MmmhmmM

Sometimes I forget how hard it is for me to breathe. When they’re around. How the heat between them is like a sticky side of the underbread and their moist tongues so soiled with hatred, simmering hatred stuffed under the pots and pans, that they’ve forgotten to pretend to notice. And when I slip backwards, shed the limelight and watch them, hear the way he makes her cry, hear the way she makes him beg. It’s all so shrill, all so twisted in some vortex of steel and sympathy. A cacophony of cries. And you’ve never felt so worthless as when your name gets trickled down like a lost pet, like a needle that sticks up at your skin and keeps scratching and scratching and scratching. And while one clings to the clothes for their life, the other’s been pushing to burn them for months, years.

I am naught but a burnt rag.

Sometimes I forget how much it sucks to hear them fight. How much I quiver in fear at the thought that someday I, too, will venture into the realm of love and romance. For after all, that was where this began, was it not? Or was it merely an unplanned pregnancy that smushed the two together, like two cheeks and fat rolling around in grimacing smiles and crackling flashbulbs. And all this time it’s been so hidden, they’ve thought common sense to swim from the gene pool. But I watch and I see and I wonder if I will cascade into this shimmering trap. If metal fangs will pierce my ankle, watch me struggle and bleed as I weep just to touch the shining sting once more. And thrusting fingertips into gaping bone, vein, tentacles of destruction winding through my ripped limb and squelching blood…tiny eyes will watch in my stead, sucking in breath like seaweed and pushing their skin from their body.

Innocence is relative. Purity the same. And whilst I keep one close to my pocket, the other strokes like catfish whiskers at my fingertips and swishes away. I choose to purge myself of reliance if only to keep that which I hold dear at bay from the greedy mongers, from those who would see me fall. And the failures and the mortgages and the crying toddlers that wail their mother’s name as she stares at them in grief, astonished grief. It is all for the watching eyes and watching hand, for the weakness of the day as they forgot their independence, ventured into the cushion that would see them dumped. So swaddle me in mummy’s wraps and squeeze my paper hand.

I will lie in this sarcophagus and you will close the lid.

.me.

One is a genious...

.me. .lit'rally.

Breakfast Club

Why can’t we write

When pressure comes close

When expectant faces peer

And hearts shudder in repose

Why can’t we write

As our fingers freeze

And we picture rejection

Agonizing on our knees

As we plead to the skies

Vivid pain on our lids

And we clack out more rubbish

All we are is what is

We are the earth

And the sky

And the water below

As it sloshes our ankles

And tightens the bow

And an arrow shoots through

Pierces freedom in its wake

And we sit and we weep

At the rubbish we make

Falling through rubber

Shattering skin

Melting our fingers

We are but men

We are but workers

Busy as bees

And soon we may realize

However you plead

That only our eyes

And only our noses

And only our lips

May shove out such proses

Such delicate buds that you kiss and you milk

We are the poets

We are the poets.

We are what is.

.me.

Geometrics

She will drown in this sorrow; she will drown.

The words sloshed around her mind like empty rain, crashing in waves and torrents ‘gainst the back of her eyelids til she squinted to keep the screams at bay. Shallow breathing, her cheeks rubbed raw like perfect egg shells, she steadied herself against the bar, clasping the rounded wood.

“It’s not like it was before. It can’t be.”

Her whisper sounded like the watery pleadings of a lover who already knows they’ve lost the fight. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and let her head droop between hunched shoulders, the fabric of her t-shirt ridging between the blades.

Soon would come the doctors and the lawyers bereaving what the doctors had done and her mother wiping away tears that stained her skin and her father, nodding behind the walls as he brushed his fingertips against the belly of his flannel shirt. Images like flashes of fire swam before her face and with a violent huff, she blew them away. She had recovered, she’d been a medical marvel, the doctors had said! Children had written her, told her what an inspiration she was. The television cameras hadn’t left for weeks. And now in an empty studio it had all washed back upon her, drenching her clothes and sinking into her poisoned skin. With a crippling cry she sank to the floor, pressing her palm to the underside of the wood and resting a cold forehead against the mirror. A silent and stoic face held on her features, lips twisted in a painful grimace even as her heart squeezed itself dry.

A trickling sob escaped her and she clamped a hand to her lips, shaking her head violently, biting scolds to stop her. Like a fallen ballerina she crouched, sucking in gulps of air and tasting the salt on her swollen tongue. Blood swam in her veins, gushed out like a broken spicket and already she knew, it would all return. She’d tasted her freedom, felt it sprinkle her skin like peppered needles.

And now it would all be back.

The questions, the wires, the chittering monkeys that bounced in her face – it would ALL be back.

And again, the world collapsed.

.me.