doll parts
cat bones
"it's freezing out here"
broken light-bulbs
dusty tools
"when you're older"
rotting fruit
meat hooks
"I'll have to remember that"
quiet incisions
death by worms
"so bad it hurts"
clothes burnt to ash
broken windows
"waiting for the lightning to strike me"
knots upon knots
disused spider webs
"lost art"
drowned candles
paint, painted over
"a clean cut"
silver-lined clouds
loved and lost
"wouldn't do any good"
..

I used to write
My secrets in the sand,
Knowing they would never stay
Long enough to be told.

I used to just swim,
pulled my hair up and never
Really tasted the salt that foamed
After the crash.

I've ran in the sand,
Sure, but never have I
Ever let it smooth my
Skin into what it could be.

Before today, I've never
Let the current take me
Under and feel what it's like
To always come back to something.

i’d rather write about the freckles on your back than think about all of the ways in which you quite possibly don’t love me.

i feel sick at the very thought of you picking me apart the way you did; fingers grabbing and stroking in a catastrophic symphony of skin and vulnerability.

let’s read between each other’s lines; share my sentences and punctuate my paragraphs with your mouth; because i can breathe easier on the mornings where i wake up wrapped around you.

because my moods change like the ******* seasons and the spinning in my head doesn’t want to stop.
                                         you tell me that i should probably get a therapist because no one that thinks about all the ways in which they could **** themselves has an ounce of mental stability.
                                          i tell you that i have been to four.
                                          names faded into a blur with hazy snippets of conversation remaining.
20mg.
                    30mg.
you tell me that trust issues and scars aren’t endearing and i tell you that neither is counting up the potential number of pills needed to dissolve your body into the living room carpet.

let me sink inside your skin and make a home in your flesh;
i tell you about the nights where i lay awake in the bath turning the water red.
                       tragic, isn’t it.

you tell me that this isn’t how my head should work and i tell you that i already know. everything you could possibly tell me i already know.
i know that 400 calories a day isn’t normal, and my hands shouldn’t shake all the time.
                                             i know.
please let me stitch myself into you, even just for a while; until i no longer feel dizzy and my world stops spinning.
i don’t need you to tell me that it will be okay, because honestly i don’t think it will be and, that in itself, is okay.
                                                                ­                 let me stitch myself into you, because my own skin can’t take it anymore.

let me call you back when my voice stops wobbling and my vision straightens out, but honestly, i’m terrified that it never will. what if this is it. headaches and tears and shaking and blood.
                                             and the debilitating, gut-wrenching feeling of pure and euphoric emptiness.

                                              tragic, isn’t it.

Why do my eyes waver in salt water?
It's just a concept I don't really understand when
The ocean in my mind is dry but
My eyes? So wet.
And yet, fire roars through an ***** named Passion - and the sand beneath my feet burns their soles and tries to
Penetrate my soul
But I have buckets,
Tucked under two lids,
That can spill with or without my will.
They can put out a flame, both good and bad. A blessing and a curse.
I'm told that fish can't climb trees but I have neither arms nor gills you see
I have been immobilised,
And it's down to a monochrome smear on a canvas with so much potential;
A plethora of 'dos' and 'don'ts';
The slaughter of a lamb.
I would like to stand in solidarity with each martyr of idiosyncrasy.
I wonder if anything we ever do will be enough.