A stiff wind broke the morning clouds. It was another gloomy sunrise, in a string of second-rate days. Kiera woke much like the sun, downtrodden and wishing to fall back down. She snapped down on the alarm, knocking it to the floor, and with two blinks was out again—back into a world she was beginning to recognise.

First the flooding darkness. Despite two weeks of this her body still rejected it. Her body hated it. Pathetic. Limbless shakes as the throbbing chill tore its way through her lungs, gripped her skin like sweat. She could smell the sharp stink of iron. When her vision came she saw her arms were covered in blood. A red too bright.

A figure she hadn’t noticed flickered out of her view. She turned her head sharply but saw no one.

Kiera realised she was walking. She held a square, brown-wrapped package, which would not stop squirming. As she struggled to keep hold of the ******* thing, ****** prints coated its sides. A postbox lay on the other side of the road—the same colour as the blood on her arms.

Kiera was furious. The ******* package would not stop squirming. She needed to reach the postbox before she dropped it. She was desperate—scared shitless. Why?

Kiera began to cross the road. Each step sent the package twitching, twisting. Her legs were bone thin. Her skin was shredding apart. Another flicker—edge of the vision phantom—appeared, but she barely noticed. The package was growing so heavy that her toes were breaking on the asphalt. She looked up and saw the postbox had receded.  How dare you? How ******* dare you, you *******.

She was on the wrong side. She had never left the sidewalk. How could she? She had no legs. Blood began to pour out of the postbox. It crossed the road, coating her torso, lapping the bottom of the package. The package stilled and began to deform in her hands. It was rotting.

Kiera had an urge to *****.

They lit
A thousand acre fire
To smoke out old dreams
That had
Buried themselves deeper
In the choke between ash seams

Writhing, fresh white skin
Came apart, bursting the arteries
Between the surface creature
And the blacker haunt named apathy

“Sleep away your desire
“Sleep away your misery
“Sleep away your vigour
“Sleep away your sympathy”

A dead seed in the pyre
A dead stare set to atrophy
A dead wish undelivered
In a lull of breathless harmony

I crawled through the dead spaces of old houses
Just to breathe in years old memories
Brimming with adolescent thrill and reveries
Picturesque sceneries in glass-encased eternities

Withered limbs broke apart feinting apathy
Parched and cracked, my lips bore silent screams
As I disintegrated, filling the negative space
That resides where loss and ache form dead weight

I am the calm that breaks your heart
I am the still that never departs
In a frenzied world of dead spire loves
Out of reach, out of luck, and out of touch

I became envy, firing sparks across cold skin
I became adoration, pulsing and sun-kissed
I yearned to hate
I yearned to love

Do I dare coalesce?
What will I become?
Knowing all that’s gone?
Knowing not what’s to come?

Do I dare coalesce?
What will I become?
Knowing all that’s gone
Is all I loved?

Deathshaker
Twenty one years
Crossed hearts and hoped to never die
Slept crooked, and woke deaf and blind
With pins and needles through the chest
And foot, and mouth, and ******* head

Deathshaker
Twenty one years
To wake to dust and rot and ache
To once loved noises, long replaced
By crushing silence, bitter debts
To lovers long dead

Blood come, blood lust
Pulse and closed trickle
Pledged and disloyal
Come beckon her closer

The red grin dismantles
Flesh as well as the cleaver
Pain left drowned within
Infinite desire

And heir blackens and boils
Skin softer than petals
Split apart for the curious /
The insatiable

Come beckon her closer
Come beckon her closer
We all die in the moment
And live for nothing.

This phantom pain, comes haunting every second breath
The new ache mirroring the old, dressed in past’s clothes
I’m stepping on growing hopes, don’t want them to take root
Before they blind me
Can’t bear to close the distance on happiness
If it’s false I won’t let it be
If it’s false I’ve been blind since I could see
I’m wasting years of my life, days fly by, at a standstill with a racing mind
Been there for years
I swear I’ve let it go a thousand ******* times
If I could just let it go
I’m dwelling on coloured memories
‘Cause the black white truth ain’t all it’s built up to be
But it’s all I’ve ever seen
And it’s all I’ve ever wanted to see
There’s a time when you realise every promise is a lie, if a pretty one
If one you’d rather believe than the thought that the future is uncertainty
And that those laugh lines, those good times, carved from people you love
Will stay
Even if they all leave
And you wake every morning looking into those creases
Hoping one day they’ll bring you as much joy as you once had
But they’re just the consequence
It’s bittersweet

II
Envy darts her wicked tongue
So slick with black desire
To chase the blood from passion and suffocate
The heart of ire
III
Inertia places her hips
Over barren seas
And drinks the lust to fill
Her
Insatiable greed
IV
Solace rests his blunted fangs
Too late
On torpor mottled skin
And echoes haste through empty halls
Still labyrinthine vessels
I**
Curiosity ensnares
Mortality, the wander self
With susurrus pulse and love
Drives caution to the slaughter