There are circles around my eyes that I trace
in dark streets, trying to find
my way home. A mind of clogged dust
settles on my shoulders, stagnant
and old. My hands are blue and heavy, slow
with ice. Hair hangs, sodden,
thick with burden.
My skin is rotting.
The sun winds around my body,
spinning me, dizzying me,
making me lose my way
as compass needles
stitch their tracks into the earth,
lines of misguidance
taking me absolutely
nowhere.

There are holes in the soles of my feet. Open,
bleeding holes. Their edges
are crusted with salt. Their silence
says everything about the nature
of my pain. I'm like a mermaid,
cutting my tail in two just for a shot
at somehow finding happiness. Feet destroyed
from the hot glass I walk on
to find you, hair clotted with blood
and heavy with agony. My legs are long
broken. They fall to the floor
at all angles, shuddering screams
tearing the earth apart around me like weak
skin being ripped open by a thousand claws.
Ocean waves drag my blood back with them,
possessive and snide,
waiting for me, wretched and pathetic, to die.

You somehow capture me in my essence,
revealing a beauty so profound
that I can't quite believe what I see
before me now. There is a sky above us;
filthy, full of words and phrases
which are unable to be formed
when I see you, walking, looking off
into the world with narrowed eyes
and the ignorance of how my eyes change
when I see you. Your face removes any analytics
which before dominated my mind and instead,
I stand dumb before you. I am unable to recall
your face for all of the power
it holds over me. I find myself
standing on the edge of us, ready to jump,
because I know that I will be able to fly
if you stand on the edge next to me.
Despite the despondency within me, I grow
stronger every time I see your deepening green
flitting across my eyes in the night,
every time we share a short second of eye contact.

I never expected to be the woman cauled in grace,
the tall beauty who caught herself in movement
elegant enough to make her a force of nature.
I drift through life like a leaf on water,
aimless and carefree. Words of ruth
tumble from me like a wolf howling in vain,
desperate to be heard. My youth has stained
the derailed girl I was when I was old.
Those crumbling bones were wrapped up
in an unexpected life - bones growing
into momentous trees, dancing
among the clouds like skyscrapers. I am
the floating girl wearing red in a sea
of black, melding and merging with the world
like the ever-changing depth of dappling light.
I am the beauty in a whirlpool of chaos, floating
out into the ocean, washing out to sea,
leaving only my handprints in the dust
and a train of thought woven
with the realisation of who I truly am.

Beneath this dress, there is matching red underwear to be found.
It says something about me, that I like the hidden parts
of myself to be the boldest. Perhaps I am wearing it only
to turn myself into a symbol of ***, a goddess
to be reckoned with, but I like the power that gives me.
Underneath the wine red fabric, I am utterly naked -
stripped of all that is my own and left, stranded,
a faceless body to be looked at. Beneath that
there is only skin,
yards and yards of skin, stretching
beyond horizons you couldn't possibly have imagined.
It glints with youth like dew in the light.
It is pale and untouched, mottled with veins and vessels
all carrying the same purpose: life.
I am haggard, crooked and old
but my surface is soft and warm to the touch.
I'm so smooth and perfect that if you strip me to my core
I'm like driftwood - misplaced and beautiful.
The grain of my body flows into knots and splinters,
twisted and graceful. I'm frozen in motion,
my limbs in shifting stillness, dance
captured in the undulating surface of my body.

Some girls know all of each others poetry off by heart.
They find assonance in their laughter.
Their linked hands echo in sybilance.
I sometimes sing as if I am one of them
but what if I can't hum on key?
What if my elegies are the ones nobody reads?
Words, words, words. They rush over me and out of me
to a dead audience.
There is no innocent brush of fingers
or sweet laughter, only the perverse desire
to write something more than myself
and wait for an empty orchestra of applause to greet me.
Perhaps if I write as I am
then I will become who I am not.
Perhaps I will become one of the poets,
harmonising in time with the rest of you.

She left her cave,
heart full of bones,
and unzipped. Her dress fell
to the ground. She stood, exposed,
layers unravelling in the sunlight.
Toes curled into fresh soil,
the smell of rain. Her body exploded
with bright, vivid colour.
******* bared to the whispering wind,
a bead of sweat found itself trickling
down the centre of her back.
Her arms stretched upwards as she
rejoiced the morning air,
laughing to the sky.
She stood firm.
Birds came home then left again.
Days changed to night then back again.
Winter came.
When the ice began to thaw, it started
at her feet.
She willed it to.
You can hear her peace
in the thrum of the ocean.
Her skin became the enticing
reeds, swaying to the beat
of the wind's drum.
You can feel her sorrow
in the cries of lonely wolves.
Her limbs became the stretched shape
of trees, making the horizon jagged
and green.
You can sense her anger
in the crack of lightning.
Her body became the earth, each
person born as one of her children.
You can see her, even now,
glowing with the sun and singing
to you in the morning air,
standing firm.