Tides are changing and the moon's pull draws breath from my lungs, refilling my body, bouyant

And as I lie there in the achingly frigid water I am overwhelmed by the exhaustion barely kept at bay, sinking

Pausing for a moment opens the floodgates and I am pulled downward as the weight of my world pins me to the floor, stagnant

How much longer can I continue this path of distraction, ruining myself from inside out, purging only the scantest of my full grief, simmering

It won't take much more to topple this body of cards, no tarot reading necessary to define my tears, flooding

Melancholy is muted, savoury today and soft textured, silky soup and no mastication necessary for tired throat
A strip of tension my forehead recognises as the sand remembers footprints awhile
Tracing whispers to fears and uncertainties does little to loosen the screws but rationale is oil slick and lemon rind, acidic onion and ginger heat
Delicious - when you're in the mood
And my stomach is lead heavy with poisoned morsels I feed myself to dampen the hunger pangs, no nutrition just teeth chasing satisfaction, sensory reaction to crunch and chew and swallow
My sinking does not undulate with peristaltic push and pull of muscle, it's quicksand drowning on dry land and suffocation burial in unmarked ground
Yet unabrasive
White bread islands with butter pooling atop red warning, red warming, red hot, ready or not
I think I'll go to bed hungry

You’re 17 years old and things are probably feeling a bit overwhelming. Surprise: that feeling kind of never goes away. It’s okay though, because you’re going to get a hell of a lot better at understanding the swirling dervish of thoughts, feelings, and experiences you’ll navigate as you get older.

It’s a bit weird talking to you, but I know how lost you feel. The good news is you have so many amazing things coming up. You’ll go to university, you’ll graduate (even though it is an utter slog, completely devastating and in many ways you’ll be convinced it wasn’t worth the tears – it was). You’ll land an internship and quickly learn that you’re in a generational sweet spot which offers you job insights your superiors will never understand. You’ll continue being wordy, writing and publishing with various magazines. You’ll meet some excellent humans, some not so excellent, and you’ll have your heart broken (or break your own heart) a dozen times over. It’ll be worth it.

You’ll meet a man who gathers you up while your breakup is still raw, your trust frayed, and your nerve lost. He’ll offer patience, Star Wars and burritos to soothe the ache in your chest. He’ll listen, laugh, and console you. He’ll remind you that there are so many great things in the world and it’s only with time you’ll come to understand just how special those things are.

You’re so eager to be grown up, to be at that place where you’re not scared anymore. Not left behind or ahead of the curve, just exactly where you’re meant to be. But that’s the secret – you’ll never be anywhere but where you’re supposed to be. You have the power to change your course if that’s what you need. You have the power to own your space, your decisions, your relationships, and your knowledge. You were sold a misguided truth growing up that the best is yet to come. That’s nonsense, really. The best is already here. The best is knowing you can wake up each day and carve out the past that best serves you.

You’re going to grow up to be an ardent feminist and advocate for human rights. Which makes sense when you think about what a self-righteous little **** you can be, and why the debate club leader was so sad you wouldn’t join. Your eyes will be opened to the atrocities of the world, and what feels like a bigger crime: the complacency of the masses. You’ll be exhausted fighting for what’s right, what’s fair, what’s equitable. It will be thankless work a lot of the time, but you’ll do it because you have such defined standards. You’ll learn to build boundaries, to protect your energy, to identify the causes worth throwing your all at and, eventually you’ll be supported in learning how to slow down, how to say no, how to not stretch yourself so thin your transparency leaves you bare and vulnerable. A hard lesson that will need constant reaffirming, but such a vital one.

One day, you’ll wake up and be ready to trust in the process. To find peace in the now, not be chasing an undefined future perfect, not be ill at ease in your own skin, not be troubled by standing still and taking in the beauty of the now. Grounding your feet in the floor, stopping to take in the plants you’ve nurtured, the relationship you’ve grown in, the home you’ve cultivated, the friendships you’ve developed. You’ll start to see just how much time you’ve spent fretting over futures and possibilities and uncertainties you never had a hope in hell of controlling.

That’s it, really. Control over everything is a pipedream and despite the desperation clawing at you to be able to touch something tangible, something certain, something so real and unmovable and eternal, there’s just no way for you to find that outside yourself. You’re getting to grips with that realisation now, and it still makes you cry, howl at the unfairness and thrash against the suffocating limits of reality. But you’ll also realise just how futile that is, laugh through those tears and settle in to figure out what the real root of your discomfort is. You’ll see how tired you are, how hard you’ve been working to make yourself better, and how pointless that framing is. You’ll commit to stepping away from self-defeating narratives and driving compassion for yourself and the world. God knows the world can use more compassion.

You’ll even return to university, despite your tumultuous experience in undergrad. Maybe partly because of it. You can’t let anyone else have the last word, after all, and will stop at nothing to prove yourself capable. You’ll learn more during that PhD than you’ll learn in your previous 25 years because it’s not just about the thesis. It’s hardly about the thesis at all. It’s about personal growth and development, it’s about finding ways to forgive your past thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and set up the best chance at self-kindness for the future. You’ll ruminate on some painful topics, explore the murky waters of the human condition, and you’ll still come out of it hopeful. Because, as you’ll realise in your exploration of violence online, it’s all about vulnerability. And vulnerability is beautiful. Vulnerability is the space for creativity, for growth, for changing direction, for exploring and for shifting stagnant, broken systems into forces for real, tangible change. Not just in governmental infrastructure or on Twitter.com but in yourself, too.

It’s such a painful relearning, unlearning, learning process. It’s messy (which I suppose is lucky because you never do learn how to keep your bedroom floor tidy, nor do you get over your aversion to ironing). And in that mess is opportunity. You just need to remember that your life, your ideas, your path not looking like other people’s doesn’t mean it’s wrong or lesser or a bad fit. It fits because it’s yours. You will have so much going for you and you’ll not always see it, but luckily you have friends and a partner who will remind you whenever you need it. And you’ll keep writing. Horrible, angsty, teenager poetry that makes you cringe and keeps you satisfied in equal measure. You’ll expel the worst of your thoughts, the most painful of your feelings, in an anonymous journal and it’ll be so cathartic. You’ll keep using your words to map your journey because it’s the only way you know how to communicate. You’ll still fear being misunderstood, but the panic won’t clutch you in a vice grip the same. You’ll let go (some) of that belief that misperception is the worst you can suffer – you’ll recognise that being misunderstood, misinterpreted, misconstrued is part of the mess of communication. You’ll even revel in it and explore it in academic settings as well as personal writings. You’ll see it’s somewhat a universal experience to feel not listened to, not truly heard. And you’ll grow a chosen family of active listeners, of empathetic, charismatic, compassionate souls who hear you and engage with you in ways you could never have dreamed, matching your passion toe to toe and giving you space to monologue as you pick apart ideas and theories in real time, and you’ll feel so cherished and accomplished in their company because they want to share space and energy with you. You will nourish each other in ways you can’t begin to put into words, it’s visceral and ethereal and intangible. It’s magic.

Time is a funny old thing. It’s intimately wrapped up in every experience – the past, the present, the future. The immediate experience of a thing, the aftermath, the impacts we can’t possibly predict but will undoubtedly live through down the line. Patience wasn’t really ever your strong suit, but you’ll learn to slow (if not stop) and take great pleasure in the minutia, wonder at that truly magnificent things in your life – the truly magnificent people that make your life all the richer.

Basically, you’ll be alright kiddo. Have faith in the process if you can’t find faith in yourself. The faith in yourself will come with time, a good few crying jags and a lot of positive reinforcement from very special people. It takes a village to raise a baby, so it makes sense it takes a community to grow a well-rounded soul like you.

You’re golden, Jane. You’ll see it one day.

Love, Jane

today i wish i had grass to settle my bare feet in, a printer to take my reading away from the screen, and friends to unravel some ideas that I have percolating but barely have words to put to yet. i want post-it note messes and tangential rants over fruit smoothies in the sun.

today i wish i could thread together fringe ideas and substanceless maybes by myself. or more accurately, i wish the doctoral research project was not so lonely. that it championed collaboration of ideas and became a project of care, of community, of compassion not focused on colonial concepts of breaking ground first but instead of ruminating, pausing, treading water, observing and reflecting. on inthemoment not firstpastthepost or beforetherest. rest as pause as care as vital as lifesource of thinking. dreaming first. dreaming always. dreaming and idealising and creating. mess becomes beauty. becoming. the doctoral project is a waiting place, an expectant limbo or rather a succession of waiting places, elevator lifts to new floors but never a transition straight to answers. never up up up. elevators that move in all directions. escalators maybe. certainly shopping centre escalators. forever stalling, breaking, too fast, too slow, unsteady as we step off.

what a mess. and yet what beauty. and still a project that requires so many moving parts, so many individual pieces to function, to culminate in the final result - movement. forward or standing still, long way round or unmechanical steps. organic. always.

grounding, like toes in the daisies and heel-crumpled buttercups. natural, nature, not a fix but a part of the process. stopping, breathing, back to roots. basics are care and care is anything but basic in frenetic lives. but removing bureaucracy, deadlines and paperwork as limitations, ignoring processes and breaking protocols is a glitch in the capitalist machine. a glint in the grin of an accomplice who revels in the breaks, the breaking, the pauses and fresh starts in new branches. divergence is crucial.

deep breaths, cool breeze through cracked windows and a reminder that hot laptops on crossed legs will be there tomorrow. now to rest and to think. always thinking, always distilling. but today the sunshine is more important. the levity of the outside more pressing than years-away deadlines, Bureaucratic Other forces.

today is paperless, weightless, endless. new life grows through cracks, persistent nature and persevering natural. in my own time. how else will the project evolve?

From myself

From the world

From my newsfeed as it fills with in-jokes I don't get about the bizarre cultural phenomenon that is Eurovision

Fresh air and blue skies have me yearning for uninhibited laughter and careless joy captured in a Polaroid frame and branded to my soul forever. Anyone else's blood move quicker with the promise of spring? Daisy chain crowns, rainbow-littered cloudbanks, crocuses and orange trumpeted daffodils. New lambs in the fields to a soundtrack of birdsong. I'm tongue-tied chasing the words for my feelings today, but content in it

The feelings have wrapped themselves round my bones
Sewn themselves into my lining
Animating my body
Urging my limbs to clamber
Desperately into bed
No tears in my eyes
Just a heaviness in my skeleton
And I have resigned myself
To retreat once more
Hoping this weight lifts as quickly as it settled over me
Stifling and consuming
Draining
Draining
Drained

today the pain is not in breaking
that would suggest some fantastic noise
or cavernous fracture
today is subtle, barely visible to the naked eye
it's a quiet decay
unremarkable in its erasure of humanity
withering pitifully
and that emptiness becomes a new kind of identity
this is all that remains

Honestly I just look around and I'm stunned that any of us is expected to work as normal given everything. Like. Seriously. What do we call unending grief of this magnitude, this scale? How to we wrap words around the unfolding horror and trauma? To categorise it minimises it.

To not name it leaves it unmarked, but certainly we are marked. All of us. In ways we will be healing from for generations to come. This is catastrophic. And we buy our bread, drink our coffee, tweet our daily observations.

We're not looking at things. We are glancing adjacent, refusing to let our retinas be scorched by the gore. And that is our greatest failure.

She shines bright like a star desperate to be seen among the inky night sky
In a universe stretching galaxies, with milky ways of endless beauty and terror and brightness and wonder.

She carries on flickering in the hope that those who spot her are guided to better things by her light.
She burns hot, forever aflame and highlighting the vast darkness that can never be kept at bay.
There cannot exist one without its opposing force and no matter how hard she tries, the pitch black will prevail.

She rails against the odds, emitting radiant hues in white and red and green and blue
Painting the universe with a haze that is distinctly hers, tirelessly working to brighten, lighten, to thrive.
Survive.

But what happens when stars burn too bright having spent that light being seen
admired
cursed
wished upon
spent
and there's none left to fuel the spark?

What happens to little stars alone in the sprawling universe, unseen and unmourned when they burn out?

They fall.

Only words of angst and longing bring me comfort, if a chest ripped open can be soothing - proof of life is a relief, I suppose. You couldn't feel this pain when you're dead.

Devouring digital pages of tension and tears, with sure-fire happy endings, or at least compatible melancholy. What a relief it must be to have life's plan ready written. The monotony a balm for frazzled nerves, torn lips, raw knuckles.

one more breath cycle and sleep will claim me
i lie to myself and press against the mattress
but nothing lulls me
and i'm left with my thoughts
rolling and sticking
coiled trip hazards
slippery and i'm caught in the net
forced to sift through carcasses
gutting myself with a barnacle-hugged blade
at this point i'm destructive
no talking me down from the crow's nest
i'm battering against the logic and softness
of his back, his sleepy sighs
desperate to be asked to stay
more sure that i'll leave
the comfort of this bed
i'm saltwater savage
unrelenting with rage winds guiding
my push and pull
too far too much too little too late
uncontrollable, frantic hands can't hold me
i'm wild and free and frozen by my shortcomings
lazy
and bucking wildly against the confines of a label
tears sleuce
and i gasp for breath
this sofa offers no safe passage through the night
my journey goes far beyond and I'm scared to land ashore
not trusting my own soul
to harbour my teacup heart's latest storm
carried in on rising moon and ebbing hormones
there's no solace in the tug and slip of the tide
against a shoreline I've willingly left
in the dark, glasses pushed to my nose
laptop in hand
to hide behind manufactured light
instead of basking in his glory
fraudulent, a failure
but he's far too forgiving
and tomorrow he'll welcome me back
in the hopes my demons have returned
to the depths for the moment

I deactivated my Instagram account last night in a fit of tears and self loathing. This morning I'm compelled to share my feelings on Twitter because there's no one specific I can turn to. It has taken a breakdown and 8 months of therapy to recognise my sadness stems from loneliness. And that's a dangerous thing to be during recovery - lonely. It makes the impetus to get well harder to see. I'm happy alone but cannot sustain happiness on lonely. I can't give up and leave my love with the burden of my lacking commitment to life. I can't move on until these traumas no longer knot my nervous system and corrode my sense of self. I can't heal in isolation.

Shouting into voids through screens and pixel bits is the cry for help with no destination, no intended audience, no necessary acknowledgement.

Having no friends, only casual acquaintances, was safe until it wasn't. It wasn't by design. I leak desperation wherever I turn. If anything my carnal need for connection, positive reception only worked to put distance between me and love of others. I think that's why I cannot comprehend his love. He gives so freely, unaffected by my jagged edges and fugly design and my insides coated in tar. Still he collects me on his lap and holds me together as my body threatens to crack open with violent shudders, my core destabilised as tectonic plates surrender to mounting pressure of my past and present. Great fissures marking lifelines and more pain than is acceptable for one lifetime.

My greatest fear is by being too weak to let him go. My deepest hate is my selfishness as I force a life of loneliness on him too. Those who tolerated me before have set in place their boundaries - I'm glad they're putting their own needs first, of course, and the pattern repeats with painful recognition that I am the problem. But now it's not only me who feels cold in the distance, he is left astray as well. My heat insufficient to warm us both. I should untether him from me. I should let him be free. From responsibility, from duty, from guilt, from the crushing weight of knowing me and loving me.

If you love him, let him go. I should. I should. I can't. And that hurts more than all the isolation. Selfishly too, because if I let him go I could be free of this. I could slip away unnoticed and not hurt anymore. Living is pain. It demands so much. I am empty. I have no more to give.

Love might be a losing game, but life is a cruel irony.

no more pretending in avatar form
fancies and flirtations with identity play.
lead-heavy lies sink my stomach
no longer playful imaginaries -
gutteral yearning for something real
tangible, a taste or a smell
a hint of individual not swallowed up
in reflection or oversight
this discomfort is soul deep
unsure where the boundaries of me lie
i'm ready to crawl inside myself
tear through my skin from the inside
find a path home. within.

Dazed and confused
the sunshine streams through the glass
but the heat in my cheeks
blossoms from your soul searching

Wanted a woman, never bargained
for you - cocksure and knowing smirk
built a fire from embers
created below

Ebony eyes and wanton woman
calling forth dancing flames
Lord how they hypnotise
licking skin lemon sweet

Breathy moans, wailing, strings snap
building, running, bridging, cresting
Alight and alive
I want you again

Childish words desperate for sophistication in a mother's heels and pearls
Searching for authentic but coming up years too short.

A bitter pill to swallow, incompetence.
Not for lack of pain or power, but a search in vain.

Vanity is right. To want soft words that echo in others hearts is indulgent
Unnecessary. Unattainable.

But still I write as a toddler outside the lines, with no direction or skill, desperately searching for a prettier picture to emerge from the mess.

Stick figures pierce my tongue and
words ring uncomfortably in my mind.
A jigsaw puzzle with no edges and one hand tied behind my back.

The one-two punch knocks the air from my chest
As I desperately want your comfort for the white hot heartache
And knowing I can't reach for you
The source of the pain I cannot ease alone
Clamping my jaw to hold back the howls of injustice, bitten tongue to avoid lashing out in anger - but it's not anger at all
It's furious hurt and mishandling
Your hand on another woman's knee
Innocuous but not
Meaningless and full of answers
Amplifying my isolation
The distance a canyon as we stand toe to toe
In a bar full of shiny happy people
And I am muddy brown sad
Crunching ice to unfreeze my jaw and remind my nerves to feel. Something. Anything.
As long as they ignore the despair.

You give me word friends
touchpoints to give feelings tangible boundaries
walls for my grief to bounce off and imprint
on me in the reverberations
with visible faultlines and shapes.
Thank you for sharing your archaeological finds
as you comb through what's left behind
in crumpled receipts takeout containers
collections of unclean hair knotted and balled
cotton buds and empty crisp packets
fewer wine bottles no more ice cream tubs
orange peels stale bread milk cartons
-- translating bottomless sadness
in lyric and steady tempo
each syllable is a treasure.

Scrolling with one eye ******* shut does little to assuage the assault on my heart from squares of millennial pink and sky blue, espresso black and prosecco effervescence in fancy glasses on bar tables I'm not invited to join.

Never was anyone's first in line which didn't matter until I realised how much time there is to fill as the days stretch on and nights begin to warm offering ample opportunity for connection and yet I sit satellite orbiting a world reopening for some and remain on the outside, cold and distant.

Vulnerability is the essence of connection and connection is the lifesource of happiness, now engineered quasi-chonologically; machine-picked priority in heart buttons and view counts as we no longer value the time spent thinking, mere lingering hesitation- am I worth no more than a momentary pause as your thumb swipes upward?

It's easier to publish vulnerability on social media platforms whose algorithms inherently work against visibility of raw honesty and hurt than risking rejection from the people I desperately want to hold me, see the cracks in my facade and enjoy me in my dilapidation while my world edges crumble.

Isn't that something

A second glass, filled
Full of a sort
Wine and bright side
Equally measured.
Pain feels manageable
In these compartments
Labels for days of the week
And diary entry hours
To briefly acknowledge
The storm.
Golden hour hues
Paint monotony
Interesting
Change of pace
And life feels
Life-like
Not disconnected
But real
And my bone-ache
Muted.
Furry companion,
My charge - for a while
Tangible connection
Convention
Of friendship
Desire
Companion
Motivation enough
For now
To carry, onwards

Drowned by your breath on my neck.
Soaked in your intention.
Lapping up every whisper of promise.

Time's lost meaning
Barren garden
Evil tasted
Purity wasted

Carcass soils
Unwanted plow
Harvest dead
In compost bed

Garden walls
Too high to climb
Nightmare's doom
Living tomb

Bartered soul
Wasting away
Piercing battle
Breeding cattle

Bruised leaves droop
Limp, resigned
Cruelty comes
Spilling plums

Torn from inside
Sanctity gone
Hatred steals
Evil feels

Moon cycle storms
Flooded and choked
Thorns' tight wrap
Ooze ichor sap

Planted seeds
Deep in belly
Grow sweet fruit
Of bitter root

No safe haven
None mother nurture
Promised decay
Predator's prey

Nothing grows good
In black eden
Sapling dies
Winter cries

Weeding excavates
Mum foundations
Plans unfold
In stories told

Childhood warnings
Heeded, forgot
Beware the loss
Beyond the moss

Innocence ends
Freedom won
Chewing leaf
Full body relief

Break in nature
Rules discarded
Time to fly
In inky sky

It's not the orange line between my neck and cheek
Or the wonky liner that never looks even
The accidental overdrawn lip
Or even the thankless task of taming eyebrow hairs with gel and pen
That makes me fret before nights out

Yes, gusset-less tights are frustrating
One shoe unfindable in the wardrobe forest floor drive me up the wall
And no two items of clothing match or sit right on my increasingly fraught frame

But mostly I detest
The thought
Other people's eyes
Judgement
Appraisal
Decisions and approval
(or lack thereof)

How can I begin to make presentable, or pleasing to the eye a face, a body, a soul that I find nothing pleasant in
Concealer can't work magic tricks
And glitter bares all
There's nowhere to hide

So maybe I'll stay home tonight

She deserved it.
Everyone agrees with me.
The signals mixing with the cocktails
and I don't even know what time it is.

She had it coming.
Her parents told her so.
I was acting like any guy would. Should.
Skin taunting. Hips hypnotising me with
That rhythmic pulsing
Suggesting
Requesting.

She wanted it.
How was I supposed to know
when she bit her
lip that way, flirted that
way, smiled that
way, dressed
that
way
asked
for
it.

She did it to herself.
It's not my fault.
That's the way things are, right?

Oh my darling my darling my darling
In feeling you are living
The pain doesn't end you just
Live
Though, through, despite, because
It's a life
Life
Not easy or simple or without fighting
Not without crying and trying
Not without wondering
But if you read this
Despite wondering
If Dying
Might be the solution
I promise life offers more than
The alternative
And how can you know
Except
To live

It's so impossibly hard to capture fleeting moments of anguish in words that truly embody the experience. In that second stretching for on for days, there is no escape, no end, no hope. Such a hopelessness is intensely lonely and creates a terror that passes through muscles so concretely the electrical current sparks fuzzy on my teeth, freezing my jaw.

And when that moment ends, seconds to days later, such a feeling is still so impossibly hard to capture that I doubt memory and weary body alike. The exhaustion has no tangible cause. Nothing ties my lingering reactions to their root any longer. The synapses decay.

These words become all I have.

give me your words that i might finally rest
the aching, the longing, the want
mark your heat with mine
indelible flame
history's ghosts will nevermore haunt

Crying on the toilet counts as writing
much like scripting music videos on rainy bus rides home are artistic accolades to mount on the wall.

What is a personality but inorganic reproductions of wit, obsession, acceptable ugliness and socially-prescribed diminishment of all that does not glitter?

Tweets act as building blocks for political ideology
Brightened, tweaked squares filter through Instagram's grid of preset beauty and interest
Connections manufactured in nostalgia-tinted Facebook posts
Validation turned numerical, gameified: contingent on algorithmic recognition of human need for intimacy and acceptance

desperate to be seen, read, heard

validation is cloyingly sweet and unbearable on the soul when withheld

but on and on I’ll bellow in the spotlight

desperation pouring from every pore

sweat breaking on my brow from the forced performance

dance monkey dance

and at least if they laugh i’ll know that they noticed

what a pitiful thing to find in the pit of your soul

that need

to be seen

Why is it that I can fill my mouth with clunky words, ugly words, but I can never pinpoint the pretty words that roll off my tongue and make pretty sounds?

I talk and am told I'm too much. I fold in on myself behind closed doors and berate my need for attention, unbridled desperation. Yet tomorrow more words will spill and spoil and even still I'll wish they were drowning me.

I want to choke on my verbiage. Sew my mouth shut with steely reminders that my teeth and tongue and lips will get me nothing but lonely and a stomach ache.

Make it stop. I can't take pliers to my molars while my tongue wags. Make me stop. I don't want to be loud but I am. Make the embarrassment stop. Shred my tongue into ribbons and make it end. Make the words stop.

Struggling to focus and get **** done.

Realising just how necessary it is I slow down, ease up. My body is crying out for rest. Soon, I tell it, me, us - soon.

A body fractured, pulled in so many directions, dizzying speeds and gasping for air. Carnival rides but I'm too winded to scream, eyes ******* shut with sensory overload of mind and world.

I demand different. Deserve. I deserve different.

Work when I can. Time off when I need. From now on I build my plans with intention, with rest at the core, enrichment and nourishing takes precedence.

It's the only way I'll cope.

Kindness and long deadlines, slowness and focused activities. Soft soft soft. Lavendar and cotton. Nature to heal. Until I can breathe without panic pounding my chest, laundry lists crowding my throat, I wind back everything else.

I have to live to succeed. And that life I mapped just now is lush with opportunity - focus on care and community over arbitrary Winner goalposts or ingrained capitalist mentalities.

Soft, slow, intentional, communicative, unapologetic, peaceful, at home, in community, divine.

This is how I live now.

The pain is precise
Ears ringing
Heavy ache
Sheen of sweat
Such a small incision
Felt long after
Invisible cut
Tangible absence

Apt metaphor
For those appointments
That came too late

I would gut myself
**** to clavicle
(If only it didn't ***** the carpet)
Scoop out my insides
Melon ball platter
Rancid, unpalatable bile
Untouchable innards
And a prayer:
Foldable, soft and ragdoll
Pliable and girlish and pretty
Everything I evade
With shovel hands
Mastication-worn jaw hinge
Too full, sickening
Rotten teeth acid stripped bare
Purging and pleading
For a lighter load
How awful to believe myself
Worth all the more
To society soon as I'm empty

I want to bask in the glory of your light and drown myself with your dark. Cool contradictions burn bright inside me.

In your arms I am Brigit, crafting a searing flame. Or Hestia, perhaps, as our hearth and home become one and the same.

Bathing in the warm winter sunlight I think of us intertwined, scintillating. It is not just a little spark. It is a roaring fire.

A flicker, a glimmer in the endless dark. Keep a candle burning, my love, to guide me always home.

I want to purge every painful memory
Incindiary- exorcise my ghosts of the past
Pouring salt on invisible wound, infected and unhealing
Incapable of moving on, crossing over
Letting go and fighting fair

Arm hairs upright
Muscles fraught with anguish
Unable to extinguish the barrage of remembrance assaulting my senses
White-hot on my eyelids and blackened ash on my tongue
With the tears and the lies

Exorcise my anger
Let out the snarling mongrel
Limping and fiercely protective of every vulnerability
No ability to let go or let loose or let up
Because it only leads to new scars in old wounds

Make room for stillness
For connection, soft and gentle affection
Tactile love and visible satisfaction
Undeniable pride and ephemeral wonder
That I'm here and living and alive

Why do you write like you're running out of time?
Lin-Manuel's all too apt question feels much too personal
Running, chasing down thoughts and feelings and explanations
Necessary to understand, theorise, analyse, criticise. My
patience wears thin as I realise I'm
running from myself as I
barrel towards truths.

Grappling with inspection, learning more about perception, intention
And navigating this new world, no
it's the old world with renewed vision
Open eyes wide at the injustice, in-fighting, inability to step aside as privilege clouds judgement.
The caucasity.

It feels wrong to wear the badge of ally,
Share lessons learned or ring out the battlecry
for justice
reparations
and necessary losses because
Needs Must
when I'm still blinded by the white light radiating from my own complexion in the unsettled dust.

It's amazing I
still manage to make it all about me when I
know it's about others whose voices were suppressed
And really I
know that's not really true
It's just that I
never second guessed
what I was told by
those in power. I stayed willingly complacent.
Privilege, reckoning, accepting, harms done,
next steps, affirmative message, false promises from my tongue
until they have real action I can take but
Again this narrative still centres on myself and
that needs to change.

The focus needs to change.
The emphasis needs to change.
Or the injustice with remain the same.
And too many people are running out of time.

Some days I feel a thousand years weary. Trapped a forever-teen, frozen core and angst-riddled.

Outsider. Isolated. Incapable of translating the aches of my forearms, clawing at my sternum, or distress in my gut to make any sense beyond feral screams.

The fear, wildness, confusion clothed in apathy and tumbling forth as tears, grey palor, an appetite gone astray.

Distraction deflects for a time but the reality check becomes all the more bracing. I cannot fathom ever feeling different, even if yesterday was opposite in every way.

Evermore I am trapped, concrete resolution and in my final form - - how could I possibly be wrong when these days last a thousand years and memories, physical remembering, atrophies as my tears dry and hope evaporates with my breath, hot and laden with worry.

A bumblebee landed on my hand
Whisper light and feet kissing the pad of my finger
Down digit limb
And onto the cosmos white head yellow belly
To fill up on pollen, love drunk on Nature's sweet centre
And I yearned for paper and pen to catalogue this moment
Grounding me in my surroundings
Gentle water slipping over rock
Soft breeze and wings
Hopping from flower heads
Stocking up
Filling my lungs
Revelling in the abundance

There's an ache and a peace that washes over me with the little bay's tide. All memories made in this town are etched on my heart - good, bad, devastating, eternal. It's a home like no other and I might never tend roots except familial ties here again, but this is my soul place.

Tracing old paths down memory lane bathed in golden hour sun.

My boyfriend has two cardigans
Exactly the same softness, dark grey, cold zip and asymmetric cut
I'm wearing one, my legs curled beneath the other
Frustratingly cold on the sofa when the stagnant bedroom air was near suffocating moments before
My eyes are heavy, tired, blurry with sleep, alert thanks to anxiety
Brain on a loop of words and feelings and fears
Mostly desperation to not disturb his sleep and a break in the summer heat

What is a promise
But heartbreak packaged in sonnet-sweet deception
Lies interlaced with long fingers
Destruction delivered with storytelling eyes
Depths unknown and opaque intention destination unclear
Log-axe swung with old acquaintance hands knowingly
The cottage's fate one of ruin and disrepair

What is I love you
If not wet air and empty vibrations
Limp attempt to write over scars with thicker pen nib
Buried doubt seeds far past the lungs and into the belly
Hope the ground is too acidic to bear fruit
Smothering the flicker of heat that might set questions alight
Pacify - silence - deny

What is I'm sorry
Besides yesterday's breakfast regurgitated
Retiring tongue
Dousing retaliation
Cold water drowning
Lungs crushed under the magnitude of your infidelity
A pitiful pass at piety, grace in the face of your sins

What is heartbreak
But spitting anger and screeching injustice
The instinct to bolt pulsing muscles
Desperate feet pounding sharp weeds
Skin torn to free space in the body for anything else
No peace no solace
Nothing but pain

This isn't numbness
This is fire and ice
Pressure, ghostly echoes
Fading fingerprints and blooming bruises

Desperation and joint-locking uncertainty
Despair, grief, debilitating sadness
Fear

Too distraught to pretend the hope isn't a fragile bud
Too superstitious to trample those slow creeping vines
Too untrusting
Too tender
Too alive

Autumn strips
the branches of their wilting leaves
much like I shed
my insecurities at twilight.
Rebirth is but a season away,
growth is inevitable.
Appreciate your blossom
as you take in
your renewed form,
born again
in the sunlight of a new day.

fractured whispers, intangible thoughts
weary heart, words escape me
gums ache, muscles cry
depression seeps further
mind body and soul decaying
and i crumble

Time's ticking
Future waning
Engine clunky in disrepair
Hot muscle furious
Fists flying
Pummelling oppressive chest
Exorcising faulty heart
Weighty
No longer waiting
Clawing
Climbing windpipe ladder
Desperate to escape
Feral creature
Spitting fire
Shrieks and shivers
Defiant for
The end

My heart slips out back under my shoulder blade, desperate to avoid sinking or being ****** through curled cage and sternum plate

Languid kisses leave me satin and desperate
to crawl into your mouth
make a blanket of your tongue
lay tokens of my favour by your molars

Your hand's on my hip and
all I can think is how safe I will feel
beneath your collarbone

Legs intertwined with duvets and soft hums, satisfaction
your ribcage dances with my fingertips
as I envisage burrowing deep in the cavity which holds you
up, together, grounded.

That seems the spot for me-
inside you, part of you, never without you
so desperate and desolate in life
except with you
utterly a part of me, so fundamental to my own existence
what power you have, what destruction you might release, what trust I give completely

Wrote myself a letter
naming all the things I'd done
stained my soul pitch black
set my heart on a cantering run

Folded up that letter
the smallest pocket square
carried it heavy on my heart
too shameful to be shared

Left that blasted letter
to age with lint and time
never took it out that pocket
to reminisce with summer wine

One day that letter's weight
made my breath so hard to catch
I finally plucked it from my pocket
and with a prayer I struck a match

Perhaps that cursed letter
was written for the gods
for after, not much later
I found myself at odds

The man within my letter
stood across my door
holding paper aged and ashen
he let flutter to the floor

"All these years of silence
and none a word from you
would have had me believing
your mouth's lies to be true

But I have read your letter
though destroyed it you had tried
so I know your heart
and how blatantly you lied

I wish you'd paid the postage
and sent this to me then
saved us both the heartache
of lost lover and best friend"

I crumpled at his words
like the paper in my hand
held it up - peace offering
to that blasted, blessed man

"My darling I am sorry
I left with words untrue
The biggest truth in all the world
Is I'm hopeless without you

If you would read this letter
know you hold now my heart
I've poured it through my quill and ink
it's been yours though from the start"

Today I celebrate the fact I'm alive
messily
with fragility and passion
mistrust and eyes-open optimism
living and cherished
so precious and overwhelmed
adoration for the ones who see me
recognise the sparkle and the tarnished silver
shying from spotlights and loudly staking claim to space, time, presence
I am here
Living

what are we beyond pixels and pictures
but empty shells dictated by a valley of greed, violence, silence, data
unable to exist without, desperate for beyond, behind, outside

neon nostalgia and retrofuturism promise relief we cannot obtain
while all that glitters in silicon steel boxes is stored away with fans churning air thick with dead heat

donna - mad, iconic, far from first but memorable in her questioning
no escape for us until we break the boundaries, binaries in code and encoded

unravel, split me, unzip and withdraw exterior for a hint of personality past performance - search for something real
rest in possibilities, all that will not
be