said / unsaid

I have a friend who whispers when she swears
Like by saying the words softer you can cancel out part of the meaning
Or take away some of its severity.
My father is not a man of many words
For so much of my life, “I love you” was said in action, implied in the way he’d kiss my forehead as I was falling asleep.
Sometimes I wonder if by not saying things you can cancel out their severity
Like how much everybody needs to be loved
And the inherent humanity of that sentiment
And the silence in which we all live it out.

Time and beginnings//Home

I believe there is something magical
About those first moments of everything
Something created from nothing
And I can't explain it
But something inside me knows
Or hopes
That these echoes of those first feelings
The ones that set particle beside particle
And the universes into motion
Will one day again draw me
Closer to the person I am meant to be

I press the walk buttons three times
Tell a joke twice
Get passwords wrong four
Segment my life into numbered lines
And draw their contours over my skin
With words and with people
Spiralling inwards and outwards
In the ratio of 2.618
I believe that one day, my words will move mountains
Hit people square in the face and remind them

Of home
Of cardamom and cloves
And the feeling that no matter what you're feeling
You are not alone
And it's okay to be weak sometimes
Because deep down within us all
Are those first moments
Something that none of us can escape
That inexplicable magic of beginnings
And the millennia that it has taken for us to get here
And that we are truly the people we are meant to be

1901

I want to tell you

Never to fall for anyone who can turn you into a blue-period Picasso

Or who will put two eyes in their right places on your head

And capture in still life all your restless ways

You had warnings, you know

They say never to try love a wild thing

Or tame it

Either way,

When he pulls out his paintbrush to cover you in all the things you wish you could be for him remember

Michelangelo broke his back and blinded himself painting ceilings

Some things are just too far a reach

And your fidgety hands and feet go much deeper than oil and ink

A canvas is too small – and you are too large

That not even the call of Gabriel could pull you through its threads.

Braver people

I’ve found that I’ve started praying again. Not anything really, just when the air is just the right thickness, and the fluidity of it gets into my lungs and I choke up and I climb up a tree and just sit there, talking to something which I don’t know how to explain to anyone but which pulls and pushes me away from people no matter how hard I try to be articulate.

Maybe there are too many gods between us.

Maybe my inability to form honest words comes from being too honest in my face.

Maybe there’s only so much honesty a person can give before they break apart.

Some days, I feel like I’m breaking apart, and the survivors are my shipwrecked body parts. I’ve got limbs flying everywhere and I had always imagined what weightlessness would feel like and this – this doesn’t ring true.         

I sometimes think that I am the three wise men, giving the only three things I own. And I give it all. Keep on giving until the only parts left of me are so thin even the moon at it’s most distant would aspire to it.

I say may god forgive us both, but these days I’m feeling more like there’s nothing left to forgive. So I try to stand tall, chest like a mountain.

Neck reaching like them trees that try to reach higher.

Heart marching like a parade.

Lungs the sound of bagpipes, so loud you can feel it from the moon.

Still, I wake in the middle of the night wanting to be braver.

Wanting to be fearless.

Wanting to be the girl who stands fearless in the heart of the dragon’s mouth.

Want to know what being brave feels like, and if it really does feel like flying.

Please don't make me love you

The night I tried to convince a stranger to swap shirts,

Saying his beard would look fly with my sequins

My heart took three steps backwards.

Your hands became rope that I tied myself up in

I never asked for this much

But I took it anyway-

I have a greedy heart.

It carries around dollars in four different currencies

No longer am I a fish holding silver between my teeth

These coins stick into my spine

And these problems tax more than I can afford to give.

I have forgotten how to be generous with my words

But when you asked me for a poem,

I peeled back the skin over my heart

Showed you the twenty-four bones of my rib cage

And the words strung between them.

Breathing in two silent halves of a pair-

You saw only the inconsistencies I carry within me.

This morning, I pulled down the bridge between them

With more hands than a street full of beggars

More fingernails to break off at the altar of

I don’t know what I believe anymore

(But I think it’s closer to heaven

Than anything I’ve ever seen before).

So please, don’t make me love you

Because these lungs hold too many contradictions

And my heart is as crooked as my fingers

It can’t hold onto anything

And I’ve broken too many bones

To be anything more than a five dollar bookshelf

Heart beating words so loudly

You can smell it from the street.

NY

You will go to New York on an impulse. Fall in love. You will get lost in Brooklyn in the middle of the night and be rescued by four Romanian girls in the Russian quarter. Or at least what you think is the Russian quarter. You will accidentally find Coney Island. You will guess the subways. Someone will say to their friends that they swear they have dreamt about you. You will be swindled out of $2 by a German guy dressed as Spiderman in Times Square. You will go to Battery Park. Drink a bottle of wine from a bottleshop a local took you to to try and impress you. You will get to know Lady Liberty with a background of buildings bigger than anything you’ve seen before. You will fall in love. Start sobbing at a Van Gogh self-portrait. Walk barefoot in central park trying to find the rock that Amy, Rory and The Doctor sat on. Wear stupid shoes. Buy a tin of beans at 12.30 in the morning and break the tab on it so you can’t even open it. Trust other people with your valuables. Be called brave. Feel brave for the first time in your life.

Notes // that night

That night was the certain type of perfect

Where the moon is not yet gone, still cuts like a scythe through the sky

I should have known from the moment he said that Clara was his favourite companion,

That there was never any hope

I was never blown into this world on a leaf,

I fell crashing through it, in a short skirt dressed as a kiss-o-gram dressed as a police officer

I never was an impossible girl, saving worlds and baking soufflés

I am a wasp’s nest

And I have stung too many hands bare and red

To be anything close to what he wanted.

I wanted to tell him that night

When everything was the way he said he had always hoped for

That I hadn’t drunk too much

That he still had his shoes on

That night I was beautiful, and he was never meant to notice.

And he never did.

Lightness // Shrinking Women

There are things I want to say to you

I peel them off me

Fold them into books

Put them underneath furniture to stop them from wobbling

How many hours have I spent hidden under rugs

Dripping peppermint oil over my fingertips

Hoping that would bring closure

The smell burns cool down my throat

And I wonder if this is what resolution feels like

Every day I trim away parts of myself

I never know peace until I am throwing away

The superfluous

My rubbish bin is overflowing

With history, with smells and old clothes and memories that no longer fit

I continue to shrink

Some days I believe that if I become smaller

I will have more control

I once talked to a friend about the lightness of being

Removing boats, cities, worlds

Until there was nothing but lightness

So I continue to let go

Measuring my intake in shot glasses

Forbidden to take more than what will fit through a straw

Closing my world until I can control it with bits of string

Tied to parts of my room

Back to my fingers where I can pull

What I want closer, another string to move things away

I walk through aisles of empty glass bottles

I whisper “protect me from what I want”

As my hands reach out for everything

“You want too much” I say

As if this condemnation of my hungry soul is enough

To stop me from burning my fingers

On flaming skin

You want too much

Your skin is blistered and seared

Your world has gotten too small

Since when did you forget about being large enough to hold the universe?