"her writing depresses me" he says

my voice quivers, falls up toward
space and crashes
down
against the sea-salt waves. my voice

s-s-s-stutters, repeats the first
syllable five times and once again
for an even six, repeats, repeats,
repeats. my voice is

quiet and every teacher i've
ever had calls on me with a
"speak up!" but no one ever
listens.

writing is the only voice i've ever known
you will not take that from me.

everything i've ever known
turns to dust, spiraling in a
constellation of tremors and
hyperventilation and worry,
so much worry, and every
moment in which i exist i
can feel my heart threaten
to beat straight out of my
ribcage and maybe i
want it to.

my knuckles are bruised,
the colour of sunsets and
irony, because they say i'd
never hurt a fly yet i'd
throw my fist into a window
as a fatal act of defiance.

hasn't the world
taken enough from me?

i talk to trees instead of people. they listen better.

my bones are twisted. the
skeleton cracked at year thirteen
with what could only
be age or agony-
probably a gnarled collaboration
of the two.

i think i've been twenty-one
since i was born; at least, that's
what every teacher i've ever had
thought of me: "mature for her age".
so did every ****** guy high off of
green smoke with eyes glazed over in

lust, either staring at me or straight
through my jeans, whistling and howling
like wolves with blood dripping
down their chins and claws
ready to ****** something already

gone.

i think that's why i died young.

i slipped the silk fabric over the curve of my hip and the scarred flesh of my thigh in a dressing room with three of my friends behind me, ******* in the fat of my stomach. they say black is supposed to be slimming but it only made me bloated; maybe the mirror was a liar (i know it didn't lie). an elephant with too-thick eyeliner and a too-thick body stared back at me and i bit through the skin of my lip till it bled and i wanted to live on some other planet where elephants were appreciated.

"that's the best one you've tried on yet," someone said, but i couldn't hear them over the red-eyed demon within me which whispered of shoving ******* down the trachea, messy but quick, everything gone in an instant. if this was my best one, i was doomed because my eyes were glazed over with the misunderstanding that beauty would never apply to me.

"i'm just gonna go- go to the restroom-" and the red eyed thing inside me cracks its whip, takes over the nerves in my brain, makes my legs sprint to the toilets and it's over, it's done, the food gone among stomach acid, falling hair, and teeth erosion.

i can only imagine what the restaurant worker who was forced to clean rainbow-coloured ***** in the toilet thought.

you robbed me,
at the tender age
of non-consent and
bony knees from
something i will
never win back

and i'm not
talking about
virginity anymore