To whom it may concern,

I am fragile. I will pretend I'm okay when really my shoulders are collapsing under the weight of the heavy universe I do not feel a part of.

To whom it may concern,

I am tired. I have been running from things I dare not face since monsters began appearing under my bed and now all I'm left with are mirrors. I would rather join the monsters under my bed.

To whom it may concern,

I guess you could say I'm running from myself. Maybe I am. All I know is that the reason I hear my heartbeat so clearly is because my chest is hollow and I push people away for fun, like they're the dinner table I'm sat at and now I'm full.

To whom it may concern,

My name is Victoria, the meaning of Victoria is victory but the only thing I've been victorious at is ripping my own soul until it bleeds black. I've been trying to dye it red from the blood of others but colour fades and I'm tired.

To whom it may concern,

I am made up of layers, some are impenetrable by choice and some are just hanging under my fingernails. I can't seem to get them clean.

To whom it may concern,

I am a riddle, to some, I am a muse. For me, I am trying.

it's a melancholy sadness and it grips hold of my joints with steel chains and i am bolted
bound to internal torment like a sadist playing sadist tricks oh i am bemused
wrap me in cotton wool and sing to me
nursery rhymes or tragic blackened symphonies
melancholy melodies / mad and misused
play the piano on my ribcage and sing your sadist tunes
this little rib went crack crack crack
everything in the room faded to black, black, black
what a bitter hymn oh and there is nothing holy about this
beetroot is red because you beat the root of me dead so tell me
where is your god?
i think i set him on fire with the acid in my chest
my blood is scathing / possessed
i drew a cross on his forehead with what i had left
monsters are manufactured; a product, you see
a deformed social escapee
non-conformist unmoral idiosyncrasies

laboratory rats

setting the world on fire with gasoline and dynamite
study the ill mind of a structureless parasite
understand that monsters are manufactured,
and they were once
just like you

i'd cut my own heart open and bleed without a sound as you lay next to me to show you that tiny vessels string together within me to spell your name and i would bleed it all out to prove that to you i would cut my lungs out of my body to prove to you i breathe because of you i inhale and exhale for you and i want to cut my tongue out of my mouth to stop myself from talking because it splutters out of me like clouds of baby powder and it's so foggy i can't see light anymore

The first girl I ever apologised to
created craters in my veins and filled them with love and she didn’t even know
how beautiful she was, lying next to me face-to-face with nothing but TV reflections and an orchestra of words spoken in silence
I wanted to tell her I love her over and over again but my eyes stole any sentence I could form in my head from my mouth and did nothing but stare
They say a person’s face gets more attractive the more you look at it but I feel this is a lie; if I had only got to glance at her face for a second, she would still be the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen
and we fit together like tetris blocks, building a foundation to plant the root of forever
and I want to grow beside her, watching her blossom from a caterpillar into a butterfly, from a star into the sun
and I want to be the steady trees that stand beside her, humble and proud, showing her that I meant it when I said I would never leave because I am rooted deep into our soil of forever
and I couldn’t even if I wanted to and I kept my heart chained to my ribs before I met her but she waltzed in, handed me the keys and I haven’t been the same since.
I felt her come crashing into my life like an asteroid; I am sure I was wiped out and taken to a universe where only good things happen because I can no longer see bad, only flowers where bullets should be
I can no longer only see red, but violet and magenta and mahogany too and she has opened up a world where everything does happen for a reason because it has led me to her
like a sleepwalker looking for home only to find something much better than that
like a sleepwalker waking up to find themselves immersed in golden sands and out of touch with reality but rife with the knowledge that she’s real
and her touch is there to remind me of this,
the world’s biggest mystery gracing the palm of my hand with their own fingertips, two DNA connected and the vibrations of my love for her bouncing back to whatever God introduced me to her to say thank you
and I remember the first time I held her hand. We sat in silence as I traced my fingers over hers and back again, like a visual of tentative attraction on loop.
I didn’t believe in anything until I heard my name on her lips and suddenly angels existed and
Sometimes I feel like I’m hallucinating but I don’t mind when her presence in front of me is tripled and I can see not just one of her but three and each one outstretches their hand as they morph back into one person, as if to show me that in all her various forms, I am safe
and I have never been safer
I can no longer only see red, but hues of cyan and aqua and agate blue and they merge together to form eyes I dive into searching for the very depths of her ocean and I never gasp for air
because I am safe. They merge together to form irises that look at me like I’ve never been seen before, like a rare breed of an extinct animal discovered again; irises that look at me like they could stop time with their intensity
and I want to stop time with her
I want to contort it to wrap around her and I and protect us in the promise of eternity
because the stars will set the sky on fire and everything will melt in embers and ash without her
the planets will misalign
the soil will sink the trees at their roots
and the ocean will swallow the earth it once harmonised with
and I will, simply,
cease to exist.

monsters don't live inside my head
or in my heart, or under my bed
they walk amongst me-- in day,
and at night
they whisper honeycomb sweetness
in my abundant ears whilst
blinding me with pale sunlight.
monsters don't live inside my head
they mask themselves in a façade of
overgrown riverbeds--
deep-rooting themselves within my
oesophagus and i am choking, choking
oh but i cannot get enough of this.
monsters live
in bone marrow
in hair follicles
in overgrown fingernails
burrowed like a perpetual parasite
until they become a part of my DNA;
a mutation, the cancer that causes
paranoia and maybe a little psychosis, psychosis.
i am not crazy
i am not crazy
there are just monsters
there are just monsters.
they grip my hand as i walk down the street
intertwine their fingers into the cracks in
my bones and i do not fight back--
i am tirelessly tired of tiresome tug-of-war.

there are many things that keep me up at night, like the evolution of life and the existence of time and the meaning behind said existence and whether there’s existence beyond the only existence we are familiar with. and then there’s you. i spend approximately an hour thinking about that other stuff and approximately three, maybe four, maybe less, maybe more (usually more) thinking about you. i wonder if the abyss i feel on a daily basis is because i’m trying to grasp an existence i can find no other meaning for than you. maybe that’s what you’re so intangible, maybe that’s why you’re so far away. it is the universe’s idea of getting me to realise that i will never grasp it and i will never understand it and with this realisation comes heavy weight, like a gnawing on my joints, splintering in case i forget there’s something missing.

with this realisation comes many more realisations: i will never grasp you, i will never understand you and you are intangible because you are a universe to me and all i want to do is hold your black holes in the palms of my hands and crush them with the heavy weight i surround myself with and all i want to do is dot-to-dot the constellations of your mind so i can feel connected to you in some way.

there are particles of your skin in my bedsheets and the breath that clouds out of your mouth as your bewildering mind speaks has entered my own at some point and i am told it takes seven years to get rid of and i’m not sure how true it is but all i know is i have seven years to find you so that i do not lose the best pieces of me. seven years is a long time, but i’ve spent approximately two just daydreaming of the lines under your eyes and the colour of your lips and i am still no closer to you.

when i realised you were a universe, i was sat in a café on a city street we passed many times and i couldn’t stop drawing pictures of your hands and the way they cupped and caressed like no other and suddenly you were cupping the world and there were stars and supernovas and darling, i swear, it all made so much sense. the wind blew that piece of paper away and maybe that should have made sense, too, but it didn’t and i tried to draw your hands again but they didn’t cup the same way and i guess the universe has always been presenting signs but i have been blinded by the stars you hold.

i am sorry i wasn’t good enough to melt the icicles that formed on your heart after she left you. i have been bathing my wounds from your tongue for a while and the saltwater sting mocks me every time. it is not the only reminder i have of you, there is a long list and i’m sure one day i will write it on a scroll for you and for once you will crumble into the dust that i held buried in my collarbones waiting for your lips. for once you will understand what rubble feels like beneath your feet as everything around you perishes under your own fingertips and it will weigh even heavier on your shoulders than when she left you.

i said that i had seven years to find you so that i did not lose the best parts of myself but since you’ve been gone i have been trying to become my own universe. the planets do not align yet but there are more stars than black holes now and if i had to thank you for one thing, it would be that. i longed to be your epiphany but now i cannot stop fulfilling epiphanies of my own. if i was to be anything i would have been your shadow, with you wherever you went; now, i am sure i would be the light that casts such shadow and you will wince at how bright i shine.

i have spent two years daydreaming about the way your lips curve and the movement of your hips on the dancefloor and how you brush your hair behind your ears and i have come to loathe them. your lips do not curve, they fold. they fold syllables and words into tiny shards of glass and pierce the skin of those who love you. i am still tending to my wounds but i heal the same way a phoenix raises from ashes. you brush your hair behind your ears when you want something because you know how intimidating your beauty is but darling, your hair is growing thin now and intimidation is a natural response to things people don’t understand and how mediocre it is to understand you. don’t get me wrong, you are still a universe but if you always believe you are centre, the gravitational field that holds those orbiting you close will weaken and your universe will annihilate itself the way forest fires burn what they find beautiful.

in seven years i will wash away the parts of myself that have been touched by you and not a trace of you will exist in my veins anymore. i cannot wait to finally feel like i can breathe and not choke on your name every time i try to exhale you.

you may be a universe but honey, so am i and how blissful it is to have nothing keeping me up at night.