join me up here, together with free flowing air,
And if you can't make it on your own,
It's our privilege to help you there.

I used to **** my stomach in,
Till my lungs would ache and split,
Then I learned to pull my muscles up,
And I'd find a better fit.

I learnt from magazines,
and TV shows,
The things that told us,
To always shrink, to never grow.

I learnt from my mother and my sister,
Who would sit and pinch their thighs,
With a sigh and a shriek,
About needing to go down a size.

I became obsessed,
But not with food, wine, or shopping,
My obsession was with the fat under my skin,
Growing fast and never stopping.

I became obsessed with numbers,
Numbers even though I hated math,
People telling me to stop, to eat,
The voices in my head would clash.

I feared that I would grow,
But also I would shrink,
Fingers trailing gaunt on skin,
My madness slipping from the brink.

I feared that I wouldn't wake up,
The next morning, the next week,
But I couldn't stop myself from finding,
The skinny I'd always seek.

I'm not fat, I know I'm not,
And I know weight does not define me,
But I see the bone, I strive to see it more,
Without bone what would I be?

‘You have nothing left to lose.’

His voice was calm, mellow. A velvet song whispering against her ear. ‘You act as if they’ll miss you- ‘
‘They will miss me.’ Her voice held such conviction it made him grin.
‘You hope they will,’ he corrected her, ‘and you hope they won’t forget you- ‘
‘But they will.’ She finished quietly. ‘That’s okay, that’s what gravestones are for. To remember the dead when no one else will.’ She paused for a moment, glancing at him. ‘It’s a lonely feeling to be forgotten.’
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then leant back on his hands, their legs hung messily over the edge of the building and she kicked hers absentmindedly.
‘One day,’ he began in a long distant voice, ‘all that will be left will be gravestones. Billions of cold rock slabs, billions of names, and not a soul to read them out. You’ll all be forgotten then.’
‘That’s okay too,’ she smiled at him, ‘because then we won’t need to remember the dead, we’ll all be together in the great beyond.’
His laugh rang out across the city and the sound played a melody with her cells as this ancient creature sat beside her, his face alive with laughter.
‘Such a curious creature you are,’ he breathed, looking at her again. ‘Do you have hope that your great beyond will be pleasant? Do you believe everyone’s will be?’
‘I have no idea,’ she shrugged, ‘but I have hope.’
‘Hope in a pleasant life after death but not hope for a pleasant life while you’re alive?’
She studied her fingernails as if they held the secrets to the universe and he laid a hand gently over hers, ice trailing over her skin at his touch.
‘It’s alright, we both know how this will end.’ He soothed. ‘You’re here because you’re destined to be, and I’m here to collect your soul.’
‘So you’re saying this wasn’t my choice?’ she asked, her voice tiny against the thrum of the world around her.
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘it was fate, and fate is something you can’t run away from.’
She looked at him then for the longest time, her eyes burning into his memory and her blood humming under her skin.
‘Have you ever tried?’
He blinked in confusion as she stood up, teetering on the edge of oblivion. Without thinking he grabbed her hand.
‘What do you mean?’ His brow furrowed in confusion. ‘Have you?’
She smiled at him then, really smiled and he thought he’d never seen something so bright since the day the sun was born.
‘The beauty of life and death,’ she laughed softly, ‘is that in the end, in all the possible ends, no matter how ****** a choice, it will be my choice.’
He stared at her. Was she stupid? This was her fate, this had always been her fate, since the moment her life had been woven into the world’s story he had known what would happen to her. What choice did she have? What choice did he have?
‘In this world,’ she continued, gently laying a hand over the top of his,’ I may not have had the chance of being killed in an accident, or of old age, but I’ve always had the choice of killing myself. My one last vestige of control, my parachute, my safety belt, all that jazz, you know?’
Slipping her hand from his grip she gestured to the skies around them. ‘Whether today, tomorrow, or fifty years from now, no one, not even you could make this choice for me.’
Silence sat heavily around them as they looked at each other, her at peace and him feeling something tug in his chest for the first time since The Beginning.
‘You’ll be dead before you hit the ground.’ He said numbly. It was the only thing left he could think to say. ‘You’ll run out of oxygen.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said one last time, ‘then I’ll die flying.’
She might have been an angel then, spreading her wings to the highest heavens. The cold night air burning her lungs as she breathed in deeply.
‘Besides, you said it yourself.’ The grin on her face was blinding as she tipped forwards, arms falling softly through the air.

‘I have nothing left to lose.’

I am here,
Voice railing against the edge.
I spread arms through air,
Fingers trail in open streams,
and I am here.

Green light filters,
Life spreads brightly,
Happy burns sharp and warm,
Laughter bubbles in my throat.

And the song bursts from my lungs,
Running through park and down busy road,
I am free, I am alive.
Today,
I am here.

I can feel the love,
fading from my heart,
or rather,
it's not fading,
it's being torn out.

Piece by piece,
people steal it,
when I would have given it,
when I had given it,
and then demand more,
as if I'm holding back.

But I'm not,
I'm loving with my whole heart,
loving them more than me,
loving their flaws and insecurities,
their hatred and inconstancy,
while I let my own drown me,
in their wake.

Everything hurts.
Days, weeks, months later,
It still hurts,
Constantly.

Years will pass,
The pain will turn,
From a sharp knife cutting edge,
To a dull thudding ache,
But it will always be there,
Constantly.

And I'll hear her name,
From time to time,
Because it's a common one,
And no one will know the pain,
Eating away inside,
Constantly.

Or that you used to see her,
Every night,
You're nightmares painting her death,
across the ceiling,
as you lay wide eyed and awake,
The old scar hurting,
Constantly.

You want to forget,
As cruel as that sounds,
You want to forget her,
That you loved her,
That you lost her,
That there was no goodbye,
Just the news,
That she hadn't loved this life any more,

That the pain in her heart was too much,
It ached and strained horribly,
That there was no escape from it,
And while she was alive,
It hurt her,
Constantly.

If I were a food
I suppose I'd be bitter sweet,
an outside of barley sugar,
an inside of rotting meat.
I pretend I am the sun,
playful, bright, and new,
by the nights end I'm done,
my skin a deathly hue.
I'll wither in the orchard
like those jewel bright fruits,
cut the tree, dig it up,
I'm dead to the root.

Cheerful words from her heart did sprout,
And her soul ran far from sea to sea,
The pen her sword, pages a promise,
The room a sanctuary for the free.
Stagnant water is living at her touch,
The stars are bright and pure,
When ancient monsters rise from dust,
Her words are the golden cure.
But when the ink runs dry,
And the light reaches day,
Her room returns to just to just a room,
A different monster comes to prey.
It's sly and it slinks,
Its hide a black matted mesh,
It croons sweet rotting words to her,
And rips away her flesh.
Its teeth are black,
Its eyes are red,
Biting teeth are drenched in ****** foam,
Kicking and scratching inside her head.
It mocks her, ruins her,
Her breath catches in her throat,
Death, failure, forgotten, for all its names,
It was ****** she wrote.

Her tiger stripes started,
at the crease of her elbow,
and flowed down to her wrist,
in blood carved waves.
Light marks stark,
against dark skin,
they wrote a story,
in curved and brutal staves.
She was a tiger striped girl,
made of sharp smiles, bright eyes,
and when tiger stripes reached her fingertips,
she chose to leave this place.

How do I recognize this thing called love.
Shall I call her by name?
Will her eyes sing songs of deep memory?
Is she meant to tug at my heart,
The push and pull of tides past
Chaining me to her with links of pearl?

How am I meant to recognize love,
If I've never met her before?
If she doesn't feel like the stories and fables,
If she is messy and broken and damaged,
If she hurts more than she keeps,
How am I to know love is real,
And not just chains rusting
In the deep.

But worse,
If I can't recognize love,
But she can recognize me,
Feel the tug of her heart with me,
Want me,
What monster am I
To keep her by my side
Waiting in spendthrift time
For me to recognise this thing called love.

I think of the pearl bright Moon
and the bright warm Sun,
a thousand stars between
and a distance even further.
I think of soulmates
torn apart by cruel fates,
Mother Nature's gentle soul,
her heart hardened by sin.
And the push and pull of tides,
endless, timeless,
rolling over the sinking sand,
murmuring and roaring a time old tale.
Of how two souls loved each other
so strong and true
that they tried to steal each other the world,
and how their punishment
was to watch the world die.
I think of how they're stuck there
an eternity apart,
separated by sea,
sky,
land,
and how every night,
sinking to the bottom of soft seas,
the Sun dies
so the Moon breathes.

Tether me to the sea,
with chain and link,
leave me be,
my darling, my sweetheart,
then you'll see,
with a seashell heart,
in this evergreen,
my love, my soul,
it's all I need,
floating, freely,
in this perfect sea.

It's a wreath on her head
and a knot in her heart,
fairy lights falling
and falling apart,
and they flit in her head
with wings of furious petals
and tongues made of lightning,
cursing the chains that link
and clink,
tying them to her mind,
an empty blackened space,
as burnt as her lungs,
as the oxygen burned
and she hung
from those fairy lights.

I sit
perched atop high and empty balconies,
these falsities, growing like mold, catching like crystal
on eyelashes heavy and old.

Heavy and old,
heavy and cold,
I loved once, I should be able to again
but my heart catches in my throat

and the cannibal takes a bite,
hungried flesh falling from the skeleton that is myself.
Everything is cold and with cold comes numbness,
an even worse pain.

When you're numb you can't feel the warmth
of summer rising,
her feathered hair following the migration of birds
coming home, home, home.

Her sinner skin burned and gold,
enticing you to feel, to breathe,
against god's wishes, against mine,
to cling to a life you're not living.

A dissected corpse picked apart
to my very atoms,
by the vultures feeding themselves
off my already ended life.

"Live, even if it's for everybody else."

I've a frightful conundrum,
To see, to blink,
To let myself feel,
Let myself think.

The heartbroken thought,
Of who I'm meant to be,
Is not the girl,
That's meant to be seen.

Or perhaps it's me,
A topsy turvey corpse,
Flying free,
Acrobatic hands and knees.

A comet crashing space
Friction wearing away
As I twist and burn,
My question stays.

Will I remain the same?
Trapped in this place?

I think I remember
the first time I lost control,
no longer that perfect child,
that good little girl.
I was hurricane winds,
lashing limbs,
shattered glass and ruined nails.
I was bitter sneers,
malice with a deep red,
burying shades of blue.

I bled purple,
purple of indigo nights and violet bruises,
violet bruises and violent bruises.
The first time I lost control
wasn't as a child it was when I was alone,
and that hated mirror finally cracked,
distortion free to extort me
of my fears, my loves, my laughs,
of my fear of losing control
and never being whole again.

Hello Self-loathing,
my decrepit old friend.
You roil and toil in my age old brain.
A millennia of dust spiraling into
what I suppose could pass for memory.
A dead man has no need for shoes,
so I pad through the dust on bare souls.
The dirt is cool beneath my feet,
my bones below are cold too.
It seeps to my corpse underground
and the one hanging from the moon.
Her smile was cold and distant,
gently rasping I couldn't reach her.
I cannot love her openly, my mother would
hate-
but, still, yet, I reached out, hoping-
Self-loathing my old friend,
decrepit you may be
But you're the only one who'll stay.

My skin turns to my brain
and my brain appeals to my heart

                                                          ­               keep doing this and
                                                we'll fall apart

                                                          ­          like you did when-

Stop,                                                     ­                     
don't you dare                                                            
­bring her up,                                                            
I­ don't ******* care.                                            

                                                               ­             If you just        
                                                                ­      t a l k e d -
I don't need to talk                                                             ­                               
I want to bleed, I need to be bleed,                                                           ­                                 
        and yet my bloods still clotting                                                         ­                                   
It's a ******* irony                                                            ­                                

                               ­                      We need help-

We are not we                                                               ­                             
You are you and I am me                                                        

                                                                ­       Without a heart we can't be-

THEN DIE WITH ME





                                                         ­                  You can die heart,
                                                          ­                                  leave us be,
                                                             ­                   the heart will die,
                                              We'll be a machine.
                                                        ­                            With chains and links
                                              That fracture and freeze,
                                                         ­                                   you'll be you,
                                              and we'll be me.

A friend of mine
told us goodbye tonight.

Said she's fine but
I thought she'd die tonight.

I'm not going to rhyme tonight,
I can barely breathe tonight,

I don't want to repeat tonight,
I don't want to repeat that night.

And May is inching closer
with every breath I take.

And every breath I take,
Feels like a mistake.

There's the rhyme,
I lied. Like her.

A friend tried to reassure me,
"She said she's fine."

My brain promised me,
"They wouldn't tell someone."

But my heart begged me.

"Not again
Not again
Not again"

Please.

I used to be terrified
Of fleeting shadows
And moonlight patches
The dark swirling around my feet
And the creaking house whispering dreams
But now I switch off the light
Long before I'm beneath the covers
And ask that the monster grab my feet
Reach from underneath my bed
And pull me under
Because that monster
Any monster
Is better than the one in my head.

If I could wait a thousand years,
or even a thousand more,
I’d sit peacefully in this garden,
the home that I adore.
When sweet evening trees
brushed tree top tips,
and we sat on the trampoline
spitting watermelon pips.
And the roses curled tight
like a hug around the home,
golden like a sunset
and lilac like my bones.
They were pink along my cheeks
and whiter than the walls,
twisting leaves and viscous thorns
mimicked our front door.
The colour of the mint on the steps
and the swing in the big ash tree,
and the shaking in my heart
which was always meant to be.
So I’m standing in this garden
and I’m feeling way too old,
the roses now are dying,

I feel so very cold.

Colder than the soil
where pets have gone to sleep,
where buds spring up
and spring prepares to leap.
And the sun is bright and warm
but I’m not really there,
the gate is closed,

locked and stolen,

I think I’m getting scared.

Coffee stains the page,
different marks for different days,
and pages curl at the edges,
from heat, from age.
It's a bitter morning wake up,
when the sun is bright and new,
surrounded by the smell of coffee,
the sounds of typing too.
Or early morning reading,
as the bookworm reads the book,
or the scratch of pen on paper,
the poet in their nook.
Coffee stains their hands,
their page, their veins,
lost in their dream of word and coffee,
the outside world is drowned in rain.

My reasons are mellow
music notes
made of bruised yellow
and print pressed flowers.

They're desperation mourning
a melancholy mood.
Intangible,
conflicted,
a mismatch of muse.

My reasons are trivial things,
books and tv,
good food and drink,
     notes in the air,

                and a pen on the brink
                                    of something important to say-

but the music fades,
the notes turn to dust,
and the reasons,
they fade away.

Love is buzzing
in the morning air
as we get ready
to leave

As I kiss you,
warm honey soaks
through the blinds
of the hive

We travel so far
from each other that
it's hard not to feel
lost and alone

But at night
these honeycomb walls
curl around us tight
as winter blows.

Love is,
this home with you,
yellow walls,
the colour of honey.

Words don't flow anymore.
Since the day the world shattered,
Splitting beneath my feet,
Weeping lava and tsunami spray
Lurching and reaching for me.
Not the way they used to at least,
Not the way they sang and spun,
My fingers conducting them,
Swirling them, twirling them,
Endless refrains of summer and sunshine,
Molten gold and sugar thread.
I wasn't there that day,
I was somewhere else,
Mourning someone else.
I should've been there,
Maybe if I'd been there,
Maybe maybe maybe
If if if.
Words don't flow anymore,
She took them with her.

There's something they love to say,
"life is a roller coaster and
everything will be okay"
so I kneel every night
and I pray and pray and pray,
but this feeling, this aching,
it never goes away.

I want to throw up,
Agin and again and again,
Those rotten insides,
Black tar and mold
Replaces my stomach,
My lungs, my blood,
Heart-

I want to throw up something
To get rid of something,
To get rid of me,
I am me,
Does this make sense?
I need to rid my body of me,
Throw the body of a cliff so its
Detached from the world,
Detached from me,
Clean-

The lyrebird sings,
and the hourglass flows,
and nobody knows,
where anyone goes.
And the signboards have crumbled,
in this blackness of mind,
a blackness so empty,
so silent and kind

That sun sweet
piece of me,
pressing sugared lips
to the vanity,
heart rhyming love
with melody,
and the flowers blooming
over crystal seas.
That lonely heart
cries to me,
of who it wants,
of what could be,
and the blinded Seer
who prays to leave,
with galaxy eyes
and fervent pleas.

-and then I think of her.
My flesh, my blood,
marred by something darker
but she's the light.

She's a star in inconsolable depths,
burning like she's born to it,
and I think of the first time
that I held my sun.

My arms, well,
they were striped like sheet music,
and bruises played like notes
like your smile on my heartstrings.

And you gathered the shards
of my worthless heart
as gently as your chubby fingers could,
your fingers wrapped round my pinky.

                   And so even when,
                                                   yes even when,
       the music fades away,
                                        you are my life,
                                                           ­                  my purpose,
                    my reason to stay.

Heavy down suffocates the air,
a soft snow carpet on the floor,
stark white against stark skin,
heavy echoes of heavy doors.
Death is found in the silence,
death of love, death of heart,
that swollen feeling in the chest,
of being ripped apart.
And of blood dipped feathers,
and blossoming bruises,
lilac and midnight blue fingers,
wrapping her neck like nooses
and-
her heart falling like a feather,
before shattering like glass,
death of trust, of faith above all,
a million apologies won't fix the past.

I wanted to spread messages of hope,
To inspire life inside people's hearts,
Fires larger than snowy mountains
And tornados carving their place in the world.
The results would be deep chasms,
And ashes nourishing life a thousand time brighter than before.
The results would be human.
As bright as the sun and willing to burn you if you got to close
Because they'd learned that they weren't yours to touch.
Their light was a gift not a privlige
And they'd learned to stop chasing the moon because love means to live for someone.
Not die.
And they'd be deep as the sea,
Coral reef skin and raw emotion because the salt had flooded them head to toe to throats to heart.
Beneath the kelp forests and kissed fish would be their darkness,
Their loneliest place built for their loneliest self and I'd swim down.
I wouldn't be scared of this darkness,
I couldn't be because this darkness was you.
You'd learn that you could let the sun through a little deeper,
That happiness was for you to feel, not a show to put on for other people.
I'd swim down to you but you were always strong enough to swim back without help.
I wanted to help people.
But as times passed those hopeful messages have died.
And sometimes I feel so numb it's like I'm drowning at the bottom of the sea,
Buried beneath the pressure,
Struggling to breath and there's no light, no nothing it's just black and empty and I'm scared, I'm scared of this darkness because these aren't your demons anymore,
These are mine.
I wanted to help people remember they're good enough,
That they're worth saving,
But as time goes by,
I can't even save myself.

Crystal seas and Christmas trees,
sand between my toes,
fairy lights, chocolate bites,
the smell of summer in my nose.
Feathers and shells,
delicate and bright,
this fast spinning earth,
and stars so bright,
and bubbling laughter,
beneath the big red sun,
days of tears and
days of fun
and-
days where nothing,
absolutely nothing,
has ever felt so right,
as the living days,
breathing days,
that feel so warm and bright.

What am I?
But worm at apples core.
My soul lives at the expense of flesh,
Gobbled up as I burrow down deep.
Empty space fills empty mind,
And the chorus sings eat, eat, eat.
My soul lives on while I eat the fruit.
The expense of my flesh?
It doesn't worry me anymore.

Should I describe myself to you?
With words that burn and bubble blue?
Should I tell you too?
That the words inside me are hellfire truths?
That my hair, my skin, my bones, my tooth,
Are irrevocable rotten proofs?
Maybe I should but what's the use?
Burning and bloated in scornful youth.
Between my brain and my heart is tentative truce.
And maybe there's nothing left to really lose,
This inescapable, ineffective ruse,
This high top building I have to choose,
And hiding from my deathly black humor muse,
I don't think I really have anything left to prove.

The memories are like
warm gold,
sweet at first but
then heavy and cold.
Picture frames with
shattered glass,
faded pictures
with fingerprints past.
The sun turns paper
yellow with age,
turning photo albums
page by page and
momentum in your heart
stops for a beat,
who knew memories
could taste so bittersweet?