She wrote like she was struggling to breathe, like
she was running after a train
barefooted
on railway tracks in the middle of winter, shivering
shuddering, holding on
to nothing at all but
being held
by screaming words
tugging at her feet and biting
into the ridges on her fingers

She wrote like all the clocks in the world had
come to a stand still, though
days continued to pass, like
the fluttering pages of an abandoned book
in the midst of a raging storm

She wrote sometimes like hail, pattering
against steel-coated frozen rooftops, falling against
doors left ajar
bruising faces which taught her, how
to shoot bullets

At other times, she wrote like a gentle breeze, like the scent
of rosewater and jasmine, and dirt
lovingly caressed by morning dewdrops, and
her words, they
sometimes danced across paper, swaying with
a trace of a brief smile, and
then they fell with a thud, giggling
in those sudden, fleeting moments of insanity, which
make The Blissful incinerate themselves, into
ashes which blow away in the wind

And then at other times, her words were silent
dark, brooding,  still,
like the darkest corners of a rundown neighbourhood
after midnight, like
the dust which settles on suitcases filled with
forgotten photographs, against
the farthest wall of a quiet room . . .
dark, brooding, still,
like her soul, barred behind wood, engraved
with the whispered words of the shadows of her fears.