There was a girl who felt lost
And trapped at the same time.
She looked out from her tower window
At the birds moving across the skyline
And into the trees.
Is it a stereotype of a princess to
Be locked in a cage and look at the birds
And wish to fly like them?

I love train stations.
Unironically, I hasten to add.
I get excited when I get to explore
A new one, even though I have a
Habit of getting lost easily and
Ending up on the wrong platform.
I’ve never missed my train though,
To everyone’s surprise.
Getting lost in the easiest of places
Is my speciality, but the usual anxiety
Doesn’t course through my body
In stations, the liminality is
Almost comforting. It’s an in between platform,
Not the start and not the end, always
Somewhere else to go afterwards.
I like that.

Found

I met you and I thought I had found it,
The thing I had been looking for since
I was a little girl.
Someone who knew me better than I knew
Myself, someone who would love me
And keep loving me
Despite all the dark and twisted corners of
My mind.


Lost

But then you left. And I lost it.
I lost the person I thought I needed
And couldn’t live without and
I cried. I wept and screamed and pleaded
With every deity and universe that
You’d come back and find me.
But it was futile, we were both
Lost.

You are made of crumbled stardust,
Modelled and reshaped over and over
Into different people until now when
That stardust is you.
Millions upon millions of people have
Looked up at the moon, the same moon
That Shakespeare and Cleopatra and
The dinosaurs all saw, even though they
Are dead and gone you are here. Maybe
Your stardust came from one of them.
The universe is expanding and yet it is still
A constant.
The night sky has baffled any and all who gaze upon it,
(we just have the means to discover and name the
things that reside there now)
And it is every bit as beautiful as when Van Gogh painted
A starry night.

This one's for the girls who are considered
Mean, who don’t smile at strange men or
Move out of their path just because it’s expected.
The girl who, after playing with the boys,
Was accused of being ‘different’ for not letting
Someone copy her maths work.
The girl who gets angry and
The girls who only know how to ugly cry
And the girls who are told they are unlovable.
You are not unlikable,
People are intimidated by you, but don’t change.
Don’t you dare change who you are for anyone,
You are worth so much more than them.

As much as I want to feel loved,
I don’t think I am lovable.
I fall too fast and always, always end up
Laying on the concrete with
Blood in my hair.
I have flaws, everyone does, but I’m always
Afraid that you won’t love me, not the way
I need you to. I’m terrified, like a cat in a
Thunderstorm, that someone will
Put up with me for a while
Then leave.
And I’ll be left to wash the rust out of my
Hair and wipe the black and grey from under
My eyes.

Easy, simple, traditional.
What you always start out with
Before becoming more adventurous.
After trying other things, you may find yourself
Not wanting to go back to the
So called

‘Boring’

Flavour. But I don’t think it’s boring at all.
It’s simple, something you can find
Comfort
(and pleasure)
In.
There’s no shame in not wanting to experiment,
As some nasty people would have you believe,
Nothing to be mocked at all.
You can have whatever flavour of ice cream
You want. It’s your choice, my loves.