We were the graveyard girls
gorging on lost souls and bones

But our highest prize….

…we wanted to taste Death.

To bite into his flesh, and hallucinate his prey,
to let his blood trickle on our tongues, red as a brilliant, untouched ruby

We wanted to see if it would -
by some twist of supernatural law - make us immortal

(or infamous)

I long
to be folded
in paragraphs
and wrapped tight
in sentences

words that are both
a balm and a blaze

for a vowel to be the spark
that sets of a fire
that reduces everything to ashes

(past, present, future…)

is all I dare hope for

I am like fire,
burning through the
memory of you

every moment will
be ashes, the ashes
soon dust

you will not destroy me,
for I hold the flame that
burns as bright as star -
light, that annihilates
trauma and pain

do you think for a second,
that I will think of you? When
I am picking stardust out
of my hair

do you think you will matter
to me? When my memory
of you, is merely smoke
in the air

I am out
throwing breadcrumbs
to help me find
my way back
to you

you are out
with torches
burning down
the trees that line
the pathways

home

You see scars
instead of stories,
histories weaved and stitched
half healed, still tingling with shame,

fragile ribbons tied together by my teeth,
pulled tight against the darkest night,
when midnight was a threat, and sunrise
an aching promise that I might forget,

so, see scars if that’s all
you can see,
but I now honour the stories
within me

You murdered me
yet I survived,
in a sleep where death
is my only dream,

my heart was stolen,
yet I hold it in my hand,
broken and scarred,
why does it still
beat?

I feel your fingers on every
inch of my flesh,
flies that get under my skin
and infect my insides
with fear, guilt and shame,

I hold every breath in
the purgatory of my
throat ,

to be sent to the
Heaven of forgetting
or the Hell of regretting

You held a promise
over my head like a guillotine,

I'd be safe as long as I did
what you asked,

I'd survive so long as I
gave you what you wanted,

I saw God in the face of Satan,
because there was no other
way for it to be,

and you want my thanks
and gratitude for being
my saviour that
night?

when you would put me
in a prison, for the rest of my life...