My room smells of smoke and cologne.
You seem nice,
your eyes are lovely. My inner thighs
are peppered in bruises,
my legs hurt, my cheeks are flushed still.

It’s sweet to look at the milk skin, the ink blots,
remember I’m real. Remember
the feeling of being wanted,
your weight on me, the sweet nothings,
the drunken kissing, the moaning.

I want to hold on to you, but I’m
sure I’d be fine without you.  My ex
had a baby, I wasn’t angry.
I wished him luck; it’s a girl.
A new main lady.

I drank something crazy, I lost my cigarettes,
brought you home and we went to bed.
I wonder could this ever be anything really;
could I ever look into your eyes
and say I love the bones of you?

There's an itch on my back
that I just can't scratch.
A chronic pain.
Maybe it's
all in my head?

At eight A.M.
sometimes I just can't get up.
Then one o'clock comes
and nothing
changes.

Today was a good day,
my friends proved their friendship.
Their presents were perfect,
they must really listen.

But the voice in my head says
"guessing."
The voice in my head says
"just using. Who'd care?"

How has it
got like this? How has it
become so serious?

It'll pass. Surely
this feeling will go.
I rang Samaritans,
but they didn't answer the phone.

The feeling is viscous. Impermeable.
I’m restless, doomed. I can’t explain
why I love art
but wear a lab coat, just
so I’m forced to remember
what life is worth.
I can’t find that in words.

A white noise, a terrible ringing. I
used to feel nothing. Not anything.
Now I hear my fear and anger competing.
I’m listless. Delusional.
My mind is irrational.
My heart says “don’t listen”
but I can’t always hear it.

I wouldn’t
hurt myself anymore, but sometimes
I can’t sleep on my side.
I’m balding from tearing
my hair out. Sometimes
I dream I’m pulling at wires
and on waking my palms are bleeding, sometimes

I wake up and I’m crying,
fingernails buried alive, and I’m prying them
out from under my skin.
But, these are just days the SSRI’s
aren’t working,
the days when I'm ill
and my whole body's hurting.

My dad is so sad - he says
“when will you stop them”
I say “hopefully never.”
He’s downtrodden. I’m sodden in rain.

I want to lie in bed today.
Is that okay? What if I
never get up? What if I forget
how to feel, and lie here
for weeks and weeks upon end?
I’m so afraid of
losing my mind again.

It's weird but, you said it,
how you had to close all the doors
like I tapped every railing
and blinked three times.

You only ever wrote in black ink.
I'm two hours early for every
single
train.
I have dreams that I miss them
every
single
night.

You're sorry that you're angry
because you can't settle down.
I chose not to plan anything
that I can’t control.

I remember feeling
my bones hurt, because the pencil
lay sideways
on the desk. And my heart break
just because I couldn't get through on the phone.

Do you see yourself in me?
Could you bear to kiss me,
or would you dry heave
and rinse your mouth out
six times a day
repeatedly?

I’m compulsively
dotting i’s in the main library.
Red bullet points, but my wounds
bleed blue ink. “Wouldn’t it be nice?”
you say
“to be sane for a day?”

I look at you, not really feeling anything.
I find it
frustrating
that you don’t want me
and I’m left counting,
obsessively
nitpicking.

Loneliness is a silence,
a kind of tinnitus, a ringing.
I’m not sure if I’m deaf or
it’s really that no one’s speaking.
“You aren’t worth anything”
We both look up, but
neither of our lips are moving.

It’s an anxious tapping. Midnight
cigarettes so you can
taste
your breath. How else
would you know you were living?
Although
there is nothing to fear but fear,
so I couldn’t fear death.

Smeared myself
in a foul smelling home bleach kit.
It's nerve wracking, but now
I'm blonde again. A bombshell.
Ready to hit the town, smoke
cigarettes balanced between
my index and middle fingers,
and blaze spliffs by the beach
as a storm howls around us.
I'm ready to have
the boys eating out of my palm,
texting me, intoxicated,
wanting to hold my hand and
smell me. Wanting me to be
their blonde baby. Kiss me, honey.
Drive me out to no where
I can be everything you dreamed for.
I can be your water in the desert,
your shelter on the mountain.
We can watch the sun go down, and you will wonder if I'll
stay the whole night.
Will I move on tomorrow?

Coffee, modafinil and two cigarettes,
sweating and begging for a few more Ds.
Another pass by the skin of my teeth.

*******, pills and Jameson.
Pints of beer and two more cigarettes
hunched in the cold in the street.

And buses. Hours of buses.
Eating pasta by the lake between classes.
They'd never notice here if I disappeared.

It's snowing, and to keep warm
there's blankets, jumpers and casual ***.
Maybe a brandy if the going gets tough.

Are you ***** calling me? Drunk texting me?
Who knows, I dropped my phone in a nightclub.
I didn't get home until sun up.

Pray for me.
It'll mean nothing, I worship no God,
but just
hold me in your thoughts for a moment
remember my smell and the touch of my skin.

Pray for me.
Forgive all my sins. When I took your name
in vain on the bed.
Remember the small of my back,
tell your deity to watch for me.

Pray for me.
Let my memory roll off your lips
as you kneel, hands clasped and eyes closed.
Picture me. Wonder where I am now.
I was never holy but my soul still needs saving.