When we walk back to our rooms,
Talking about what we’ll do in our lives,
Once we’ve grown up and grown out
She says to me
‘It’s ok.
You’ll get a job easily because you are English
And you are white.’
I don’t have a reply
I want to show her the nights I spend studying, coffee induced, trying to make it to deadlines to get that grade
Believe me
There is nothing in this skin colour that can achieve that A, that job or that degree
Yes
I know I am lucky
My family history may not hold your exact pain
But tragedy is also in the ancestry of all of my forefathers’ names.
Does she know that her family earns more than mine?
That if our bodies were painted
hers would look gold
And mine would look off white
Like the old Vauxhall left around the corner
Broken and damaged
Doing its best to still run
It is spray painted white
Of course it works.
I am tired of being made to feel guilty for being the colour of milk bottles.
All lined up,
We are freezing into frosted shadows
Like we deserve the cold
We have been thrown into a snowstorm and told it does not matter if we are lost because at least we are not seen as different.
How can I tell her that snowflakes are all naturally unique?
All different shapes and densities and depths
I could only be whiter if I was dead
A corpse
Would I still be entitled to the world if I wasn’t even around to live in it?
We are told to celebrate difference
And I am in total agreement
But since when were pale shades considered nowhere near as important?
I can’t even be thankful that I was born in this gender
Because being referred to as a ‘typical white girl’ is a personal offender
Offended, offended
I know we are sick of political correctness
But why do manifestos of equality make feel like I’m worth less
In no way am I saying my skin colour makes me better
I am saying we should not target people for something they have to live in forever
We are all born into varying shades of brilliance
So why attack anyone?
Do not resist this
Do you think colour-blind people give a **** about anyones’ races?
It is not about looks or image or even faces
It is about heart and mind and love and affection
So why is my skin colour the only thing that grabs your attention?
Just last week there was an article written stating
That white working class boys were doing worse in the tables
Than any other race in the United Kingdom
Is this because we teach that white working class boys are entitled to everything
Except for an education, except for the freedom
To be proud of their skin colour, themselves, their entire culture
Instead we tell them
At one point in time
You had it all
Complete power and look what you did with it
How can they ever learn to trust themselves if we keep reminding them of what their great great grandfathers have done?
This article entitled them ‘the problem’ with British schools
As if budget cuts and institutionalized bullying isn’t what’s at fault at all
The villain in films often wears a mask – does he do that so you can’t see his skin colour?
So you can’t see that there is good and evil in all of us no matter how dark or pale you are
Do not make a villain of yourself
Do not make a villain of me
Please teach your children it is ok to be whatever skin colour they are born in
Tell them to wear it like their favourite dress or their favourite tie
Tell them they look good, that they suit it
Please teach them they are worth the world
Please teach yourselves, it is ok to be white.

Last night she me asked what your name was
That’s a lie
What she really asked was if I liked anyone back home
But you see, yours was the only name I thought of
You are the only person I think of
Romantically linked but we're still not in sync
A broken mp3 file
Corrupted
Wrongly titled
It begins with M, I tell her
'Two Ms'?' she questions and I look at her as we walk
And she turns to me and says
'Does that mean you’re so in love you’ve become the same person?'
But how do I explain our initials are the only things holding us together
We are so far apart
More like A and Z
At opposite ends of the alphabet
Just waiting for the time to come together
Does this make us crazy?
I’m not sure
I don’t know what this makes us
Are we anything at all?
Last week I nearly kissed a boy with your name
Don’t tell me that is a coincidence
I have believed in signs ever since I could read them
“DO NOT ENTER” my thought stream
Just carry on swimming in the “DEEP END”
Because you know I will always be a life jacket
Waiting for you to surface.
So, face me again
With your real, pained expression
Of a broken home and natural intelligence
You always saw the world through a lens,
Clearer
Cleared your mind of anything to do with me
I am still waiting, holding your camera case
For when you decide to put that life away
Zip it up and find a new one in me
M, I miss you
Like the last bus home from school
Like the sugar in a diet
Like the 29th of February
Maybe in four years’ time, when I say your name
It’ll sound an awful lot like mine.

You were always the last bus home
As though
If I didn’t catch you I’d be stuck waiting for a lift I’m not sure would come
I missed you often.
Always went to the wrong station
I read your numbers wrong
You were vivid, neon flashing
But I wasn’t wearing my glasses
I couldn’t see you properly
I thought I deserved the long walks home
As if chalky hills and borrowed books torn up into pieces were the only things I could hold onto
I always managed to lose my return ticket
Some days I did it in the hope that you would let me on for free
Let me in
Do not close the doors automatically
As if I am not worth the wait
I am worth the wait
Don’t drive away from me again
I am not begging
I am not praying
I am asking you to come back for me
Reverse to a time when we discussed frame sizes and half flamed dreams under fairy lights
Come back to a time when you thought I was something special
I met you in gold and black shadows
Like we were sweeping statements of colour
Thrown together
Into a palette
Paint with me
Do not separate me like ink and oil
Do not separate yourself anymore
We are not cheap materials
We are quality
Treat us like it
Treat us softly
Take my hand and follow me across the canvas because honestly, it’s all I am good at doing
Making a rough pattern of a future I was never sure I’d have
I can find the destination but I need the petrol of your spirit
I need your headlights, your windows into things I don’t understand, your compass into things I am not brave enough to dive into
Guide me
And once you have finished
Please. Take me home.

I think too much
Is that why two years after you wanted to leave this earth
I still can’t get the thought of you collapsing out of my head
Why the idea of you alone in your room
At four in the morning, clambering out of bed
Deciding whether it’ll be a good night to give up your life
Is still in every thought I have, I dread
Those thoughts
The idea of my own future is too much to handle when I still worry you nearly didn’t have your own
I think too much

But were you thinking at all when you drowned yourself in pills
As if paracetemol was the answer
And death was the cure
I couldn’t bring you any closer
You had locked all the doors
But there were broken windows, cracked walls
And I should have seen through them
Maybe that is why I can’t sleep, because my doors are locked tight too.
I think too much
Maybe if I opened my house to you, you would have wiped your scarred feet
And your bony knees could have rested in the warmth of my bed
I would have held your hands for hours, my friend
I would have held them until you fell asleep
Until you didn’t have the energy to find the labelled bottles I still keep
Maybe- Maybe- I could have helped – I
I think too much

I still cry over you
I still cry for you
I feel the blood of your attempts on my own hands
As if they were clasped around your neck
I am not poetic enough
I’m no Lady Macbeth
But the guilt still plagues my skin when I now hug you hello
Because when you are suicidal
No best friend should not know
I think too much

I think about the sirens
Did I hear them that night when they rushed to your place?
Finding sixteen year old child, in her mother’s embrace
Was she crying?
I think about it all the time
Did you pray to the God you’re not sure you believe in?
Did you pray for the end or did you thank him for starting your heart again?
I think about it all the time
Would they have you cremated or buried?
Force you back into the ground before you even had a chance to grow out of it
Like clothes owned previously
Working class families
We bonded over hand me downs
And straps for cash to hold tight what we earned
Would they have dressed you like dolls you could never afford?
Pristine and price tagged
Between us girls, you never suited body bags
Your body shape is best suited to the rise and fall of your chest as you breathe
It does not suit a coffin
Are you finally coughing up the truth now?
The truth is you are alive
You are still alive

I think too much

You were always like a sister to me
And I know things are different now, and we’ve moved away, moved apart
But you still creep into my subconciousness
As if making up
for the two weeks before you told me you’d tried
“I wanted to die” You told me
And in that moment, so did I
It will never stop hurting to imagine it

You are eighteen now
You are beautiful
Smart
All the clichés
But just because something is said often, doesn’t make it untrue
People will never stop saying the words ‘I love you’
I think too much

And that’s why even now that I see you smile
And laugh
And your happiness is so genuine, so true
I still have this incredible, guilt weighing need to write an apology letter to you.
I still don’t think this is enough.
I guess I think too much.

You asked me what it was I ever saw in him,
Over half eaten lunch and cups stained with coffee
And I said I saw everything in him that I couldn’t see in me.
I saw life
And excitement
And beauty.
You told me I deserved better,
That you’d only ever come to our wedding for the free cake.
And the alcohol,
For the company of me but not my husband.
I told you not to worry.
He will always be my unlawful better half.

See the only love I have ever been in is
Unrequited
You didn’t need me
Nor want me
But I couldn’t get enough of you
So I grabbed onto you like you were the last ticket out of this town
And I never let go even though I knew
All the trains had stopped running years ago
And that you could never really save me.
I still held on.

I have never been in the kind of love where things are simple.
I love you and you love me
Is something I have never been a part of.

So when I say I’m in love,
Do not think I am happy.
Do not think we share our secrets at four o’clock in the morning
Or that he knows the exact shade of green of my eyes
like I know the bruises on the back of his hand.

Because this love is not like that.
This love is not patient, nor is it kind.
It is hard
And I am hurting
But there is no-one to kiss it better.

You are the bitter taste from coffee I still make too strong
I was in boiling water
You were not.
Too hot, too hot
those words burnt both our tongues.
I still see you when I shut the fridge door
catching myself wearing your empty expression in the window's reflection.
The milk is almost as pale as your skin,
as white as your teeth
when you remembered how to smile again,
as though you were stuck in a bad dream
that no amount of hot beverages could save you from.