child of heart
but not of womb,
would i'd been
gifted to ban the
hope-thieving,
spirit-throwing
parasitic lies,
to shelter ears
& fragile petals
against bruising,
whiskey-glazed
acts and words.
would i might be
gifted now to
soothe, cradling
tender soul through
deadest night's
watery gloom.
yet firmly i know
none other will ever
be gifted to bestow
what only One balm
can perfectly renew,
and He waits for you,
my beautiful girl.

Spending a month in a hospital teaches you a lot about people.
The doctor that told me to shave my head or she wouldn't treat me,
The nurses that spent forever chatting to me
And giving me supportive advice about how my illness doesn't define me.
The woman who was given a terminal cancer sentence
And chose not to pay attention to it and defied it anyway.
How she sat next to me on my bed,
Told me that all suffering is valid,
And just because I'm not dying, doesn't mean I don't get to complain.
How she complains more about her skin problems
Than she ever complained about her cancer,
And that's OK, because pain rarely follows rules.
I never even learned her name,
But she gave me the words I hold most closely to me
On those days when I want to fall asleep and never wake up.
I'm allowed to scream and shout and rage against the pain
And the unfairness of it happening to me.
I just have to make sure I know where the line is
Between giving my darkness a voice and pitying myself.

In the quiet hours
before the sun,
I shed a thousand
layers of you.
Dead, heavy skins
flutter to the ground
to decorate my ankles,
until suddenly,
I’m light.
So light that I float
and, as I rise,
breathe in
the whole universe.
I see colors—
new to my eyes.
I feel safe here,
knowing there is
no happiness
like mine.

magic sweet words
tumult breathless,
teasing over others:
she spins her web,

spins intricately,
nattily: ages of
scalding have done
her in perhaps,

or stabs that refusal
brings, this is how
she is, will be, busy in
her impenetrability

a tightrope walker,
a smooth talker,
faker, giver, taker,
the silk is thick,

her clean heart
thus corrupted
she has trouble
sometimes, I

can see it in her
eyes, the distortion
of not knowing, for
those few dangling

moments, who she is,
face / mask
voice / silence
agreement / refusal

I may have persevered
I may have stayed
if only the years
weren't slipping away,

I wish neither of us
were built this way.

she did it.  
her teeth eaten.
tongue swallowed.
mouth made vestigial.

words: in the miscellaneous drawer, pls.

guts move quicker than light or thought, i've found.
caught in the (thoroughly) dusty
ceiling blades of
ergh quotidian spins, whyyyeff.my.life

she -somehow-
drew in
this awe, for now.

ellipses feed feed,
till it says it all
without uttering
one silly little
syntactical arrangement,
ever again; this, her stir.

dot dot dot
dot dot

and with a few
small jots felt,
she wrote

my hurt
down.

joy, again: like a note passed in class.

The thing about spending almost a decade
In social isolation is you forget what's normal.
Imagine my shock when my friend casually pulls me close to her,
A half-hug, friendly embrace.
No context needed, because touches don't always hold
Some deep, meaningful intention.
Yet for the past almost a decade, that's been my reality.
How rare the hugs, how they only ever follow extreme sadness
Or loneliness, the desire for comfort and support.
How I can never reach out to touch someone
Unless I've done it a thousand times before,
And even then, it's an intentional act of love.
Every movement of every muscle is planned in advance,
To minimise the fearful, pounding beats of my heart.
For someone like me, where anxiety floods through all my veins,
I don't know the meaning of the word 'casual'.
And I don't know if I'll ever learn it.