2022-2023
Sun on Rough Water - 2022
They speak of dark veils
over grieving eyes
I felt it in my very structure that
my skeleton, a puppet on strings,
couldn't lift
I knew the sun still cast beauty
I was tempted to look straight at it
Then you, like water, let me float
rest my limbs, gravity interrupted
we will watch the sun cycle
in the reflection
so it won't burn our retinas.
Revival - 2022
Ghosts fell as bedsheets to the floor
it was too loud in my ears at first
when I heard our laughter again
you never got to see us like that
but in showing you the places he filled,
I let myself feel it
and it hurt
and I cried
and I remembered all the love I found
in the dark corners of my teenage years
Observation of Self - 2022
Dark clouds above or shadows inside
my darkness comes from the light
all my best ready to turn
always a bad day away from casting
it's overbearing light like a beacon
a lighthouse where it shouldn't be
luring the things I love to the rocks
I want to rip it from me, but like ivy
it's rooted too far into the brickwork
of my entire existence
if I were to strip it down
I'd take all I am with it
I'm too scared to crumble.
VALIDATION!!!! - 2022
I thought they'd love me now
I'm better, I'm better, I'm better
Look at me! I'm coping!
They're unburdened.
Look at my exterior
look at their reflection back at them
Am I too much now?
Was I better when I felt it?
When every picture they posted
made me more transparent
but now there's real ghosts
I thought my flesh would be enough
Sixteen all over again
this time I get it.
Through Winter - 2023
The snowflakes on my coat sleeve
hold the detail of something vast
I can't measure the veins of us
though I try.
Judge the space between my fingers
of moments we have to come
I'll hold you in life's blizzards
when it's not snowfall
that has turned your hair white
Imprisoned - 2023
Even my organs are scratching
at the cage walls of my body
no freedom from the poison
I pump through tunnels of blood
In panic they desperately
try to trick my body that it's over
the cruel slow to regular
holds more terror than fear
My skin, how she sighs
eyes distorted to blind themselves
but I fix. And I fix.
Some things can't be unbroken.
Left to Fend - 2023
A wild animal
rescued into captivity
I got too used to false safety
when you pushed me
out the walls that kept me safe
with a pretence of freedom
like a house cat
I realised I'd lost my instincts
to survive by myself
Selfish Little Girl - 2023
Point the blame at anything
she's too small to do harm
curled upon herself in hatred
to extend would be to let it out
Blame the skies in this country
too grey to cast shadow she exists in
until she's free from responsibility
to take it would be to feel it
Blame the people she loved
too good to be near her
she shouldn't have hurt them
to be near her is to rot
Point the blame at her
she's too much to be with
poison like that won't stay
under her war-torn skin
Jealous - 2023
You kept up their paintings
I slept under them
I wondered what I could do
that would make me worthy
of a spot on your shelf too
I kept things as well
the defensiveness
the need to be seen to feel alive
along with the shame of who I am
tried to lie it all away. To myself. To you.
Maybe you had an impossible task
to make someone like me feel wanted
was I even capable of feeling that at all
I think of those paintings
the emails you wanted to send them
I want to scream was I not enough
I know it's not that simple
it never is.
In Fourteen Days - 2023
Two weeks before the end
I wrote a poem about how
I'd be there for you
even when our hair lost pigment
How presumptious of me
to have assumed
you'd let me stay that long
Turns out I'd already sucked colour
from more than just our hair