This February sky is mad and beautiful
and I want to hold its stars in my mouth.
I want to cough them up into new constellations,
spit out the blackness
That gets caught in the back of my throat.
Feel the cold of the moon under my tongue
While the galaxies swirl in my stomach
twisting my insides into new knots
While I know that inside me
There is the potential to create
New worlds, new stars
I breathe in the light studded darkness
Close my eyes and see the night sky
That has made it’s home within me.
I may not be a constellation,
But I could be.

I sleep
I dream
I forget
Those moments of clarity
Of realization
And epiphany
Those moments where
For a second
I knew
I was whole and sane
Except I’m not
I’ve got demons
In my head
And the devil
I don’t believe in
Has been
Keeping me awake again

The gravity of your body
Is too heavy
Like there is more
Inside of you
Than your skin
Was meant to hold
It makes me think of
Comets, black holes,
And endless starry skies
You are your own constellation
You are my personal starry night
I will count the points of light
That shine out beneath
The thin skin of your wrists
Trace the memory of galaxies
Around the curves of your hips
This body is not your own
Except it is, it is
You are anchored within
By the gravity of your being
By the things you’ve done
And I, I am anchored to you
By sheer force of will.

My dear, my dear, my dear,
Say you are not afraid;
Say it so loud
That the doves in your body
Stop fluttering their wings,
So that you feel still
For one moment.
Sigh like a pack of wolves;
Dangerous in the right situations
But mostly more afraid of them
Than they are of you.
You worry that everyone
Reads what you are thinking
By the way your
Face colours itself
Like a sunset,
By the way the light fades
Out of you, slowly.
Close your eyes,
Steady the thrumming
In your chest
You are not afraid
You are not afraid
You are not afraid
Anymore

Hey bluebird
Fly away from here
You are too small
To weather this storm

Hey bluebird
Will you fly away from here
The sky is blue as you are
And I’ve locked your cage in fear

Hey bluebird
How are you singing
When your wings are clipped
And you can no longer fly?

Hey bluebird
Your colours are fading
Your feathers are shades of grey
I just can’t see blue any more

Hey bluebird
You’ve weathered the storm
Damaged and faded you’re singing
Maybe I should’ve just listened to you.

Spark the stars into being
You settle like the dust
Of meteorites, falling stars
Over the memory of dark skies
And endless expanses of black

You are a night sky
A million stars that light up
The darkest parts of the universe
You are supernova bursts of light
Stars bursting into being
And flickering out
A million miles away

And all I can do
Is write about the stars
And never even dream
I could be even one.

Your body is not a language
But I know it by touch
I’d know you blind and deaf
The whorls of your fingerprints
Are as familiar to me as my own
Sometimes I don’t know
Which is which
I find myself getting our
Bodies confused and tangled
Forgetting where your skin ends
And my own begins
Even when we are apart.
Am I another person
Are you?
Would we really want to be
So separate that
Our skin becomes our own?

You are the amplified heartbeat
Pounding through my head
Like hoofbeats, predicting a stampede
A wild thing, just tamed
Baring teeth at the hand that feeds
and slowly forgetting
That the blood singing in your veins
Was meant for more than cages.

Swallow the things that break you apart
You know you’ve done something terrible
Like swallowing pills or drinking alone
But you can’t quite figure out
What exactly you’ve done to deserve this
And the pit of your stomach is hollow
Like the poison doesn’t fill you up
The way you thought it would
Like it’s eating away at you instead
Like everyone warned you it would
But it makes you feel warm,
And distant, and numb
Something rattles in your chest
And you think for a moment
There is some sort of bird
Caged in the space
Between your heart and lungs
That maybe you’ve poisoned it,
Maybe its wings are pinned to your ribs
Or that maybe it will never sing again
And the worst part of it is
You’re probably right.

There is a nest of birds inside my body
Trying to peck and claw their way out.
I can feel their wings beating
Bruises onto my insides

Their ever flapping wings
Stir my stomach into knots
That I can’t hope to untie.

Every time I try to speak
My mouth fills with feathers
And I have to swallow hard
Again and again
To keep from choking on them.

They’ve pecked holes in my mind
These restless creatures inside me
So that I can’t understand anything
The way I used to.

I know they are trying to escape
That they are trapped inside me
They mean me no harm, really,
still, most days I feel
More like the caged bird
than the cage itself.

Light a candle
For every memory
You can’t let go of

***** one out
For every faded scar
That you won’t let heal

Burn circles
Into the palms of your hands
To remind you this is real

You are still here
You are still here
Even if you don’t know
What that means anymore.

I wish I could draw circles
Signs and symbols
And have you understand
That there should be
More to life than this

The mundane
The days found lacking
The words that mean nothing
There is more than this
There has to be.

I cradle my head in my hands
And wish on a higher power
I draw sigils on my skin
and hope they mean something
Hope they make me more
Than what I am.

They don’t,
They are nothing but inkblots
Open to interpretation
But nothing else
They are not important
I am not important

I cannot draw a line on the ground
And turn it into a wall
I cannot paint birds
And make them fly
I cannot stand in a circle
And be protected
I cannot call upon power
That I do not have.

I am not chosen or called upon
I just live in the world
I haven’t changed it
The marks I make are superficial
They can all be erased

Like a ghost inside my own skin
Fading in and out
Like bad radio reception
The static cuts in
When I try to speak

and I’m yelling at you
Telling my secrets
Over broken radio waves
I could tell you anything
And you wouldn’t hear it anyway
But it’s safe this way, isn’t it?

I am cutting out
You are searching
For something better
To listen to
But you can’t find it
Can you?

You are a dark spot on the shoreline
I can’t see it, but I know you’re smiling
And the ocean is trying to swallow you whole
But You laugh at me for trying to save you

You are a dark spot on the shoreline
With waves lapping at your shins
I still can’t see it
But you’re still smiling

You are a dark spot under water
There are shadows pulling you in
Undertow of regret, pain, and wanting
And if you let me I would give you my lungs

We pour alcohol like anesthesia
and pack salt into the wounds
Like one will help us forget
And the other will protect us
Except,
It’s never really worked that way
Not for us, never for us
We’re down as many times as up
And the shock to the body
Of sudden revival, rebirth
Isn’t really a shock any more
Don’t be surprised
When your prayers aren’t answered
It’s been a long time
Since any of us has believed
That angels were on our side.
God is watching, maybe
But that’s hard to believe
Maybe he’s the one
Making sure our faces
Are stuck in the mud
Making sure this black water
Creeps into every pore
Making new creatures of us
With too wide smiles
And aeons in liquid eyes
They’re swallowing us whole
Are we really
Going to just let this happen?
I thought not.

I struck the match
Watched it burn to my fingers
And let it keep going
I tried to light a fire
In my veins
In my heart
All I did was blister
And I can’t
Shake off these scars

I wrote a message
On each wall of my heart
But all it does is bleed
And I cannot take it out
And show it to you
My hands are red with trying
Digging around beneath my skin
For something I could give you
Some part of me
That you would want to keep
Now all I have are scars
And a heart that doesn’t
Beat the way it should.

This is not the first time nor the last
That fear spins inside of you
Making carnival rides of your insides
It is not the first time, no
But it will always feel that way.
As the bottom drops out from under you
Down is the only way to go
And your heart sticks in the back of your throat
Like the last time, and the time before
But you can’t remember surviving those falls either
Not really, you only know that the ground has shifted
And You are suspended in the air, waiting to drop
Struggling to get air into your faltering lungs
And never remembering the last time you survived.

Maybe we should be kinder
Because everyone
Is scared of something

Maybe we should dream
Drink and laugh
Like we mean it this time

Maybe it’s time
we pulled the bodies
From our closets

Maybe it’s time we accept
That we can bury our past
And not mourn our future

Maybe we should live
Like dying doesn’t matter
Like we aren’t afraid

Of the Dark.

Sometimes when I can’t see it
I wonder if the world exists
If I close my curtains
Turn out the lights
And close my eyes tight
Does everything else
Simply cease to exist?

Can I ignore
The pounding of my heart
As it keeps me awake
Because, after all
None of the things
I’m worrying about
Really Exist when
I’m not looking at them.

But how do I stop looking
How do I curtain the world
Shut off the sun
And live with my eyes closed
So that I don’t have to fear
Things that pop back into existence
The moment I let them?

We speak as one stone to another
In silent millennia
The slow language of erosion
And The decay of time around us

We are static objects
The universe spinning around us
While we stare at star trails
And wish we could be meteorites

Maybe we were falling stars once
Flaring and fading too quickly
Maybe we were once young and on fire
Maybe being still really is our reward.

Here’s the thing
sometimes it’s not the hero
that rides off into the sunset
At the end of the story.
In this life
Sometimes the villains win
And there really are no
Happily ever afters
Just the day after
And the day after that

This storybook life
Isn’t really something
You can chase after
Because you can’t
Hold on to a story
You’ll realize this
As the words flow
Through your fingers
And your illusions
Are shattered
Over
and over
And over
Again.

There is tragedy written in every line of your body
Like your skin is too fragile to hold all your scars
You breathe like you won’t get another chance to
Maybe you won’t, what do I know about it?

I can see you have a story for each and every wound
But you aren’t looking to tell the world
You know no one would believe you anyway
No one listens when you tell the truth
No one cares if you lie

You take one more breath, one more step
And hope it doesn’t all fade away
You were meant to go out brightly
The flames of a dying sun
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

There is still dust under your nails
From acts of creation, of redemption
There will always be blood
Staining the lines of your hands
There is not enough water in the world
To erase those stains, even if you did want them gone.

Your sins sit heavy on your shoulders
And you don’t think you can bear them anymore
You are stumbling, trying so hard, too hard
To be who you should have been all along.

Everything is so far away
And I can’t breathe
Like I used to
Fear
Like some large beast
Makes it’s home
On my chest
Crushing the air
From my lungs
I am restrained
By its weight alone
Trapped
Grasping
At air
And the ignorance
Of passersby

I can’t breathe
My vision
Tunnels inward
Black at the edges
The weight
Is too much
My ribs shatter
And my heart
Is cut to ribbons
but still pounds
Faithfully
In my chest
Even when
All I want
Is for it
To stop.

I want to speak
In the language of bright tomorrows
And the pressure of my fingertips
On your back

I want to breathe
The rain in the air
and the smell of dust
Melting from your hands

I want to feel
The softness of your words
And the sound of them
Resting in my ears

I want to be
The world after a storm
And all the glittering possibilities
I can see in the sky.

Hey don’t forget to dream
When the lights go out
Don’t let the turning of the world
Make you restless
Don’t let every wrong footstep
Leave its mark in your mind
You can’t erase the past
But you can hope for a future
That doesn’t leave you
Dreamless, Drifting, and lost
In a tide of missed opportunities
You are salt water
And the golden reflection
Of the sun on the sea
Pay attention to the sound
Of the water rising in your bones
As your breath rushes out
Like low tide
Leaving only those things
You no longer need.

Like a demon raised
From a hell I don’t believe in
A spike of heat to the heart
Burning up, out,
Pressing against your ribcage
Like something trapped
Dangerous
Choking on a sharp tongue
That jumps up
Shattering against
The teeth and lips
That hold it in
And the words fall
Unused and unwanted
From a fading smile
Piling up
The debris
Of a thousand things
Left unsaid.

Sometimes

Sometimes
It hurts.


Solar plexus hit
You break
You’re breaking
You’re broken
Harden the point
Make it count
Make it
The killing blow

You are strong
Enough
Strong enough
For this.


You think.

We are chasing the dark
Hoping it doesn’t
Catch us unprepared
If you go on the offensive
You can’t be surprised
By the shadows
Seeping in at the edges
We drink deep of this
Black black water
And hope to hell
It’s not too late
To save ourselves.

Can you sleep here
With the monsters
Watching from the shadows
We’re barely keeping away?
Is there any rest for us
Who aren’t quite good
But aren’t quite wicked either?
Is there light to burn away
The darkness we’ve been chasing?

In this electric moment of sanity
I see everything as it is
I see the reality of things
With the beautiful haze stripped away
And when I blink, it is still there

I don’t know if the air I’m breathing
Is the same air that surrounded me
A moment ago, but it feels different
I feel heavier, like every step
Makes footprints in concrete

If I close my eyes for long enough
Sometimes it will go away
This clarity, this unrelenting realism
Maybe I’ll feel lighter again
If I close my eyes tight and think of flying

You are not the ocean
Even if you feel as though
You are rising like the tide
Being turned away from
The shoreline and always
Coming back again and again

You are not the wind
But
You can still make goosebumps
Appear on skin
Or be the breath of
Fresh air someone needs

You are not a force of nature
You are so much stronger than that
So much bigger even if you
Still wish you were a hurricane
Something bigger than
You see yourself.

Meanwhile your heart is in your throat
You’ve stepped into the middle of a conversation
And you don’t quite know where it’s going
But that’s kind of okay you guess
They are turning your face into wallpaper
And you fade and peel away under their apathy
But that’s still okay
You aren’t the type to burn bright and sudden
You are a slow burning candle, not a firework
And you figure, you can be okay with that too
You don’t need the flash, bang
You’re okay with flickering
But never
Quite
Going
out.

I remember the way your eyes wanted to open, When you were still asleep
the rough taste of whiskey on my tongue smoke filtering in from the open window
I am  not dreaming now but maybe I was, once.
Maybe I could find that dream again
the one where we were incandescent, eyes lit up like supernovas,
and great wings sat heavy on our shoulders
but that dream is gone.
That dream was a lie.
It never existed.
You never existed.
Do maybe I am not here, maybe I am the imagining of some poor soul
Cursed to see this mundane spectre
This ghost of someone who was never really here in the first place.
But for now I sleep, I sleep and dream of things, indescribable
Things I cannot remember, things I do not want to remember
I open my eyes to the morning feel my muscles stretch
See my fingers silhouetted in the bright light streaming from behind sheer curtains
Yes, I am here, I am real, I exist
For now.

There is a twitch to me
Buried under my skin
There are moments
I am still
But underneath
I sit minutely shaking
And I could not
Tell you why
It happens
Only that it has
As long as I can
Remember.

Sometimes it’s a spasm
A contraction of
Too many muscles
To ignore
Too many to stay still
Like a cold breath
On the back of my neck
There is no subtlety in this
I feel I am shaking off…
Something
I've never quite been sure
What exactly it is.

The saying goes:
“Someone is walking
over your grave”
For every unexplained shiver
And sometimes I wonder
If somewhere they built a sidewalk
Over my grave.

Am I the drowned woman
Keeping the shore
At bay
As I float towards
Expanding seas
Wider than any land
I could set foot on
The sky is wider still
But then,
I’ve never
Been one to fly
And each point
of each sun
Burns into
My Skin
So I stay here
Underwater
If I am still
Enough
I could believe
I am floating
In the black
Vacuum of
A sky I will
Never really
Know.

I write these words into your skin
Like a eulogy, like my dying breath
Like I’m hoping you’ll find comfort
Where really, there is none
Nails on a chalkboard
Bloodstains on the carpet
These unpleasant reminders
That tell me you’re not okay

The words roll off my tongue
Jagged and bitter
Sticking in the back of my throat
Like they don’t want to be said
But I know I need to say them
So I spit them at you
Like I’m breathing fire
And wish this didn’t have to burn

I’ve made a place right here
For you to live
Curled just beneath my ribs
We were simply
Trying to live
In each others' back pockets
Buried in each-others' chests
The sensation of separation
Too much to handle
But it too became commonplace
We adjusted
Chests expanded
Allowing space, and time
And it’s comfortable here
This time
This place
It’s nice to know
That time and distance
Can’t separate us
Any more than
The separation
Of flesh and bone
Will make us
Different people
Through biology alone.

I want to disappear
Into the rumble and hum of this world
I want to see
Faces I’ve never seen before
And places I never knew I’d love
I want new colours
A new piece of the sky to dream about
I want to know
The wings I feel
Thrusting out
From my shoulders
Aren’t just
Wax, paper, and string
Fragile and temporary
That they will let me
Fly away from here.

I’m chewing my lips blood red
and wondering about
My next course of action
Because this isn’t where
I thought I’d be
And I don’t know
What I’ll do
If five years from now
I’m in the same place
I’m dreaming
Of water and forests
And places
That don’t exist
Outside my head
I’m contemplating change
But I don’t know
where to start
And really that’s
Where the problem started
In the first place, isn’t it?
And I’m dreaming of a time
Ten years from now
When the forest creeps
Into my back yard
And I let it
Because I can’t
I can’t bear
To tame a wild thing
When in the end
That’s all I want to be.

This ocean of things that I cannot change
Well it’s washing over me
And I’m breathing in water, drowning
Then dragging myself from the sea

Watch me save myself from the brink
Watch me feel the burn of air in my lungs
As I gasp, cough, and try to think
This ocean air is heavy

I still cannot breathe

I am not bright light
I am bone and shadow
My eyes dark spots
On a too white page
I am dreams too hollow
To mean anything
Nightmares Clawing
Under the surface
Threatening escape
I am unafraid
But I am not brave
I am brave
When I am afraid
I fear everything
So I fear nothing
I am not Brave
I am necessary
Monotony
Blank and numb
I am cold ashes
On your tongue
I am what remains
Of a fire so hot
It burned away
The Sun.

Your body and mine
Like planets and satellites
Drawn close without collision
I draw in too close
And find myself burning
Into your atmosphere
Pulling the tides of you
Into swells and rolling waves
I throw off the gravity
Of all of these collisions
And we meet in the middle
I am embraced
In the richness
Of your earthen skin
I burn out quickly
And find myself
Comfortably warm
And as close to you
As I could possibly be.

Stop.
The trees are sinking
As the ground grows mouths to swallow them
Keep your head held high
No, actually, don’t
Heads held high are often cut off
Stay low, keep to the shadows
NOT THOSE SHADOWS! Those ones, over there.
Yes. Don’t move. Don’t ever move again.
Question your existence as you huddle
Trying to be still but shivering despite yourself
There are no mouths here, nothing to swallow you
And isn’t that a shame?
Find the teeth that will crush you
Throw yourself on their unyielding edges
Accept your fate. Everyone else has.
Can’t you see that?
Can’t you hear it in the empty echo of your voice
As you call for help, for company, for a face, any face?
Stop. You are dreaming this.
Oh you are still alone, we all are
But there are no gnashing teeth to grind you up
No mouths in the ground to swallow you whole
Breathe. Relax. It’s all okay. It’s all okay.
Everything will be okay if you let it.
Will you let it? Do you need to be convinced?
Stop. You are dreaming, you are dreaming.
Wake up. Why can’t you wake up?
The ground is opening up again
This is too real to be a dream
All you can do is cry soundlessly into the dark
Stop.
Stop.
Stop.

Let’s pretend these sheets are a shroud
And that I’ve died or run away
Or done something equally as irreversible
Let’s pretend your heartbeat
Is rabbit fast and unsteady
Don’t beat yourself up
I forgive you
Don’t worry about me
These are the things I’ll tell you
From somewhere you can’t hear
And they won’t give you comfort
You won’t have solace or peace
Because I can’t make you hear them
So you won’t understand
That none of this was ever your fault
That I slipped away on my own
And didn’t burn the bridges
That I thought I would
That I could come back
At any time
You’d never believe me anyway
And my heart crushes inside my chest
Drops to the centre of my stomach
Like I’ve swallowed it
and I can feel it beat
Like a baseball bat to my insides
Breaking apart my body like glass
I’d really like an answer
For why exactly I’m still standing.

You are a messenger in a bulletproof vest
Holding your palms out in surrender

You are flinch, twitch, and jump
At voices you can’t stand to hear

You are nails chewed ******
Nervous habits and red face

You are grit your teeth and bear it
When all you want is to be alone.

You are clawing fear under skin
And trying not to show it.

My body is a graveyard
The inside of my chest a mausoleum
For all the thoughts
That never made it past my lips
All the half forgotten dreams
Buried alive
In the chambers of my heart
Each beat is a fist to a coffin lid
Each breath an attempt to quiet
These restless dead things
That crowd all the spaces within me
This is where I go to remember
All the things I thought I could be.

That last thin thread of trust
Well it unraveled, It broke
Another friend,
Another love lost.
This is why
I stopped trying to hope
Prayers are meaningless
When they are not heard
And I will no longer
Ask for answers
Where there are none.
This world is crumbling
And you tried to do
The right thing
misguided as it was
I know that now.
Overreaching your place, your power
And finding it too much
You’ve redeemed yourself to me
A thousand times in my dreams.
And every night
That I look to the stars
They seem darker
Missing the one point of light
That fell down to me
and tried to stay.
You lit the sky once
And now I wonder
Are you really gone
Or just too far away
For me to see?
Are you a shooting star somewhere?
Will you come back to me?

This is echoing forever
Footsteps in silent halls
Shattered glass on fresh turned earth

The first mark on freshly painted walls
Nothing stays new forever
List the ways innocence sours

Nightmares are dreams turned inside out
Shadowed hands plucking flesh from bone
What is hell but this and only this?

Forever echoing footsteps
In halls that were never silent
Nothing perfect stays that way.

Tomorrow,  like a distant sun
That you are hurtling towards
Only to find that when you get there
It’s not as hot as you imagined
Sometimes it’s burnt out
And the light you see is the echo
Of a million miles of your own false hope

Suns burn out slowly though
You could still have time to find your tomorrow
But you cannot move at the speed of light
Weighed down as you are by doubt
Dreaming is not moving forward
You cannot distinguish ground from sky
With your eyes closed
Stop dreaming, open your eyes
Find that dying light
And hold on.

Sometimes the weight of your own mistakes will be too much.
     You’ll bend further than you thought you could
        And sometimes,
           You will break.

2. Sometimes it’s the sting of someone else’s mistakes
          That hits you like a punch to the face
              And you’ll sit, trying to soothe your wounds
                   Wondering what you did wrong.

3. No one ever tells you there will be times
          You feel guilty for being happy
                                                 Don’t.

4. A knife to the heart will usually hurt more
           Than a knife to the back.
                 But, sometimes, if the aim is right
                                 They’re the same thing.

The Machine parts in me have rusted
I am all creaking metal fatigue
And slowly splintering glass
I am not indestructible
I am not build to withstand
The storms I have weathered
But I have survived them
Maybe a little less intact
Than I was before
And each one wears down
Each part of me a little more
There are no spare parts here
And when one wears out
You have to learn
To live without it
Until you are nothing but
Jangling bits inside a
Worn down shell
A barely functioning
Version of what you
Once were
But then again you have
More storms to weather
Than you could know
After all,
They don’t make them
Like you anymore.