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Lucy Ryan Dec 2015
waking
newly human
strange and soft;
pinpricks, feelings -
the crawlings around inside you
shiver as your skin becomes real

a nightlight for daytime sleeplessness
carry the seas inside yourself
like people:
walking barefoot
drinking sunstreams
and braving the dark red nights

hark, choir voices, still
slurring miss you discrepancies
howls in empty skies
wolves die

a misunderstanding of your insides
bones
more sand than rock
crumble at a press too hard

on this,
last day of your first life
hung on a boy’s fingers
the edge of a cliff
taste the water in your nerve endings dragging you home
you splinter,
and you rise -

when the bruise blooms, you shine
Lucy Ryan Nov 2015
pull the clouds //  up over us // covered in soft // in gold-laced kisses // so when the sky // cracks open // we smile // falling in
Lucy Ryan Nov 2015
Lips like bloodlines,
Carmilla kisses her mirror
and calls herself dangerous

Naming myself for dead things,
for ruinous things;
fire,
the ash that drank Pompei,
the ivy that made your walls cave,

Was Lady Macbeth sweeping her hair in braids
to nest her crown?
Or Nefertiti painted gold to reclaim God?

I’m asking for the lavender girls
See, we do these things to be holy
to be myths in our skin

Tying feathers to our shoulders
and glitter to our tongues,
thinking
I can be gold if I want to
I can be thorn-tipped ugly

In pink fur, black lace, we kiss the toes
of Courtney Love and Venus in one breath

Cut back
to my blood-laced lips on the mirror
as though saying Narcissus is my idol
my skin placed above heaven
and I wish to love myself so much
I’d choke for it
Lucy Ryan Oct 2015
these pieces / found in mud / beneath the water / where we stitched them / as feathers / on Michael’s spine / and ****** / kisses you / like God / could fear you

may dirt / on your jawbone / make you holy / and blood / on your mouth / make you thirst / and you / in moments / as glory

and we prayed / we prayed / we pray
Lucy Ryan Oct 2015
is it you – too?

the scratch of skin

blood under nails,

fighting the phantoms

and scratched back in couplets

through flesh onto bone

words inside, words out


is it you, love?

who has me choking on verse

spat with toothpaste and blood

tucked into an unwatched glass

and drunk

until birdsong flows
potential tw for non-consensual drug references that could be associated with date-****
Lucy Ryan Oct 2015
Praise my pillowcases and her shoulderblades

which carry my horrors so soundlessly


Press kisses to the mouths of ghosts that sing

and the lullabies I swallow like prozac


and bless you, angel, who told me I was Holy

and I told you I was *God
Lucy Ryan Sep 2015
city height, light,
never for your toothpick bones
- but still, a second skin for the sleepless
and your starless starry-eyes
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