float

I know. I know
it feels so unavoidable after
all the things that have cruelly
unjustly happened to you
I know. I know
that it is so unfair how
you have suffered and trialled
and how it seems impossible
not to stand in front of the mirror
and cry at the girl there,
imperfect and scarred and
lost
I know. I know
how it feels to want nothing
how it feels for dreams to exist as
nothing but a dull black hum
how sleep is the only thing
that takes the edge off of your
jagged existence
but I know. I know
that misanthropy is not forever
it does not have to be your way
the purity of living is here
for you and you
do not have to drown yourself out
of being
you are bigger than the
sum of your tragedies
come to the healing pool
expect pain in every
new place you go
float on its salt waters
and throw your heart into life
again
because you know. you know
that whatever you have to fear
is not worse than
isolation and hatred.
survive, darling
I promise
you will love
your life again.

titanic

a girl
just as lost as I was,
reached out with
a perfectly manicured hand.
queen captain of the new Titanic,
weathering a storm you
could never know
(not even in your worst nightmares).
the lies of boys brought us together
brought us to a three-hour phone
conversation before we even knew
who we were.
that’s not how us damaged girls are
supposed to act, but
even then we knew where
our blood was best directed.
a girl,
with more beauty and soul than
you could ever understand
(or would deserve).
they should be the ones eating our pain
digesting it whole and
letting it fester in their rotten guts
but that
is not how life works, so on
and on we will go.
she does not need to prove anything
to you, but look how she
glimmers in the light as
a pearl
even when you try to cast your shadow.
fuck you,
we live.

blonde

little child, blonde
eyes blue as welsh waterfalls
it is not your fault
that you were hurt
it is not your fault
that you found things hard
little boy, blonde
with clouds in one eye
they told you that you
were not innocent
you were bad
and well
you need to know
that a few broken toys
stitches in the lip and
scribbles on the wall
were not
deserving of beatings
on school mornings
you need to know
that when you cry
you do not need to be ashamed
that when you cried
because you were hurt
that it was valid
you did not deserve
to be punished
for things you
could not control
little child, blonde
showing off your missing teeth
I wish I could hold you
now and whisper strength
into your young ears

new

I stood at the door to my new life
full of fear and tears
so desperate to find the key
under the piles of newspapers from 2004
that littered my desk
the smell of brass was a taunt
from morning til night,
knowing it was so close to my hand
but still lost.
then he came and shook me
awake at two in the morning
opened my eyes
“I am just
like you.
the papers are yours
they don’t belong to god
so get a
fucking move on”.
I found my key
and I walked into the
world that had been waiting
for me
I in my rarity and he in his
reminding each other that
our gifts of perception
are not gypsy’s curses.
my friend,
thank fuck for you
and here’s to our health.
my brother,
you’re more than a diamond
in a sea of glass shards

mother

perhaps I should
go to bed earlier
I would then be
part of the well-rested masses
but
as I stand outside
two and a half hours
past midnight’s chimes
the icy wind biting
at my naked thighs
I look up to
my mother in the sky
waning gibbous, the
full three days gone
with the innocuous
sounds of suburbia
ringing in my ears
(a chirping bird
the wind
and a car door slamming
somewhere in the distance)
I know that this is
my time for being
no street lights shine
but I see such sights
of wonder and peace
and even as my hands
turn numb in the cold
I breathe the night air
and feel the balm
of home

prince

I used to think he was a prince,
and I wrote about him with diamonds
flowing from my pen.

I stared at him in wide eyed
wonder whilst he slept
in my bed, and I so wanted to
plant myself in his soil
and grow my smothering bindweed
around him.

I let the waves of
obsession and lust
wash over my heart,

and oh,
those waves were so
lovely for a time

(until they came crashing down
and I screamed for three
whole hours when I realised
he did not plan on falling in
love with me).

then he was gone and
I was powerless and
angry and consumed by
my need for his
royal validation.

“I hate you!
come back,”
I whispered into our letters,

and my pen flowed
not with diamonds but
poisoned well-water.

then time passed
and I grew and
flowered and blossomed and
shed my buds and became
an oak.

and
when he came back
(because that is what
always seems to happen),

he wasn’t a prince and
his hair wasn’t spun gold anymore.
he was just a man.

I wasn’t his arrow
and my burns had healed

no longer so susceptible to
drops of water and kisses.

I revelled in our connection
and nothing more.
I looked at him and he at me.

uncomplicated and free
and true in our humanity and our
normalcy and our faultery
and our fuck ups.

maybe now that I am a tree
and not a twining unwanted stem
I can be like this
and feel joy for its simplicity
instead of dissecting its
fragile meaning.

or maybe I will muse and see
that my desire for his turrets and towers
ebbs away with the moonlight
trickling down my thighs as
the lap of the warmest tide
goes out. 

we shall see, little prince.

star part II

read part I here

I wrote once
a little while ago about
a burning hot star that
scalded my palms and
blinded my eyes
I wondered why I was
so paralysed by its beauty
and so afraid of its power
I plunged my hands into it then,
not knowing how to harness its purity
I gilded my fingers silver
and skinned them to the bone

stars are all white gold
and full of dreams
but they don’t travel through galaxies
and now that I understand how to
work my telescope,
instead of staring into the light
with bare-eyed fascination
I can see that the star, so far from
my breathing earth
is burning itself into static death
going out in a blaze of beauty
that will suck the life out of every
little thing around it

I look away from the endless sky
and down at my feet, tempered in their
little leather boots
and see the leaves swilling around them
I see the pearls of dew drops glisten
and grass growing through cracks in the pavement
a sparked single match lights a
wood fire somewhere to my left
and I realise that a burnt-out sun
a thousand light years away
could never warm my healing hands
could never captivate and delight my eye
the way my left-hand fire could