you’re never fully dressed without a smile
is that why models pout so much
to make themselves that much more alluring?
i’m not sure

i can’t think over the sound
of people catcalling
the world’s best dressed woman
because she doesn’t want to smile

i don’t want to smile
i’m not your pan am sunbeam
to brighten up your journey through the day

all i wanna do is catch my bus,
go home, and fingers crossed
i won’t start crying on the way

i’m sorry, i’m so sorry
please don’t worry
please don’t worry
it isn’t very much at all
except:
i’m blue-
faced with apologies
and choked-up girl pathology
"i think i’m gonna hurl"
i scream, and taste
another “sorry”,
pressed like flowers,
blossomed in my throat.
speak softer, beg forgiveness,
my voice is not my business:
cut my tongue out,
make me kissable,
more easily dismissible
an echoing abyss for you to fill
with hot air, coffee breath
and sound bites
i don’t **** around,
i bite
and scratch and pound and shriek —
you will be sorry when i speak
you’re gonna look pathetic,
you’re emetic, here’s your drinks back
down your suit
i feel frenetic
i will puke, i ******* swear it,
if you call me unapologetic
like a compliment again.
not apologising
for myself
is women’s studies 101,
and i am done
with what a sorry state
you left my sisters in.
paternalistic praises
of our struggle for assertion
and insertion of your ego
into conversations
you were not invited to
is not the way to ladies’ hearts, though
we know how to get to yours:
open ribs, second ***** to the left
and straight on til morning
some things aren’t about you, little boy,
put up, grow up, shut up:
get your tongue out of my mouth.

I used to bathe in PVA
to hold myself together,
falsifying
the striptease of confession,
revelation,
forging a synthetic skin
to let people under, tear
asunder, take
a piece and frame it
like a rubbing of a leaf
or gravestone,
lock it in a locket,
gild your open heart.

One childish summer, I
stood on a street corner
with a friend, de-winged
ants knee deep, picking at her
sunburnt shoulders, peeling
her away, leaves to the wind
like a flowerbud
or christmas present,
trying to find her
angel wings
halfway between shoulder
blades and tissue paper
skin, volant as powder down.

Some precious things
are best left veiled.

Crying in public as performance art
or baptism, applying lipgloss for
ten minutes straight, calm before the start
like feathered storm clouds, lilac-heavy, or

pupil dilation as angel wings spread.
Blood pours from organs into hands, shaking
like cellphones, fresh texts, legs swelling with red,
blinking away glass shards, mirrors breaking.

Bees seep in through trembling eyes, and lips
let loose a white noise tangible as snow.
The moon crumbles in my hands as salt slips
in through pores, leaves my dusty cheeks aglow.

Honey-brained and drained, my eyes are flowers:
petals bruised, I see nothing, lose hours.

Don’t let anybody tell you your scars
still itching, as if they were
filled with electricity,
gives them power.

Let them scream for
attention, deeper wounds do not matter any more.

Though
they carve their love into
you, you are not stone: know

you are earth, a flowerbed,
saltless, rich, ready to bloom anew:
seeds sown, all sewn up, you
tend red rows of rosebuds.

All the thin shadows in
your skin mean is that
you are healing: remember

digging fingernails under scabs
will always make you weep.

Some people take
stitches to undo: do not
trap them
in your flesh like inflammation,
wash away the static shock,

pull out the shards of
glass. Your hard heart
will turn to snow,
to blue tac, soft but greyed. Warm
yourself in your own hands.

Write names in condensation,
let them fade until
your reflection smiles back at you.

Like a cathedral, I vaulted
my heart with bullets, torn
from my chest and
guts, blunt and melted,
wrapped my arms around
the word
"****", praying
I was one of the strong girls, the kind
that wants not, wastes,

not one of the romantics, the “hopelessly
devoted to you”, hanging on
everyone’s every word like the last
line of a love letter:
goodbye. And so I forget

wishing for the briars in my throat
to grow
and hook our hearts
together, as though
your tongue could cut me
out of my coma. I know
not to trust
in prayers and fairytales: I find myself,

an ice queen, too cold and flaky
for a lover: drunk, disappointing
everyone (but most
of all, my mother).

my sister is picking fruit, tummy aching
with the weight of a second basket;

my mind three steps to the left
of my skull,
i ask for pomegranates

(the sun is dead that watched me
last time i ate.)

my sister says:
"there are no strawberries"

my sister says:
"there are too many raspberries"

i need something
the size of
my fist, bursting
with red cells and life
to swell my chest, ground me
here

like a phonebox, my heart
can barely hold one person
before we start to bruise each other,
peach soft, blushing
dark and aching,
as each mistake rots through
to the pit of my stomach

juice runs down her
fingers like old blood

plasma gilded, scabbed
and spilled, please
give me thicker skin,
cake me in rind and membrane
to hold the magma in.