white lace doilies

i played with pretty white lace doilies when i was younger, colouring in the fragments piece by piece with the occasional eureka moment of cathartic ecstasy and i think Archimedes said once that he had “got it” but i don’t know what he thought he had gotten because really no one has anything at all and there are stars stars stars with a wrong light all wrong but still singing and the crystal wine glass is full of dark red with little white lines of reflected light like i am watching raindrops plink to the ground full of hope but it is washed out of them and i want to seek you out but i don’t know who you are or what you look like or where you live i only know that you are oh so beautiful and i want you to be happy there’s a terrible knowledge sitting in my heart that tells me you’re sad and i don’t know why but it makes me cry as i look at you in all my favourite photographs like a model on the catwalk and you don’t know who you are without the heels and the makeup but i’m telling you never let anyone tell you how to live or who you are because media is hiding you away and you need not be hidden i promise you there are promises and then there are promises and this is the second kind the kind that is always kept cat-silent and the horizon isn’t really so far away you know it is only that it is always moving like a dream ahead of me and i can’t – quite – catch it – and there you see gone again like the horizon i can’t follow you wherever it is that you go when your eyes are distant and you don’t focus on me when i say your name i used to think that the moon followed the car when we wound round twisty intersections copper-snake-like and you fell asleep with lavender eyelids fluttered deep dream sleep bone tired scar tired high wired

choke me

hold me foetal           
like a precious, brittle thing  
easily snapped           
my bones are made of tight-packed sugar   
and I think if I stand now they will    
collapse
into shadow    
shatter glass  
if this is your revolution         
taping the authorities to the wall and trying to be  
more mature than they ever were   
then I think you could have done better than           
militia born and bred on coffee and blood   
veins was always a favourite word of mine  
don’t get confused     
there’s fear of not breathing
and then there’s having water rising, choking up     
lungs  
until breath is a thing of the past and you can’t remember how to            
inhale even if there wasn’t a flood inside of you      
forcing you silent       
and thrashing.
vultures settle on the wires   
oh, waiting for something just like you and I           
darling           
tumour flowering open and infectious         
rainless and brushfire           
and I thought about saying    
love isn’t a romanticised idiom        
the scientists say love is survival      
love is evolution and it lives parasitical in our hearts          
keeping us from throwing our minds into a pile and mingling our thoughts until   
we are indistinguishable       
though sometimes that’s all any of us want 
stumbling with a twisted tie and your hair isn’t slicked back           
you always drew a queen
running joke and your eyes light up like optical fibres too many sparkling stars

candle smoke
and dark dark dark

feedback onstage and the audience doesn’t wince because they’re too caught up in it all

nicotine stained teeth
it was always a favourite song of mine

vowel-slipping round your tongue through your sugar-bones and skulls

you wanted and you wanted and you didn’t have
so you took. 

imperfect

uninvented
rewritten
mind choked up, absorbed
and thrown back polished up like brass
you must remember that you are not broken.
you do not need fixing.
you never needed fixing.
and Ariadne, the girl with the string to guide me home
remember.
bright side
creativity
and four different words for love.
i love you with all four of those words and more besides
because you never needed fixing
and yet you knew you were imperfect.
remember your imperfections
cherish your flaws
banish pain and you banish who you are
beloved
poison your water in small doses
call up your immunity
and know
every second was worth it.

a letter to you from you

yesterday you came home and put your head in your hands 

"worthless," you said to me, anger in your eyes and frustration in your hands. 

"useless," you insisted, and i sat there and took it like i always do.
my comforts were nothing in the face of your grief.
my words were drowned by yours.
you sat in front of the mirror this morning for an hour with a brush and straighteners
your hopes and dreams bottled up in foundation and mascara
but when you were finished it was still not enough
and it will never be enough
because you hate me more than even i can fully understand.
you loathe me with a passion
you hate my crooked, too-large nose
and my ears that stick out too far through my wild hair
you hate my skin that breaks out
and my lips and breasts that aren't full enough
and my body that isn't slim enough
you can't see that my face is proportional
pretty, even
you are blind to my healthy weight and size
my mostly-calm skin
and my expressive mouth
because you hate me far too much to ever consider me beautiful.
you hate the way i talk too much
and the way i say the wrong things
you hate the way i make things awkward
the way i can't make friends.
you hate the fact that i see things that others don't
because it separates me still further.
you can't see that my conversations are beautiful
full of philosophy and fascination
you can't see that i don't need the kinds of friends other people depend on
because they don't give, they only take
you are oblivious to the joys of my sight
the world i see.
love me.
please.
you're breaking me apart, and i deserve better. 

look at you. look at me. 

we are beautiful. 

isolation (and: NANOWRIMO IS OVER THIS BLOG CAN LIVE AGAIN)

My head is in my hands and I am sighing, crying. My mind is made of teeth, little white incisors and molars that bite and draw blood in the parts of me that are carpeted corridors. Here, where sound is squirreled away like treasure that you don’t tell about, blackened secrets are stained by fire and stained by her.

She peeled away my layers and tutted with a disapproving air floating around her, sticky and dark. She came back from her white nurse uniform in jeans with a long, sharp knife and I shrank forward both terrified and desperately yearning, wanting to be perfect like she promised -
The cut was clean but it was long and wide and she dug inside me and found all of my flaws prodding and exploring until she was unsatisfied enough for satisfaction. She deliberated, her cogitating clockwork spinning faster as her mind raced with the speed of determination and faulty networks, and she said,
“There

is

no

God.”

-

You used to break pencils when you were angry.
I remember the snap as they broke and a few splinters embedded themselves in your hands. Your face was white and your fists clenched and your fear as obvious and hidden as anything could be. You had broken ends in your pencil case for weeks, and I – I have a theory -

You used to cry when you were happy.
It’s not so unusual, but you used to cry so much that I’d ask you what was wrong and you would have to explain, and then we would laugh together and sit on the broken heater in the classroom singing stupid songs until the bell went, talking about celebrities and thinking about the dichotomy of the world.

You used to laugh when you were sad.
I think it was because you didn’t like to talk about your feelings, so you talked about everything else instead, and when it all became far too much the laughter was a distraction, so you could cry with isolation watching mindful of your fear. Isolation came to you once, trying to talk to you because she more than anyone understood, but you fought her off with one hand, hiding your tears with the other and punishing yourself with people.

-

And I tried to argue, present statistics and facts and distract her with probability but she kept saying it like an automaton – there is no god – until I almost believed it simply for the sake of repetition before my rationality caught up with me, out of breath, frayed and coming apart at the seams but still there, stuffing falling to the floor.
-
And the teeth clicked together in my mind and tore apart her words and my world like shredded fragments of memories or a white cloud savaged by the wind.

-

change

i don't need you and your silverfish-memories
i don't need anyone.
needing is dangerous.
or is it not needing that is dangerous?
i'm not sure
anymore.
both have done me harm.
maybe
it's just life that's dangerous.
the cracked stone
the divide
ashen skin and pallid hands
i force breath back into you. you will breathe.
you will.
you don't.

disconnected

maybe when God made the world He left the moon unfinished
and that is why there is a dark side
that we are always reminded of, reflected in ourselves

-

don't panic.
if you panic, you'll lose it.
keep calm
breathe
remember.
a day at a time.
remember.
you don't owe anyone anything
remember
this is your world and you decide
remember
where you've been is who you are
it's true we make or break ourselves
we don't have to be pretty if we're strong
this is who you are.
breathe.
remember.

-

i pull my knees up to my chest
make myself small as dust
that's what i am
nameless, i drift
and i don't need anyone to tell me who i am

-

the eyes of the people follow me around the room
and i cannot hide in the light
you wanted something i couldn't give
didn't have
but i suppose i provided solace for a while
i knew you couldn't be grounded for long -
not like that, not by me -
and sure enough, after a time
you flew free.

-

she knows something is wrong.
"be kind to yourself," she says
but i want to work until i'm lost in it
the way i'm lost in this.