"mary mary quite contrary
how does your garden grow
with silver bells and cockle shells
and pretty maids all in a row”*

homecoming queen
ballgown made of polythene
they always said in trash bags
you could still look haute couture
leave em wanting more
now, the only thing i’m sure of

is laura, laura, laura in the ground
nothing but her aura and a lily spattered mound
remains, it pains me to concede
that she’ll be eaten up by ghost ****
by the time she turns 18
she’ll still be homecoming queen
below my lungs and all the earth
she will be crowned
laura in the ground

angel dusted lips of blue
and eyes of lapis lazuli
all the water in the river
couldnt fill the chasm
this microcosmic monster ****** bone dry
cause the only thing i’m sure of

is laura, laura, laura in the ground
nothing but her aura and a lily spattered mound
remains, it pains me to concede
that she’ll be eaten up by ghost ****
by the time she turns 18
she’ll still be homecoming queen
below my lungs and all the earth
she will be crowned
laura in the ground

even her jewellery is broken hearted
all cut up like lines of cheap *******
it feels like all the world is utterly uncharted
with you gone i am lost in fog
you’re planted in my brain

oh, laura, laura, laura in the ground
nothing but her aura and a lily spattered mound
remains, it pains me to concede
that she’ll be eaten up by ghost ****
by the time she turns 18
she’ll still be homecoming queen
below my lungs and all the earth
she will be crowned
laura in the ground

oh laura, laura, laura palmer
golden girl, enchanted charmer
you will still be crowned
laura, lovely laura palmer
you’ve got a date with the embalmer
and afterwards there’s coffee in the ground
i promise, doll, i swear
you’ve nothing, no one left to fear
you’re all walled in and safe, my dear
my darling laura, laura in the ground

i like wearing miniskirts and i read marie claire
i like bubblegum pop music and i like to dye my hair
i like rich thick hot pink lipgloss and i like to pretend
i still dress up all the time even though i’m seventeen
and im learning how to defend myself

i pretend my legs are made of silk and i pretend im sleeping beauty
i fake like im a natural blonde and fake like im a cutie
i like having kitten pits and i like kissing girls
i like clothes that show off my **** and i like wearing pearls

i like the way my hair smells of peaches
and i like it even when it reeks of 15 different kinds of bleaches

im a ******* soft girl
im a pincushion queen
a raspberry swirl cheesecake
a pretty little thing with a head full of snakes

deliberately unclean
deliberately obscene
pretty as yesterday’s underwear
pretty as the roots of courtney’s hair

pretty as my favourite les mis scene
when anne hathaway’s fantine dreams a dream
and her nose starts running as she starts to cry
and everything felt real for once in my life

i’m covered in face powder and i’m covered in dirt
and you’ll never know joy if you never know hurt
and that’s why they make disney princess plasters
so when you skin your knees you’ll only feel prettier after

let’s talk about all the junk we like
and re-learn the art of laughter
i’ll be in the kitchen making raspberry tea
whenever you wanna join me

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.

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).

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

Sometimes your mother will look at you
like a dead language, some untranslatable
character. Speak anyway.

Sometimes your burning heart’s smoke signals
will make her weep and splutter,
or pass over her like incense, slightly
too sweet, and thick with silence.

Hand her an apple.
Know she might choke before she sees
the core.
Feed her anyway.

Sing your hymns with windows open
when the house is ablaze, do not
suffocate. Gasp through carbon,
remember who gave you your
stardust: you are
heavenly. Burning bibles
purges nothing, and screaming
into pillows
is not a prayer, precious girl.

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.

the morning star i see glistening in
trapped condensation between loose panes,
glimpsed through a sliver of lace,
is no angel falling over
london city,
just an aeroplane, and the silence of
people kicking and screaming
their way home from dreamier locations,
lisbon, or somewhere
the sun is already awake. they too are
weighted with clouds, pillows pressed across their faces.
in space, all our eyelids are
feather light, we breathe comets,
my lunar skull suspended
between this world and the eternal
dawn. this is how i fall asleep.

our suffering was human long before you
tried to “humanise” it,
give us the kiss of life,
i am not your wife, i am not your sister
i am not your ******* daughter, sorry to break
all this water
on the embers of you
deigning, for once, to give a ****
what your friends do to us
by imagining we belong
to you — i will demonstrate
how little you know of possession
as i run
my keys along your car
til your mouth unlocks, drops open
and i dive down your throat, walk around
in you, the cage
of your ribs more spacious than
my own, two sizes too small,
zero, counting down to take-off, space
for my heart all taken
with the frenzied tango
of me watching you watching me, behind
my eyes, all winged
and no less trapped for it
vandalism is not violence
i would have snapped
your wrist when you tried to kiss me
just to see if you’d curse quietly
about your shattered iPhone bones
pick up, dust off, shrug shoulders
cold and solar
your belongings increasingly disposable
so when you love me because i could be yours
don’t flinch when i spit
in your eye, scream, cry, take
your name in vain
to leech from myself the pain of your basilisk glance
turning me into rubble, eroding all
the toil and trouble or whatever it is
you fear in me, petrified
perfect specimen, cut and dried
venus de milo on a pedestal
armless, harmless
all legs and bust
soft hewn and lunar, gathering dust
i am not your medusa
victim, your rock, your ***** girl
grain of sand to make a pearl
i am fire, water, air
you cannot hold me
don’t stroke my hair, don’t ******* touch
me, yeah, my fingertips
may turn you to gold
but i’m not here to spin your straw
neither am i some unrefined ore
for you to forge into a wedding ring
stone is bitter cold as metal
though it makes a rougher crown
don’t worry, though, my darling,
the chill will hiss and dissipate
when i come to melt
you down

i can’t even keep a cactus alive
i forget to feed the fish
my sims, playing god,
kept in bowls
floating squarely upside down
i bet if i kept the cold
virus inside a petri dish
in my ***** room, it would die
as well as any pet,
as sticks and stones
collected as a child, coloured in
snapped or shattered, inevitably lost
and yet
and yet

in nine months’ time
i will be
one hundred percent loaded
a poorly dressed specimen
of adult human life
imaginal stage, caged
bug eyed girl
growing moths, cultivating mould
far too scared to be so old
still packed in with cotton wool
all bundled up inside myself
walking on eggshells
wings wrapped around my head
a feather bed, an endless humming
to block out every bump
in the night

my body is a cephalopod, sucker
attaching to every
rock or hard place, petrified
of the space between myself and
love and caring
needing a taste of everything
that looks safe to ingest
my restless limbs
can neither hold you nor let you go

whereas my cactus heart
tears skin and fingers far apart
the second we huddle in
too close, pins and needles
a pillowful of hurt,
a careful collection,
dessicated exhibit
iron maiden
cold and unbeholden,
longing to be held

i am half empty, i need water,
so much that i could die.

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.

i feel the ghost
a strand of hair
clinging to my eyes, my face
like lips or a whisper
and i exhale a cloud
like a pillar of smoke
to tell the world
i love you, i am sorry
and i watch as it envelops the planet
in the haziest hug
a love bug
to fill your lungs
with a haemotosis of kisses
and cushion your heavy heart

i remember the nights
that my home set itself alight
along with the rest of the nation,
in rage at ashen-faced foster parents
open window, gasp for breath
and there was only smoke.
though it was not enough to live on,
it quelled the hunger for a while
and we smiled
as one, hands held in this hell
while the father we never asked for
let us poison ourselves
on the gifts brought back from holiday
three days too late
to find an urn
in the blank space once held
by a hospital bed,
now lying broken in a skip,
all cinders, rags,
no riches —
but the stitches at
least are removed,
as gone as everything else.

Petrified for the last time,
I cut my brittle heart out
with a pair of nail scissors,
clipping through the keratin
down to the quick —
the sharp, thick, constant sting
of raw flesh, ribs spread
to see the moist, shady maw,
the red, white, and blue
empty ring box of my lungs,
a “yes”
like soft velour, all
tumescent and convex, pressed
out with the fragments
of vitreous gifts
you poured down my windpipe
(unintentionally vitriolic),
gem shards, cold and hard,
and I am scarified inside out.

My heart, airlifted
from its zone of alienation,
wails and trails lank Titian locks,
a red forest, scorched and floored.
Still, the dead marble lump glows red
and ***** like blood under nails.
You are subdermal —
eternally, infernally so.
Put apples in my cheeks, speak
but do not
listen, I glisten —
first with sweat, then tears,
then soap suds. I shed
my skin, touch fresh markings,
milk patterns. Half blossomed
rose bud,
dismantled, curling
up on myself,

you’re out of the woods.
I pull up my hood, drag my feet
out of the mud, bind
my open chest with the rest
of my ruddy cloak and,
sanguine, let drop my spleen
into the puddle I leave
behind, all dark
with blood and bark. Your bite
is not so bad
but, oh darling,
what big teeth you have.

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.

i would like to sleep
in a flowerbed
pansies cushioning my head
for all the thoughts
i bought from a freelance writer
the last time i pulled an all nighter on my own
you wanted to talk on the phone
so i did
but i had nothing to say for myself
i nodded and smiled like you could see me
and worried about my mental health, again
my drunk honeysuckle fingers slurred
over the power button
and they cut you off
before i had to pay for another word
i really can’t afford to be so shy
cut through the brambles of telephone lines
put your hand in mine
and we’ll sleep a hundred years
and keep the thorns for souvenirs
i wish my voice didnt sound so dumb
but now the stitches of my vocal chords have come undone
and i don’t feel like spinning thread today
so i embroider every word i didn’t want to say
in pink and blue
on my faux punk jacket
and use it to cover you
sweet dreams

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.