Soft padded sheets with a chalk-white fade
Contours from repeated pressure illustrating a familiar shape

Indented rivets in the overused cushion where you tried to hide
Red-turned-brown spots dried, markers of where you failed to keep it inside
Timid stains of salty moisture once fallen from your eyes
Now just a faded gravestone to the bliss simplicity brought before your fight died

Deaf ears and the pleas that pass through their shallow halls
But the sound changes octaves as it bounces off the thin beige walls
And so it echoes unheard as it falls
One too many close calls to accept the sound that emulates from it all

Trembling bones under heavy skin clutching the bed-frame with an iron grip
Second only to the pressure your upper teeth have on your lower lip

Revolving doors unhinged, flooding your thoughts as they race
Tired eyes stay bolted open, not recognizing the shape of your own face
in the jagged glass that now lays fractured and stained from the image you tried to replace
But it still didn't go away
“This is it,” you say

Cavernous holes,
Once whole,
Now just hollow shells you used to call home
Empty of all heart and all hope

And you brace for the hit, the moment where it finally all goes black
And the silence will finally answer back,
telling you you've ****** it up, it's all rotted through, you didn't fight hard enough and now you're done

And every single time you're still surprised when that moment never comes
And despite the tremors and daggers, your stubborn heart carries on

So find the narrow sliver of air where reality and your mind meet
And take in all the oxygen like it isn’t always free
There isn’t much too it,
You just put your head down and breathe

Because if there’s only one thing of which you can be sure
It's that these souls were designed to endure

And "this too shall pass" will become true once more

Let your heart and its resting pace made amends
Once the shaking stops you can finally stand
And wear that smile until courage finds you again

Somewhere inside you always knew this isn’t how it ends.

when my mother told me to get out of my own head
it was like the sound of a sudden beat in an alley way
that viscous, sinister bang of broken glass
collapsing in the forefront of my imagination
when she says to stop overthinking everything
I am suddenly reminded of the opalescent lights that corner my thoughts
the world spinning on its axis, turning my head and twisting so tight it pulls at the roots of my hair
when she tells me to get over it
I feel the weight of a textbook crushing my spine, speaking it's scripture to me like the demons that whisper through air vents
so over is not an option, mom
I've never been one to fly above the nest you'll learn that pretty quick
I am a cult of 9's, the tails whipping at the edges of my brain, it's one eye watches me stumble on division symbols, cackling at the ways I try to split my problems in two
when I tell her
I just want to sleep,
she tells me to crawl out of my bed and dance
but how come dance has turned my mind into a music box, a ballerina dances on point inside my head and I reach, and claw at the frayed corners of my skull, hoping to hold her grace
when I tell her my bed is the only thing that makes any sense,
that dreams don't come in clusters any more like the rapid cars on highways,
that they fold over into one,
that for once the calculator in my head isn't multiplying, or dividing,
that for once the number one just means one,
when I tell her that my dreams are filled with clouds of sanctuary,
or that my mind is only asleep when I'm spoken to,
that it climbs out of the covers at night to float high above the stars,
she says that laziness is a sin,
that feeding your exhaustion at 3 in the afternoon is ridiculous
but sleep is all that makes sense
when nothing adds up
so when I tell you I never roll out of bed with a refreshing, minty mind
that sleep doesn't feel like resting anymore
that it feels like sleep
that it feels like lying down after a long day and constantly crashing on to hard pavement
that falling from a 200 story building makes me feel alive
that's when you decide to tell me that I've exceeded all expectations
that I'm a shiny quarter in a sea of dimes
then I ask if you knew that all shiny things break the same
that I rust around the edges just like any other coin
could you understand my restless behavior isn't exotic but exhausted
then maybe you would too, hide behind bedroom eyes

Tidy room, tidy mind.
Logical, is it not?
We splash our life onto the canvas of our bedrooms.
Our dreams escape onto the walls as we sleep.
Our feet drag the dirt of our adventures on the floor.
Our desks are hidden under papers, pencils, a calculator, papers, a spoon, a comb, and two large hands ransacking the surface looking for a misplaced paper.
I like my room in the mess of sense I understand but maybe mom was right. I have to reorganize my room. I have to reorganize my mind
to clear the pathway between my bed and the door, so I can have a new vision and spend time looking for the right things.

Lizbeth dressed
in her favourite
short dress

knowing her mother
would disapprove
and would lead

to her mother's
usual moans about
looking like a ****

like one of those dancers
on that TV pop music
programme

and what would
the neighbours think?
Lizbeth stared at herself

in the full length mirror
looking at red hair
her freckled skin

which she loathed
and how the dress
was getting tight

about her
how it showed her
shapely figure

which she did like
and her mother didn't
and thought of Benedict

at home in
his village cottage
with his parents

and siblings
and she hoping
to cycle out

to see him
and maybe
if she was lucky

get him
to get down to it
-she had tried

many times before
but with no success
- even in the small church

where no one
ever visited
he wouldn’t get down

to having ***
saying it wasn't
the place

and then another time
in his bedroom
where he took her

to show her
his animals bones
and bird eggs

and fossils
in broken pieces
of chalk

and it was there
behind them
his double bed

already for them
but no
she was till a ******

and even here
in her own bedroom
she brought him once

and still he wouldn't
have it
even though she'd

almost stripped off
her clothes for him
O how boring

he could be
and she gagging for it
so much so

that she was tempted
to go it alone-
as seen in

the *** book
a girl at school
had lent her-

but no
she wanted Benedict
no other boy

just him
and down stairs
she heard her mother

singing along
to the radio
some classical

music stuff
her mother's voice
croaking above

the music
like an unhappy frog
she lifted

the short dress
by the hem
to see how short

it could get
before her mother
would take it away

from her
and give it
to another

she raised it so
she could just
about see her

white underwear
and smiled
and said

to herself
there
yes there.

I didn't want you in my pants
So I put on a dress

an unread book,
a pair of broken headphones,
the shirt of someone who is perfect in my eyes.
a bic lighter,
a glass of water,
a succulent that i could never seem to keep alive.

condensation forms on the surface of the table
as the water begs to bring life back to the plant,
but the lonely plant only speaks of the sun
and the way it desires his light.

Leave us in a bedroom
a locked room
both bound by a fleeting veneration
but no tangible definition
and windows will fog up
with excess anxious laughter
and phlegmmed throats
til the glass transforms
transparent to translucent
so the outside world becomes
an informed guess about
which coloured shape is going
                   where.
The door handle will twist into the room’s
home grown central nervous system
backed by rising voices
rising pulses
assuring ourselves it is
everybody outside
who is trapped and not us
because ‘cosy’ has scribbled over
‘cramped’ between the sheets of peeling
wallpaper and bodies upon bodies upon
bodies only excites.
We will stay in bed
cocooned around this single duvet
and distracted into its folds because this
is how we choose to spend
free will. Don't
murmur about the locked door
and even when it opens for
lack of air or food
so we tentatively tread through into the
open, or perhaps closed,
I beg you to
grab my wrist and pull me back and whisper
tear yourself up
decrease with me
because this will always be the one place we’ll happily suffocate.