this heart of porcelain

vitrified by your gentle hands

I am delicate, you said

like an unplucked flower

I am just waiting to be

smashed, picked, broken

and you would stand in the smithereens

and cry

over a ruined masterpiece

but shed no tears

over the girl who sacrificed her heart

for your art

Your fist opens
like a spray carnation

I pick at its pink petals
teasing it to take my fingers
and weave them between yours

for us to hold hands
as the sun beams down on us

burning the flowers to dirt
offering them back to the Earth

There’s no crueller word
than goodbye

Until it’s accompanied
by the whys

I am not whole, you see,
for there is a hole that runs
right through the centre of me

a void of emotion
where fear, shame and despair

disappear from view

(from me)

rainy days can make my mind murmur, though
with a flicker of recognition

For even the sky cries, dear...

Even the sky

I thought about the body I have hated all my life

I asked it “what will it take?”

Less food
More food
More puke
More pills
More miles
Less stones

It never answers, so I was surprised to hear a whisper this time...

“It will take kindness, acceptance, love...

You have to love me, darling. You have to let go.”

bleeding ink from my fingers
I try to paint a picture with words
clumsy and heavy
the letters swim
and change
I smoke ten cigarettes
in an hour
desperate to tease some kind
of creativity from my mind
but the ink runs dry,
and all that is left
is a black handprint on the page,
the result of pressing down too hard,
trying to put my pain to paper

pale and interesting
wilts under the August sun

each ray eradicating a joke, a charming tale

your skin ****** with heat and as it cracks
seeps through everything you tried to hide

a boring soul, a wandering eye, a fickle heart

I did not mean to burn you, darling
but you just weren’t interesting

to me