The promises were left unkept and forgotten in the spare room
Thrown in with last years fashion and the years before,
And standing at the door I can't remember when we started
Hoarding words to make a life boat we'll never sail,
Never say; did you mean them at all?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2q3IPH7SE0

Envelope me in your love
And return me to sender
As darling I will always keep turning up
On your porch on a summers afternoon,
And without any words you'll know
That this kiss was meant for you.

Do not tell me you love me,
Or speak sweet nothings in my ear.
Just spread my legs
So I forget that I'm here.

She heard the door close and the sound of a trail of clothes
Then the room filled with silence as she lay exposed.
Her heart started beating, like a laugh too shy for her to undo,
"I'm in the bath", she whispered, "and I'm also in love with you".

She was the girl who was made out of sugar.
Perfection crystallised in an hourglass figure
To be laced with ribbon around her small waist,
Pulling tighter on your chest, her bittersweet taste.

A nun whips me bare and broken
Against a wooden table Jesus once ate upon.
"Beg for forgiveness"
I get on my knees
and thank God for what I
am about to eat.

The books scent lingers on her fingers
Lightly tying up her loose ends till they read
Like Shakespeare carved on a tree for all to see.
Her lover sips her coffee with an elegance only history
Understands;

She is the girl who leans across her rhymes and reasons
And bends her binding around her waist.

She is a woman whose strength
Pauses a book store into a silent stillness;
A muse that is written across my face
As she traces the pages of their story, closing the chapters
With the bite of a lip and a touch of a cheek.

Hers recite the poetry of rosebuds blooming in a far off place.

Still she knows that next season only memories may grow, but today
The taste of her lips remind her of those yet to be sown.

Suitcases aren't made for dresses and skirts or any such thing,
They are another type of box they try to trap you within.

You tell me to grow a pear
Just so I can put the fruit between my lips and eat it.

Lying beside the safety blanket of an open fire
You ask me why I am scared of the CD player.
A question no one dared to ask,
As if asking was like the warmth that
Would unravel me bare skinned
Limbs against floor boards
Revealing the things I hoard under
The loose fabric of a summer dress.

I confess to you them parts of me
You would never see unless you
Asked that single question.

I bite my lip, the tip of my tongue
Hoping it can charade its way out
Of these words, these words
I have been trying to drown,
to sink with sips of sauvignon blanc
Till I had dried the glass of myself clean, empty.

I bite my lip.

His eyes were like silver discs,
Scratched on the surface
Playing nothing but broken records
So no one could hear the fear inside my chest.
The melody of his muse would ring through my veins
so I shut my eyes,
Opened my thighs and I bit my lip
Drawing blood to my tastehah buds
To forget the thuds of his open palm
So no harm would come to me
If I forget to see, forget to breathe
Each night I would cry to the wake of the morning,
hoping tomorrow would never come.
For some, darkness is safer than light.

It wasn’t how they told me it would happen.
Slow, sober, a blur of moments
Woven together into a noose that would
Hang out my hope on the thread of a rope
And it wasn’t how they told me it would happen.
That I would go back to him when the darkness came.
That I would know it would always be the same
But I would never be the same again
He locked me in the closet for 6 hours,
Hands bound, mouth taped shut
And I never thought I would pray to stay locked away
I have never been so afraid
Waiting for the door to open to two discs
Reflecting the fear that was living in my heart.

I don’t know where to start.
Fear is an emotion that can scare you
to silence the secrets wrapped up in your lies
Beside the tears you keep in a jar for no one to see.
What is that bruise?
I fell in the shower.
Why are you bleeding?
Mother nature
Why are you not eating?
Im eating later
Why are you limping?
I am struggling to stand myself in the mirror
Can’t you see I am starving myself thinner and thinner
So please guess what is happening beneath this dress
My womb is ***** empty,
There is nothing left inside me to fill
Nothing left that is real
Can’t you see I am trying to **** myself before he does?

You ask me why I never told you.
I bite my lip-
This poem has been hidden beneath the
Smile I now wear, under my tongue
Within my lungs, inside my fingertips
That itch to write the truth
But I know if I say these words,
Unseal my lips, this story is real.
Tracing the lines he left on my body
I know he’s telling me to not pick up the pen
And that is exactly why I have picked up my pen.

I don’t want to condemn the people who ****,
Who try to escape the law
With threats to their victims
Hidden beneath words disguised as love
I don’t see myself as a victim anymore.
Him. He. That man. That boy.
He isn’t me.
I cannot blame myself for what happened.
You cannot blame yourself for what happened
Between closed doors, open alleys,
The bedroom in your own home
With your parents on the same floor.
People ask me why I am scarred
And I say these are not scars
These are my battle wounds
From a fight I thought I lost,
From a life I thought I tossed aside
From a time when I didn’t know if I was even alive anymore.
I didn’t survive, I am tired of being told
I am lucky to be alive to survive to be normal
The sad thing is, this is what is becoming normal
for too many women and men
and when are we going to make it stop?
Stop is a word so many know too well.

My ****** still lives in my bones.
He’s made it his home to roam,
To decorate and play the same song
Each night over and over and over.
I never invited him in.
I couldn’t escape my ****
But maybe it could have been prevented
If we teach our children what it means to have consented
That consent cannot be confused with silence
Why are children still not being taught
That ****** violence should never be silenced?
Instead of questioning what I was wearing
We need to start caring that 1 in 6 are sexually abused,
we have got used to a culture where we remove
a persons right to question whether this is normal.
This is not normal.
This is never normal.

When are we all going to stand up and say stop.
We need to stand up and say stop.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2q3IPH7SE0

For I fear I am no longer alive
But paralysed in desire.
The thought of your breath on
My pillow like sheets of unwritten music,
Lines no longer ironed straight,
This is the rope that tempts my fate
And throws me in the fire.

"Breast stroke is the only way I can keep myself afloat"* she said,
*"So bind my hands. I want to drown in you."

There are times when the clock waltz's faster
And steps on her feet till she can't keep upright.
There are times when the clock stands still
And she looks into the eyes of the one thing she cannot master.

She folded me up like origami, turning something used into something beautiful
And smoothing out the creases of my geometric heart she kissed goodbye the girl she called art.

Her fingertips were stained with pollen
With the vase I bought her with freshly cut
Flowers tainted with prints of butter yellow.
A pinafore wrapped with ribbon around her small waist
a chaste smile fashioning her face for the neighbours of our place.
one look at her and I see a fingersmiths daughter.
a girl who outgrew this ***, this house, this girl the porter.

"I am not ok", she said,
"Two letters cannot possibly explain
The pain that resides in my heart.
There is not enough ink to begin
Describing what is within.
Find me a word that is real".

Do not touch yourself.
Your body is not yours to claim,
Reign in your securities
And tie them to the bedpost
A notch that your crotch will never

Remember,

Do not try to regain
The strength to stand up tall,
It only gives you a place to fall from.
If you hold your head up high
People will start looking what is inside.

Remember.

Only let others touch which is yours.
Now open your legs for a round of applause.

"Do you still love me?" she whispered in my ear,
"How can I love a girl who is no longer here?"

Hand me down the love you had before me
And sow gently the tears in your sleeve
So I can wear your heart on arms made
To hold you as you drift through sleep.

You cannot capture my heart
When it is already kept in a cage

The fragility of female flesh,
The feminine depth within each pore
Hides a deep havoc beneath glowing embers,
A storm man fears and calls a *****.

Isn't it ironic that I need a map
To tell me what I left behind is still right in front of me?

"I am not a fighter.
My knuckles aren't bruised, but my heart is.
What does that make me?"* she asked tenderly,
"A girl in love", I replied.

You are my cup of tea.
*And you are the sugar that kills me.

The monsters under my bed
are merely shadows of my shattered mind.
Each night they dance in a trance of moments too late
for she beneath the bed is the curse of deception.
only can you see her
if you look in your reflection.

Stop trying to save the girl that isn't worth your pennies.

The scent of her skin is the sweetest perfume,
A sentiment left, leaving traces of you.

When you entered my life you bolted the door
Leaving it shut so I was forever yours.

She filed her dreams in alphabetical order,
Wiping the dust from her minimalist future.
She boxed them up and piled them high,
Shrinking them to match her thighs
And the looking glass began to lie each night
Telling her the weight of her dreams
Was too heavy to fight.

Don't use your words to build me a wall
As I am the foundation on which it will fall.

I gave you my word,
Wrapped it up in cellophane so it would never lose meaning,
Enveloped in the kitchen draw where you placed for safe keeping.
And now when you read my poems with another preserving your touch
You'll realise you had all my words-
One was not enough.

You asked for the world
So I gave you a mirror
And if I could not say this any clearer,
*darling you are my world
Your gravity pulls me nearer.