Your scent has become chlorine to me.
Every whiff,
Every inhale,
Burns through my nostrils
And into my lungs.

And yet I still cant get enough.

Why am I so frightened
To say I'm me
And publicly acknowledge
My small mastery?
Waiting for sixty years
Till the people take out the horses
And draw me to the theatre
With triumphant voices?
I know this won't happen
Until it's too late
And the deed done (or not done)
So I prevaricate, Egging
them on and keeping
Roads open (just in case)
Go on! Go on and do it
In my place!
Giving love to get it
(The only way to behave).
But hated and naked
Could I stand up and say
*******! or, Be my slave!
To be in a very unfeminine
Very unloving state
Is the desperate need
Of anyone trying to write.

I wonder if you
ever wore your
heart on the
sleeve
of the shirt
I stole.

Regardless,
I'm sure
that there's space
for mine.

It's all coming down.
That which I built up over the years,
brick by brick
with bleeding hands.

I realise now
what it all meant,
those unthought actions and
unacted thoughts.

And I see it all before me
like the sad endings of the movies
you don't want to watch.
Your face in the mirror just like
you wish it wasn't.
Secrets in a drawer and
you regret having looked.

Each story they tell you is like
another dash
- on the canvas that shouldn't be
painted.

Maybe there's a reason for it all
and one day you'll be given a diploma
you don't really need.
Because they're telling us
you'll learn.

But what do you do when you
haven't learnt yet
and the mistakes are still
being made?

And that which you are hiding from
is chasing you
like the sea at your ankles and
it's too cold
so you're running
and you're scared
because this wave is bigger
than the one before.

Suddenly you're drowning
down and down
until you feel your palms press
flat
against the bricks from all that time
before.

You open your eyes for just the
slightest second
to see them stained red
and you know where that's from.

But they're in your way,
why won't they budge?
And you feel yourself
slipping away from under
whatever it was you used
to shield yourself.

It's all fading
and the bricks are
rebuilding themselves
but only in your mind because
that is what happens at
the end.

And you're wishing you had smiled
at the boy on the swing who
didn't yet know the world
and the girl running out of the
school gates on her last day
and the old couple who
kept on bickering.

You wish you had smiled
before it was too late.