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

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 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.

Helium pumped into my corpse to animate dead weight
Pulled down, skeletal anchor and stretching upward, weightless and outside myself
Always a contradiction
Constant tension
Split apart, torn in opposition
Body feels what mind won't acknowledge

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

Fill up my heart
Bathe in my sin
Submerge me in silk
Press against my skin
Rosy my cheeks
Bruise my lips
Lick my tear streaks
Share in my sorrow
Give me your joy
Promise me forever
Beautiful love-drunk boy

sick of stumbling on words that don't fit
trying to sound pretty but just tasting ash on my tongue
the dirt is just dirt, not a bed for sprouting new leaves
no cultivation will help me blossom
the meagre harvest of years gone by is as good as it gets
perhaps it's time to hang up the emotional shears
it's too painful to keep trying and not make it
let me fall asleep on the moss and become part of the scenery

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

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.

Not so easy with thoughts
pelting towards you so
fast you can barely make
them out before they join
the shouting masses at the
back of my head

Drowning them out with
sticcato breath and out of
time heart beat

Echoing in my ears, caught
in my throat, coagulating
in my veins

An unpleasant mix for a
tasteless treat that
catches in the oven, burnt
out dried up hollowed out

No such thing as slow
here. Only ever faster
ever closer ever harder
Never stop.

The light is small but unyielding
Black tape and camera film ***, high school experiment
Needle pierces and injects a world of possibilities
Who would have suspected a pin ***** could swell so much emotion inside me
The initial pain not on my body
But he is mine
And he is safer now
The sheer fragility of life brought under sharp focus, unrelenting these past months
And with him protected I breathe easier
Hope is an embodied relief

soundtracking my summer, soft and wistful
a teen nostalgia time capsule
of angst and wide-eyed innocence
simplicity wrapped in pastel softness
sugar mice, 99s, Boys Like Girls - how fitting
as thunder rolls in to clear the skies
for sunny promises and late night kisses
undiluted joy with barely mixed ***
sweet on my lips and salt at the waistline
warming our skin through windows
as gulls pepper the soundwaves
how magnificent the glory days are
reborn, revisited, revitalised
with today's knowledge
and back then's hope
danced and tiptoed and sprinted through
to songs of child hearts and dreamer tongues

Songs of the past
Reverberate
Echoing through my skin
Ripples of memory and dream and fantasy
Child wonder and hope and promise and faith
Marrying villains in storybooks
With historical figures still living
Present, ominous, oppressive
Crushing guilt
Shame

The tale of Persephone dances on my skin
Birdsong felt hell-deep in my soul
White dress stained red, pomegranate
carcass left to be reclaimed by the soil.
Seeds and sticky juices long forgotten,
as seasons turn and reunion means retreating
but the hallowed halls held on weary shoulders
call and her heart will always answer.
Slipping a hand in that of the one she gives it all up for
to gain everything with.
Tempestuous eyes, weathered brow, slight smile
gleaming in the darkened corridors as she claims her throne

Home.

TW: suicide

I don't want to die
I don't want to live
Not if it means
This cycle of hate and shame and fear and empty
Repeated with reprieves
Only to start again
Halting life, spoiling love
Spoilt
Spoiled
Ruined
Rotten
Rank
Gut the festering system
Start fresh
Such a fatal design flaw
No warning light
No hard reboot
Just life
And death
Here
Or not
Suicide
Or suffering
There's nothing fair in it
Nothing human about it
I don't want it
Not the pain
Not the shame
Not the guilt
Not the life
Not the death
Give me peace
Give me reprieve
Give me space to breathe
Give me him and I'm happy
Give me hope and I'll ruin
Everything dies
I'm not okay.
It's not okay.
It will be.
But it's not yet.
And it's shameful to say.
To feel. To know. To burden.
How is suicide an unnatural death
When mind decides and mind is flawed
Rid the problem
Pain ends
Ended
Stopped
Over
Peace
Quiet
Reprieve
Relief

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.

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 am an empty well with nothing left to give but the frayed, overused rope and a bucket full of holes.
No water left to quench your thirst but my tears my wet your cheek, cool your skin, soak you to the bone. I am a forced metaphor.
Recycled. Chipped away at the corners to fit my new mold. I am empty. I have nothing left to give.

Gulping down air in the grey dusk
grounding myself in green hope and butterfly heaven
Potential - plastic pots and soil
holding heat and brave roots seeking solid footing
Everything has its season
threat of decay, spoil and deluge
God give me clemency tonight

I've spent the night concocting fake letters to my therapist as a concept for an art project. A coquettish ploy for validation, vindication without unpacking the heaviest loads.

My fear the depression is back, or never really left. The agony of watching my Love crumble at the hands of his own brain and his apathetic complicity in his brain's self-destruction. And by the way, I'm gay. Have a nice holiday.

Some email. But much easier than over the phone. No pauses, breaths, hedges, deflect. Fear of rejection runs deep, core to my design. The draft sits silently, relegated to the bin.

So much work. So much weight. Here's hoping my foundations hold until he's back.

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

Chaos

He makes me see stars
paints galaxies on my skin
pours oceans of love
til I'm swimming in affections
unsteady tiptoes
slick on the marble
hooking his belt loops:
Let's lose ourselves tonight.

Left behind, always
On the back foot
Running
Out of sync
Outside looking
In, disjointed
Clumsy and never
Sure of my place
Bending, breaking
Molding myself into
Something palatable
Something acceptable
Something other than
Myself, to please those
Whose disdain
And confusion and
Frustration with
Who I am
Cuts deeper
Than any barbed
Tongue I host
In my own mouth

I have nothing profound to share today. I'm sitting in my dressing gown and fleecy leggings, trying to ignore the cramps (because I couldn't possibly end this tumultuous year without heavy bleeding and ***), scrolling through celebrations of wins, the grief of losses and the hopes of a new year ready to overshadow the last twelve months. My thoughts vacillate between the joyous relief that comes with January 1st in which we feel renewed and revitalised, and a sombre heaviness with all the hurt and loneliness and suffering and continuing oppression we carry through regardless of the date on the calendar.

It has been a year of learning and unlearning and community spirit and crushing disappointments and turbulence of a kind I don't think many have endured en masse and simultaneously alone and which threatens to stretching on indefinitely.

My greatest hope is my greatest fear - change, and not enough of it. Our systems are broken and our governments' failures continue to rip at the fabric of our society and, as always, our most vulnerable are taking the brunt.

I hope for mobilisation, for everyone to find the issue they commit to help build a sustainable solution - be that food poverty, climate change, reproductive justice, abolishing the police or community welfare. This year has proven our collective power and the overwhelming need for us to act - and revolution will be ours. It's beyond time to dream bigger, listen better and work smarter (not harder) towards a fair future, building for our most vulnerable and capturing everyone else more fortunate along the way.

Our individual power is unique; our ability to change minds and create solutions and unite our families, friends, colleagues - our communities - that's where we're most valuable. Not every action must be bold and break new ground. But coordinated networks build movements - we've seen this. We need to learn from those who came before us and recognise the depth and severity of the cracks in our systems.

None of this is profound, or new information, but it doesn't make it any less valid. I hope next year brings you what you need, but I also hope you'll look beyond 12 months and build for a future we can all enjoy. Because if this collective suffering continues at the hand of individualism's ideals; if we learn nothing from our months inside, isolated, in pain, what promise can the future hold?

weary and threadbare
my soul is mostly empty
words can't reach
louder than a whisper
the pressure on my chest
cracks my ribcage open
and still the air
struggles to escape
lifeless eyes blink away
tears of defeat
frustration would take
too much
awareness lurks
at the back of my head
of passion and drive
long extinguished
soft sighs glance
at embers, echoes
that life might
breathe in this body
once more

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

new life in a shell
brittle and cold
weight lifted, shoulders
drop and lungs sigh.

feline unfurling in the
sun warm exploring
muscle aches, joints
oiled and creating happy shapes.

room to move and enjoy
airy and open
skin pulled over, sinew
ready to settle and rest.

wiggling toes and brows
at peace and soft
teeth sink, lips
ready and patiently waiting.

memories dance atop
a body remembering
sunny days, past
delights will be born again.

In 2021 I want to chase joy and write love poems about mundane tasks and stitch magic into the fleece of my jumper and staple security to the curtains and bake up a storm and soak in the beautiful dappled sunlight on the walls and strive for contentedness of every day

I don't want to be curled on the sofa in a fit of teeth-crumbling, frantic panic. No more holding myself accountable to capitalism's death grip on my life as tangible outputs and numerical gains. Instead, next year will be about the secret smiles that hide in the corner of mouths for special someones and bursts of song while doing the dishes and too-tight hugs celebrating the random excellence each new day brings

I'm here. We're living. We're okay.

The taste of a ghost on my tongue
a memory in my throat
you name your taste your smell
filling my chest, stopping my heart
it's as if you never left
and this feeling
ice in my veins, fire licking
my insides
overwhelming in its newness and familiarity
I know you
I know you

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

Another year, another milestone. I take stock, survey my self for signs of life, of death, of other, of the After.

My emotions have a strange taste, metallic and unknown. My body is a marionette doll with loose strings. I could sleep for a thousand years yet force myself to stay awake. I'm lulled to slumber only by tales of wizards and trolls and girls with silver shoes from my love's honey voice soft as lavender- sweet sandalwood-man dreams are summoned.

Grief is hard work. Tiring. Endless. And that knowledge is a comfort when little else in the world can soothe the blistering pains and festered wounds that lie but a layer of skin below. So I let the stories wash over, a calamine salve on red raw me. How else to unleash the worlds of hurt that live inside with the no-longers and would-have-beens unable to exist with him gone. The universe is full of possibilities, but not for him. Impossible adheres to my ribcage and Gone locks my kneecaps and Never stops the heart I demand keeps beating so the Left Behind of him might live on, if only to be heard in a breaking heart once in a while.

I'm beginning to see the beauty of an unassuming monotony, complete lack of remark or incredulity, the repetitive sameness of minutes, days, weeks. Corners of gold in sunlit brick. Echoes of dreams in the creases of bed linen. Sumptuous, biteable plumpness of the aloe on the window sill. Water moves differently. Cold has a taste. The numbness ebbs away from senses - sight, taste, smell, imagination slowly filling with renewed insight as the world around remains exactly the same.

When it rains, it pours
And the devastation fills my throat
Drowning in fears and apprehension
Hands desperately grasping
The rocks too slick to find purchase
So I sink beneath the waves
Fury and despair and regret dulled to blunt apathy
As the ice cold reality freezes my veins
Remnants of life dimming
My eyelids succumbing to the relentless weight
This ocean of grief pulls me under

reflections unmask
a morose acceptance of bone-deep sadness - pain that both is born and obliterates at a cellular existence
there's a gory irony in that, grossly mantled as a token of loss and a cautionary tale.

be wary of the unseen, unheard spectre
with far reaching influence
and a seductive promise of something more.

enshrined. shrouded. cloaked.
euphemistic hinting of evasion and avoidance, as though detection both
forces acknowledgement of existence and persistence - an inevitable reckoning.
untouchable. unwinnable. unbearable.

my heart clenches thinking
back on friendships and fun and laughter
i poured my heart and soul into
for nought.

desperate to give my weary head
space to look on those decaying connections
fondly, not with bitterness
or aching.

the grief of friends loved and lost
to time, distance and mismatched expectations
is a quiet trauma that imprints on
my soul.

yet I will repeat my mistakes again
ready to welcome new friends into my heart
and hope desperately it won't end
in pain.

Limbs heavy, joints creak with aging beyond their years
My eyes are heavy with tears I don't have because the aching chasm in my chest is frantically drawing every drop of water in my body to fill it up so there's something there, parched and so empty that each tear drop echoes in the hollow cavern. My ears are ringing, auditory canal itching, lips tingling. My body is having a reaction, allergic to my brain and the toxins
chemicals of imbalance
sadness

revisiting the words I write on heart-weary days,
I can taste the emotional exhaustion
in its metallic meloncholy
and a slight bitterness at the shadow
they leave on my soul
when sweet words of brighter days
are far harder to wrap my tongue around
in ways that echo through my chest ever after

lavender soothes and nourishes all in reach
bluebells dance on the breeze with impish levity
honeysuckle intoxicates in a heady familiarity of childhood

springtime appears and the space between my ribs is cavernous
adventurous. life awaits.

The panic sloshes messily
Churning my stomach
Scrambling my thoughts
There is nothing left in the here and now
Only past sins and future collapse
Ringing in my ear
Leading me to my downfall
Focus is a thing of the past
Or the present, which I am not
Stuck in an endless loop
Fear and self loathing
Manifesting beneath the surface
Energy unbound
Rattling my cage
Binding my jaw
Descent into blackness
Rotted and festering insides
Disarming my sense and perspective
Til all I can see is the chaos
Of my mind played out in
Every action and reaction
Cause and effect
So it's safer to lock, power down
Do nothing at all
And wait for the inevitable
crumbling
Destined, preordained
The writing was always on the wall
Fingered shakily with blood
From pulled teeth and ripped fingernails
Pleas and curses and promises
Littering walls of self preservation
I built my own crypt
Visitors shall not enter
No peace for the eternally ******
Slumber will not greet me here
This is the beginning of the end

it feels impossible
to ignore the vulnerability
extending the olive branch
sweeping shadows under the rug
to feel included
to ignore the reality
mismatched expectations
always a step behind
a beat or two out of time with the rest
trust and reliance further
from the bedfellows you had always believed
and resentment builds at tight-knit bonds
you've never felt welcomed in
always on the outside
playing make-believe with borrowed time
and the other kids' toys
sometimes the big girl boots
tread paths you're not ready for
and routes to new possibilities
though painful and lonely and
endlessly daunting
are safest for a heart
worn out from breaking
under the mishandled fragile bonds
left of a trampled soul
rebuilding softly

life has become a series of snapshots in soft focus.
my heart constricts and all i can do is whisper into the empty room.
desperate to turn the ugly into art - make it beautiful.
then the hurt is worthwhile. the alternative is just too sad.

The Deathly Hallows -
aptly titled for hauntings of a soul
tormented by its own creations

The stone turns in time with heart beats
a rhythm set to the mourning for loved ones lost to time
no peace can grow here while the loneliness creaks in my bones

The wand, brittle, breaks as the back
bends under the weight of memories, promises, histories long forgotten
and the power is not in the spine or the soul

The cloak muffles as questions, regrets, tales of lives gone by catch in the throat,
suffocating and tangled in limbs
restricting the body from view, from vitality

Pain echoes through these hallowed halls
and Death is ushered in, a welcomed friend to quiet the mind plagued,
one final act of brutal emancipation.

I have mistreated my body for far too long
And the cracks begin to show.
Furious, red, screaming against the alabaster
Why have you done this to us?
What gave you the right to?

Forcing food down our gullet
Sedentary. Sluggish.
Purge, regret, binge, repeat.
Pushing down feelings, blocking out thoughts.
The mouth and throat replacing honest conversation with fast food for faster results. Short lasting but instant gratification won out.

And now the results are in.
Battered, abused, inside and out.
The brain's poison finally externalised but not exorcised, merely adding to the litany of reasons Why.

The body is finite but never quite finished. Unfurling.
Forced to withstand the gluttony and shame, embodied, entrenched.
Bone deep hatred for what lives inside, oozing outward.
Desperate for it all to end. Knowing it never will. Until it does.

Is that all this life is now? Carrying the shame of bad deeds past forevermore, back bent and spirit breaking whenever the lights are on and clothes are off.
Constant reparations for sins that cannot be washed away.
Skin tarred by a brush that will never cover up the unjust punishment inflicted on this corpse.

Lips stained by the juice of the pomegranate she
devours while thinking on him
Rolling seeds across the roof of her mouth with her tongue.

Bountiful contradictions in her empty palms.
She does not exist to perform his redemption arc
or become the harbinger of his destruction.

Playful, serious, light and dark
She reminds me that there is both light and dark in all of us
Can love really be so simple and so complex?
Must we give everything to gain everything?
Can such a fiery passion be felt so deep and never burn out?

How can people find beauty in stretch marks
born from unnecessary overindulgence and a lack of restraint?
The professor drawing
attention to the issues, inconsistencies,
failures of the ongoing test of self-control
Cracks in the pavement
where rotten weeds refuse to stay hidden
the ideal conditions for ugliness to thrive and thwart
the constructed beautiful facade
There is nothing pretty about self-sabotage
There is nothing redeemable in such a loss of control
The boundaries of my body
break
Under too much pressure
Too much
Food.

The melancholy is thick on my tongue
heavy on my shoulders
tight around my chest
pulling me down and down
under the bathwater as I stew,
marinate,
simmer.

The sad is not loud or exultant
it is not rage-fueled or violent
but a soft, lowly whisper
which crashes against me
waves of velvet and suffocating
emptiness tangled in my
ventricles, clenching and
draining and dimming.

Sit with it, they tell you
honour those feelings that steal your breath
or gut you with painful precision
sit and accept and move on
but how can I move forward when
time has lost meaning and
life has no direction and
purpose trickles down the drain
with the last of the bubbles.

Stalactites warp, following the bevels of the cave
Water drips rhythmically
Occasional tide patterns emerge and dissipate as echoes and ****** noise mingle and crest, ricocheting from natural ceiling.

sunday morning newspaper
aeroplanes, words smudge under tear
stains and my lip cracks
under the pressure of my bite
acts on instinct
as the words soak, inked
time imemorial
illuminated under the hot sun beams
through the window little rainbows dance
on the bed linen same old
pretty looking heart healing soft feeling
bold moves and boulders
hurtle down the mountain side but with you
by my side it seemed impossible
unstoppable we were until
you stopped short of expectations
waiting patiently at the train station
for crumbling goodbyes and never agains and whys
no closure, forgotten, moved on, stepped over
and left to pick up the pieces of a promise
etched in my chest, deceit is
harder to swallow dressed up in a sweetie
wrapper but it's better swallowed whole than
watching life slip away, folded
up on the kitchen table with the sunday morning
newspaper.