you feel a storm
you move fast
you etch his name above your navel with hungry fingers

Often,
I thought
that love
entailed war
wars waged against others
wars waged against the world

not of the self.

Like flirting with a cigarette, studying it
teasing it between these slender fingers.
Turning it this way
that way
and putting it out after one
measly puff.
You know, before the cancer seeps in
like that.

I am a writer and I've always known it.
Even when my feeble self-esteem conspired against my urge to pick up a pen.
I carried it around
like you carry relics
my pens.
Remained tethered to them.
I write now.
Perhaps because I am not a talker.

my mother's trust issues are leaking into my chest
and
my father's tendency to forfeit humans for his solidarity
sometimes
I feel my persona bending to accommodate them
both.

I think that
as a writer
my writing is my biggest strength
yet my biggest weakness
because if you lose yourself in these flurry of words
you will come to love me
but if you see past them
you will come to know me.

I feel
less volatile
less awake.
I've been biting my lip
livid.
Wearing my own blood as lipstick,
tears as mascara.
Whilst solidarity whispers dark words into my ears.
Meanwhile,
the crowds
they tell tales
of how pretty
I look.

I fear losing someone.

No, not to another.

To God.

But what I fear more is
losing someone
to God
and not missing them
not like I should.

Men?

Hah.

They come to me.
But they never seem to go as easily
as they come to me.
I'm a simple girl.
I want nothing more than to bathe in my solitude.
But these men,
so foolish by nature
they want nothing
more than to claim me.

They threaten my essence.

And so well
I hurt them.
So well I hurt them too - my dear
So well in fact
that they come for seconds.
And when I start hurting them
I can't seem to stop.

I carry their morsels,
their names
in my every stride
in my sway lies their broken hearts.
At night, I lay on a bed of virtuous compliments.
I adorn my flesh with their promises
my skin reeks of their tenderest secrets.
My dress
a construct of their desires alone.
You will hear their fervent pleas
from time to time
concealed so effortlessly beneath my laugh
a soft cackle.

It is true.

I have dulled many lives.
Yet I have never felt more alive.
Because my dear
I’m sure that you too
would agree
I wear them well

les garçons.

you tiptoe around them
as though they are museums
paintbrush in hand to dust their
egos
veil in hand to clothe their
insecurities
but tell me,
how do the exhibitionists serve you?

smile
my dear - even when it hurts to
for your smile may be like the ray of sunshine
which escapes the curtains at dawn
for another
whose sun no longer does the things it is
the sun does

How could I love myself
                                                 If I didn’t study the clumsy crevices that lay in my stomach?
How could I love myself
                                                 If I didn’t nurse the jagged grooves that make up my spine?
How could I love myself
                                                 If I didn’t unearth the secrets that my pores harvested at night?
I am touching parts of myself that I have never touched before.

The day the earth set me forth
flowers blossomed in my mother's chest
and ivy tucked itself beneath her tendons.
Perhaps that is why I forfeit good men for anarchists.

I was born neither one thing
nor the other.