I am silent, no words come out,
I am silent, no thoughts come in,
I am silent, no way of stability.

I am so silent in my mind,
I simply forget to speak.

They say because I am so silent outside,
That the inside of my mind must be loud,
But the real issue is I'm far to quiet either way.

Far to quiet to be alive,
Its like my depression finally won out,
Because not only did I get myself to shut up,
But my brain has finally shut down.

I am not fully here or there anymore,
I am lost away amongst the fog,
Someone come get me, I am sick of the silences.

It’s five thirty in the mirror maze,
and you’re all standing still,
surrounding each other at every angle.
There’s a way out but do we deserve it?
And the answer is no, no we don’t.
So we don’t try it and then it’s just you
and you and you in the mirror maze,
making yourself claustrophobic.
It’s hard to stand yourself in here
and it makes it hard to move.
We spend so much time alone together
that we begin to loathe each other
and then how can we get out?
If we can’t tolerate our self,
how do we leave the mirror maze
and inflict our self on others?
See, it’s better to just stab yourself
in the back three times over.
Let’s call it penance.
Let’s call it a lazy sort of suffering,
a selfish sort of punishment,
a sorry I’ve been such a bad person
but look at how much of my life
I’m wasting, look, I’m suffering now,
and I know I deserve this, I’m so sorry.
I understand I’m a terrible person.
We make no attempt to escape the
mirror maze that we’ve made for our self
so the life outside goes rotten.
It withers or it outgrows us,
and still, we’re standing in the mirror maze.
One day, I tell myself, I’m going to make it.
One day, things will be different.
But you can’t see it in the mirrors.
See, you’ve tried happiness before
and each time you find that beautiful blue winter,
that purple evening, that wide ocean,
you blink and you’re back in the mirror maze.
In the happy spaces, the mirrors put themselves back up.
Each perfect place and each perfect moment
becomes another mirror maze because we’re so stuck here.
You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve this.
Why should you be happy? You don’t deserve this.
I hate you, we tell each other and try to turn our backs
on our self but you can’t do that in the mirror maze.
We ought to be sad. Why aren’t we sad enough yet?
It’s unproductive, it’s toxic, it’s pathetic,
all this self-inflicted sadness, but aren’t we
all supposed to hate the girl in the book
who refuses to be sad? I don’t know what to do anymore,
so today’s yet another day gone, six o’clock in the mirror maze,
wearing yesterday’s bad feelings because new ones don’t feel right.
​

You ask me what my diet is
and I am reminded that for three years of my life
All I had in my lunchbox
were jam sandwiches
Single slices of own brand bread
with scrapings of red in the center
If there was anything there
at all
And I tell you that I've never had a problem
with portion control

You ask me again how I stay so skinny
and I think of all the days I spent
rummaging through bare cupboards
Looking for something I could have
for dinner
As I tell you that I have always
been like this

You wrap ******* around my
wrist and joke that a breeze would ******* away
and I can see myself now
11 years old and 5 foot nothing
Pushing my sister in her pram
up a hill on the way home from
school
Straining under the weight
And I tell you that my body had
never failed me when it wasn't windy out

You demand to know why nothing I eat sticks to me
But I can't tell you how my frame
hasn't yet gotten used to being full
of something other than rage
And I don't think I would recognize
the girl who wasn't starving
and stuffing her face
So I tell you that I just don't know

You can't help but ask why I didn't just buy myself something extra
And I smile when I think of the small
amount that I had to spend
and the fiver worth of sweets it went on
that I handed to my baby siblings as I shut the door
to their room
On the worst day I can remember
Because they didn't have to be hungry too
So I didn't eat a single one

But I tell you that skinny is just a memory I didn't get to give back.

You cannot tell her she's beautiful,
You cannot tell her you love her,
You cannot tell her she's your world
When she's at her best moments.

You may only tell her those things,
If you're ready for her to have those off days,
If you're ready for her to not always wear makeup,
If you're ready to deal with her mood swings,
If you're ready for her to be clingey some days and distant others,

You cannot tell her any of the pretty little comments,
Unless you can handle her
Alone at two A.M.
As she's struggling with life,
And wondering why

She is not enough to win her own internal battles

Am I a door, who's lock is broken,
who's hinges are loose?
I'm being swung open and closed,
Swung open and closed again and again.

My hinges are rusted,
I have scratches and kicked-in holes,
My **** is about to be broken off.
Next I know, I'll be ripped off of my beautiful loosely rusted hinges and thrown into the roach-filled dumpster.

But I was put there for a purpose.
To open myself up and let those in who were in need of help.
And those people have ******* me over multiple times.
But that was my purpose.

My loose, rusted hinges
held on
no matter how many times I was slammed or kicked
because that’s what I was made for.
To help others,
no matter how broken they made me
I held on ,
and I kept my purpose.