It’s is a rope, with the strongest of fibres
that holds me together and can unthread and tear me apart,
it replaces my bones and makes me limp.
It makes me fold into myself as I walk -
are people staring at me?

Coiling so very tightly
twisting and turning and tying,
tying me up, forcing me to my knees.
Cuts deep into my foundation -
they’ve spread too far.

Rapid breath intakes, sweaty palms
my heartbeat is deafening, faster faster,
punching through my chest as I walk down the street.
I just need to get to the end
yet I always fail and f  a  i  l  more.


Trying not to let my weak body collapse me.
trying not the let the sheets smother me.
trying not the let the rocks squash me.
trying not to let the fingers strangle me.
trying not to let the words define me.


It’s like a ***** that holds my world together
there not point trying to look, you cant find it,
yet when I’m in public it comes loose.
I prepare to run as
the sky crumbles around me.

The ***** is so small you cannot tell it lay inside me
it’s so delicate so don’t look at me closely,
or you can see it in the twiddling in my fingers.
The dilated pupils and panicked expression.
Choose. Fight or flight?

I bite my lip so hard it starts to bleed
trying to keep it inside and hidden as to keep it a secret,
it’s like a wave trying to break towards the shore.
Like somehow, it’s never going to stop
*so I keep sinking and sinking and nobody can tell.