the pain comes and goes. It is an ocean of emotions and it draws back, folding in on itself, and just when I think i am free of it, a tidal wave of torment smothers me and drags me beneath it's depths. I am suffocating beneath the waves of my self-torture, drowning amidst an ocean of others feeling the same, yet still somehow, terribly, terrifyingly, alone. The darkness almost swallows me and I cannot breathe, I cannot see, I can only move my arms frantically and hope I am swimming towards the surface. Surrounded by the debris that is my life as the tidal surge covers all i hold dear and drags it into open water. And just as I think that the crushing weight is leaving me and I am finally free of all life's misery, the ocean spits me onto its surface like I am a pebble it cannot swallow, but the relief only lasts a few brief minutes before the tsunami of guilt and terror flood the canals of my veins and scatter my bones throughout its abyss. Thus the process repeats and i succumb to the flood once more. all the while wishing it would just end. Wishing I could sink and become part of the sea bed, where I will gently move with the ebb and flow of the tide, rather than try to fight it and be overwhelmed with the force of its devastation. And in the words of a song that my water-filled lungs cry out to;
Do i sink, or swim, or simply disappear?

We are always in motion
Never stopping,
Not for a second.
Racing towards finality
Waltzing through life
Our hands bound,
Unable to reach for the other
A dance of writing poems
And speaking no words
Shielding eyes when a gaze lingers
Scared of what we will find
Should we see the eyes of the other
There is rage and sorrow
And painful regret
Of that dance that now instructs us
You are the sun
And I the moon
Never touching
Only seeing from a distance
And somehow gravitating
Around and towards each other.
I know if we get too close
You will burn me away
Or I will eclipse your light
So we dance, endlessly
And we write poems
And speak no words.

look at the world around you
look at the way the birds of the morning
sing the same sweet melody every day
look at how the wind can bend the trees
but never do they bow to it
breathe in the atmosphere and the air
polluted it may be, it holds everything you need
marvel at how easily breathing comes to you
even when you feel you cannot
look at the way the sun never fails to rise
and the stars appear in different places each night
be awed by the constant rotation of Earth
and the way we do not notice how it turns
look at the animals, the fox that creeps into your garden
and the deer that runs from the wolves in the forest
feel the rain pounding against your skin
every drop lasting only a mere few seconds
before it's short life is over and purpose is gone
but the storms never stop being beautiful
and the rain both cleanses and creates
new life is being formed every second
all the atoms are working together
in perfect unison
Look at this world, really look.
Isn't it remarkable?

Love.
That tempting *****
At once giving and snatching away
All that is known
And all that could be had
She laughs at my pleas
I want it all and she knows this
Mocking and unyielding
She gives me a fleeting taste
Of the joy I have craved for so long
Before again receeding her gift
Like the drawback of a tsunami tide
I am then sinking and breaking
Under the weight of her
And all that she encompasses
And all that she ever could
Our mistress, maiden, mother, crone,
Cruel as the devil
And twice as pretty

tucked into the safety of your arms
held against your chest in a blissful silence
is this what heaven is? it must be,
for if it is not, I want no part in it.
Your hand strokes my back
and sleep creeps ever closer
my eyes are closing and I await the nightmares
that have plagued me for so long
but I awake some time after
in no cold sweat, no scream echoing from my lips
you're looking at me with eyes that hold such love;
I never thought anyone could look at me like that
a smile plays on your mouth, and its infectious joy
sends a thrill through me and a giggle rolls of my tongue
Your heartbeat was a steady drum that sent me to sleep
and your love was a warrior that chased away
all of the demons that crawl onto my shoulder
when sleep settles and vulnerability encloses me
I never knew a person could feel like home
but you are the only shelter i have ever felt
from this agonizing storm inside of me
I beg you, your beautiful love for me
has returned the light to my eyes and my life
Please stay?
I know you will
I know you will.

I am making bargains with the universe
I say a silent prayer to nothing and no one
I say, please, take their pain away
I will carry all their burdens if only they don't have to
please, universe, there is so much sorrow
we are surrounded by gravestones of those
that were crushed under the weight of self conflict
fighting against the sadness to be happy
please, let me take their pain
I am used to pain, I have room for more
just let them be happy
I cannot bear for another friend lost
I cannot bear another gravestone.

Concept: my body is made of gasoline. You're my spark my spark my spark. I am aflame and it feels so good to burn.

The words taste like metal on my tongue, rusted and grating across my teeth in the hopes it can force itself back down my throat where I will not have to speak again. The tears have dried on my cheeks and chin but the flowing doesn't stop, and I am creating waterfalls that cascade from my eyes and will sink through my skin and fill my until I drown within myself. My head staring at the floor  because I cannot look you in the eye anymore, not after what you have done time and time again, manipulating me more and more every time I foolishly let you back in my bloodstream, where you inject your poison into me and I am eaten away from the inside. Betrayal. Such an ugly word, yet the only one that comes to mind when I hear your name now, I used to think of things like wonderful, love, euphoria, but now there is only a fractured wishbone digging into my brain trying to bring me back to life whilst I pray for things to change, and go back to how they were before I loved you. But I have loved you and now I have learnt not to, cause and effect, ripples spreading out and out until they shimmer and sink.  You hurt me again and made my mother look at me with sad eyes and there is nothing more heartbreaking that her seeing me as a stranger, but things are okay now and I have pieced back together the fragments of what you so cruelly destroyed at my feet. I will not trust you again, I will not love you, I will not even breathe your name, lest some part of your essence nestles into my lungs as I try to exhale you. I will remove you with my tablets and the kind words of my loved ones and the warm embraces given to me, that are so much more temporary than yours. May the tide of your sorrow take you safely to a shoreline far away, and I pray that if our paths should cross again, I do not remember you and you do not remember me.

10,20,30 tablets
down, down my throat
Alice falling down the hole
row, row your boat
way into the darkness
where heaven may reside
40 crying people
that i left behind
mourners everywhere dressed in black
a coffin just for me
sobs thunder, lightning cracks
who knew that they would grieve
family is torn apart
brothers and mothers now frail
those who loved you, broken hearts
can you hear your friends wail?
an angel now, looking down
seeing what chaos you've brought
14 years old in a flower crown
you're an angel, but you're distraught
5 years later, your mother still cries
and your friends still blame themselves
you want to scream 'it was I who died!
i swear you couldn't have helped'
but they can't hear you, you're a ghost
a phantom weeping with them
but one thing you regret the most
you're the one who let this happen
14 years old, flower crown
Heavens' not that great
you don't smile, you just frown
at a choice you can't erase.

Something has changed,
shattered,
this gentle thing we had,
fragile as it was
has met its inevitable death
and we have plunged into dark
grasping at fragments of light
you have found someone
more stable than I,
better suited,
more loved
I forgive you
because I knew from the start
that this joyous thing
was doomed to die
as they only let you be happy
if they're preparing
to take it from you

nonetheless
I will grasp at the light
I am not the meek and feeble bird
that flew into a spider's web
I am a lioness
ready to fight for my joy
We will see the sun again
and it will be, as it always was,
*dazzling

I feel empty today, rotten and polluted like the inky sky of this town, ruined by the light. Maybe that is the problem, I am too much dark, too much the night’s daughter to be filled with such brightness, I will reject the light, gagging and choking on its purity and recede back into myself and the comfort of shadow. I don’t hate the light, but in the dark my skin doesn’t end at my fingertips and I can encompass a much larger space than the universe has provided for me. The moon will smile at me and I know it is the only light I will ever need

We're just a bunch of stupid kids. We pretend to know about love in the hopes that it will fill the gaping hole in our chests caused by the lead bullets of our parent's words or our friend's mockery. In truth we try to be mature and 'grown up' but we're not.  We're just 9 year olds stuck in a 15 year old body, trying to create a jigsaw but we've got missing pieces where our dreams should be and Reality has either hidden or destroyed all our aspirations that were so important when we were little. Now we're struggling through GCSE's and getting by solely on coffee to hide the lack of sleep, expected to decide our future when most of us can't even decide what to have for breakfast in the morning. I guess what I'm trying to say is...
We're just children.

I am as unpredictable as the ocean, I can turn on you in an instance with no cause or reason. My heart often lacks enough trust to hold a conversation and my eyes grow weary when exposed to too much sorrow. If i could take a thousand needles and press them into the palms of my hands to feel something, I would, but for now I am just numb. And with the numbness comes a dire sense that my life is slipping through my fingertips like sand and I can do nothing more but watch it as it crumbles.
I hate every inch of myself of late, from the roots of my hair to my little toe. I hate all that is inside me, including the stardust in my bones and the ***** blood sweeping through me, this heart beats but it's broken and it has no rhythm; It is an old truck worn from years of hard use and I fear it will give out soon, I cannot re-fuel myself, I cannot re-make myself. I can only sit in silence and smile to my peers to make them think that I will get through this.
But their whispers I can hear, and they know I will not.

They'll tell you
That they want you
And they need you
And they love you
But the truth is
Love is a dog from hell
And you're just a stack
Of bones

I am 10 and the things said to me
again and again are like bullets
in my gut, and punches to my head
they tell me 'its your fault your dad died'
but my friend still turns to me and says
'god, you're so perfect'
I am 12 and these things are still being said
but now by different people, infact,
they are being said by the boy I used to care for
funny that, i thought he cared too

I am 13 and my eyes are bloodshot
and the ****** tissues on my bed
from the state of my wrists
lay scattered in pieces, much like my life
and the next day my friend asks
'why are you so perfect Georgia?'
but she hasn't seen my wrists yet
and she doesn't know about how many tablets
i've taken in one night
just to escape this so-called "perfection"

Now I am 14 and while my friends are out
having a laugh and making memories
I am sitting at home with an elastic band
tied around my wrist, so i keep pinging it
because people started to comment on the state
of my wrists, and legs, and stomach
and I couldn't bear any more mockery
But I'm on pills now, every morning
to control these urges to rid myself
My friend, naive is she, still messages me
saying 'I want to be as perfect as you'
No darling, you do not want this
whatever this may be,
it is not perfection
what sort of perfection
kills you from the inside?

Make my heart cold
Make it icy
I don't want to be so red
So ****** and beaten
Every time I fall too hard
And every time I bleed out
Emotion emotion emotion

It is my greatest strength
And my fatal weakness

i feel guilty
wanting to die
but
*i can't stop
i can't stop
i can't stop

often I think i can force the words from my throat
push past the floodgates and fix this drought
but they stick behind my teeth
breathed out - rearranged, changed - back in.
the hollow of my throat holds a thousand tragedies,
a thousand miracles, it births thoughts like colliding stars
and yet they will crawl around my mouth, humming,
a lungful of bees that sting and sting and sting
my thesaurus brain cannot find the right mixture
of vowels and consonants and breaks in sentences
to give justice to what blossoms within me
they say silence speaks volumes
and I have been shouting mutedly all my life.

The demons lurking
Beneath her surface
Could not be killed
By the painkillers
That she took daily
Nor could they escape
Through the deep marks
That laced her wrists and thighs
They could not be drowned
Amidst the ocean of tears
That shone on her face
When the silence settled
And though she fought bravely
What is one frightened knight?
Against an immortal army
Made of darkness and blood
She had won many battles
But from the first day of suffering
She knew she had lost
The war.

It is always raining
On the outermost edges,
In the alleyways and
All through the subway streets
Inside,
Outside,
The snow and the hail and the goddamed rain
It pours through the cracks
Of my heart

they marked her gravestone
with the words
'beloved friend and daughter'
really? is that all she gets?
beloved?
she was not just beloved
she was as graceful as the pond lilies
and the light in her eyes
put the supernovas to shame
her hair was the colour
of the whiskey she drank
and it cascaded down her back
like a waterfall
her kindness touched people
like a healing remedy
her good heart made priests blush
and her joyous attitude
was infectious
She was too young to die
and too innocent to go like she did
And all she gets is beloved?
She was so much more than that.

You were my first 'real' boyfriend
And it went well, for a time
But you pushed me beyond my limits
Made me do things I cannot forget
A small innocence lost
And trust impaired

You whispered such sweet things
Into my hungry ears
That craved a love I thought we shared
You whispered the same things
Into many ears
You were the angel I gew to hate

I buried myself
In every crevice of your being
And let you steal pieces of me
For 9 cruel months
In return for the 'love' you gave
We are both alone now
And no less sad

You are perfect
In every atom and fibre
But you came into my life
At a time where I lack  trust and compassion
We are both broken things
And by trying to put out our fires
We do fuel them
I want to love you

Concept: the moon and her light seeps through that starry blanket, and I am enveloped in the feeling that, maybe, I belong.

Concept: people come and go, their presence is a fond memory and their absence is not sharp and raw. We all have our paths.

It's easy to preach self love
And self acceptance
Until you're ļaying awake at night
Weeping sorrow and anger
At the bones that hold you
And the skin that binds you
And every crack and blister
That your pale shivering body owns
It's easy to talk about self love
When there are at least some things
That can be seen
As worth loving.

My town.
a lonely place
full of the drunk
and the depressed

the fat belcher
coming home from the bar
at 11pm
rambling nonsense and nothings
to the moon and stars
because no one ever listens anymore

teenagers walking
down cobbled streets
at midnight
thinking about how easy
it would be to disappear
because no one misses them yet

the party-hards
blaring music through windows
at 1 in the morning
to distract themselves
from the monsters in their head
because the sound is an antidote

and the observers, like me
who sit and watch
at every hour of every night
and see the nooks and crevices
in this broken little town
and here we sit
typing away our little report
of the drunk and the depressed

we're not like them, no.
we can't be.
not in this
lonely
little
town.

Sometimes, in the shower
I think of all the hands I have let touch me
And have to scrub myself so hard my skin blisters,
Use my nails like a blunt knife, try to tear into a new skin
One they have never seen
I'm reminded of all the ways I have said no with my body,
All the times it was ignored,
And turn the water so hot I feel hell singing in my blood.
I hear all the ways I said no with my tongue,
All the times it was ignored,
Bite down on lips that never spoke loud enough
I’d sever this useless muscle from my mouth
If only I hadn’t already hidden the razors.
But sometimes, in the shower
I think of the times I have touched myself
Ran fingers over a soft-skinned body
That could not do more to save me
And I remind myself that this precipice of hatred,
The dancing cliff-edge of blaming myself
Should not lead to scars and blood in the drain
I think of all the ways the water has held me
Has embraced me for hours and asked me to give nothing in return
In these moments I know a body is just flesh
This sinew and marrow carcass of me
Is blameless for the reaching hands
Of the ****** and rotten bodies of them
It’s just a frightened body
And I forgive it
I forgive it

I can hear my bones talking to God, they ask him why he hates us and he says he wrote the fracture lines in our skin with perfect precision, he did not create us with the knowledge to heal.
And yet.

When Adam ***** Eve
And calls out Lilith’s name
the slinking Power inside her
Opens one sleepy eye
And uncurls two glistening fangs
Eve wraps her fingers around Adam’s given rib
Hands ****** and covered in blood
Eve plunges bone into sacred heart
Hears him gasp from gospel mouth
Mutters her name like prayer,
Like truth
Winds herself around him in python embrace
Swallows the blessed body whole
And becomes the Garden he dies in

God looks away

I am a half-built castle
made from weathered and broken stones
my foundations are not solid
and the rain pours so easily
through a roof not yet there
I am an unfinished project
abandoned before I could prove my worth
I am all the cracks and crevices
in this forgotten tower
I am alone and incomplete
and I would rather be nothing
than an almost-something

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

Concept: inside my ribcage there is a tree growing. I am blossoming and every drop of blood is nourishment to my inner oak. She keeps me steady and she doesn't bloom all year round but when she does, its beautiful. Im healing, I'm healing.

.
you tell yourself they love you
                         but they tie you to a pyre
                                               and they set you
                                                             ­        *ablaze

You are a blur to me
I cannot remember how many times we have kissed or how often you say my name but I remember the feel of those lips and the way you sound when they are speaking words only for me. I dont know how long I have spent in your arms but I know that hours are not long enough and I know that when you laugh at something I say my heart skips at least three beats. I know that your every movement is vivid and fluorescent to me. I dont know how many times you breathe in a minute but I know that your heart sounds like steady drum and it quickens when I tell you I love you.  And I do mon amour, I do.

I will swim languid in the River Styx, absorbed in its acid currents, and when these demons and soldiers place blade to my Achilles they will find no weakness there. I have been unmade and it has made me invincible.

I am neither here nor there;
I am the dust forming
in the darkest parts of you
buried deep in the back of your mind
I am the rust covering
your broken heart
that once beat so eloquently  
I am the ship that never sailed;
left in the harbor to rot
because I was not as beautiful
or as elegant as the other boats
I am the lonely flower that is left
when all my bright and colourful friends
have been picked, and i am left
all alone, unwanted, and untouched
I am the broken grave in the church garden
that used to say 'gone but never forgotten'
Now I just read
**'forgotten'

The night is still
Holding it's breath
In anticipation of the charcoal clouds
That are rolling in
Like a rising tide,
And with whips and cracks
The skies break their banks
And rain pours forth
From the heavens
And the clouds collide
Like gunshots in the air,
Bones breaking against wind,
Light scatters across the atmosphere
A haze of purple and blue
Fleeting, but brilliant
Passionate, but deadly
A tremor that shakes the walls
Of brick and stone houses
A wound ripped in the sky
Electrical blood seeping through
the cracks and crevices.
The storm is upon you.