I could see the white flag begging to fly, the sadness pushed out from my face like a foreign body pushes its way to the surface.
I could see the loneliness that was once so well hidden, pristine clear as it buried deeper in the wrinkles that have begun to form on my once smooth skin; so different to the image before me.
A fool could notice though, the cracks in my smile. The years I had to practice; that fake smile was a sick talent, one not taught but easily learnt.
The clothes that I was once forced to wear sit on my lonely shell of a body, they didn’t belong there.
His figure, under his own hand, forced into a sad image of having too much control over me, causing his skin to fall pale and drape uncomfortably from his tired, beaten bones.
The place of a small child is not under the hd of a man, it is to sway gently in their arms in total peace. But there was a monster hidden under his crooked smile, which looked so perfect in the family photograph.
“Smile for the camera please”

Cigarettes long to be held between our lips
Finding solace as we inhale their essence
Our lungs fill with their solitude
Their venom glows
As they are kissed until they turn to ash
Death runs its fingers down our spines
It desires both of us.

I stayed under the stars for too long
And now, I am burning with lust
Life flickers like a candle in my eyes
But my voice gravels like a leaf crushed in autumn
And I lose myself like a gust of wind through the trees.
My words leave bruises like blue prints and they short circuit your mind
Desire stains on your skin, and I map your veins as though they are clues
A key to the map of the course my tongue will travel
Until your hands pull out my hair
And your back arches.

I have stood at the edge of a cliff
And wondered where the light really goes
When the sun sinks into the sea below me
I’m well educated enough to know the scientific explanations
But still I watch every time
That the last flicker of light bounces off of the angled waves
Just to be sure that is isn’t the touch of something holy that causes this entity
But the sand and rocks under my feet
That catch and reside in the soles of my shoes
Remind me that I am merely human, that the world can be explained
But I take a palm full of sand and rocks
And throw it into the sky and out to sea
I take note of how each grain becomes a star
& I wonder if I ever believed in science at all

If my mind is an illness, then my veins are a bundle of unwanted *******, pulsating around deadly oil that smothers the wildlife in a layer of ink. And it follows that my memories are muddled in the soil, formed into mole hills that trip the child as it runs through a field;
In that case, the antidote is a tear shaped raindrop which feeds the plants, almost as well as the eye that sheds it feeds the cheek. And that eye will water many plants. It is salt in their roots, and they will wither and die from the excess eventually.

Sporadic days I remember everything at once
The majority of days I remember nothing at all
I do not know which is the most terrible
Being engulfed by the dreadful ocean
Or the death of one who’s thirst is not quenched

Some days
I feel your griminess pulsating through my arteries
I feel your disgusting presence ruining me
I see the childhood I never had flash before my eyes
And it takes my breath away to know that I grew up before I was ready
I became an adult before I grew hairs under my arm pits
I was troubled before I could even write my name neatly on a piece of paper
Some days I feel like I’m drowning or like my lungs have been removed from my body
But yet, I keep on breathing. I keep on surviving.
I’m an adult now, biologically and mentally
Yet you still hold a grasp over me that I never gave you permission to have
And it makes me feel sick to know that I can’t change that
My past will never change
What you did to me will never change
And because of you, I have to live with that.