and on my breath last night's whisky
stale smoke and stranger's mouths
drunken words fuel the fire and
the knowledge inside 'I am going down'
the promises shattered in the mirror
silvered glass and steel-edged knives
the demons drag at my heels and how
did I ever think I would be alright?

*© Tara India.

fragile yet bulletproof
a doll, china-glazed
wrapped in barbed wire
steel claws, my iron gaze

through the blackness
the magnetic ground
starry-eyed; it's tempting
trying to pull me down

with lead weights tied
to my dragging heels
god I wish I were strong
and didn't have to feel

mind wired on chemicals
and caffeinated veins
blood clots, racing heart
I think I'm sick again

counting the hours in
bites of empty air
ghosts crawling to my ears
nestling in brittle hair

I'll have to stop soon
I'm hunger-drunk, dying
high on pain and
so done with trying

baffled by so-called normal
those machines that refuel
on fat, sugar, calories
it's so ******* cruel

that I was born to howl
at a midnight moon
to live in shadows, knowing
my life is ending soon.

*© Tara India.

sit, to a ticking clock
numb bones, aching joints
a drumbeat heart slowing
living in death and decay

eyes pour synthetic love
and fear, while my
dreams rot in my skull
losing my mind each day

should be working, reading,
writing something with real
meaning, instead I am
living in death and decay

structure falls, missed lectures
since I can't focus or
even pretend to understand
losing my mind each day

getting into trouble, again
and again I fall into this
silence and paralysis
living in death and decay

how long before they notice
I am not really here,
I don't exist, and never did
losing my mind each day

insanity, unreality hangs
on every wall oozing venom
that stills my heart
living in death and decay

dying is no art when I
should be becoming something
beautiful and alive
losing my mind each day

failure, drop out, weak
poisonous words and I
am giving in, giving up
living in death and decay
losing my mind each day

*© Tara India.

thousands of lost souls screaming at the dark
that lives inside their minds
and wishing someone could draw them out
of their lonely heads and this broken time

even the simplest action becomes an ordeal
a herculean task to those who are
living perpetually in fear of all
the things they see and everything they are

if you have never lost your senses
to sheer paralysis over food, or going out
you cannot understand how terrifying
life can be, or how it drags so many down

we live in the depths, an exclusive hades
this circle of hell exists on earth
heaven and stars become a rich pipedream
we lose all idea of love and elusive self worth

an illness so isolated, this disease
god I wish something was wrong with my body
that could show what makes me so insane
instead of a perfectionist need to be lovely

an innate detachment from others
the people who know how to exist
in happiness, who dream of real things
who when they die will truly be missed

I am not here, not real, I wish I was
not a shadow girl, the ghost at the bar
lost in a lonely heart and finding salvation
wielding a blade and creating ugly scars

making pain replace love and true feeling
so that everything translates to fat
and I can't possibly enjoy anything
and open up, I'll never be like that

withdrawal and dissolution reigns until
this girl gets help, gets locked up
gets shown all the ways in which she is sick
god, I wish I had never grown up

*© Tara India.

thinking "small"
five days isn't much
but its the most
i've lasted for
some time