I'm six years old. I'm six years old and my favourite colour is green because it's the colour of my eyes and I think my eyes are the prettiest things I have ever seen.

I'm eight years old. I'm eight years old and I had a nightmare so bad I felt like my eyes were deceiving me. My favourite colour is now the same pale blue as my Mum's floral bedsheets because they make me feel safe.

I'm ten years old now. I'm ten years old and I'm a big girl because I'm allowed to walk to school with my friend instead of my Mum. We walk past fields of buttercups and other pretty flowers but my new favourite colour is the peach of the rose in my front garden.

I'm twelve years old. I'm twelve years old and I can't stand the colour green anymore because the meaner people in my school decided my self worth was less important than their jokes. I don't have a favourite colour anymore, but if you ask I'll say it's purple.

I'm fourteen years old. I'm fourteen which means I've been a teenager for a year and I still can't stand the colour green. My Mum let me dye my hair for the first time and now it is red and red is my favourite colour, but if you asked I would still tell you it's purple.

I'm sixteen now. I'm sixteen and I think I know everything, I met a boy that I like for the first time, my Mum doesn't know, but I think he makes the colour green a bit easier to look at because he told me he loves my eyes and that they are the most beautiful things he has ever seen. He gave me a pair of rose tinted glasses and I'm not quite sure why, but for now my favourite colour is the deep brown of his eyes but if anyone asks, my favourite colour is still purple.

I'm eighteen now. I'm eighteen and I can finally drink without it being illegal, and I have started drinking to forget everything except the colour of my Mum's pale blue floral bedsheets, the peach of the rose in my front garden, the bright red of my hair and the green of my eyes but most of all I'm drinking to forget the purple of the bruises that litter my skin, the purple that I always insisted was my favourite colour for reasons unknown to me.

I should be twenty years old now, and my favourite colour should be the orange of the sunset, the pink of the sunrise or maybe even the yellow of the buttercups in the fields I used to walk past on my way to school, but I did not make it to twenty years old. My favourite colour was never purple and I never asked for my skin to be constantly tainted that way, but you made sure I never healed and now my Mum is laying purple flowers on my grave and she's wishing she fought more to get my favourite colour to be green again like when I was six years old and in love with myself and the world around me, because if I still loved the innocent green then maybe I wouldn't be suffering my greatest nightmare as a child with the only comfort being tucked up in the seemingly endless sea of brown. I always tricked myself and everyone else into thinking things were perfect with rose tinted glasses but the lenses shattered and the last flower you laid on my grave was the peach coloured rose from my front garden, and now the petals have wilted and all of the colour has been drained from me but this new world has more hues than I could have ever dreamed of.

Is it so foul
That every morning I regret to see the sunrise?
Is it so foul
That every evening I hope it's the last sunset I see?
Is it so foul
That all I want to do is close my eyes?
Is it so foul
That I despise the life given to me?

Am I at fault
For the pain I have endured?
Am I at fault
For the environment that is mine?
Am I at fault
For the soul so pure that has been scarred?
Am I at fault
For my inability to control my mind?

Don't I deserve
To be done with all these tests?
Don't I deserve
What people refer to as happiness?
Don't I deserve
If not a smoother journey...
Don't I deserve
At least to be put to rest?

I was an egg.
Tough exterior, and complicated but soft on the inside.
My chalaza
You held me together.
Kept my soul in place.
I was albumen, yolk, air space, membranes...
You were my chalaza

and then you weren't

You ripped yourself from me, broke my membranes right from the inside.
My yolk crashed with nothing to hold
My air followed you out
I was left to suffocate in pieces of myself, damaged in a way I could never repair

My hand hovers over the paper.
I twist and flip the pencil in my hand.
My mind swims in images and words.
Colours and thoughts.

*but the paper remains blank

You're the sun.

So beautifully bright that I have to stare, even though it hurts horribly.

I live in Antarctica, where you only light up my world half of the time and then leave me to suffocate in darkness for months on end.



You're a deer.

Unaware of me observing your adroitness from the dark depths of this brazen bracken which conceals me.

If I make any sort of sudden movement, I know you will sprint away into the trees because you're so afraid of letting anyone get close to you.



You're a puppetmaster.

Pulling at my oh-so-vulnerable heartstrings in the most musical way while creating the most fantastic and addictive art.

Your fingers are magic to me, and their slightest movement can either plunge me into endless despair or **** me up to the most heavenly of all cloud nines.



You're a siren.

Drawing me in with your sweet song only to ultimately unravel me.

You taunt me with colorful hints of false hope, making me wonder if you're really that cruel, or if you're merely  unstable.



You're a child.

So oblivious to the obvious, yet incredibly innocent.

You brighten my day with your silly antics and sweet gestures alike, but you're too enthralled in your own little world to ever notice.



You're Doctor Jekyll.

Always changing your face from friendly to arrogant and asinine, then right back again.

Sometimes I wonder how I could love someone like Mister Hyde, until you turn into the nice guy again and remind me.



You're a weaver.

Excruciatingly twisting the threads of me into the fabric of my being, leaving little streaks of sorrow and joy.

You have shaped this tapestry in the most painful and beautiful way, and without your unknowing influence, it would surely be unrecognizable from its current battered, but unique, condition.





You're a thorny rose I keep trying to pick.



Sending me away ******, bleary-eyed, and smelling sweet.



I wish you could understand how much I need to carry you home.