“But I was so much skinnier back then,
And I looked so much better”
I hear myself say.
But I was drinking three meal replacement shakes a day
And passing out after running 3k.

Daisy.
A little flower with white petals that sometimes turn pink.
An orange centre that withstands the constant extraction of those petals,
with the pang and echo of tiny voice shouting
          “He loves me; he loves me not!
Often mistaken for a ****.

Daisy.
A girl who winces with insecurity
every time the nearest dandelion clock is
plucked from the soiled earth around her.
She watches with wet, reddened eyes
as she is paralysed
and unable to stop the careless children blow away Time,
as if it were some sort of lark,
seed by seed.

Daisy.
A witness to the exposure of stalks and leaves alike;
a veteran of the unwanted embrace and, indeed,
the wanton thieving of petals and memories and silence and voice
combined.

She is swaying but explicitly not
bending to the wind.
She stands her ground and she has
blossomed.

“O, who hath done this deed?”
        
“Nobody, I myself. Farewell./Commend me to my kind lord. O, farewell” ~ Othello V.ii
            
                                     *

The day my dad built my new bed, I cried for hours.
At last, a frame that will lift me up,
Not force me down.
At last, a frame that was fit for purpose.

No more hiding from the monster that lived underneath,
overhead and
in-between my sheets.

Somewhere to lie in without being lied to.

            (It’s just a bed, but it’s a safe place to rest my head.)

Somewhere to peacefully retire, not hastily retreat.

            (It’s just a bed, but it’s without him, so it’s without sin.)

There used to be so much silence after all the violence
          “And yet, she must die.”
You could use the very knife my life rested on to
Cut the tension in the room.

But now, Sweet Desdemona!
Now your rest is due.
He took your every breath away but
His chaos could not consume
Your famous last words.
He cannot reach you in your eternal sleep.

For months, I have thought you lucky, and envied your fate.
But now, at long last, I have found comfort in my own bed frame.

Why err on the side of caution when I can
Breathe in vast amounts of cold air without a jacket on
So I intentionally freeze
At midnight;
Get back home and invite the bed bugs to bite?

Why err on the side of ******* caution when I can
Talk to strangers in the dark and
Walk home along the train tracks,
In the hopes a spark will shock me back to life?

*

I just want to feel something.
Anything.
To feel anything other that the weight of my duvet,
Holding me still, but threatening to pull me back to rock bottom
As time draws in and tells me
“What a waste”.

As the Eternal Footman looms over me and peers into my soul-
He laughs.
This is not a life worth living, but it’s also not a life worth taking.

I cannot help but wonder tonight if the archangels have abandoned me.
The universe has a plan for me but executes it unsympathetically.
My nocturnal nonchalance convinces me that I have nothing to lose,
and no one watching over me-

But there is always the moon;
There’s the moon.

I wonder if I will be happy, soon.
If all the lunar rays
I harvest through my labradorite will serve me well.
Whether I’ll hit the ground running or just simply
hit it like a meteorite.
Will I reach for the stars or throw myself
in front of the metro.

I seek solace in the sun and safety in the stars
but the sun no longer shines and the
stars no longer give a **** about my safety.
I have been plunged into darkness and led
astray.

Wandering aimlessly,

using the world as my own ashtray
because what other use does it have for me now that I am drowning,
with my head in the clouds?

Churchill called it the black dog,
I fear I will die within this brain fog.

My grandad used to buy
Wall’s vanilla ice cream and
Robinson’s orange squash for me
When I’d visit him as a child.

For the longest time, food of any kind
Was just food and nothing
Was a treat or
Had to be earned.

Now I yearn for a lackadaisical meal,
For squash and ice cream,
For food to be food and it all to be good.
For when calculators were used in maths lessons and not to pinpoint the exact moment I overstep and
My figure becomes
Mathematically incorrect.

I want to re-learn how to exercise for fun and not punishment,
How to be happy and grateful for my fuel and nourishment.

I like to stare at the blinds until faces start appearing in the fabric. Smiles, noses, eyes-
they all jump out and morph into one. When they start mouthing things to me, that’s when I tend to look away. Sometimes, I look for faces in the shadows of objects lying around the house.
There’s a particularly amusing silhouette of what could well be queen Victoria that
pokes out behind the curtain ruffles. I go
looking for her sometimes on purpose, because I know she’ll be there and it’s
something to be certain of.

If I could inject a feeling into my body every day, it would be that of certainty.
I fear I am an addict to the art of prediction and delusion,
so much so that I have developed an intolerance to uncertainty.
My therapist would like that I’m using that,
that’s one of her favourite lines.
I live my whole life in a recurring conspiracy. I firmly believe things are going to happen and am genuinely shocked when
they inevitably don’t.

But there is something so tantalising about allowing myself to drink up an illusion of certainty.
I like the control and
I love the power it convinces me of.