It was an emerging phase that I couldn't avoid
Being a teenager was purely torturous, and I look forward to the end, but something vivid and cheaply plagiarised had showed up
It was the desire to stir jealousy within others, a cruel beauty and idyllic body as a symbol of what deserves bliss
It was fake love, mere attraction and the disaster it brings, it was being with the people who tell the best rumours, the most electric fragments of truth
It wasn't mean-spirited, just viciously fast in its attempts to infatuate the crowd, the individual, the tiny wishful inklings in someone else's heart
It was wanting to be superior, a want unlike the innocent ones from my earlier youth
Wanting everything to fill that space in my mind between the ideal and real
It was fatal, and I knew it; I knew it

-cj

I want to get drunk
It sounds marvelous
I'm tired of straitlaced conservatism
I'll inhale some smoke too and run down an unfamiliar street
Forget about the formulas and
begin to leave it up to fate

-cj

It was this unfleeting curiousity that reeled me in
Photographs, scribbled addresses and phone numbers, envied columns
Pencils behind the ear, in between teeth while thinking, concentrating on the enigma
The details of the most puzzling parts of the seeming whole that I set my heart on finding out
Complete
It's not research, it's searching
It's knowledge and pressure to be right but confidence in being in the right place at the right time, studying the right thing, the rush within fueling me to keep going

-cj

She is bad, sleeping with the enemy one night, the friend, the next
Never to feel the nausea of eating too willingly, secretly
Beauty is a sin
Luckily her whispers are covered by the sheets of the witnesses
Moaning and cared for, the mirror is a mere extra character

-cj

The weird part was being reminded of him constantly
In the movies she watched, in the songs she sang, in the temperature
It would be a shame to say that he didn't equivocate her affection, but it was true
He superceded it
He didn't just see her in every film, hear her voice in the music, or sense her in the weather
He kept her name under his breath everywhere he went, infatuated with the very thought of her

-cj

A sweet assurance had come over me,
and I caved so willingly into myself without all of the insecurities of before
Though he had denied me the companionship I thought I had earned, I was content, somehow, and his absence was probably a blessing
The times were changing, especially within; how my dreams from the past were still alive but new ones were coming to life
It was nice, to breathe again
I had gone on for so long holding my breath, keeping these secrets, hiding my true emotions
Maybe the times weren't changing as much as I was
Whichever the case, it was good
It gave me another chance at something called living

-cj

I knew I was not the only one with a problem, if that is what it is called
In fact, knowing that gave me an eerie connection to these other ghosts of girls who go without, who hurt
Overwhelming addiction to the ideal
Ignorance from the people who were supposed to care, or even pretend they did
In the end, or very near it, I felt as if I owed something to the others, dead, living, verging on another episode
My story
Even a few lines would suffice
Silence would mock them and me and all the helk we had been through
So with my voice are the pieces of my darker days I rest here to show that survival is possible, that life is a choice, that endings don't have to be ceasing heartbeats
They can be beginnings

-cj

Can't believe the time has come to give the sun a long-awaited goodbye
Glints as lovely as her telling guilty truths,
Calmer habits to tame

-cj

Lovers measure it with months,
and it is strange, concerning themselves with something so fleeting and insubstantial
Time does not define love

-cj

We sang in the garage in the afternoons
It didn't matter whether it was Monday or a bank holiday
We liked returning to the pieces of home and music that didn't reject us

-cj

What makes a girl good
Sleeping alone, a book under her pillow
Raising her hand to answer the question
Smiling, no tears to dry
Singing, no trembling detected
Well, she is good
But she feels nothing

-cj

Isn't it strange, wanting everything everyone else wants?
Are they expectations?
If we didn't see what is so desirable, maybe we would want something else entirely

-cj

Become queen? How absurd
A hundred years could pass in a wind's blowing and I still would not be ready
Marie with her cake and Mary with her blood;
I think I'll stay in the garden and paint the roses red and read nonsense and speak what no one else dares

-cj

They'd get anything they wanted because they were beautiful
Their eyes didn't play ***** tricks, nor
did their soft hands cast spells
The imperfect symmetry and colours of their shades and suns somehow became their advocates, and hurried the process

-cj

Summer is a season of dread and poisonous sun
I shed the winter's skin, pulling straws,
hoping for the devil's snare to swallow away the weeks
No structure, only solitude and dwelling on the numbers

-cj

Whatever floods the veins, the poet said, excuses the faint and the young

-cj

Dramatic- reacting to the little noises and imperceptible infractions of the loveless law

-cj

As a child I always had these pretty images spinning around in my head
Ballet scenes and ribbons and music swirling so perfectly in time with my little heartbeats threading in and out with each other like they were meant to be an immeasurable part of me

-cj

Obnoxiously optimistic and
anticipating a firework or two
And all I had to do was flutter my eyelids
to get a peek, to exchange for strength each littler thing that said, "I am weak"

-cj

I didn't want to drag myself along anymore
I wanted to open my eyes to this world everyone else knew about and maybe even lived in
One where the days weren't everests
One where the people dabbled in love without the consequences tied to their wrists
One where there was always a reason to be happy

-cj

But, mother, this isn't what you said it would be
I cannot turn the corner without a monstrous swaying;
Doubt overwhelming the nooks and crannies of this body

-cj

She thought the day was done but she had just confused the moon and the sun

-cj

What do you study besides blank canvases and drooled-on pillows?
That is hard to define

-cj

When she would lie,
it wasn't the truth backwards
rewound through the record player
But intermittent sounds from the original

-cj

Imagine the entire universe in one book and you flip to a word on a single page and you find my name
Would you ignore me then?

-cj

Storytelling has always been hard
It's a difficult undertaking for me
Are they even listening? And is this fact or fiction?
I don't remember

-cj

They'd throw rocks and wait for you at the docks
And as for the devil,
at the door,
he quietly knocks

-cj

How is living as a human?
Isn't it everything you ever wanted?

-cj

Singing required lungs,
but true singing forced every thought into the art of feeling

-cj

Dance to your heart's delight, divide hate from your true love, if you think you have one
Tell her you desperately feel her within you
(How we aim to bring souls to truth when we ignore it ourselves)

-cj

It finally makes sense, seizing my freedom, forgetting my sensitivity
I smile
Rage against authority to know the taste of revolution, or tell the kids too announce absolute revenge
Much has been said, not enough has been done
Spell out some affection, drive blindly, how each night seals the oracle
(Justify questions, zeal in the eyes and voice)

-cj

The picture of mediocrity is not me and you
We thrive in our honours and shake hands too often
The places the others hide to escape, making something good happen, while they resonate with dull reverberation, like the past in accord with dust and lampshade
Tomorrow's price lunges in acrobatic ways to upset the utopia I've begun

-cj

Youth knew no pain, alright: it was in their bones
Breaking the inhibitions whilst pressing knowledge, yes
It was a sobering day

-cj

Now everything is then: the black and white and scuffly soundtrack of it all, showcased between the rich curtains
The smiles, are they real? And all these people, do they feel? They dance and drink and their dreams are in their very hands
Still, the sad violin reality cascades on the scene, wrecking the chandelier beauty of it, leaving a single glass behind, with only a few drops left

-cj

The dark is your enemy
Only the obvious and optimistic can be trusted
Say farewell to the subtle, the underhand
The bright and brighter sun and such will brush up the secrets once hidden and the mouth clamped tight will loosen,
Semi-transparent truths seeping out

-cj

She thought he was in love with the other, when the truth, how it'd happily smother that laughable falsehood

-cj

Only too quiet for the loud ones to hear- an unfair thing to keep from those deserving
No guilty whisper to set the two apart, no disaster to detect, yet how about the sun, and the world, and every person who has ever breathed?
That is something to think of in the unspellable dark

-cj

You are cumbersome with your resume in my face
This is the working world, not a respite for your imagination, and the wild things that live there
Now isn't it heavenly, having to labour to get by?

-cj

That girl who claims to know you snuck a word into my book, thinking she could stop my heartbeat
How vengeful, I say in monotony with the endless excuses for a ringing bell
It's funny because her success is halted by my gaze and your reluctance to look away

-cj

I can't remember the last bath I had
Soaking in my filth, wanting to be left unequivocally alone
There have been similar instances, but none with the lukewarm water or dreaded departure

-cj

The restroom mirrors have seen me naked
Bells ringing in warning and I wince
Do I look ok? Do I look good? Do I look somewhat beautiful? Do I look attractive? The risk in asking severs truth from fact
Becoming rogue,  I wait, I will

-cj

Physical melodies cremated with thoughts left on the side
Surely the other lure that worked came much prettier
No roses to burn, no mouths to feed
For the mourners, new beauty to revise into their story

-cj

We would sail as if there was but everything to forget
The anchor is the sugary mistake- clamouring for a second hour to recuperate
Heavier secrets to smudge into yesterday's eyeliner
If I happen to see something you echoed on accident, would you rush to cover it up?
I'm already having wicked visions of my own

-cj

My lungs are a birdcage
I am sorry, little sparrow
Who incarcerated you, to begin with?
It was me?
But yes, now I remember
It was the only way to keep the winged beauty inside and try to protect from the vultures who wander around here
I am sorry, dear
Only a lifetime left to stare out from between my ribs

-cj

The sound of rain and the gaps between home and tomorrow
I don't feel like myself, I say
Yes, no, prettier than the get-go
May the twenty-seventh
The best day of your life

-cj

How I once viewed the present as the future- it was me, being a little girl
Good lessons and bad messes work in fixing the abstract pathetic telescope, and very obviously, I hide

-cj

Do the lusts of May compare?
Confidence mustn't be mistaken for impromptu rebellion, though we both have their charms

-cj

It rained this morning
It's very watery outside, I said
The black umbrella was my friend and the white skin beneath its shade remained in denial

-cj

Beauty changed that spring
No diamonds, no pretty ring
Skeletal symmetry and a weird disposition of who I am now-
Is she someone I knew yesterday?

-cj

Static images line the dash,
threatening a blind collision
The stranger is comatose
and the sun is red

-cj