your name is
forbidden in
my mouth
or in my heart
because when
i think about
you;

i'll cry a little more,
hurt a little stronger
love a little softer
because you no longer
make me feel sober

i'm drunk on the
memory of you

I find you in the margins of old school books,
in the cupboard where I keep my old notepads,
in the stories I’ve forgotten I’ve written.
It’s all scraps of myself in rounded letters,
uncanny because it looks like me,
sounds like me,
but it’s you and it is you
but it’s like me too.

I’m opening you (and me) back up and I hate you.
I hate you, but here we are,
in the mirror maze,
all these mes and yous
in the endless tunnel of mirrors,
back to back, side to side,
caught in ourselves at every angle.
We’re all the same: We’re all so different.
None of us are good.

I hate you.

I hate you at every age,

Then reality splays, sprawls flat out in front of me, exams, money, work, decisions, tight nooses that bind me to life. Get your head out of the clouds, girl  *(2012)

at every stage,

Big smiles, A stars, clever girl, the anomaly, dry compliments, sand paper against my skin. Locked in, not a word, just a mind gone grey, a growing mass of dust that swallows the light and only allows for glasses poured half empty* (2014)

at every moment,

I don’t fit in, never have done, never will. I’m always one step ahead or one step behind. I’m never quite there. But no one understands. They say they do but they don’t. I’m different and I don’t like it but I don’t want to change because this is who I am and whatever happens, I have to put up with it (2012)

all your hatred, you happiness, your ignorance and your sadness

The scab peels and leaks. Too soon to heal, too late to undo the fall. Tomorrow, you’ll trip again and your skin will bleed but this time you’ll know where to find the first aid kit. (2013)

You make me sick.

The world was blue today, a metaphorical wish wash of tears and a meagre ocean. Ice cream dripped in depression, picnic blankets snagged on pebbles and the kite committed suicide on the telephone lines. (2013)

I hate the scraps you’ve left behind

I put bits of you in the bin. I put you out for recycling.
I donate you to charity shops and so you live on and I can’t get rid of you.
There’s no way out of this mirror maze,
no way to avoid the mirrors at angles,
no way for me to escape you or for you to escape me.

There are so many of you and I literally want to beat you all to death.
Oh, I hate you. I hate you.
I don’t think I’ve ever hated anything more than I hate you.
I hate the tone of your words,
I hate your stupid sadness.
I hate your happiness.
I hate your hope.
I hate the memories of your laughter.
I hate the memories of your fun.
I hate you for all the things you’ve done and
never had time to feel bad for.
I hate you in the photographs,
in the words, in the schoolbooks,
in the poems that I’ve shared,
I hate, I hate, I hate.

I wish I could smash up this maze of mirrors and you,
but then I’d only be left with myself
and I hate her too.

I’ve spent a lot of time on this side of my island,
building my mirror mazes, my mirror boxes
and my mirror tunnels, and it’s just me,
walking into myself, looking at myself,
tripping over myself. It’s just me,
consuming myself in myself, just me,
multiplying myself until I cannot bear myself anymore.
It’s just me, at angles, again and again
and all I can hear there is myself.

I’ve spent a lot of time on those beaches,
lying face down in the sand,
filling myself up to feel something, to fill something,
and then I’ve half choked and washed it away with salt water.
I’ve spent hours trailing my fingers over the erosion.
I’ve spent hours searching for the ******* washed up on the beach.
I’ve spent hours lying back on the scratchy sand,
waiting for nothing to happen.

I’ve spent a lot of time breathing in the grey while
watching the murky ocean storm and spit.
I’ve waded into the waves and let the cold numb me
and I’ve made my home there and it’s not easy then
to get back on the shore. I’ve spent too long in the sea
and now I’m cold through and I want to be colder.
I spend my days crawling back to the mirror maze,
to run into myself and myself and myself, and I know,
I know, I know, it’s bad, but I feel safer here, with
the puddles I’ve made, the mirrors I’ve put up
and the cardboard cut out I’ve got used to.

But maybe, maybe sometimes, I ought to go
to the other side of my island. The side with the promenade
and the sea so clear I can see the rocks beneath it.
Maybe, I ought to go for walks in that end of day calm,
when the purple, orange air  stretches across the waves
and the sky and is so easy to breathe in.
Maybe, I ought to spend more time there, walking until
my chest feels so full that I have to stop and sit.
Maybe, I ought to spend more time sitting and listening
to the gentle sounds of that clear, purple sea,
until I feel happiness on my cheeks, in my ears, in my chest.

And I know, I know I’ll go back to the mirror maze,
I’ll climb back inside the mirror box and go back
to watching the grey stormy sea. I know I can’t make my home
in the purple yet, but maybe, maybe I can try visiting a little more often.

This is just a boring sadness;
a low-lying, flat sort of sadness,
just a grey sea on a drizzly day.
There’s nothing major going on here,
nothing monumental, nothing tragic.
It’s all just a bit blue round the edges.

This isn’t an explosive sadness,
it isn’t a torrent and it isn’t rock bottom.
It’s just a boring sadness that hums steadily
and it’s fine, really. It’s fine.

It’s just a sort of storm globe sadness,
willing to become tempestuous when shaken.
The waves rush, lightening darts, thunder bellows,
but it all happens behind glass.
And it’s fine, really, because it settles itself quickly.
The sea goes flat again and it’s fine.

It’s just a monotonous sadness,
the sort that makes life dull and hopeless.
It keeps you in your bedroom
and it ticks off the years and still,
you’re in the bedroom,
yet to have your first kiss,
your first heart break,
your first night out,
your first airplane ride,
your first concert,
your first car,
but it’s fine, because it’s a sadness
that comes down like a fall
of paper snowflakes and it’s fine.
It’s all fine.

It’s just a boring sort of sadness,
so you watch other people’s misery instead
and you wish you could spare them the pain.
You become a twisted sort of sadness covet,
a sadness thief, stealing sadness that isn’t boring,
stealing sadness that seems worse than your own
And it hurts you and makes you feel worthless,
all these bungled attempts to rob sadness
but it’s fine, really. At the end of the day, you’re fine.
It’s just another bit of boring sadness and you are fine.

i learned the hard way that caffeine is not a substitute for sleep
and that i am addicted to the way you feel on my eardrums
and that i can't make myself disappear completely without dying.
you are a cold day in august with overcast skies
you are midnight and six in the morning and mid-afternoon.
you are the cracks in the ceiling and the stars in the sky
the smell before rain and thunder and lightning
electric and erratic and terrifying.
you are a blank slate and a new beginning
and i am screaming heart attacks and dry heaving suicide notes
at four in the morning.
i walk holes in my shoes daily like it’ll fix my insides
and knit every broken thing back together
while you saturate my mind with your intensity.
when we met, my veins were leaking loneliness
hemorrhaging bad ideas and harboring secrets.
hiding.
you were my safest place.
and rumor had it that drinking bleach would **** the thoughts in my head.
your words were amnesia.
my head forgot how to make me feel empty
when i wrote your name at the top of the next blank page in my journal.
i didn’t give a **** about gravity
until i fell into your orbit.

And my problem is that i don't know
where to start or how to end.
I live in ellipses,
commas, and dramatic pauses
and I pretend that I'm doing it on purpose.
When you saw through the blur in my head,
you told me all about my heart and
how out of sync it was with my mind.
And I was sitting right next to you when
I hid a letter in a box,
tucked it right between your running shoes,
but it's December,
and you don't run when there's snow on the ground.

I told you I was a baseball field,
empty at two in the morning,
dust settling, but I don't think you
knew what I meant.
So I told you that my bathroom sink
has swallowed more demons than gallons,
and that I lay on my kitchen floor
more often than I sit on my couch,
and that I am hemorrhaging indigo
and dry-heaving maroon late at night
when you are asleep,
and maybe you only pretended
to understand what I was talking about.

They're all sick of me
ending statements with "never mind,"
downplaying my madness to keep them calm.
I told my dad I loved him for the first time
in two years, and followed up by
stealing my grandfather's anxiety medication
to sedate the butterflies in my stomach.
I like to think I know what it feels like to be dead.
Like sleep, only colder. Darker.
Less and less until I only exist as
stains on people's brains.
I always liked the number zero.

I am the journal I threw out two nights ago
without checking the pages for things to keep.
I am three days awake, bloodshot eyes,
six cups of black coffee first thing in the morning,
and black-out curtains at three in the afternoon.
I am a suicide car and a pedestrian who never looks both ways.
I'm my own worst enemy.
Someday, I'll light a few candles to set the mood and
take a bath with my toaster.
I am an appendix; nobody needs me.
I'm full of **** and I need removing.

And I guess you should know that I am not sorry.
You're going to find that letter tucked between your shoes
come spring, written by someone who isn't red stains
on bathroom linolium. She was
rainbow streaks that the sun plastered to your livingroom walls
at eight in the morning.
At least, that's what you told me.
I don't think I knew what you meant.

did i ever tell you about
the dream i had where
your name was on
every page of my phone book
and all the numbers were wrong
what about the one where
i'm in the hospital
and every doctor that
checks my pulse and takes my blood
has your face
or how about the one where
you're dying of cancer
and you can't stop yourself
from living life too fast?
and you swear the answer to
every question is a
significant something from your past
like
cigarette smoke and diet coke
and the weary tone of your grandfather's voice
as he spoke about the end of all things
and we had to remind you to stop
saying such sharp things as
words sliced your throat
and we all choked.
what about the one where
you roll your eyes at me
as we're flying through the windshield
your spine snapped as you
told me it was my fault
we crashed the car
i spit my heart up on the pavement
and watch it beat.
how about the one where
you keep sticking your fingers
in my hair to warm them up, and
every time you pull away
my mouth falls open and fills the room
with a thousand reasons to stay
or how about all the bad ones
where the only time your eyes hold
any color is when they aren't
locked with mine
the ones where the entire world
goes silent when you speak
and i can never quite catch
what you're saying.

I am sick.

My nose is stuffy
My throat is sore
Headaches & fever
Loss of hearing in my right ear

But there's more than that.

My stomach begs for food when I do not feel hungry.
I shiver and curl in on myself and say that it's alright.
Lies spill from my mouth like a waterfall.
This body is home to more darkness than this world has ever seen.
I am unsure how to ask my doctor why this is happening.
When asked before why my dress size went from an 18 to a 14 so quickly, I could not give an answer.

This is my last year of high school and I know what is safe to have.
How much orange juice to have without going over 100.
Where I can sit without my friends finding me.
Who to give my food to that won't ask questions.
Classes to miss because sometimes, it's too much.
I know who keeps an extra jacket all year round.
Which bathrooms are okay for shoving my fingers down my throat.

But I still don't know how to type a report on this illness and explain why I did not have any sources cited.
How to tell a teacher that the quotes are from me and other people that I had gotten tips from.
A group chat full of screaming teenagers who are all just dying to be thinner, to go down just one-two-seven more sizes.
Instagram accounts full of inspirational pictures and advice for the caption, occasionally posting a check of themselves.
Websites that have been deleted by now that I had spent hours looking at and writing rules from.

How am I supposed to tell a teacher that....
My report was so well written because I was my main source of information?
I can't look at foods and drinks without seeing numbers?
I can't look in a mirror without wanting to cry?
I view food as poison to my body?
I sleep in class so often because my body is lacking the nutrients it needs to keep going?
I have been like those screaming teenagers for years and as much as I say that I'm better, I will always be like them?

How do I explain to my teacher I'm slowly killing myself and I can't stop it?

At least my report was turned in on time. That's all that matters to them.

do you have moments, where you can’t imagine a future?
you’re lying there, staring at the
same walls
same ceilings
same words
with nothing but the same feelings-
empty and pale,
like there’s no reason to go on,
when you can’t even do enough to fail.
the future is coming, but you don’t want to be in it,
can’t imagine yourself in it.
where you just want to stop.
everything.
and just sit there for a while.
maybe not death, as that’s too permanent,
but something close to it.
when you can feel the rope around your neck,
the razor on your wrist,
the way the pills taste.
you can imagine it, and you aren’t sure if it’s what you want,
or just the feelings you imagine it will give you