Sometimes I wonder
How many others
have frequented this same spot,
have felt heavy limbs drop.
Passive to what came next-
As if no amount of questioning could save their fate.
Have had their heart broken at King's Cross Station..

What possessed you to purchase a one way train ticket-
skipping school, breaking a perfect attendance record
seemingly on a whim?
Starting a new term, boredom ensued,
adventure beckoned.
Recent changes in behaviour surely set the scene.

Were you summoned by false promises-
Lured into the arms of a man you felt compelled to meet
On a week day, in the city?
I could have sat in the same train carriage
I could have met your eye.
Remembering the whirlwind that was, 14.
Writing in a diary no one would ever read.
Shredding into pieces, aged 18.
Forgive me,
I couldn't fathom seeing 18, at, 14.
Far fetched in forgetting time marches on,
being stuck in a place of pain.
Clinging on to suggestive song lyrics,
suggesting being Queer was okay.

Did he tell you it would be Okay?

You wore your favourite band t-shirt, had awoken late
in an irritable mood that morning.
Out of character, they said.
They traced any internet activity  
any possible CCTV sightings.
You had lost a mobile phone over a year ago.
The trail of answers quickly ran cold
the stream of questions would never end.

Your dad felt you might have struggled with your sexuality
though you never explicitly said anything.
Shame can embody you, silence you.
At 14 it can surely threaten to suffocate you!
I still ache for the shame I let cover curious green eyes,
for the sugar mouse she promised me at 14,
for the arms I kept by my sides.
''It gets better'' is the narrative attempt to reassure you on YouTube,
but how many difficult years must first pass until it is bearable?

Hindsight is a luxury afforded only with time.

Sometimes I wonder
How many others
have frequented this same spot,
have felt heavy limbs drop.
Passive to what came next-
As if no amount of questioning could save their fate.
Have had their heart broken at King's Cross Station?

I felt awkward accepting your love at first.
I didn’t quite know how to handle it nor what to do with it.
It was more than the little kernels I normally got.

So, I let you love me.
Like letting in rays of sunshine
Warm my insides.

How could I ignore a love so pure?
Who am I to be picky when I shall die in a car crash any day now?
I’ve shied away from loving long enough.

If I can’t stop the sun shining, then I won’t stop you loving me.

He paced between two feet.
His eyes wide, unblinking.
He rubbed her legs and told her to stay safe.
He searched his pockets,
I don’t want to know what for.

I had been a cloud.
I had floated through the night sky.
He told me he’d come back.
I believed him.

I thought things were different,
and oftentimes they are.
But what is left there waiting for me,
when time can’t heal all wounds?

I long to feel safe in the streets.

I haven't figured out how to be alone and not lonely
Only wishing I could go back to how it was before
But there are more things on my mind
There are more things to do
I haven't figured out how to do it on my own

Just me and a homegrown sadness
That keeps me company with
Those late night cigarettes and cold coffee
Staring out at windows starry-eyed at nothing

Big parts of ourselves are based on what we know best
What we do
Who we love
Where we are comfortable

The safety of familiar

When a rock the size of a delayed trauma is thrown between those cogs
The machine is still capable of continuing the way it did before
Something just makes it break that bit more
Quietly camouflaged beneath the surface of certainty

Everything now slopes to subtle disarray
As if the plates you had been balancing this whole time have suddenly stopped spinning
And the poles are threatening to snap under the pressure

I have separated myself into sticks and stones
Promised to break my own bones with every unstable step I take towards something I’m blind to seeing shadows of

Talking about it is impossible
It comes out in tongues of unintelligible
Crashing on tired ears too kind to tell me how badly they need a break

Discovering that who you thought you were isn’t who you can keep being
Makes me envy anyone who has had their identity stolen by an outsider

Constrictions come with self analysis
My body now moves through an ever-changing state of inconsistency
My figure defined by dislocated assumptions
Curves contract the changes in all the wrong places

Worries spread their seeds under an ocean of unnoticeable
Trust is now a stranger in my own home
who has figured out how to cut their own set of keys every time I change the locks

Blame is a fallback and the only ones to place it on are those who taught you everything you thought you knew

Heaviness is a weight I can’t brush off my shoulders
I carry everyone else’s burdens on my back because at least it is something I can be good at
A care taker who neglects to take care of herself

Eroding with every passing hypothetical
Every second thought
Every doubt
And every 'what if'

My impermanence is solidified in the knowledge that where we came from will soon call us back

Constellations can’t hold conversations but at least I know they won’t worry half as much

‘Nothing is permanent’ is one tattoo I can’t remove with laser surgery

So now I look for the missing parts of myself in others
In sizes and figures and numbers

What I am not is always something I could become
There’s always been room for improvement
and the empty space is running low on oxygen

Comparison has her cruel hands wrapped around my throat with a thirst I’m incapable of quenching
Self-deprecation isn't attractive
Insecurity isn't ****
Sharing so many similarities with someone who is everything better than me has turned itself into an internal torture device
an omnipotent ‘almost’ that lingers with every non-existent like-minded interaction that will never happen

I place my worth on the pedestal of peoples perceptions

Nightmares show reruns every second night
of the possibilities that now manifest themselves in the lining of my limbs
Leaking toxins that won’t go as far as my throat in case someone else overhears them

An unspoken competition for admiration and attention
The hollow has started to build scaffolds in my stomach for further renovations.

Easing it is a process
I seek shelter in laughter and forcing to forget

And loneliness has become a friendly companion in their absence

Afloat with overthinking until it jumps overboard
Dissolves transparent in glass coloured water

And drowns in it’s own pretty poison

Baby I just wanna get drunk
A little something to get me outta this funk
Maybe get some smoke into these lungs
Laugh at terrible jokes and finger guns
Play some old records that I hate
While you tell me why they’re so great
Get freaked out at how fast time goes
I’ll fall asleep on the floor in my clothes
Just a chilled night, nothing crazy
I just wanna get drunk with you baby

E coli colonies
And clusters of blisters
Pink clusters of blisters
And scabs and lice
Do they taste good your cockles?
Do they feel satisfies your mussels?
Do you feel alive, alive, oh?
Candid she is ah
The women of the water
Of beds of sand burrowed deep
Shadows under rocks
On the corners of streets
A parasitic mass
Not the proverbial grain of sand
A fluid called nacre
Or mother of pearl is
Deposited
Layer upon layer
Until a pearl
Is formed
The product of an irritant
A cluster of blisters
Opalescent blisters
Sweet pink satisfaction in
The labial palp
The entrance way to the mouth

‘I’m so cold and I’m so scared
And I’m so alone’


I just
So, a pearl fisher needs to wear waders
There’s no dignified way to put on waders
And when it gets cold you have to **** yourself to keep warm
You also need a set of tangs
Mine are hazel
I got them from the wood
I cut it down but first I asked the tree if it was okay
The tree is part of the river too you see
It nourishes the peat
That filters the water that
Drips back into the river
That is filtered by the mussel
That the salmon and trout swim in
Then the mussel
The larvae attached to the salmon and the trout
And it forms a symbiotic relationship
Where the mussel filters the water and
The salmon and the trout
Spread their offspring
The way you can tell the difference
Between a male and a female mussel
Is that when you pick up a male it's
Literally dripping in *****
A constant *******
The females all spawn at the same time
A mussel is an indicator species,
Which in ecological terms means
That it is a species that will
Be
The perfect indicator of the health
Of the river
The other things you need are
A river speculum
I haven’t made mine yet
But we used plastic ones
With glass cut to shape
But it enables you to see the river
The secret part of the secret river
It’s red down there
And it’s cold
The women of the water
They hide in the shadows under rocks
And burrowed deep
They can move very slowly across the river
Bed
A colony of mussels
A family
When you find mussels
When you f
When you find a beautiful
When you find lots of them it’s
Called a
Good crook and this is where
You’ll find pearls
If you ask me the man who takes them is a good crook himself
Bad crook
And it’s I’m looking at it now and I can see
It with the moonlight on it
And it just it
Keeps going
But it’s tidal here it’s not fresh
I’d have to distil it myself
With copper pipes
Copper tubes
Copper coil
When copper ages it turns blue
And you don’t weld copper
You braze it
Soldering at a high temperature
A Heat
Mussels can live up to 150 years old
I held a 120-year-old one
And it was so wise and venerable
I didn’t know what to do
I couldn’t speak
This mussel
She was alone
Down there in the red
The angry red water
She lived through
WW1 and 2
And women’s suffrage
My grandmother was alive two
I wore silk because it’s pure
And women are supposed to be pure
Don’t know
Freshwater nymphs
I can see it right now
And it’s just like little tiny mirrors
Little tiny mirrors that are reflecting light back
Speculum is the Latin for mirror
Maybe the water’s a mirror
But it’s tidal here so I’d have to distil it
Saltwater mirrors
Saltwater speculums
Spectators of atrocity
And mussels they grow
With annual rings
Annually
They reach maturity around the
Age of 30
Like tree trunks
Like the hazel
That helps me to keep them
Catch them in its tangs
But I want to protect them
I am one

Little plaster shells
But I cracked one
And it wasn’t plaster
Split her in half
Not with tongs
With silicone
Pink flexible
Gooey silicone
Their linings bleed every month

It was a dark orange
Red colour
Because of the peat that was draining into the water

But I have to protect them
Cause I am one.