It was the kiss on my cheek
you held
just a fraction too long,
and the way you wrapped me
in your arms
that made me hate
your forced embrace.

When you whispered
‘sweet dreams. I love you’
they were both lies:
my nights were not sweet
terrorised bitter
by you.

In the big, blue sweater
that drowns my figure,
I cry in your car.
On the leather seats,
worn out by travel
tarnished by sunshine and dirt.
I used to sit, in the back seat
and you would play the radio
and talk too loud, like you always did.
I would put my earphones in
and try to forget
that I was still alive.

In the front seat here,
I am a big girl.
My feet don’t dangle
from the seats like they did
when I was younger,
and you held me in your arms
and I felt all the world
around me was so big
but really, I just felt small.

In the drivers seat,
you sat
and asked me why
I looked so sad
all the **** time,
as if my sadness could be explained.
And I told you the truth; my truth;
that when I woke up
I wished I hadn’t.
Then you said to me,
‘you are so selfish to say that’
But I was too far gone to care.

I am back in the shadows, standing still
as usual. On the outskirts of the dancing people and,
in my own skirts that flow, burgundy wine in a crystalline glass
that allures and detracts blame from the eye.
And not many eyes do wander so far as to catch,
in the corner, a glimpse of a girl so lost and tired,
young and awkward. When his eyes meet mine I think,
perhaps this is my story, my day (or night) to carpe diem.

But when he comes near it is nothingness that I feel.
Only illicit breath on my neck and from that,
the guilt ****** as hairs stand on edge.
I do not want this now, shocking, I know. Scandalous, I think.
It would be wrong to stop, where after all, do our tales
come from? Our narratives, sewn and stitched
to rich fabrics of our lives. How can I write about this without
the experience of knowing it for myself?

I will detach myself and let it wash over, as his hands
are on my waist and his cologne in my air,
I think it must be like the sea, a salty traverse
that washes away at shores edge. And I want to be a part of
this oceans world with all I am to want.
Music so ear-splitting I feel the ground pounding beneath me
and the room inky-black murkiness that cannot be navigated,
these factors must be what happened to my judgement

And when he is done I sink into the walls and wish to forget this;
he leans forwards and whispers into my ear.

It is in the too small house with its too big furniture,
and it is on the bus where I sit and the train where I stand.
It follows me around; a thick grey smoke of nothingness.
Some days it is consuming, swallows me, envelops me in its arms
in a hug that feels like suffocation. I suffocate, hushed.
It is there when I stand in the bathroom cubicle, cold,
empty and alone. It is behind me like the puppeteer and here
I stand, the delicate marionette with her oh so fragile
limits of flesh and skin, real and alive and crying for mercy.

I cannot change it, though I wish it would leave me at peace,
but instead, it takes its bitter time and through its fingers,
my own sanity falls like sea-green sand. In the mornings
I wake up heavy; it is lying on top of me, and all my effort
goes into getting up. Suffering, every day the same as yesterday
as the people who surround me wonder, what it is?
She is loud in her questioning; unforgiving, with the aftermath
of a nuclear leak, invisible and deadly and ever so toxic.

She takes a distinct dislike to it, but it channels itself through
my own body, my own spirit and soul. I am the marionette;
all strings attached. And so She turns on me with Her beady
eagle eyes that watch everything I do, and in her head, She
makes Her judgements. Her divine judgements, Her divine rulings.
It taunts Her, and She feels it and rejects its presence because once,
it was a part of Her. It holds me in its arms and tells me
all the ugly in the world, and all its evils. I want to be held
by something, and so I let it. But Her anger is plentiful, crimson.

I am often alone with it. It helps me think of all the small things,
and all the bigger things too. It opens avenues in my mind,
dangerous avenues, avenues of death and ways to bring it about.
It is there when I am alone in bed. It is there in the day and all day
it shadows me and plagues me and haunts me and it scares
away the people who dare come near, but it holds me with love
like a mother should hold Her child, with its’ tender embrace.
And I crave that touch, the vestigial happiness I feel in it despite
the fact its fingers touch me with coldness and nothing else.

She is growing agitated with its presence. I wish it would leave,
leave me alone and leave me be; but it stays, clings.
It wants something from me, that I cannot give,
it longs for my death and I begin to long for it too for it is powerful
in its persuasion. I am blamed for its shortcomings and She,
unsettled, stands with hatred for it. I know they have history,
for it whispers me tales of truth in my dreams,
far from sweet as they are, bittered and calloused by knowledge.

It grows stronger within me and as it waxes, I wane.
The singing stops one day, eating the next, holing up alone is now
not undesirable, but a wish. I wish that everything could stop.
It is still not content, taking more and more of me away;
She is discontented – Her old vices do claim – and out She takes
that anger and discontentment unto me. It eggs her on.
It fills me with emptiness and Her with blame.
But when She said that the quiet was because of me,
She was ignorant to the silence that followed Her.

I see her down the concrete path, head bowed low.
Her steps have the loneliness of old dust,
stooped over shoulders as she is, like a weeping willow.
I see her down the concrete path, head bowed low.
She knows of pain, of trauma, of which she cannot let go,
and dreams of no tomorrow, toward which she lusts.
I see her down the concrete path, head bowed low.
Her steps have the loneliness of old dust.

allow her to brood in her disconsolate pool,
her feelings will conflate and shall leave her behind,
happiness is dulcet so why shan't she indulge?
mortal shell left behind, she regards as a fool,

do but wonder why God put her up to misrule,
evanescent existence of her halcyon days,
cannot He separate her from the penumbral gloom?
ninety-nine cases the exception to the rule.