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466 · Aug 2016
Lean On Me First
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
The smell of fresh rain,

perfumes the evening breeze outside;

a soft scent carried along by the clouds.

The coloured blush of flowers still

open to the gentle beat of raindrops.

Come with me and be still;

be calm and languid, supple and

warmed by the glow of company.


Let me strip you of your wet clothes.

I can see the light has waned.

Embrace me before you crumble;

arms outstretched,

a reflex to stop you hurtling down

to your knees.

I can feel you, a cold lake inside;

freezing over.


You say you are tired.

So tired of seeing me morph,

into your soldier.

I take up arms at the first signal.

But I don’t mind being in uniform;

at the first sign of your need.

Because I do love you,

in all your shapes and transfigurations.

In all your depths and dark pockets,

lighter days and mysterious vanishes.

I know this is true, I do love you.


You say you are a burden.

A burden you are not responsible for

manifesting on rainy mornings and

shady afternoons.

You are unpredictable; as gentle and ferocious

as nature.

But I don’t mind.

I tackle the excitement, mount the climbs;

I love knowing you can awaken from your

stupor, can ensure you always return to where

you deserve to be.

Bathed in light, laughter;

capable of all the things the true

monsters roaming this life can be, do, feel.

If those devils are entitled, I can make sure

you are too.


I wage war on your enemy; that nasty essence

defusing it’s toxicity.

It may take more of me than I have ever

donated;

more energy and strength,

more resilience to push through dark shadows,

fighting through imprisoned demons,

pulling away from sharp nails and dirtied hands.

But you don’t deserve those shackles.


Not everybody can do this;

can constantly seek new ways of breaking chains.

But don’t go to sleep believing I can’t.

I already have broken them,

many times over.

Or you simply wouldn’t exist today, at my feet.

And neither would I exist to fight for you, as I do.
448 · Aug 2016
The Mental Illness
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
Come with me, all my loves,

all my heart pieces;

scattered away on winds and rain,

and let me show you something.

Insatiable, hungry, ravenous for cravings

until satisfied and full.


I’m afraid to say,

you are my distraction.

A ceaseless focal point, somewhere to extend my energies, someone to

take care of because I can’t do it for myself.

I can’t take care of myself, I just live on a perpetual ride;

up down round twist loop repeat.


You’re my own heart, of sorts.

I try to nurture, comfort, maintain, strengthen, clean and bathe,

heal you.

Everything I’m denied for myself I place in you;

and the cruelest heart you are when you neglect me, run frightened of me,

abandon and relinquish me.

You never once were grateful for the fresh blood I gave you.


You remind me to forget about hating myself, for a time.

You make the bad shadow go away.

It feeds on me in the lonely hours, when I’m not doing something,

with someone, being wholly somewhere else.


When I’m trying to leave the cycle of rises and drops…

it finds me.

It puts a hood over me.

I can’t see or sense a thing.

My head is so heavy it’s my own body weight.

You ask me what is wrong, and I can only shape a blank, cold slate.

Blank.

Disorientated and battered, I’m so frightened of the blank space in my head.

What was there before?

What was going to be there?


I need you to show me how to feel this,

how to love myself, you, believe, speak, explore, rise and climb,

so I know I can feel it for myself.

People tell me I can only love someone, when I can love myself firstly.

But I don’t know how that’s possible,

I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.

That is why I cling so ardently, and why I need so many of you.


I can deal with hell all day everyday, and I do.

That’s what this is like.

I can develop a mechanism

to survive the hellish torment,

but the unpredictability is what

gets me every time.
448 · Aug 2016
A Study of Butterflies
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
Clocks beat their incessant rhythm;
time told by ticks you hear,
time is the air you breathe,
time is the harder push and kick under water.

I am acutely aware of the struggle,
the weight of water above, suffocating,
and the darkness below.

When I see you turn and stare,
a smile dusted with sugar and sprinkles,
I know it’s too late; the ticking stopped.

I’m pinned to a board for you,
splayed in compromising ways,
all the colours and lines, shapes and textures
of my soul laid bare beneath the glass.

Pinned to a board,
your personal butterfly,
wings open and stabbed through with pins.

This is how love gone wrong makes you feel.
This is what being horribly open makes you realise.
You are on display; kindnesses and sins,
inked like sacred tattoos all over.

You are the expert, judging my form.
You are the clever enthusiast,
reshaping my design, new pins,
new stabs,
as you replace the glass before my eyes again.

Hopelessly trapped in your hands,
quaking like a captured bird,
I can’t even move my arms to cover
the crude scratched markings,
bright red scissor marks across my thighs.

They speak of pain, heart ache,
loneliness, sadness;
emotional rollercoasters,
betrayal, silent tears, self punishment.
Heartbreak mostly.
Over you.

This is how anxiety kills.
The constant glass window you place
me so nicely under
is more toxic than you know.
It keeps me locked under an icy glow.

I’m pinned so I can’t
break your gaze;
you may not think it much but
I’m lost in such a tearful craze.

Please stop hurting me,
please stop viewing me.
I’m open and raw and cut,
lying like a dead specimen;
you took it all from me
when you
said
I love you.

Place me out of sight,
just for a little while.
Let me keep my secrets,
let me keep my shelter;
the safe where I throw all the
torments
because I don’t want you to see them.

If you loved me,
I wouldn’t have to be your
dead butterfly.
I’d be fluttering at your ear,
a sweet brief presence, a coloured blur,
lost in the air, free in seconds.

If you loved me,
let me go.
440 · Aug 2016
Proofs Of That Night
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
Nights of thinking alone,

gathering my proofs,

I’m still unsure you were real.


I loved the sweet caress of your voice,

the way your mouth shaped my name,

your eyes hovering lazily over mine.

I loved the soft touches and frenzied hands,

as you carried and explored me, explored together

in bed sheets and a summer night’s heat.


Balcony doors embraced the ocean with open arms

before us, the tingle of adventures together

left tickling my skin.

It was a night that brought so many gifts, so many

tender looks and sprawling affections

laying waste to the floor.


But it was a night left to my fantasy.

No videos, photographs, Facebook statuses

or afterwords of gratitude.

A night left as bundles of touches and

portions of tangled desire beautifully coiled like

ropes inside my head.


I need those proofs.

I need to know that love-nest even happened.

That it wasn’t some sickened dream I had,

whilst I cried in bed alone that it would soon

all end;

a frayed and ***** heap of pity left in place of you.

My heart would conjure anything to protect me from you.

My heart would drill holes in those fragments if it meant

lies from you, if it meant little pieces of love you could

hurt me with.


My heart is grateful for what you showed me,

the love you painted with me, for me, over me.

My heart is still in love with the times we shared,

the memories that glide around silkily in my sleep;

but my heart is also still frightened, of you.

And what power I gave you, over me, to make me

weep and search for evidence like this.

To finally know you loved me, or not.


Because that is what it needs doesn’t it?

Prove that it needs to, that it’s real.

Were you real beneath my fingers?
431 · Aug 2016
Tendrils of Memories Circle
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
Tentative tendrils of memories

encircle me today.

I eat, bathe and walk with them;

whispering sweet words;

grazing my ears with kisses

of the past.


I can feel myself weaken,

give in to your misty essence.

What place are you going to take me

to this time?

I know what images you please yourself with

are at least real.

Were real.

Not just sickly cravings, fantasies of an

escapist.

But reminiscing can be painful too.


You coalesce at the corners of my vision;

Beautiful, frail beings of floating moments.

My own ghosts;

you don’t haunt or stalk,

but drift alongside me.

Every few minutes I’ll walk through you,

and images will flood me.

Voices, colours, senses,

emotions;

a pocket of the past to relive again.


This one is fresh.

Recently swaddled and placed in storage.

How considerate of you.

To make me remember what the rapid fall

for a new love is like.

The reserved smiles, thinking you can

peek and they wouldn’t see.

The shy touches, always longing for something

heated.

The small toss and throw, between words,

gestures, hands and hearts and lips aching to

be closer.


The world vanished,

****** into its own black hole,

when I laid eyes on you.

I melted.

Seeped into warm, golden streams.

You left me feeling bold, my

desire unchallenged;

you pulled it out of me

like pulling string out of its coil.


Your arms slowly made the journey

around my slender waist;

holding me close.

I could nuzzle and cling

and I never wanted you to pull away.

Ever again.

Wrapped in each other’s warmth below the

map of stars and before

the beacons of the city,

our kiss was slow and long,

sweet,

sugary taste and warming.

A fire at the first spark, rising from ash.


Ghost, why trail me like this?

On those days I have yet to see him,

I still crave him.

You remind me of that lingering pull.

I sit on that bench where we embraced,

but he isn’t there.

All I know is you ghost.

Hovering beside me,

a still, pale presence moulding

into him.

But you are empty.

A white spectre leaving me wanting.


Stop shedding my memories before me

like dead skin.

They were.

Stop reminding me.

I’m still left yearning after your visit

to my mind.

Rooting through the archives,

trudging through my still weeping pieces.


I pull away, and your vision collapses.

Finally you fade into nothing.

I can be at peace without your play.
428 · Aug 2016
It Shows Itself
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
It shows itself in the mornings, too brisk to leave my bedroom;

soft tumblings in bed fighting to scrabble for warmth with a body like ice.

It shows itself in the lines and creases on my face;

prematurely carved in stone and worn rough with care.

It shows itself in the dreamy daze I wade through;

I stumble around you and on into some frightful collage ahead.


It shows itself in the strings unravelling behind me,

that you follow until you’re inside.

It shows itself in the pages of unseen messages you keep,

the ones you ignored or purposefully forgot, asking if we are ok.

It shows itself in the way I can never afford to be calm,

never around you at least.


It shows itself, the way it pummels and pounds the inside of my skull.

It shows itself when I can never sleep, like resting on a pillow of

broken glass.

It shows itself through my eyes;

the way they rest on the floor and silent tears

fall down around me, leaving silent stains that disappear before you notice.


It shows when I twist away from your lips,

but then instantly move to pull you close, on top.

It shows when I love you, and begin to let that fall from the window,

to somewhere else.

It shows when I learn how to love myself, then proceed

to wound and maim myself;

because I left you dangling on my line, my fishhook buried in your side.


There is a chaos.

Inside my head.

Are you prepared to face it?

It’s a raging ocean and you need to want to swim in the tides.

You need to know how to float on a sea of rubble, crushed up words,

sanded-down motivations and crashing waves.

It doesn’t soak you in salty coldness,

but the dark relief of being numb. No sensation.

Just observing the world from a tiny crack in the wall.


Are you alright, steeled enough, to try with me?

To brace against it all when I come tumbling at you from nowhere.

Are you strong enough to try and understand the chaos?
421 · Aug 2016
One Question
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
I have one question.

That’s been digging trenches in my mind.

Hollowing out all the empathy, the faith,

the blind addiction to sourcing a better humanity;

better lovers, stronger fighters,

stunning believers, more tender hearts.

With actual effort to beat on their own.


Your exclamations are false, always.

And I can tell you why

my shell is caked in your muddy, rotting stink of fake facts.

I’m cracked, embittered, roughened edges capable of paper-cut slicing skin

and all my lovely scars can tell you something you hardly believe.

I’m here to tell you why.

And why I hate how you make me feel this way;

a cynical coil of seething, jilted, passion, to fix what I can’t.


For all those who make hearts melt and weep,

shed heat and fire in rapturous thoughts and darkened, tainted dreams;

for all the single words you used as tools to build up walls,

break down my walls,

deceive me into caring about you

who chisels into only getting the gem he wants.

You can collapse a mine on me for all you care

in the end.


For all those who can make devilishly delightful

fantasies for all the vulnerable loners,

like me,

like us all when we shut our eyes,

to hover and circle over, beg for on our backs,

naked and open and bleeding raw beneath you

like ritual sacrifices for some higher purpose, some higher hopes and

goals and unwavering loyalties

to you,

my dearest demon behind every salvation;

You are the emotional abusers that gravitate in my orbit,

and I can’t seem to dislodge your planets from my line.

I admit, you got me high off some stunning ****.

Of yours.


For all those gentle, perpetually unavailable, curious beings

vacationing deep away inside

if only you would let me try and reach you, for you

to bring out all the best in me back;

before you close up like sealing a scar

We are left in a continual loop of back and forth and sideways,

hovering through open, closing doors

elevator rides to the same living routine, breaths, steps,

burdened heavy heart and raw eyelids

bruised red and blue in swollen tears

when you can never emerge from yourself to realise I’m right here

for you.


For those that run around, commanding disciples, throwing the weight of luck,

fortunate coincidences, helping fools sabotage and **** for existence,

perfection,

idealism,

licking off frosting,

dwelling in your own superiority,

I see your ruse.

Painting pristine pictures

with the lift of a finger

selling illicit jealousies and spite

like wildfire

from the back of your 24/7 Facebook page.

You make us understand the reality of one-sided loyalties,

the critical unfair rulings of want and have,

divided and mixed between people,

achievements hard fought for like precious land

and ownerships of better peoples

determined by the infernal number of people you know.


So yes.

I do have one question for you.

Why are you like this?

An why must we all break apart alone in

the boiling pressure of it all?

Forget the next night.

Wait for the return.
419 · Aug 2016
Amongst Your Blank-
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
Amongst your blank texts,
I have a message

You bring out something better in me, than when
I’m alone with myself.
What the **** is stable? I’m not stable.
Do not break my heart please.
I’m warning you.
418 · Aug 2016
Wandering
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
I missed you.

Oh how I missed you; like a wandering
traveller waiting for the new light on the darkened
foreign streets to everywhere.
And so our travels go like this…

Like the traveller delayed, already departed from home,
yet still searching for the next greatest ambition, dream, landscape of contentment
I felt the sludge of home-sickness;
a deepened breath when I heard from you again.
And to keep the sick down;
I realised what I hadn’t been able to say;
words choking my throat, razor edges skimming,
drawing slivered cracks in my breath.

I realised my feet had been standing still the entire time,
out of phone calls and the sound of smiles from the other line,
a companionship was never too hard to resist from you.
The tricky little games of life and feeling weren’t so stressful to navigate,
compass, map, rushed footsteps dancing along the roads to you.
Neither were your hands ever unwanted;
you could carve such brilliant sculptures of me with your fingers,
roaming, heated, the quickened pulse under mingling collarbones.
Lying with you reminded me of your talents, your greatness
that integrity and solid stillness out of place anywhere
but with
you.

A picture postcard of me and you.

Coming together again on beaten, dusty paths of the sweat and painfully
sharp air we breathe,
a kiss.
Was all it took.
I returned home all over again.
My feet were still standing still.
The miss, the bursting heart, hot and explosive to rekindle everything.

I divulged what ticked over in my head, the beats my heart skipped over you.
Blurted it out over the fear that
what is gone is completely gone.
Taking a step back to take that step forward again.
I made you reconnect with all your burdens;
over me and everything we touched together.
*** returned to the table, but I found out I know longer
wanted to own it, want flowers placed in a vase without purpose.
And we all went back again;
I missed our friendship, our coupled retreat, I missed how we used to simply be.
But I can learn to regret the risky flights I took with you,
and the physical became one.

The sad truth, is that I will never be able to stay at home forever.
I need to tell you I miss you but I also can’t be with you forever.
Paths are not worn down, they are not trekked, nor found
at the end if I am resting, waiting,
for them all to meet me.

I feel sorry for returning home, knowing my bags are already filled
for another adventure, another place.
But I can’t take home with me.
I can’t take you with me.
I feel sorry for making you dredge it up for no reason,
for lies, for misinterpretation;
I wanted to tell you before you opened up to it, to save you from shame.

And now I wrap my arms around myself,
to shield against the lonely slow footsteps I take now,
bags packed full of me, to take with me and remind myself,
of who I am, and where I will be going;
Don’t think I don’t feel despicable;
about making you feel about your feelings for me again, for no reason in the end.
I can only feel guilty and sick to the core for so long.

But now I wander. I can still love you
like home,
but I can also be free.
407 · Aug 2016
Your Domesticated Wolf
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
The way you say those words

makes me

fall back in.

The mind games you play

can be so cruel;

causing stings and pulses

surging in my skull.


You’re not an addiction;

I would have to enjoy you, crave you,

need you for that.

No, you are a deadly medicine.

My sickness is loneliness

and you are the drug I take

to cease this episode.


Your domesticated wolf.

I have claws and teeth and all

the things you want to strip me of.

But they are also the features you

long for in bed alone at night.

I can howl and

growl

and whimper at your feet.

Still you trap me in a leash.


I hunt you during the day;

but you chase your hound at night.

I’ve loved you and lost you;

it’s time for me to stalk,

to roam the wilds, free of you.

But you only grasp my mane tighter.

You ***** my heavy, soft fur;

marvel and leer at my savage,

intoxicating form.

You think you have tamed the beast

which means you can own me.

‘See these luminescent eyes?

They’re mine.’


You make me feel the unbearable

weight of guilt;

strapped along my back.

Of trying to stop this imprisonment.

Because it is a hellish cage for us both.

You make me feel all fetid and rank inside;

endlessly making the mistakes you don’t know if

you can forgive me for, love me for.

I don’t want to be dealt the vicious card of villain.

I don’t want to be the murderer.

The internal bleeding I hide,

makes me realise

I have no choice.


Lose you, be loved by you, end you,

all mean the same twisted inky blotch.


I only wish I could have been the one to lunge.

Lunge for your throat.

Rip gashes in the sinewy, tall

master I have.

Tear your limbs from you;

cleave your confidence, your stoicism.

Erase that brutish nature only I can see.


Instead of you choking me.

Instead of the tight noose around my throat.

Before you cut it off and whipped my hide

as I bounded to the closest shadows I could find.

Tamed so much that power was forgotten.


Your domesticated wolf.
389 · Sep 2016
If I Let You Hold Me
Tamara Fraser Sep 2016
If I let you hold me,

you’ll want to stay the

night.


And I can’t let you.

For My Sake.
381 · Aug 2016
An Open Lost Letter
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
Dear you;


I have tried,

so hard to paint my feelings out for you;

to relinquish those delicate flowers into the raging torrents.


I have always wanted,

you to understand what I do, is for you;

I don’t have to pretend I’m not falling into your fibres and strings.


I have craved your smiles,

to know they are for me, mine for you;

I frolic along with you, hands bound and the world a riot.


I have never wanted to cry for you,

to let myself feel something so large, trembling inside a shell for you;

to feel is also to know I can hurt, wounds and scars do show.


I always was excited by you,

what you could make me sing for, praise in you;

to feel the sudden rise of temperature, soar to new ecstasies.


I have never known that I could predict words for you,

being able to moan and shape them from my tongue;

I know what they are, before you growl them out and

bite me

with those sharped teeth

and I collapse with them

buried deep within,

my head, arms, legs and in between.


Yet, there are things I have always wanted to say to you.

Things locked away, deep;

bottled and barrelled in caverns and crooks.

I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to voice them.

You make me nervous. You don’t help me wrap my tongue around them.

But maybe it’s simply me; I blunder through it all, you know me well.


I have to tell you that I’m sorry we will never be able to know

exactly who we are, together or separate;

there is no one who knows another person so intimately.

We are lovers, but I will never truly know your body like you do;

and for that I only wish to speak in answers.

Never questions.

Or I’ll be haunted by their coldness.


Take care. I love you.

At the same time I’ve already begun to miss you.


Me.
365 · Aug 2016
Jigsaw Pieces
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
I get your message, but I struggle

making the words come together.

Just like I struggled making our pieces fit.
362 · Aug 2016
Sins At My Feet
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
It made me want to cry before you; eyes raining a storm and

pleading you to reconsider. I could feel all my sins wash into

a lake at my feet; their ***** colours blending and swirling

in a sordid affair of truths.

The sad loss of words beside me. You just stared at the mess

at my feet; and I could see the weight inside begin to crush you.

I’m so sorry I can see what I have done. I’m so sorry it has been me all

along that would break you.

In love and loss, I knew I would be the witness for both. Deep in a

tormented heart, gnawed and bitten down by myself,

I have to live with what I’ve done.

I have to see us sever; detach and crumble,

together yet painfully separate.

Two howling wolves buried in deep snow.

Come on, let’s get you home – you said to the ground.

I know you still hunt for answers. The words I couldn’t

gift-wrap for you because I lost the fight to voice them.

They are still here. I will keep waiting for you.

Trying to pass on the box of answers you seek;

I just want to take them out of their grave, and finally

let you see the pain in them.

And the love I’ll always preserve for you.
361 · Aug 2016
A Fading Love
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
Why does your heart ache so?

He said.

Why so many tears?

He said.

I love you.

He said.


Love shone in your eyes once.

Flowers sprang up from your open hands;

warmth radiated after your touch;

caressed me like a silken treasure,

wrapped me gently in soft folds…

We made love like flaming embers,

until the dying light sugar-coated the cracks

running along the walls.

Your hands slipped through mine,

your lips lingered a breath away, always a breath too far…


Why must we return again, to this?

He said.

Don’t you know you are mine?

He said.


You pushed me back and held me under,

a deadly shadow of you sliding its fingers around my throat.

you wanted me

until

you didn’t.

beneath the surface of your gaze I saw things.

the dusty landscape of your skin,

the broken branches through your torso,

the glaze of your eyes as they rolled over me naked beneath you,

the tension giving you jagged edges,

the glass of your fingers scraping down my thighs.


I can’t be with you right now.

He said.

Nothing’s wrong, I’ve just got other things in my head.

He said.


I can feel the spots you’ve pressed,

on my skin.

An inky tattoo down my spine.

the pins and needles in my chest.

the heavy feeling of you not coming home.

where in the world did you go?

you speak in riddles, picking lies from between your teeth.

fragments of answers,

I can feel the cobwebs of where you no longer venture,

your door shuts on me.

I can feel my body go numb,

I can feel the blood collect in deep hollows,

I can feel time lose its pulse.


I’m sorry, but I think it’s for the best.

He said.

I don’t want to go, but I need to now. You need to believe me.

He said.


I should never have let you in.

sewing the cuts closed leaves me even

more

aware

of how

broken.

I truly am after your touch disappears.

forever.

fingers blistered,

stitches dripping blood.

bones thick and coarse under my skin.

half a beating heart

ticks

slowly by,

counting the hours

before

I

can

feel warm

again.
335 · Aug 2016
The Simple Rose
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
You place a rose in my hand to

tell me you love me.

It blooms, a single rose;

luscious petals of red and pink and hues in-between.

The folds and intricacies, the frailest branching veins and roughened stem.


It ages.

Softness becomes dry and crisp beneath the pads of fingers.

It rustles together, sheets of parchment with your words of love imprinted

on blossoms that stick together in the dry, stale air.

I watch it everyday.

Through the smiles, the laughs, the moans and whispers,

the tightened holds, the anger, the confusion, the lies and the tears

you litter across my bedroom;

desiccated, broken petals of faded pastels and trust I take back and

hide from you.

The thorns draw beads of blood whenever I touch my flower.


I place a rose in your hand to

tell you this is dangerous, and that I can’t love you.

It crumbles, this single hunched rose;

jagged fragments of petals stuck together in the heat of

hot breath between us.

The cracks, the disappearing veins don’t trace the fragile openings.


It has aged, beyond repair.

The stem a dried, rough twig in my palm, I hold out

to you the dusty blossoms that fall straight to the ground.

It’s light, incredibly pale and thin and cold today.

One flick of my finger breaks it’s stalk in two; one for both of your hands.

Thorns scratch your palms, twisting lines on your skin;

scars that remind you of the flower you brought me

and what happened when you let it degrade.


Time dragged its sticky corrosive fingers over it.
320 · Aug 2016
Dreaming Awake
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
Dreaming with my eyes open.

I can see the mist, a swirling blanket overhead.

I feel like a taut string, coiled wire, sips of breath

between parched lips.


Patches. Puzzle pieces swimming in my vision,

an unruly tangle of images,

slowly being filled, linked from the borders in.

The ceiling hanging above becomes a screen;

roll the film, let’s see what has become of us.


I can’t hold on to you,

The dream canopy above me is like water,

one disturbance sends you rippling away.

I feel immersed in your presence when it clearly

isn’t there.

The mist, smokey tendrils reaching for my skin;

begins to thicken into fog.

So many images of you.

You montage in a cascade of colours and

you show me too much.

A torrent of raw emotion;

I watch smiles burst and tears fall;

I watch laughter radiate and anxiety creep under your skin,

I watch fatigue ride on your shoulders and anger bubble, pop, like lava.


Why are you so far away?

You glide around above, bumping across the corners of the room;

You are saying something to me. But you are mute.

Your full lips part to caress mine, but I don’t feel it.

I don’t feel anything.

And you release me and

turn

away.

You look broken;

something snapped inside after that kiss.

But I can’t ask.

You are already gone.


The mist is receding, back into the cracks in the ceiling.

I can’t make you stay.

You twist and unfurl into slight wisps of air;

gone.

I would open my eyes,

call it a bad dream,

but they are already open and empty now.
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
Flailing limbs and burdened hearts,

made heavy in the leaden air,

all silence and endless questions,

running off the walls.


Trying to make sense,

from long forgotten body language,

words and fluid messages,

lost spellbound to a sea of worries.


Will you still be there when I wake?

Can I hold your hands in mine now?

What is your reasoning for disappearing?

Is it time for me to let go, because you already

have released your threads, cut the strings and

tied the loose ends?


I circle your reasons like a hungry bird,

circling and devouring the strength from the land below,

for all these stormy days and listless nights,

left defenceless in bed and devoid of touch.


I only wish I knew your why.

A hungry heart left with scraps as morsels of

dried up affection and cracked pieces of disappointment.

I have turned over every piece left, trying to salvage the decay

left behind.


I was once strong and beautiful in your wake.

I smelled of fresh sweetness yet burnt hot as newborn flames.

I only why you abandoned your beauty?

I wonder why you left your stunning creation behind?


The one thing you didn’t take with you,

along to new hands and new hearts,

is my ability to be me.

I can still circle like a vulture in flight,

but I can also soar and sing like no woman yet

to touch her feet to this earth.


For all the reasons I still don’t understand.

For all the reasons you spoke and the volumes you

left unsaid, words brandished between us like knives

yet to pierce skin,

for all the reasons you left trailing behind your choice…


At least I know you helped strengthen me.

You gave me the room to spread wings,

You gave me the light to paint my colours by,

you gave me the boldness to reach out for new lovers,

and you gave me the endless questioning I seek to answer.


Only you, could have been responsible for such worries.

Only you, can still be responsible for such worries yet still to appear.

That is your lasting message scrawled across my skin.
255 · Aug 2016
Choice of Fates
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
It has been so long since I’ve seen you.

Who are you now?

What are your dreams?

Are we still lying together

on the grass,

hands brushing fingers,

tracing patterns in the sky,

discussing longings and fractals?


We revel in each other’s words;

the sweetness of ice cream we shared still wet on our tongues;

we walk with each other, noticing the changes on our faces, bodies,

grown up but

still nurturing, protecting

our hearts

for one another.

We don’t even know it.

You’ve been my companion for so long,

amid the drifting faces of people loved and lost

scattered to corners of my soul;

I’m so happy you’ve come back.


We don’t even know it.

But your eyes shine over dinner;

playful little secrets tossed over the table,

like a game we’ve mastered long before.

your arms link through mine,

hands finally meeting

to clasp and warm through the night.


A forgotten crush, trembling it’s so frail;

I never knew I could expect this from you.

You have loved another before,

given your world to another,

but my heart

has been resting

from neglect,

from fear and shattered promises.

buried desires unattainable.

dreams and wants so terrible because they are denied.


You devour me slowly, tentatively;

all the while I gaze above and only wish I hadn’t

recovered from your

drug

years

ago.


By day I am one woman,

by night another.

Two entities, sharing the one body, cowering around

one flame in the cold.

Another pair of eyes searches mine.


He is gentle,

he is quiet, polite, but

don’t be fooled.

He is on the prowl for something much more

than I could ever be.

I resemble the mould he desires for the moment,

the shape of a woman he wants to own.

I’m the impression left burnt under his eyelids at night,

the figure he pines to see and

reward himself to.

He makes me powerful.

He makes me bold.


I’m shown luxury, hands held out to

a future of promise.

He loves me dearly.

And I love him.

The gorgeous flirtations,

hands drifting down my waist.

The rapturous evenings,

lost in heat, lips grazing every part of me.


We crawl into each others arms so quickly;

kiss and beg, kneel and pant;

push and pull of the tide and shore;

but always destined to drift from each other over time.


For the minute, you hold me close.

A brief shock of electricity; my back curves at the slightest

connection of your skin on mine.

Why did you stop wanting me?

Why was I never enough?


The longer I paraded for you;

the longer you desired me to crouch,

a beauteous form at your feet;

the more bruised I became.

I came back burnt at your touch.

I returned with fear tingling in my nerves,

threatening to crack my bones and stop my heart.


I could never talk to you I realised.

The more I spoke, the further the blinds

rolled down;

The closer I drew, your flames only grew higher;

the more ferocious you burned,

the more untouchable you became.


You left me on a cold street, yelling in my face;

the forked tongue of a serpent sliding along my skin.

I lost you.

I could see the volume of blood I’d dripped at your feet;

I could see the amount of soul I’d given over to you, shed on

the ground,

flaking and drying to dust.

I’d given so much to have you hurl disgust in my face.


You ripped it all out,

gutted and bleeding,

you tore it all out with those claws of yours. You helped yourself, once I

finally denied you.


I made the wrong choice,

latched on to the wrong person,

craved the wrong touch.

Don’t think I have forgotten you, sweet man of ice cream, sugar;

pops of colour;

soft skin and warm smiles;

achingly sweet and temptingly beautiful.

Showing me your nature long before the vulture came to

pick and scavenge the love I didn’t know I carried.

I still only wish I had stopped myself from crumbling before you.

I only wish I had known you to be my perfection.

I only wish I had been able to fill myself more,

cared about my self more,

offered you the true best of me,

before

I

wasted

it

on

a man who stole my beauty and

made me hollow inside.


Where have you gone?

I’m so sorry I ruined us.

I’m sorry that you wanted me so badly once,

but now you want no part of me.

I’m so sorry I didn’t trust myself in your care.

I’m so full of shame.

I only hope I walk into you one day, long from now.

Hands drifting to meet fingers…

but I know I’m only dreaming.

And it’s time for me

to wake

up.
254 · Aug 2016
What I Know To Be
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
I know that the choice,

littered like puzzle pieces before you,

is a hard one.


I know you don’t mean to break me.


I know you want to conceal my cracks,

pointed edges,

gnarled and twisted,

before I get to see that they are still there.


I know you want me to wake up beside you, hopeful and

cured.

I know you want me to stop gathering my defences,

every time you throw a question over my fence.


I know you want me to be the one.

I also know that you are beginning to question if I am the one.


I know I follow an endless road. It’s always muddy and cold

and runs parallel to yours.


I know I seem settled but that’s the excuse and lie

I want for you to understand. That’s the image I

build for you.


I know I won’t be what you go to bed dreaming of.

I can’t live in fantasy with you, even though I can fall into

daydreams and blissful reveries of someone I could have been.


I know I ensnared you,

lured you into my bitter web.

I stalk around our trap like a purposeful spider,

self assured and cunning,

my body waiting for a moment to strike.

I know I’ll hurt you deeply; so much it’s

enough to cut you lose

from the net before I do something unforgivable.


I know we love the pull of each other. The safety we revel in, when

we pose as dangerous threats to each other.

The fiery lust and desire sparked when people look away.


I know I fell in love with you, but I also know that doesn’t mean

all that much to you.

I know it doesn’t mean you will always love me.

I know we hold each other until the first person lets go,

stops clinging to open arms;

warm bodies turn cold.

And I know one of us always leaves.


I know I am myself, and I wouldn’t change it for you.

Not for all your kisses or caresses or late-night passions.

Not for the eyes I bathe in or for all the sweet promises you break.


I know that I will always be me.

And I know I’ll continue to be me, strive to be me,

hold on to what I am, burn

as fierce as I do,

long after you take what’s dedicated yours

and run.
236 · Aug 2016
Deluded Amends
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
I know these are the fruitless dreams,

the billowing smoke of the wishes of a lover scorned.

I know I’m just a ragged mess curled

in on itself, cowering to the floor, wishing to be gone.


I know these are the silly, sad-song lullabies

of one girl hurt too many times in your arms.

I know I’m just reaching out endlessly,

a drowned twig broken and miserable on the shores of

a lapping stream.


I know that I’m so lonely,

fighting a battle of one, for one person,

and refusing to admit the sad outcome.

I know I’m trying to paint artworks, that simply aren’t there;

trying to steal kisses and borrow time with you that I can’t have.


I know that I’ll keep holding you under

my thick ashen smoke, until I get what I need from you.

I know I’m blindly hoping, curling fingers around restless shadows,

tendrils and whips of blackened air,

trying to find a reality where you say sorry.


Pulling at deluded forms, I’m clutching at faded outlines,

I know I’m desperate in seeking your salvation.

But I also know I just crave your fall.

I want you to make amends, to breathe my name

into the fires at your feet and feel the sting of the burn.


I know I want your dreams to fizzle and pop,

cloudy fireworks aiming to reach me and shout the things

you need to tell me, to me.

I know what I want so badly.

And that is for you to crouch and kiss my feet for all the

words left unsaid,

bruises blossomed and cuts made,

raised words bitten and covered over mine,

doubts sewn and fears nestled and nourished.


I want you to search for me, hunt me down and

unburden yourself of such things at my feet.

I want you to whisper my name at night, before you sleep.

I want you to crave and plead and beg to find me,

and I want you to say what you left abandoned.


Even if it hurts, stings, blisters or boils inside.

Say them.

Don’t cower in fear or run like wounded prey.

I want you to search me out, I want you to be the one looking…

…and I also want you to be the one to truly find me.
219 · Aug 2016
Bright Lights
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
The power of light is a wonderfully

dangerous thing;

it requires two components to exist,

the light we wish to see by and the

object to be illuminated,

highlighted;

bathed in all its innate beauty

and all its jagged edges, sharp folds,

shadowed spaces and deep trenches.


what do you wish to see?

what hidden hollow can i show you?

are you prepared to face yourself?

are you prepared to live with what you see?

nothing can be unseen.

Can you stand the

words

sounds of agony,

hopelessness

fear

brutality of your own judgement

repetition of a disturbing truth in your ears,

self-pity

a truth you cannot speak for lack of words

abandonment

I can show you.


I see her twice; once in the daylight;

purposeful, electric lights bouncing radiantly from her soft

steps, forced bustle and grace in order to drown something ticking in her

head;

and at night, a quiet mess, a broken shell,

the light’s fingers can no longer grasp her, wrapped in the

sturdy oozing blackness encasing her cries.


In a small truth, you are beautiful.

you rise up from your falls, a phoenix given the warmth of fire.

yet that small cling-wrap of beauty compares little to the

coiled, twisting mass of loss you carry inside.

the hole you cry for others to fill,

the seething pain that keeps you from sleep,

the head that worries, the body that aches,

the heart that slows and the breathing that escalates,

when will someone be able to fix you?


there are two sides to every light.

this girl, she possesses those two.

a light she forces to shine, and the other that

burns

through her skin when she feels adrift, lost.

it’s a light that seeks, prods, not tentative but abrupt,

carving out her craters and ridges like nails in thick dirt,

it traces her hollows, her curves and angles

a light that shows everything she wishes to hide from you.

you

and your judging eyes,

you prowling like a wolf around her starving soul.

you, who seeks to remind her of her damage

you

who cannot accept her, how she wants to surrender to defeat.


I see it all.

I am blessed with the ability to discern such lights.

yours is frightening.

trembling body, tight in defence,

I pity you.

you shine such brilliant light, yet you can’t find it.

I told you to never look at yourself.

Mirrors are glass; glass breaks, the shards will pierce you every time.

you know how worthless you are, you know abandonment like no other,

do you need to see it again for yourself?

my voice drowns yours, I am the light you seek to conceal.

but I know you too well. I always will.


the light is too bright. too strong,

people must look away from the burning flame of her.

They risk themselves, being lost like her

and so they walk away, leaving scorch marks on her skin

from the places they’ve

touched, explored, caressed, and cut.

cuts,

scoring her broken heart

its easy for people to play with it in their cupped hands,

loose pieces of flesh still hoping to beat as one someday.

She knows that her light is blinding.

She tries to connect, to kindle a fire inside, some shield;

she gives over all of herself, every time,

holes and caverns forming,

from donated pieces of herself

that she can never have back,

given over to intangible forms of men

as real as dawn fog,

as greedy and lustful as ravenous wolves

all sweetness and smiles until her light burns

through them and they realise

she is too much to fix.


You look down and touch those empty spots.

They feel raw don’t they?

They bleed and weep as tears drip down

from your eyes.

You wish you could patch them up,

feel whole,

but the light is too bright for you to try.

Why must you give so much?

your heart remains fragmented,

half disappears

I can see that.

a dull ache is all you feel when the rest beats.

Is your beauty worth something then,

if you are lacking a full heart?


bundled in on herself,

she waits.

She hates the wait, the pauses;

heat crawling like waves along her skin,

stomach roiling

insides twisting,

head pounding,

she only waits for the light to burn down,

a candle out of wax,

but then she’ll have little left to offer.


What about love?

I know how much you crave it.

People hand it to, teasing you with your desires;

on golden platters dusted with pearls,

sugar and spice and all things nice.

‘I love you’ they whisper in your ear,

filling those cracks in your shell,

‘I love you’ and warmth sparks from a dark void

in your soul,

they make you believe something fake.

Make you fall under confidence, bending to temptation,

spikes of desire driven under your skin.

you yearn for more, you set fireworks sparking,

the heat together

…until he turns away from you.

He slides his fingers deep inside your

chest, and helps himself to his slice of you,

you don’t even feel a thing

before you cry.

it’s gone.


They leave her. That’s all there seemingly is.

Rocking alone, neglected, ignored,

shown love before it’s taken.

‘Will it ever change?’ she mouths to herself,

voiceless, breathless.


She lives with this emptiness. This cavity inside.

but in the end,

so do you.

Because you fail to see the energy and life light,

can only give birth to.

And that itself is beautiful.
This is a representation of clinical depression and anxiety. If you want to see how this poem is actually supposed to read and is spaced out, check out my website:
www.tamarafraservoicedwords.wordpress.com
218 · Aug 2016
On The Inside
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
There is a silence.

A silence snaking through the empty paths in my head.

Someone turned the radio to mute.

A static signal, but I’m far

too numb to notice.


Take a white pill.

Let it coat your insides;

thick paint washing you out in white.

I’m numb again, riding a wave that doesn’t

meet the beach.

Suspended in a still ocean;

can you imagine waves never breaking?

A vast ocean that never rolls or tumbles?

That’s me on the inside.

I’m regulated and monitored to the second;

my body ticks over into offence.

Prevent the storm.

Be still.

Please.


Make sure you take that white pill.

Let it soothe that restless turning;

cogs sparking and running;

stop the thoughts from chasing you.

People notice more about me than I do.

‘You seem happier’.

Do I?

I don’t notice a thing; pins and needles aren’t

pinpricks stabbing up my leg,

but a dull ebb.

You think I seem better, less anxious;

less on edge, waiting for a collapse to override my system.

But I don’t feel a thing.

They keep me from having to worry about a feeling.


Is that white pill making your horrors fade away?

Are your demons drifting to some other realm?

Are they scuttering along stained walls;

colonising the deepest shadows on the inside;

hiding in fright?

I don’t know if they are running scared. I don’t feel anything to

tell me they are still here or there.

I can’t remember.

I’m just drifting along plain sands; I know I should sense the heat of the

desert, but I don’t. It’s just coarse sand under my feet.

I’m stable. For now. Drifting through listless,

silent voids with myself.

Life and people I can still react and sense and speak with.

But you have become a distant echo, distorted through space;

muffled and hollow tones behind a vacant door.


I sense you. I know you. I can tell you I care for you.

But I can’t do the same for myself.

I simply don’t know.

Tick, tick, tick,

each second monitored and regulated.

I feel the pulse as that little white pill surges along my streams and rivers.

Helping me. Helping you stay beside me.

But I don’t feel I thing.

I’m grateful I can escape like this;

but I also despise the necessity of escape, in this way.

Alone.

Floating.

I don’t feel a thing.
208 · Aug 2016
Guilt That Bathes The Walls
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
Sombre shadows clawed the wall,

And swallowed each leaf the fell in fall;

With each step, his mind did wander;

Wrapping on the wooden door,

He stood upon the tiled floor,


This man was always gentle,

Not insensitive, not mental;

The shadow flickered on the wall;

Adoring and amiable,

This man was always capable;


A family, a wife and child,

Who loved him, not mild;

The shadow was a shroud;

Forever enclosed by art,

This choice wasn’t exactly smart;


He knew he had begun to fall,

A fall which left his shadow tall;

His mind, a suspended cloud;

His action, he couldn’t forgive

Himself, a life he shouldn’t live;


And with every painting hanging there,

He was reminded to beware;

Of ever present shapes on walls;

Of demons dead, and in the past,

However, this sighting was not the last;


A classic face, immersed in colour,

A detailed portrait of a brother;

The silhouette pictured on walls;

Painted eyes filled with sorrow,

Those eyes will never see a morrow;


What is written in that grave face?

Emotions bottled inside a case;

The shadow, trailed the walls,

A frightened brother, a dark shade

That truly the man had made;


His brother had seared in his mind,

This man was greatly far from kind;

A constant companion always near;

He paced the room, that gloomy room

Where that sinister face did loom;


A memory from a dream,

A flash, an overhead beam;

The brother murdered on walls;

The brother, was was the friend

The heart he truly did bend;


From behind an opened book,

He had spied his brother’s look;

Why is it that brother haunts me?

His friend’s wife, that divine girl,

Her dress spun in a whirl;


His love for the girl, shone like stars,

That man’s heart, shook against iron bars;

                      Does that ghost on walls, know I loved her?

The man couldn’t stand that sight no more,

The sight that shook him to the core;


“My brother, may I have a word?”

Leading him, to where they would not be heard;

On walls, hatred was behind that shadow;

             Inside that man, a cold heart, beat,

His heart pounding as he took his seat;


A glass poppy was soon thrown,

                  And so the horrid seed was sown;

Cries of fright, bounced off the walls;

            ‘the fearsome madman’, was his name,

‘******’, ‘Villain’, it was all the same;


Before he slid a knife, through

that brother’s centre of heart;

***********

Cursed anger! That took a friend,

A ceased heart he could not mend;

The shadow, spilling silent tears;

That horrible, hard-hearted heart,

This was how his nightmares start;


The thoughtless, unruly rage,

His anger became his just cage;

That ghost, that lingering shade;

His face now weary and lined,

His life a thread, he didn’t mind;


‘What should become of me?’ he said,

His voice said, deep inside his head;

Again, a brother on the walls;

There seemed nowhere else to turn,

A lesson, far too late to learn.
188 · Aug 2016
Replacing You
Tamara Fraser Aug 2016
A cold lonesome night,

the streets a desert of garbage and secrets,

crumbling dreams twisting in the air,

grey concrete oceans,

humans upon humans;

locked in cabinets.


I lie shivering under your coiled figure.

Clothed yet icy to the touch.

Dark shapes slide along the ceiling, sinking slowly into the cracks and

stains;

you move.

you move closer, arms enclosing my waist, legs entwined around mine,

lips nestled against my neck, a quick bite, a breath

before you drift again to somewhere,

I can’t find.


I wonder what you see behind closed eyes,

I wonder how the shape of my body feels beside yours,

what do you notice?

I can’t sleep.

I can’t fall into an abyss beside you and not worry about waking from it.

your eyes open.

Your hands tracing down my spine, I feel you grind even closer,

almost trying to fit my mould, take over my being, come inside

like I’m the only warm spot in your bed.

You sleepily tease, expecting me to groan as i feel you glide up my thighs

but I can’t stand the pressure.

I feel your tongue over my shoulder blades

before you move off with

a muffled sigh

a disappointment crawling along the bed sheets.


Is this not what I thought I wanted?

to feel touch, to feel desire, to feel bodies linking;

the heat of attention, the fire of lust and adventure and power over you.


but it’s empty.

there is a jagged piece open in my chest.

I think it’s where my heart would be,

but you don’t help heal it

you only

rip

little

seams

apart

into a growing hole.

I thought I could use you to forget someone.

I thought I could feel again, the way I did in his arms,

swimming in his eyes.

I need his attention again, before I feel the loss,

the prickling sting,

the pain.

why do I crave such poison?


I bleed memories of you.

I feel them trail along the carpet as I drag myself

out of that man’s arms,

into the empty night.

I feel you walk alongside me,

but you keep

falling behind.

I turn and you fade.

like you never existed at all.

And I feel the sickness climb my throat,

I feel my legs shake;

heart beat throb rolling in my ears.

why have you left me for dead?


Why are you so cold?

Do you feel?

I kiss you and you hide.

I hold you and you twist away like I’m

hurting you.

Frigid.

Icy.

Void and broken.


I have this disease coursing through my bloodstream.

there is no cure.

and It’s you.

you circulate through me, causing all kinds of hurt.

You are part of me, just like i’m the shadow you see in the evenings,

and the shadow that hunts you at dawn. The shadow of the person you

long to feel against your

skin again.

We will never lose each other.

perhaps one day I’ll be able to bottle you.

bleed myself dry and place you on a shelf, a pedestal.

but for now you stay.


Stay.

because I know I can’t live without your curse bundled tight inside me.

Stay.

because if you walked away again where would you leave me?

— The End —