Rats in the cellar. Rats chew through
the screens. Rats make nests under the
umbrella. When you open it their turds
drop like leaves. Rats in the backyard

eating the swill, the leftovers from
last night – chicken bones and skins of
the baked potatoes. When they get stuffed
they peer from the windowsill

into your room. They smell like an
unflushed toilet that backed up and became
overfilled. So, they spill into your dreams. Rats
in the cupboards chewing the bag of flour

so, it looks like it’s snowing - and the bag
like swiss cheese. Rats are your lovers, your
family and friends. They surround you and
get into everything.

A lone slipper
Diary I wrote aged 18 (Unread, too piercing)
Battered biscuit tin I’d kept for years (in the hope it would prove useful (it didn’t))
Takeaway plastics (covered in grease and crusted rice)
Receipts (seconds after I am given them)
Poo explosion stained leggings aged 6-9 months at the Horniman Museum on 1st August 2020 (Jack’s 31st birthday)
My phone (an accident, obviously) into the bin at the hospital while I was in labour (retrieved soon after by a kindly HCA)
Green peppers from every meal in which they’ve been served to me (red and yellow are fine)
Opportunities (various, for various reasons)
A half used tube of e45 at least 5 years old (not mine, left by an ex boyfriend)
Eggshells, broken so a witch can’t use them for a sailboat (now I take care to leave them seaworthy)
Probably 20 pairs of cheap headphones (pocket knotted and wires exposed)
My potential (sorry Nan)
A makeup brush my toddler put in the (unflushed) toilet
Unopened bank statements (not even shredded)
Mystery unlabelled freezer meal (too scared to defrost, could be literally anything from anytime )
Tote bag stained with damson juice (used as emergency foraging bag one autumn, furtively collected from a stranger's driveway)
Old, bobbly tights (constricting yet baggy in all the wrong places)
Uni Laptop from 2012 (riddled with viruses from streaming tv shows by the hundred, and thousands of limewire songs)
My childhood dream to become a stain glass windows maker (not so much thrown away as abandoned due to not being a real career)
And the second slipper, found a week later

the colour finally found it's love
but she lost it the same day
the red on her cheeks *
the red on her lips ~
the red in her heart <3
was unflushed *
unsmeared ~
and unloved <3

Girl with wide eyes
Says she overdosed
They say they don’t know why
Maybe she was just upset that day
Her mother gave her a notebook
That said “Life is what you make it”
Then left her alone
She told many people
How afraid she was of her own mind
How she didn’t want to be alive anymore
How she was running out of time
But nobody listened
And now they’re all surprised
That a quiet little girl with wide eyes
Felt this way inside
Her mother didn’t care
She told her many times
Of the times when she hurt herself
Even showed her the scars
Her mother didn’t help
Ignored her cries
This wasn’t her first time
But it was by far the worst
She took an entire bottle of aleve
Then waited for her pain to be relieved
But it wasn’t, her stomach cramped and she threw up
Nine hospital days later
Her ***** was still in the toilet unflushed
The pills still in a row
Her tear-soaked note
Exactly the way she left it
No one cared to go up there
To see what she had done
No one cared until
Law enforcement got involved
She was struggling
But nobody
Heard her