I am not a person
I am masterpiece gone awry
Made up of shipwrecks
With salt water leaking through,
Spilling onto the picked-clean bones
Of my beached whale ribcage
I am hollow hollow hollow
Like the knots of a tree
I curl into myself
Filling in the cracks of my carcass
With that too-sweet, too-sticky honey
I rot all through the winter
And then I rot some more

They say people in glass houses
Shouldn't throw stones
But it was always in destruction
That you looked most at home

You were,
are,
a sun to her
bright beacon
constant,
her flame
her fire
her summer warmth
and still, now
a sun
distant
untouchable
her burning
her ruin
everything in flames
and ashes where
love used to sit
her heart in ember
and you
still torching the world.

pure as the moon on darkening nights
radiant as the stars and growing, growing
bright as sunshine, gold, gleeful
warm warm warm
crisp and fresh as a spring breeze
full of life, deep roots gaining strength
gentle, gentle
buoyant as a bird's wing, joyous
freedom freedom freedom

/

Messy as an unkempt room
scattered and complicated
desolate as the drying desert
burning burning burning
lost and mewling, blind as a cub
clumsy and careless
volatile as active volcanoes
destruction destruction destruction
cold as rain and tough as hail
harming, harming

Beyond the sun there is
*violence, violence

I've been having nightmares about you again
you know the ones, where I wake up
Screaming and shaking
hairs raised like there were spiders on my skin
insects, bugs, those four-legged thoughts of you
holding me against you whispering
love love love
how sweet, how blissful, such tenderness

lie

you grab my head thats cradled against you
in your hands that dwarf my own
twist, snap
That is how you have loved me
that is how you have left me
I awaken, soaked in sweat and tears
I sob into pillows that still smell of you

spiders

Are they still just dreams if I cannot escape them?
Do nightmares follow you into the waking world?
When you dream, are there spiders?
Did you ever really love me?

**Have I ever woken up?

When I was a kid
And still, sometimes
In the rain, or the dark
Even standing in a sunbeam,
I would imagine my skin
Dripping like paint on canvas
The bones beneath turning to dust
carried away on a small breeze
It sounds silly, i know
I wanted to be so much more
I wanted the light to get in

Roses at the foot of my bed
All the thorns bleeding ink,
My mother weeps in the room next door
For what she has lost in the winter,
For what remained come the spring.
My bones creak and tremble within me,
The only sound that could still echo in this house
I am a wraith in this place, translucent and trembling
Heart like a casket, but empty,
A ghost of a girl remains, trapped
Inside flesh and sinew, with tragedy
Hidden in the marrow of her.

Roses at the foot of her bed.
The thorns bleeding ink.
The petals falling off.

It doesn't matter
who you are
I hope that you
will never
have to know
the crippling pain
of someone you love
looking at you
like you
are a stranger

sometimes strength is not
how many weights you can lift at once
or the many burdens you can carry alone
not even how your heavy heart can still beat
sometimes, strength can simply be
waking, again and again,
facing the same agony each day
and yet still waking each morning
facing the sun and the rain
and being brave

Lady I don’t know barges into my stall at the nightclub toilets
She looks at me with a grim smile that’s trying to split her face in two
Before I can stumble she grabs my arm, looks at me with eyes
Rolling and rioting inside their sockets and says
Don’t forget
With her nodding frantically I ask what I am forgetting
And she shakes me and points at the neon fluorescent humming on the ceiling
The sun she says she says the SUN we have forgotten it
I give her my palms and say lady I don’t know you
She is already laughing
It’s a laugh that sounds like the splintering of bones
Like dragging a sharp knife across a rotting ribcage
A laugh you know is a precursor to wild and empty weeping
The light flickers and I notice that it does look like the sun
A bit, from this angle, from where my head is pressed under the heavy weight
Of the whites of the lady’s eyes
Another stall door opens, whispering across the ground and taking her smoke-thin body with it
But all I see is the sun, flickering like the beating of wings and I want to touch it so bad that I am burning
Truly burning, ignited on the promise of remembrance
There is a name I have forgotten and I know I will hold it again if only my fingers could stretch to touch the light
The girl that exited the stall puts her arm on my shoulder to move me away from the sink
And I fall into wakefulness, coughing and spluttering ash all over my bed
I see I have left a single candle burning by accident
There are dead moths everywhere

I am dotted with happiness
Like freckles on my sun-kissed skin
I bathe in the light and I shape it
Into sculptures of beauty
Reminiscent of the face that births such joy
Eyes sapphire blue, an ocean expanse
Of kindness and hope
I am drowning and disappearing
Becoming the sun that glitters on the water
We dance like that in unison, eternally

There is a wild beast
Living in my ribcage
I feel her pacing the length of it
Until twilight
When her rage simmers
And I hear the soft whimpers
Of a trapped thing
I feed her scraps of my soul
Small morsels; but enough
This carnivorous queen
All tender gentleness in the night,
Restless and terrifying come dawn
When the day comes
And she is released from my bones
Cower, Eve's children
For she will devour the sun
And the darkness
And all else that remains.