When you look at me, what do you see?
I see a transparent body, outlined by bold black
ink, a distant reflection of me

You see nothing, yet you see me?
I see nothing but those behind you and those walking through
your outline, yet I see who you should be

If I were to disappear, what would you do?
I do not know considering, you are not there.
You are like air

If I am like air, can you feel me brush against your skin?
You are not as strong as the wind; you are like the air I breathe in

Why are you the only one who hears me?
I hear you because I am the mirror of your outline, I respond by showing you the truth of what you only choose to see

How do I fill myself in? Become visible and whole?
You find your true colors and escape into your soul

*A.L.W.

I am
So tired.
I am cold
And white
And blind.
On my wrists,
Defensive wounds
From a vicious love,
From the kisses
Of a black asp
With constellation eyes.

I have been reliving my death.
I have been choosing
That sweet, frigid venom,
An addict dripping poison into my veins.

But I am
So tired.
I am spent
And lost
And alone.
There are bruises on the soft insides of my arms
From a habit of worshiping
Sharp things.
Under my fingernails,
Dark soil
Evidence of a grave I've overcome
Too many times
And a struggle I've won
At a cost.

I am sick of death.
Sick of attending funerals for the futures I lose
Brutally and unexpectedly.
I am sick of being tolerated.
I am sick of being
Sorry.
I want to feel life in me.
I want to learn the taste of sunlight
And safety.
Of forgiveness--
I hear
It is sweet as warm honey.
(I wouldn't
Know)

I have gazed....
Oh, I have gazed long,
And the void saw me
As I saw it.
And long after I wished I could look elsewhere
I stood, gorgonized, on the edge.

Hold my hand.
Remind me that I have hands.
Spread light
In me.
Forgive me for my gravity as I lean forward on that hollow breeze that's always calling.
Pull me back and keep me
Steady.

I will never be
On solid ground.
I will never be easy.
I will never be
Safe.
I am half light and half shadow,
Half joy and half pain,
Half kindness and half anger.
I am a great, twisted tree,
With my branches in heaven
And my roots
In hell.
Love that in me,
Will you?
Will somebody?
I am ready
To bloom.
I am ready
To live.
I am ready to be exactly
What I am.

There is an old adage - I'm sure you've heard it - that life without movement is death.

today I feel the truth of it
somewhere between my sternum and my spine
as I sit here
the parade of life rushing by
in a distinct effort
to leave me
behind
and all I can think
all I can hear
all I can know
is


*"I am most certainly dying."

Please love me, although I have loved before.
Please know that even if
I have worshiped foreign hands,
Marveled at constellation eyes,
Shed tears for other minds and hearts
That tore from me some brutal, awesome love,
Know that nobody has ever made me feel safe
For any measurable length of time.
That not one of them ever stopped in the midst of kissing me to say
"You are just so beautiful."
The way you did, Lover,
2
3
4 times,
Just yesterday.
That all the flowers I ever gave them,
All the gifts and poems and artwork
All those things to show my love
Were tolerated
The way the sun is tolerated on a blistering summer day
Because to escape from it would be too difficult.
Know that I always knew that,
Felt it from them,
Felt shame for it.
And no matter how many photographs I have obsessively taken
Of a face I thought they must have molded the face of the sun after in every ancient carving,
Know that she never wanted me to see her.
And that that
COUNTS.
You looking up at me from those white sheets, Lover,
And never glancing away in embarrassment or apprehension
Counts:
Skin
Counts
To someone who has been held at arm's length for so many years.
Kisses count,
And I count them, every single one soothing the ache of the losses I never asked
To suffer.
It is true, you are not my first love.
But never have you pushed me away.
Never have you shut me down,
Never
Have you been cruel to me.
And all this
I find it counts
More than the awe I felt for those who would abuse me,
More than the fear and loss and devotion and destruction that they demanded
And then blamed me for the consequences of.
Although I have loved before,
Please, please, please love me now,
For that is something you can be
First at,
Lover.

You tell me you're empty
And I know you want my sympathies
My acknowledgement of the problem
But all I can give you is the gawking gaze
Of a child on his first trip to the zoo
Leaving smudges on the snake tank as he tries to fathom
How something could be so alien and smooth and powerful.
You tell me you're empty
And all I can think is
That I have not a moment of my life to compare that to-
A day without suffering, without pain or danger,
Without that or joy so intense it tips right back over into treachery
I have no memory of any such day
To draw from for empathy.
I stand and stare at you
Empty you
And I know your sadness should be respected
And I know I shouldn't wonder so perversely
What it must feel like
Not to feel
But I can't help it
I feel like I'm standing on the other side of glass
Staring into the beady eyes of a boa constrictor
Wondering irresistibly
What its embrace must feel like for the mice it devours.
I know you are suffocating
But I
Am drowning
And I wonder
What empty feels like.

There is something beautiful about two sad people who agree to hurt each other.
Something comforting.
It is a comfort only very damaged people understand- the tacit agreement to cause pain, and to receive it.
Pleasure is for people who have what they want.
But for those of us who are starving, ours is best peppered with suffering.
Being with someone who understands that carries its own worth-
I don't want you to make me feel good.
I couldn't stand it if you did.
I don't want you to touch me gently, or ask if I'm alright, or stop to look into my eyes.
I am starving, and so are you: I want your teeth.
I want you to make me hurt. And I want to hurt you.
I want you to hurt me because I'm not him, and I want to hurt you because you're not her.
We want to see each other suffer because we are starving and we need to feel that someone else is.
Don't hold back. I want you to lower me because I'm too good for her.
Don't love me, don't caress me. Dig your nails in. Drip candlewax on my stomach.
One step down from torture is all I can stand in the way of human connection, when it isn't her.
Punish me for looking at her like a baleful puppy tonight, even as you waited in my room with your soft skin and your sharp teeth.
There is nothing you can do that will be too violent, too brutal, too sadistic.
I don't want to be loved right now.
I am too raw.
I want to be touched. I want to be ruined. Leave marks. Smear lipstick.
Lower me because I am
Too
****
Good for her.
Let this heart know on no uncertain terms that its needs don't matter.
Help me **** it. Help me pin my demons to the bed and make them writhe, and I will do the same for you.
Let's exorcise our loves tonight and banish them to hell.
Let's tell our skin that it is irrelevant.
Let's say "*******" to the things that bind us. I will cut your heart out for him.
I will kiss your scars, not to heal them but to remind you that when you put them there you fought for something, something we both fight for now.
Hurt me. Fight her. Do it for her.
Do it for her because I'm not good enough to hurt.
Do it for her because I'm TOO good to hurt.
Crush me.
You could boil me alive and it wouldn't make up for her, so at least leave me bruised.  
I will give you what you need, and you will give me what I need: not love, but contact.
Please,
Let my heart know on no uncertain terms that its needs
Don't
Matter.

There is something beautiful about two sad people who agree to hurt each other.

Nowadays I know
That I still exist
Even when you don't say goodnight.

I think my lips are chapped because I've kissed so many boys who don't love me.
You ask me 'what do you taste like?' I don't think its very **** to say regret and sadness.
You say 'when can I taste you' My taste has been passed around so many tongues there is nothing left for you.

He tells me 'I'm here for you, I'll always be here for you' as he kisses my neck. The next week the bite mark on my belly is fading and I can barely remember the colour of your eyes.

My sister says 'you will change your mind' she says, 'all woman want to be mothers'.
I have stumbled in at 4am with the taste of strangers in my throat to see my mother sitting upright waiting for me, I think of the night I spent crying on my mothers lap in a&e;, certain I couldn't make it through the day, the way my brother scowls at my mother, my sister telling her that 'you could've done more, you could've walked away.' I. Dont. Want. Children.

My mum tells me she is old, she is tired. She desperately needs a man to hold doors open for her and carry her shopping. I am trying to remember that needing someone does not mean you are weak.

My grandmother gave me waist beads to encourage fertility. She says 'god gave you those hips to birth children'. Ive never told her that i lost my faith in god the year i lost my virginity.  And if there is a god, i don't want his ******* fertility. I want to break these beads and let drugs engulf me to prove my grandmothers blind faith wrong.
I laugh and pray before our meal and kiss her forehead, 'god bless'.

He tells me 'i know youre *****, its natural'. I laugh and play along for his delight. 'women are just like toys, television, easy puzzles'. I think of my father beating my mother, my fathers face all the men ive walked past in the street. My mothers face is my own.

'if you don't want boys to touch you you shouldn't wear tight clothes'. I think of all the boys who have run their fingers over my back when i was dressed in clothes from neck to ankle. I wonder if god is a sexist man. I wonder if there's any men who aren't implicitly sexist.

He tells me, 'I'll spend hours on you, I'll make you believe in god again'. There is nothing I can do but laugh. I ask him, 'does your mother know you speak to girls like this?'
He ***** his teeth, 'do you always have to be so difficult?'  
I kiss him but I think of his mother, foreign and lonely, 2 sons and no husband.

He says 'you need a real man' I think of all the other boys who have told me that before leaving me.
He wants to know why I'm in hospital so much, 'how are we going love each other when you can't tell me what's wrong with you' I don't want to tell him that I've cut my arms so badly I can see god in my blood, and sometimes the voice in my head screams so loud I black out. I kiss his chest. He doesn't ask again. I resent him for that.

I've been ignoring my fathers phone calls for two weeks because his voice sounds like absence and I don't want to hear another 'I love you' from a man who doesn't know my secrets.

I doubt
material wealth
means anything
in the afterlife
on the off chance
that I'm wrong
bury me
with my books
and my plastic owl.

We live in a world,
That's run by suits,
That's run by Corporations,
And we never see the real picture,
we are all puppets on a piece string.

Taxation what is it good for,
When it goes to a government,
That doesn't represent us,
The people.  

Land, Resources,
Consumerism,
We are becoming more power hungry,
Whilst we are losing our values,
Our respect.

The world around.
How long can we live,
When this world of ours,
Is dying.

The power has always been in our hands,
We just have to realise that we have to use it.

Both hands in my pockets, a blank page tucked in my shoe,
Call it a list of every little thing I wouldn’t give for you,
Traded the city for salvation, but found neither kingdom nor crown,
We were too young for such silence, and far too old to settle down,
Now standing on a subway platform, New York buzzing overhead,
My skull sick with the ghosts off all the things we never said,
Pale skin caked with shadows, dull eyes lit low with fear,
Please bring me back to you, or any place that isn’t here.