You can read years of anger
Like Braille across my thighs
New scars overlapping the old ones
Hundreds of noughts and crosses games
I have been so unkind to myself
To my body, these legs
That only ever tried to keep me walking
That only ever wanted to hold me up
All these memories that bleed red
Did you know Regret reads crimson?
Body forgive me

You are the beast sleeping silent inside me
I imprisoned you in my ribcage
But you made caverns and crawl spaces of my arteries where you slink through and pulse your bulbous, blackening body with every beat of my heart
In the daylight I hate you enough to forget about you
But at night
I feel you stir and purr as you lazily stretch your body until it fills the space of mine
As if I were the second skin

You have made a puppet out of me
Held up on the strings of your whims I can feel you piloting this carcass
And like clockwork each night you heave your way out of my throat
All smoke and lightning and blood you curl yourself around me
And frost blooms on my neck where you kiss me goodnight
Come the dawn I will look for you again in my ribcage, feel you there
Sleeping silent
Beast
I hate you

you toy with this body And i feel my joints creak
Like a door on stiff hinges that dances in the wind
Beast you are the wind
You are the hinges, too
Which is to say you are the creaking of my body
Which is to say I would not be me without you

How could I not be called brave?
I, who have summoned my heart from my throat
Shaped it into pen and wrote with it
Weaved my soul around my fingers
Touched it to keyboard and left residue of that brightness,
Took all the scarred skin and made papyrus
How can you call me coward?
I have lain my body at the alter of sacrifice
Time and time again
Bled out on these stone steps for years
That creation may be birthed and witnessed
To break my skull open and feed you from it
It is the most courageous thing I have ever done

Bullet-hole chest
Me, a girl with parts missing
You, a smile with a smoking gun
caught in a war zone of I still love you
Refugee to the emotions that still hold me sway
Gentle as you killed me,
Kind at the slaughter
I died with tears drying on my face
And lips still shaped to kiss you
I never even saw the knife

Every sentence is shaped like a question
My whole existence is asking for permission
There are hidden apologies in my 'ums'
Shyness on the tongue

you will be 14 the first time a boy surges his way inside you
like a battering ram, unyielding at the castle gates
and you'll cry quietly and forget about it until you're 17
when a leering grin is the only precedence to fingers like knives
that scale the walls searching for whatever treasure that is rumoured inside you
you will be unable to dismiss the fear that swirls like animation-show thunderclouds above your head
when its dark outside and you've still got 10 minutes left of your journey and right here, this alley
cross the road to avoid it because you can't trust shadows in places like these
and hell, you'll still be afraid the next day at 2pm walking home from a doctors appointment
hearing the loud thud thud thud of footsteps behind you and they speed up with a thud thud ThUd THUD
your heart crazy and rioting like a bird in your chest but its just a man trying to get past you because of his long, long legs, and heavy footfalls
you haven't felt safe in the places you should've and that scared you for years until you made it to 17
layers of memory peeling back with the catalyst and you know now why arms always felt like iron bars
because you see a smile storm past your eyes when you close them
and hear the soft laugh of the older boy
as you squirm under him and no, you haven't told anyone
too late to make change and too late to stop being afraid
this, your secret shame,
you will be 14 when you let yourself get *****.