Weigh me
down
until my feet
are tied to concrete
and the sun
doesn't burn my hair
like forest fires
any longer.

I am
free flying
a dangerous sport
for those
unaccustomed
to safety
it tastes
like bitter promises
of dark chocolate
and tinted
soap suds.

Merrily
****** me quickly
before I see the stars
too long
and can no
longer love
the dark
that has been a
gentle lover
for longer
than is normal.

It hurts
to breathe
yet I still breathe
am I
a *******?

Every night
sleeping feels
like walking
to the edge
of the plank
and jumping off
Am I
brave?

I paint
with rouge
on my
flattened
torso
am I
an artist?

She is past tense,
I do not know her anymore,
She is not me anymore,
I am cold to her,
I insult woman of past tense,
I pull at her hair and scream in her ears.

I am not her,
I plead,
I am not her,
She does sound like me,
She smells as I smell,
of autumn leaves,
baby steps, and
despair infringing on a perfect photo,
She is not me.

I remember her like I was her,
I will swear the monster she is, she has tricked me,
I slap her across the cheek,
Quiet you,
She is not allowed to speak any longer,
She is no longer me,
She cannot dictate my decisions.

I speak of her in past tense,
As if I am not hurting myself,
As if I am no longer her,
As if we do not suffer the same fates and memories.

She whispers for forgiveness,
I look down with cold eyes,
My heart clenches for her,
It aches in my chest like a bruised bone,
Spitting acid rain against her burned and brittle cheeks,
I would not treat a real person this way.

She claws at me for an embrace,
Love yourself the kinder person in my head preaches,
Holding my hand, as if I had not hurt myself enough,
As if my hands were not covered in my own blood,
She is curled in the corner of the room,
Sobbing for my forgiveness,
Pleading to know why I defile her so.

I turn away,
She is not me,
It is okay to hate her,
Even when that means I hate myself.

Dreams,
The wisps that flows like tears through his fingers,
Consuming and devouring gentle ideas,
Bouncing like rubber against his skull,
Twirling in friendly banter around his curled and protective arms,
Nibbling against his inner heart until it beats in tune,
Invisible yet so corporeal to the graced and fragrant mind.

Dreams,
Follow them into the sunset he said,
Chase them down until they are upturned dog bellies for you to scratch,
Whisper them into your lover's hair he praised,
Scream them from the outside of your skin until you are tattooed in high hopes,
Race in the meadow of your possibilities, grazing hands through gentle grass stains,
Skip along the crux of your horizons he taunted,
See your dreams and follow them through.

Dreams,
Like cold butter, so easy to cut, so hard to spread,
Bright and dull and pulsing with newborn growth,
Born from abstract praise and ideation,
Birthed for the exact purpose of leading on, forwards once more, towards the hopeful past,
He had ran from himself for as long as he could,
His legs ached with the heavy weight of his guilt and confusion, eyes darkened by knowledge,
He had chased his dreams down into an alley,
Brick by brick trapped them in a cellar so they could never escape,
Ignored the harsh conscience who nagged and begged at his closed ears to stop.

Dreams,
Fountain of change,
Bringer of hope,
Pusher of people,
There was still time, he thought, as he blocked his dreams away,
He could let them out and set chase another day.

She wore her bandaids like badges.

Were they badges of honour or badges of shame?

She fears them pulling up her sleeves, all the way to the shoulders, brushing the neck, for she only scratches there...

So they won't find them.

She wonders time and time again why she does what she does.

'Perhaps I am cursed' she screams out to the world, as if it were a question and not a statement which keeps ringing in her head.

She tries to tell someone, tries to articulate what she means, tries to summon up the courage.

But uncertainty and that throbbing in her shoulder lie in wait, in the form of butterflies in her stomach and a lion purring painfully in her heart.

'Do not roar' she whimpers over and over, 'Please do not say anything' she tells herself, even when she wants to speak.

She must be quiet.

So as not to awaken doubt, so as not to force others to think differently upon her, so as not to let herself be boxed in.

'But what if I want those boxes for protection?' she tries to reason with herself, but stubborness is a disease that reeks of pausing after stubbed toes to see if it is the same feeling.

Is it the same if she hurts herself by accident? Could she have
hurted herself by accident?

'I do not want self harm to write who I am' she cries unnecesarily to the sky, so blue and taunting it twinkles to her, so endless unlike her fraying and drying self.

'Do not harm yourself then' it says, as if it were that easy, as if pain and memories and shame and the need to not think haven't already corrupted her soul.

Why is she shivering?

Why can't she breathe?

'I am possessed' she reassures herself. It is not her fault that she has been taken by a demon she cannot control.

It is not her fault that she is so weak.

She says that she is possessed, not that she feels she is possessed, for she can think of no other reason for her insanity.

'I love you' god calls to her.

She is not sure which god she should pray to, not sure where she
can let her disbelief and absolution lie. How can she know what to believe in when she has surely lost belief in herself.

'Can I give up on science?' she longs to let the non-existence control her life. If only there were rules for her life.

Will they blame her?

In the end she knows they won't. Not the ones who should be listened to anyway.

Yet she continues to torture herself for reasons that are out of her grasp.

Insanity has never been her salvation, but neither has it been her reckoning.

'I am broken' she argues when someone tells her that she should
stop, that her skin is beautiful, that scratching it is only futile.

She realises it is her own conscience.

There is a dark part of her that wishes she would not heal, so she would not have to replace the marks which disappear.

'I am broken' she repeats, wondering if someone is listening to her when she speaks to empty air.

She knows they aren't.

The poet,
Notice how none call writer,
Notice how she does not call herself,
Notice how the poem plays on when she is gone,
Notice how poet does not recognise poem.

The poet,
Words do not make it so,
The rhyme and rhythm is secondary,
Speech is a privilege not a commandment,
Defined by inside not the pretence.

The poet,
Expression comes in many forms,
Of late night lunches and barely hidden smiles,
Grimaces painted like cold baritones in her chest,
Poetry is not what makes the poet,

The poet,
Is made of daisies,
Is curled 'round buttercups and beers,
Is twisted like fine wine,
Is mountainous drops of emotive chills,

The poet,
Is not alive,
Does not ask for forgiveness,
Does not read the grateful limericks,
Does not walk the line of truth and ignorance.

The poet,
Is an animal of freedom,
A whispered wisp of breath,
The closed eyes of the girl huddled to the fire,
Is tears upon his cheeks.

The poet,
Is not afraid,
Not a monster,
Not a hero,
Is only one.

The poet,
Nameless beast is she,
Forged from her sight,
Trees broken down to fight,
And holy mimicry.

We have all the time in the world
She coos to herself
Trying to pull herself out
From the pit she has buried herself in.

We have all the time in the world
We have forever
With such a cursed double-edged sword as life
Giving us freedom and pain.

She claws her way with
Dirtied fingernails
Chapped lips
A crinkled smile like a chip packet
Out of the dark hole.

The sun is too bright
And she cries out like the
Monster
She has become.

'I have everything'
She says, because it is true
She holds love like a dying bird
Smothering its freedom in a hope to keep it with her
She strangles knowledge with
A dark mind
Which thinks of nothing but broken records and the
Repeat of
'I hate myself'.

Life is beautiful
She muses as she spreads her darkness with her
Tainting all those she speaks to
Even with a glance they become ruined.

Why do you love me
She swears like it is a
Foul curse
As her mother stares at her
With too old dark eyes
That speak of ignorance
And biting knowledge.

The wind howls
'I hate you'
As if it were consoling her
Maybe it was.

It sweeps her off her feet
And carries her out to somewhere else
She had been standing too long
Almost looking living
And now needed to die for a week or so
Bury herself again
And wallow
As if her world were imperfect.

She walks to school
Always tugging at her sleeve
Always wondering if they see it
But don't care
If they see her
But don't care
If they whisper about her
But don't care.

She wonders if they care.

'Look away'
She lies
She wants a hug
But she also wants a slap
And a shout
And for someone to say
'Snap out of it, you're not a child.'

She is a child
Even if she is not
Even when she is
Her eyes are old
Yet she has seen no war
Or violence
No one hates her
No one that matters
But yet her eyes seem to absorb the elderly
As she looks around her
Stealing life from others.

'I curse my empathy'
Even when someone sneers she wonders why
She pities them
She wishes to understand their hate
She doesn't heal her bruises
She longs to heal other's bruises.

Yet she is still innumerably selfish.

The cow.

She looks behind her
Someone is there
Always there
Paranoia, hypersensitivity
She sees people who aren't there
Always about to tap her on the shoulder
And she spins around
Heart racing
Breath catching
The anxiety throb in her leg pulsing again like clockwork...

No one is there.

What do they want
She thinks loudly
Hoping they can hear her
And she won't have to say it out loud.

Truly she is selfish
Even if they asked her
She would deny them
For she hates them
All of them
For they are happy
And she is not.

Why am I angry
She whispers mournfully
She should be grateful
Look at her house
Dog
Friends
Parents
Cuts
She is so lucky
She should feel happy
Doesn't she have it all.

It is not a question
She bangs out nonsensically
Drumming away
Her fingers tapping in anxiety
And fear
And maybe sadness
And maybe cryptic malevolent amusement.

She climbs back down into her pit of despair.
Its warm.

How oddly comforting.