Everyone talks about passion as if they know her.
But passion is my closest friend.
Passion is the fire that burns behind her eyes, the cigarette perishing between her lips.
Passion is the way my mouth feels against her chest, the breathy moan as my fingers grab her hips
Everyone says she is intense, but all I can think is how much there’s left to learn
Because passion knows what it feels like to burn out.
She lights fires in dangerous places and has more scorch marks than she has friends
Shes so calm and gentle yet never condescends
Passion is convalescence, her voice heals more than it bites
She holds my hand in the day time and holds me tighter in the nights.
Passion is pulling her closer at 1am because she smells like hope.
And nobody talks about hope as if they know her.
Passion is manipulated, overlooked and exploited
Everyone talks about passion as if they know her.
But nobody talks about passion as if they deserve her.

Eyes meet and eyebrows twitch
Your eyes glitter with lust
My teeth bite slightly too ******* my own lip
Watching your tongue swirl around your fingers
I barely remember to breathe
****, I want to make you feel good

Your thighs taste like my lipstick and your sin
Remnants of your perfume still clings to you
You knew **** well that I’d be lost in you tonight

Your fingers lightly play with the loose hairs on the nape of my neck
I want to smile because it feels nice
Instead I flinch because although your hands are soft
I feel his rough hands wrapping around my throat

Your lips press lightly against mine
I want to kiss you back because I adore you
Instead my mouth clamps shut because although you taste divine
I smell his hot breath smothering my face

Your voice tells me you love me
I want to say it back because I love you too
Instead the words catch in my throat because although those words are true
I hear his voice telling me I don’t deserve you

Retro, techno, pillball machine
Arcade, tetro, can taste gasoline
Panic, fury, not feeling alive
Danger, shaking, crush my hard drive
Spiders, robots, made of metal alike
Drug craze, wide eyes, a state so dreamlike
**** me, help me, nothing feels real
Humans, technology, all made of steel
Seizures, sweating, the air starts to crack
Delusions, psychosis, the eyes of a maniac
Arcades, run signs, lights flashing in the night
Distortions, sensations, my mind a parasite
Arachnids, cages, holding me in place
Computers, glitching, my eyes their interface
Trauma, reality, sight in opaline
Retro, techno, pinball machine.

It’d break your heart to know
That sometimes when you kiss me
I can taste his faint shadow

Water is frivolous, it only soaks the reminder into my skin;
I will never be clean of these burdens.
Because to do so, I’d have to scrape the flesh from my bones
And soak my skin in thick bleach
Or fry my mind in acid
Just so I could extinguish the power that ignites them.
Sin dances across my body, leaving fading scars in its wake;
A secondary trauma becomes true.
Maybe he didn’t **** me up enough, since I’ve done more damage to myself
I can’t blame him for the reason when I pulled the trigger
And pressed the blade into my skin.
He may have been the reaction, but I was the catalyst.

You can taste the blood on my tongue
But I can’t feel the pain
I’m tied by elastic bands to a reality so dire that I can’t face it.
My soul rises out of my chest and a world of demons appears in my vision
Snapped suddenly back I see your worried eyes searching my face
And I briefly wish that the elastic would choke me

Poison ivy next to a poisoned tree,
Poisoned friendships, poisoned by me
A broken promise, a buried seed
A safe place, a good friend, lots of love guaranteed
A liar, a cancer, advice all gone bad
****** up love, I’m toxic, the remnants of my dad
A death wish, a threat and a promise in one breath
I’ll save you, I’ll help you, I could be the cause of your death
A hero, a darling and conquer of the broken
I’m ****** up and I break things at least it’s no longer left unspoken.

Tied to a bed
Face pushed into the pillow
Silent because screaming made it worse
Smack clouded my mind
***** orange bed sheets covered in blood
Saliva trickling down my face
Staring blankly at the wall

Laughing behind me
Many men mocked as they watched
Took turns to desecrate me
After I’d collapse into the mattress
And hope i would live no more
Whilst I passed out from the drugs and the pain

So now even as my love sleeps beside me
Who keeps me safe and treats me well
We lay in a bed so comfortable and warm
I still stare blankly at the wall and hope I will live no more

How can I love myself
When the voices in my head tell me I don’t deserve it?
A constant companion of self doubt that won’t quit
Telling me it hates me and that I should ******* die
A hundred thousand critics residing within my minds eye
You tell me that I’m strong
You say that I’m a hero for being able to survive
Yet my league of disparagers makes it easy to contrive
A million different reasons for me slit my wrist
If only the voices in my psyche and I could coexist
So how can you say I’m pretty
When my long term phantoms disagree
I’d cut my veins and swollen pills if I could only guarantee
That every voice, flicker and spirit would evacuate my soul
Because at least if I **** myself, then I’ll be in control

Yesterday
I choked and cried as I brushed my teeth.
This morning I spat blood into the sink because I’d flossed my gums too hard
The taste made me nostalgic
As I scrubbed with disregard
For any pain or blood or damage
That my neurosis may just cause
I’d bathe in straight up acid
Just to put these thoughts on pause.
I washed my hands 147 times today
But bleached them only twice
My fingers are still burning
After that neurotic sacrifice
And I’d scour my wrists with steel wool
If it would only make me clean
Submerge my face in lava
And wash my hair with gasoline.
So I’ll write this down with hopefulness
As I sanitise my skin
That cleanliness will help me sleep
And feel less grimy from within.
I brushed my teeth until I bled today
Soaked my hands in hydrogen peroxide
Scrubbed my body with a Brillo pad
But I’m ******* never satisfied.
I still feel *****
I always feel *****.

If love is a galaxy
Then our friendship is a star
Your fingertips trace the constellations onto my shoulder
And send shivers down my spine.
Sparks fly like shooting stars
And supernovas flash within your eyes
Your tongue crashes against mine, a meteor against earth
Your body is cosmic,
Your body is cosmic and finally I understand
Why black holes are so damaging
And why people stargaze on cloudy nights

My body is a hand me down, my ***** second hand
I’ve never really owned my own mind, flesh or land
From birth I was an item, that his ring all passed around
By the time I was a toddler, I’d learned not to make a sound
Never the player, but a chess piece for him to use
Never his daughter, just an unwilling child to abuse
My body doesn’t belong to me, because he owned it all
Beaten, ***** and tortured before I could ******* crawl
The physical reminders, weigh heavy on my heart
So tempted to just end it all, at least then I could restart
So if I cut, burn or bite and leave marks upon my skin
Then my body is no longer his, and then I ******* win
My body is a hand me down, my ***** second hand
I really want to **** myself, I think he’d understand.

Your whole body lay trembling
Under the darkened skies
Briefly your eyes met mine
I wondered if I’d ever seen anything so beautiful
You smiled as a wave passed through you
Your fingertips dug into my shoulders
And your hips ****** beneath the touch of my hand
Constellations couldn’t compare to the stories your moans tell
Toes curl and thighs tense
My hand wraps around your throat
And your eyes roll back
“Be a good girl and *** for me”

In the attic of my childhood home lives a box labelled pandora
Its worn out cardboards sealed with tape
And the dust forms a bad aura
For eight whole years it’s lay untouched
Only poked at from a distance
It’s grimy contents full of hate
Yet the reason for my existence

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”

I do not fear the world ending
I don’t quiver at the thought of being engulfed by flames
I’m not afraid of drowning in a sea of blood
Or of my blood flowing freely into the ocean.
I never think of asteroids plummeting to earth
Or wonder what lies ahead for us after death.
I won’t think of angels or demons or gods alike
I do not fear the world ending
Because my world ended when he wrecked me.

In my head I scream,
Struggling to hold onto myself
With recovery comes decay.
My soul is rotting,
Spreading infection around my vital organs.
My heart beats out of time
And my lungs struggle for oxygen.
Yet somehow my brain keeps whirring.
Forgotten memories play out on my eyelids,
Like a cinema showing the horrors of my past.
I sometimes wish they had never medicated the rotting of my brain,
Perhaps then I’d be happy.

If I am like a book
Then he scribbled into the margins with ink
And so, I tore the pages out to get rid of him
But I never felt like me again
So I kept ripping and ripping into myself
And now I am just an empty shell
And I have nothing else to rip
But at least my cover is pretty

My body is slow
My body is the soft breeze on a summers day
My body is the sound of a fireplace cracking when the cold winter bites
My hands are the roots of a tree
The crack of lightening thunders through my bones
My body is sick
My body is the after *** cigarette, so bitter on your sweet lips
My body is the smell of home after weeks without it
My eyes are the stars reflecting stories of gods
The tales resonate through me, I am Zeus
My body is fat
My body is the deep rumble of an old train engine
My body is the shouts of a street market in the Middle East
My voice is the crashing of waves over a forgotten ship
The salt rots the wood within my core
My body is ugly
My body is the rush of warmth after a hot tea
My body is the crunch of leaves under autumnal boots
My skin is the scorching sand on a foreign beach
The sun radiates on my pelt and burns into my flesh
My body is mine
You ruined it
But my body is mine

I am more than the belt shaped bruises that you roughly painted into my skin;
Shading darker colours to where the cold metal ridges cut into my back
Red is caused by the propensity of isolated particles to backscatter light more forcefully in the blue.
…..It should never have been caused by you.
I should not be veiled with a thick gauze of scar tissue
Forming ugly purple and red ridges into my complexion.
I should not bear the full weight of my past as I take off my clothes
And see the colour red embellishing my limbs.
But I do, and for as long as I live, I shall.

When I was a child my mother taught  like a dry wipe pen on a board of melamine
Nothing is permanent
But she never warned me
That not all pens can be rubbed off white boards
She didn’t teach me that no matter how much you scrub
There is always a stain on the board that can’t be removed
A black smudge that is permanently etched onto the white surface
She left out the part where someone would leave a black smudge on my life
That can be written over, but never be unseen
It took me a while to figure out,
The only thing permanent in life, are the memories that I am stained with.

Here lies the decrepit corpse of my fractured youth.
Here lies it’s gravestone, complete with Braille inscriptions of thick purple lines of regret.
Over the yonder lies an empty tomb, robbed of its memories from its creator.
Under it lies two coffins, the splintered wood allowing short painful breaths.
Here lies my barely fused together bones, my beautiful exterior ruined from within
And oh yes I agree, its such a great pity.

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.

She has the power to crumble mountains in her wake
And yet she brings flowers back to life with her delicate kiss.
Her body moves with grace through air that could rip the very skin from your bones
Whilst her fingers stay nimble, tangled so intricately within the pelt of the earth.
Waves crash within her eyes but her gaze casts oceans asunder
And she dances, dances in the flames that birthed this very existence
Dances through the trees that give life to those who are lucky.
And my god are we lucky to encounter her.

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.

The only thing I can see through the darkness is outlines of shapes in the shade and wonder if that is all I am

I stay in the middle of the road curled up and listening to those consistent whispers.

I feel like they are never going to shut up, never going to be silent.

The monsters are restless and overpowering.

A loud moan of delusion comes crashing down on my mind.

I feel that it’s trying to get inside and take me away.

Maybe it already has?

I’m utterly alone in confining myself to this insecure life.

I’m in desolation that has insanity scrawled inside it.

But there’s no where else to write.

Craving insistently for this torture to be over.

I’m daring the devil to fight,

But he doesn’t.

My ears catch every voice that whispers, yet I can’t understand anything that they say.

I stay curled in my fragile state, wishing for a car to come down the lane in which I lay.

There’s no building that is not surrounded by the pitch black darkness of the night.

There’s no opening of sanity to show my mind the way.

There’s no escape, only the pain of which brings reality into my personal norm.

I have nothing else to do but lie and wait.

Quietly rocking in the road, waiting for darkness to fade into the white light of death.

Trying to contain my inverse reality in silence.

I must simply wait…..In hopes that maybe one day the darkness will feel like home.

You always told me that you loved Christmas;
You told me you couldn’t wait for the air to grow cold
And for snow to cover the ground and coat buildings like the sugar on frosted flakes
So this morning, I found myself crying into my cereal as I watched the sugar melt away and dissolve into a sticky mush at the bottom of my bowl

If I die before I wake, throw my corpse into the lake,
Because I did not die in sleep, I died in peace.
Life is a constant intrusion of pain into my slumber, and waking up is a daily encumber,
But perhaps waking is not as simple as it seems.
Is waking meant in a way of ceasing to sleep, or ceasing to live, not weep?
Either way, I am stuck in a abyss of not being woken.
So yes, I shall die before I wake, because my life isn’t what death would take,
Because I promise I’m already dead to begin with

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

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

There are days I could scrub at my skin until I disappear
And there are days I find it difficult to even wash my hands
He really did ruin me

Buildings full of people,
Empty people,
These classrooms wear memories upon the tables,
So meticulously cleaned and polished
You could almost overlook the fact that every single chair
Wears scuff marks
And that the corridors have invisible stretchmark’s tattooed into the untarnished paintwork
Caused by thousands of weary souls which once wandered the halls
The carpets are new, and the concrete floors polished
But can we really overlook the hours of hair pulling and escaped tears that these very walls caused?
What a stupid question
How else will we become a success?

I was born with unmarked skin
My capillaries filled with ink
The breadth of my body looked empty
Yet I was made of all colours
Whilst others were filled with words
I always looked blank
Aggravated
He dug into my untarnished parchment
Letting the ink spill out of me
Until I became that of the absence of light

Time and time again I give up
I stop ignoring what happened
I relive the memories
Each time this happens
I feel a part of me begin to fade away
My soul is filled with holes from times like these
They can’t be seen and they never heal
The thing about PTSD
Is that it can’t be undone
It can’t be forgotten
We come in all shapes, sizes, colours
The thing about victims of ****** abuse is
We would be tremendous bird houses.

I’ll burn the constellations
Onto the lids before my eyes
So every time I fall asleep
I’ve got a clear view of the skies
I’ll plant a row of roses
In the lining of my heart
So every time I think of you
The petals spread apart
I’ll drop a heap of glitter
Upon my messy hair
So every time it’s storms outside
You’ll see it dancing in the air
I’ll build a church within my lungs
Let my air sit on a pew
So every time you hear me sigh
You’ll know I breathe for you

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 am sprinting from
An ungodly notion
Vigorously contemplating
A lethal emotion

My visual mirages
That the illness devours
Making it dominant
Giving it power

My mind fails me
And the devil enters
Inexorable possession
In my perception centres

MY BRAIN CONTAINS DEMONS
And the doctors DISTRUST them?
But they should KNOW that THIS. ISN’T. MY. FAULT
******* TRAGIC LABYRINTH,
…..on my decrepit brain stem

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.

We used to masquerade down icy streets
And let our hair get stuck in our hats
Frozen puddles would whisper
And coax us to the water
which crunched underneath our boots with every step that we’d take.
Blizzards weighed down your pockets
And I’d braid the cold into your hair
It glittered.
I would stitch frost into your skin
And turn your tears into icicles
Because you said that I was cold, like the winter
But I always knew you secretly preferred the summer anyway

I remember in 2011, when I finally accepted I was crazy.
Like I had been crazy long before that, but it was not until that December that I realised.
When you’re insane, you do not realise.
I thought for years that I was special, that I understood things that nobody else did
But I realise now that I didn’t understand anything
Not even myself.
It’s easier now, not better but easier. Because I’ve finally accepted that I am ******* crazy
And that is the first step to avoid strait jackets