every lie is a *****, rusting, digging into more of what lives in my chest. if you can imagine how a spider's walk sounds, then you'll hear my brown bones closing over this thing that is red. my body is a crowd of one, a room full of me: i stay caged between 4 walls, and it is lonely.

be still so the hounds don't bring you down, not so still that they win without a fight. be still, red thing, but not so still that you may never move again. the world has an appetite for your kind of soul: their mouths, yours too, will be used against you; they'll swallow your tongue and say it was their food.

confined to this live-wire city, you wonder if you chose to be unseen. you wonder when you stopped seeing, too, stopped being a girl with a mouth full of teeth and a red rose that bloomed when she would sing, dance, dream, a girl with less to care for and more to care about, a girl who knew a thing before she was told how she ought to know it.

so what do i know? i sit in this car, i go up this road following signs that read 'home', watching traffic lights come and then go, greening it all the way to the highest hilltop. but mountains tower in the backdrop, the way down becomes an endless ***** and these burning lamps line the sides in warning, urging me to keep to the road.

there is wind in my hair, stars in the radio, and the man in the passenger seat is someone i won't know. he has brown eyes, warm skin, a Cheshire cat grin, and he is everything i hoped he would be, it's unreal. he's here in this scene, in the credits to a movie that plays on repeat, with me on this road to a home that never shows.

and everything bows to the clock anyway so i take charge of the man, the car and the stars, i take charge of the hounds and the spider in my mouth, i take charge of the heart and the bones and the dark, and i let the clock pull me out, out, out and into the arms of something new.

in fear, i am a crowded space
you fret over the ethics of it, and roast the turkey anyway
do you understand what i am trying to say?
i learnt how to swim, so i should be over this drowning

see, when things get all night-timed and dream-eyed
i know i can love and be loved
it radiates warmth, this old star blanket
like the feeling that comes with a hug

and this is the coldest month of the year, you know
some days i escape just to know there's a sun
an overbearing, godly thing on fire
so i'd rather risk my lungs, submerged

and the sun is so wrong i come back to it all:
the darkness, nerves, the dead bird
and the things i should know, that i don't

so when you say fire will keep me warm,
do you not see how that burns?

my friends
you are a garden of fantastic flora
at dawn you are peaceful in sleep
among cats and bicycle men
firmly rooted, you are roses
all elegant thorns and complex structure
and the earth from which you grow is all softness
the leaves you hold high rustle rich in laughter
this, i know

my friends
i am liquid land born from a storm
born from skies that dislike sleep
find me in the yawn of dawn
and when i am not the sun, i will water you

you say a thing, i say another:
now we are emotional

this room is not temperate;
the air is thick with ghost conversation

so we wait to feel better, we straighten our mouths
you burst wrap bubbles and i crush sour grapes

can your hands give me the love they still hold?
i am not the same each year, and you seem not to know

i ask if you can bring peace to my mind
instead, you command the waiter to smile

do you see? i am trying to break glass here

now you are taking your afternoon nap
and the thing in this room is wailing

i wait for you to wake,
but you sleep on blunted cutlery

it's that nobody likes talk of fixing the blinds,
so we adjust the curtains

now this room remembers less of light
and do you know we aren't breathing?

i have been given the signs
and they taste just like wine
in that i've never known what it's like
to follow through with anything good
like paradise in stitches and worn by a child
your mother asking for your care, your time
but you still choose to linger in a place
where the zoned-out stay for moments in a day
you choose to tear the flowers clean out of your ribcage
give them a bright dye, keep them on display
to regurgitate all over this cold hospital white

i have been given the signs
of a perfectly sweet life
and i am still scared of toothache

i am here as you will have me be
you that i love and you that i fear
this paper world, this heart that beats
is all you have chosen to give to me

there is a door i try not to open
i peek beneath it and see multichrome
it is not for me, i have been told
so i am neutral, so i stay muted

but i allow blue because i allow grief
horizons hide behind my gated teeth
a warm purple sky holds a burning red sun-
-these colours i hide, and i show to no-one

it is the door i try to ignore
a museum of thought i used to explore
a place that is many minutes from reach
a place that is a mausoleum of me

instead, i am a swallowed tongue
and people talking over tea
a painted smile, two tired eyes
a thing of archaeology

flakes of snow, faraway ocean
the coloured silence in a library
a glass before it hits the ground,
just hanging in the atmosphere

so i write with these words that you won't understand
and i wear this thick head that won't hold it's own weight
with this feather-like soul, i am barely seen whole
for i am here as you will have me be

this is real

you look
and look
and look

please speak

these birds, do you love them?
they said this path leads to greatness
i am walking towards you with every step that we take
i want to run, but you lead the way

i decide on a metaphor, and this is real
if you are a stone, i am a river
i am, always am
so then you too must be

you analyse plums as you pick them
i memorise your sweet confusion
there is a story here that is yet to be writ
so tell me this is as real as it feels

swear by the fish, the tadpoles, and blue dragonflies
by the orchards, the flowers, and ancient brown eyes
swear by your history, your land, your glittering sand
by everything here that i see, that is real

you look
and look
and look

but you speak in song, and not a word to me