I still can't give away
my heart without my pride

I gasped but only your voice went in
After the lies I'd told like magic
Emptied themselves as marbles
On the hard wooden floor
I collected myself
With my hands
Dropping the hope
I had been holding on to
Ambiguity ripped open
A line between my heart and chin
I gasped and only the truth went in

Crouching demon on my bed
Flouting reason, bringing dread
Crouching demon of yesterday's me
Vouching freedom for shamed crazy
If you had eyes they'd surely shine
But to some surprise I merely find
Instead of sections of fear and fire
A gaunt reflection of my reared desire
Crouching demon, don't choose me
I fling freedom at a bruise I call envy

My heart is a desolate castle
Upon a lonely, haunted hill
Its self grandeur misguided and facile
Empty yet infestation fills
rooms that beat in theory
but in abandonment seem still
Oh, my heart is a desolate castle
Haunted by its own free wil

Out of the dark and into my dreams
Through the haze, not quite as it seems
Out of the dark and into the depth
Candidness abandoned, and honesty kept

Out of the end and into the dark
Bottomless as oceans, still as this heart
Out of lit tunnels, into that dark
I left myself at the gateway, ineluctably apart

Out of myself and into the air
Insides roaming, body spare

The *** of rot
I've been simmering
Was embroiled to the boil
You tried to remove the heat
And appallingly scalded
Your chest and face
As my
Water supplies are
Surprisingly small
I have little to go on
but potluck
and recall

I made the walls my best friends
I told them my secrets
I shared myself
And I always listened
Until finding myself loyal to nothing else
I invited you to share their insides
In the hope of a breathing connection
But now instead I whisper with them
Behind noise or doors or duvets
Those words never said in your breath
Silence snaps when you shut the door
Magnolia reacts mildly
And sometimes breathing is intense

Stop telling the kids
That what you do is who you are
Stop telling the kids
That your work is the mark
Stop asking the kids
What do you want to be?
Or- start accepting answers of
‘Nice’ or ‘safe’ or ‘happy’
Stop telling the kids
What they want to do
Is who they want to be
You’ve confused the English
A verb where an adjective should be
Stop telling the kids
How they serve the economy
Is the same as their personalities
How will you make money for someone else
In your lifelong campaign to sustain yourself?
Is this what we ask at the age of three,
To know how to act socially acceptably?
Save the inaccurate labels of ability
For dinner parties and PTA meetings
And ask the kids
What kind of grown-up do you want to be
Or better, what would you like to see?
What’s it like being three and what do you dream?
What should I want to be?

Pushed to pillow
This morning
With musty dusted eyes
Your face was soft all over
But by lunchtime
It's all corners
And by nightfall
I'm petitioned with bruises