Your partner beside you,

a perfect and polished couple like the shiny cover of a vintage wedding magazine.

Across from a woman who’s fingers are nervously intertwined with her wife’s beside her.

And although typically adamantly and furiously opposed,

you will look her in the eyes,

And your hatred will subside,

As if it never existed in the first place,

Pouring into the faded carpet below your strictly planted feet.

Because you’re both dying.

No matter who you married,

Or where you came from,

Or how you make your coffee in the morning.

And as your vision becomes salty and blurred when you receive the news,

Each and every person in the stale sterile room resembles a soft fuzzy silhouette, undefined but human shaped.

Just like you.

No matter where their love is placed.

They too, are shattered like a mirror into millions of tiny shards, forever defined by the glittering displacement.

You share the same scarred fingertips once bloody, frantically trying to pull everything back together again.

But the reflection will never really be the same,

Warped and scarred.

Just like you.

No matter how they take their coffee.

Even if their cup is too sweet for you.

Because life is futile without love.

Even for you,

You who votes for the big men whose greedy , trigger hungry hands pry us apart.

The men who believe anything which is not same, must be less than.

The men who’s cigar smoke infiltrates the fresh air and wilts the petals of our flowers.

The men who rejoice in the severing of families, families who’s shared blood is dry cleaned out of their tailored white shirts.

Who believe life is but an entree for the pure of soul.

Who insists on bitter stale coffee.

But life and death don’t discriminate in the way you always have.

Leave the hatred in the greying carpet below you.

Relish in the rare gift which is life.

Stir some sugar in your coffee.

And place compassion before hatred.

Because life is futile without love.

Even for you.

Though I have always found refuge in the stars.

When dusk unfolds and the pinky orange mist subsides,

draining any trace of warmth,

leaving nothing but endless deep blue hoplesness,

speckled with glitter,

I can see vividly,

how it is the world will end.

violently,

deafeningly,

painfully.

The ring slipping softly onto my finger.

The veil draping delicately over my youth,

eternally impairing my perception.

The numbing certainty provoked somewhere deep inside my chest,

penetrating each fibre of my being,

each sleepless night beside a man,

a lover,

a partner,

a husband.

who’s body sprawls so carelessly across the matress,

next to

mine,

ours,

his?

Incongrously stiffened by the solace.

Rendering me dull.

My skin void of its nostalgic juvenility.

Not fatally grey,

A shade alike that of the clouds which infiltrate the clarity.

And though,

I am no longer confronted by my death as the sun collapses behind the horizon each night,

I can no longer bear witness to the speckled stars.

And restless in my

fatal indecision,

rigid aprehensiveness,

profound fear of the clouds unfolding,

I am unsure which is worse.

Step 1 - You must die

A man would never notice the restored stability of a womans heart rate when slipping his avaricious hands under her shirt,

Or the warm glow of her alleviation which clings to each disregarded word from the lips he stares at with the eyes of a predator.

A man will overlook any changes to a womans livelihood, the day she is dischaged from her hospital bed.

The day she is no longer dying.

He will simply take notice of the way her stomach no longer concaves under her protruding ribcage,

He will remenisce its fragility, it’s past inability to protect her heart.

A man will ruminate the fact that she looks like a Woman, no longer like a girl whom would lose any fight, without even throwing a punch.

He would abhor the way she acted unlike someone who’s weakened mind and body could not endure the concequences of saying “no”.

“What is the point in a Woman who is living, if she does not placate me?”

He will wish on every dandelion that she would die again, adopting the fragility of its structure, or lack there of, each soft particle of her being, dispersed and destroyed with a single breath.

This will be the most he has ever considered her.

This is why a Woman must die to be loved.

A womans pain,

and a mans desire,

will subside

simultaneously.

I’ve spent enough sleepless nights in it and let enough of my tears seep through the stiff foam mattress to call it mine.

The girl across from me in bed 10 takes the long route around her mattress to pick up the phone from her bedside table.

The 6 delicate steps consoling her slightly.

Shes pale.

Shes been that way since I arrived.

It breaks me to know that I will never see her healthy.

If that day is to ever come.

That she will always live in my mind as the girl whos christmas pajamas engulfed her entire frame.

That her hair will be eternally thin and her skin void of youthful glow.

The girl who hyperventilated over the phone at her mothers absence.

It had been 3 long days since she visited.

The girl who smiled with tear filled eyes across the dinner table to me as I grieved my fading fragility.

The girl whos compassion somehow prevailed past the harshness of her condition.

The inescapable pain endured.

Somewhere over the rainbow she is free.

Its 7:45am.

I hear the breakfast cart roll down the vinyl corridor.

I turn to the girl in bed 11, we sigh simultaneously.

We hated breakfast.

She joked about one of the younger girls and her consistent lack of table manners.

Somewhere over the rainbow her dad will tell her to move her elbows off the table.

Furrowing his eyebrows jokingly at an attempt to look angry.

she would giggle with a mouthful of pizza.

And slap her sisters hand as she tried to steal the last slice.

Somewhere over the rainbow she had never seen the inside of a pediatric ward.

I watch as the nurses rip the red and silver tinsel off the end of my plastic bedframe for the second time that week.

I’d never been suicidal.

Yet they still confiscated my plastic bags and scissors.

I don’t fight it anymore.

My body is too limp.

“did my heart drop below 50 again last night?”

I already know the answer.

I’m unsure why I bother to ask.

The piercing ring of my monitor had woken me up 7 times last night.

And I can feel the weakness in my chest.

“28bmp”

Nurse phoebe purses her lips together gently.

Something in the softness of her eyes floods me with guilt.

The way she cared so deeply for all of us.

The screams and threats she received.

“ 3 days until christmas”

She smiled handing over my colourful arrangement of pills.

“Hmm”

I reply.

Somewhere over the rainbow my parents aren’t sleepless in their anxiousness.

They aren’t frozen by the fear that my heart will give out.

We spend my last childhood christmas eve by the sparkling tree.

Watching stupid movies whilst we eat dinner.

My mothers lips kissing my forehead gently before I fall asleep.

Consoled by their closeness.

And the warmth of my body which feels so distant in my near mortality.

“ do you need the bathroom before breakfast”

I nod as I timidly place myself into the wheelchair.

I pick at the corners of the fraying black fabric on the handlebars.

Something they do not tell you about this illness is that you’re worth does not lie beside you in that hospital bed.

It resides in the girl who could have been.

The girl over the rainbow.

Who dances around her room to the soft hum of her favourite vinyl.

Her thick hair flowing in the morning sun which peaked through the kitchen window.

Her mind and heart fully intact.

Strong.

It takes time to outgrow worthlessness.

The emptiness sustains you when you’ve gone so long without more.

6 months later.

I sit upright in my bed.

Surrounded by childhood stuffed animals.

I sip at my perfectly honeyed milky tea.

The computer on my lap plays my favourite film.

My cat purs softly beside me.

My thick hair plaited softly behind my back.

My parents are in the living room down the hallway.

My chest is warm.

After years of running the wrong way,

I caught up to my worth.

Not in a state of distress or absurd desperation and planning.

Quietly.

In the moment I danced.

Painlessly.

Without the assumption that my intentions lay elsewhere.

The moment I agreed to my favorite dessert.

The kind of mental liberation I had never believed in.

The comfort in normalcy which found me,

Somewhere over the rainbow.

I hated the way the sun collapsed behind the horizon when I lay out on my trampoline at 7,

the goosebumps on my forearm.

Not because I hated the stars,

but because I realised it all had to end at some point.

The summer sky turning dark and cruel.

Piercing my skin.

Forever.

I felt the years passing me like crashing waves.

Something which could never be stopped.

No matter how much I pleaded the dandelions.

Or refused to turn the pages of my calendar.

All those nights sleepless with rage.

Paralysed by the question my mother asked.

Whats wrong?

Something.

Nothing.

Everything.

The clouds wont stop passing and I cant keep myself from growing taller and the world wont stop spinning and my dogs fur is turning grey and the summer went away and I never want to be too old to hold your hand in a crowd.

I’ve always been defeatist.

Pessimistic of the minutes and the hours and the days.

For pessimism only exists because love does.

Love you cannot bear to live without.

But time has freed me from the shackles of every moment in life that has felt utterly inescapable.

My hair has grown past my shoulders.

The summer has come and gone leaving my skin prickled.

Except this time I find peace in the cold air.

For I know the summer sun will rise again.

I thought it looked like letting the phone ring, routinely journaling, long hikes, and silent nights.

And whilst recite and granting yourself privacy are critical aspects of an enjoyable life, I don’t believe that much can be discovered about ones self through polarized isolation.

For each time guilt or shame or confusion have overtaken my conscious , I’ve followed every rule in the “self gratitude” book sold to me on instagram .

I’ve said my affirmations in the mirror, eaten a healthy breakfast and skipped school to spend more time discovering the intricacies of my wrongdoings and dwelling on relentless internal conflicts.

In search of comfort.

But when all you focus on is getting over something.

It begins to consume you whole.

what once is a pebble sized feeling of guilt in your heart silently yet hastily evolves into a boulder, cracking ribs with each heavy heartbeat.

Because you will find yourself on a relentless and endless journey of discovery asking

“who am I ?”

Not in the sense of the music you listen to or the way you do your hair.

But who you really are, in your core.

and in this state of self discovery,

The blade will get you closer to the soul.

Your protruding hipbones indicate a closeness and alignment to your centre.

And the blood trickles down your skin like the peaceful stream you walked past rashly on your 5am hike.

And blinded by your ignorance you will never find the inevitable answer to your question

“You are nothing”

Solitude breeds pain like wildfire.

For if you had have picked up the phone you would be greeted by the voice of a person who could speak endlessly about your nothingness.

The barrister at your local cafe would have smiled at the notice of your distinct void.

The crossing guard would have recognised you on the way to school each morning.

Because you could have been everything.

And you still can.

For struggling transparently and openly extinguishes the flame of solitude.

And suddenly seclusion isn’t punishment, its just alone time.

And emotions are felt not dwelled upon.

And the boulder is freed from your chest.

So no, I don’t believe you need seclusion to know yourself.

I think you’re found in the belly laughs and arguments and embarrassment and nervous glances and small talk and deep conversations and everything in between.

Because when you give into living publicly you can discover more than just the deep ache in your chest privately.

Or the way you look beneath the skin.

And you can be everything and nothing all at once.

I wish that were true.

For my room is a reflection of everything I am not.

I wish my soul were as clean and fresh as the cotton bedsheets I obsessively wash twice a week.

And that my perfuse implicit guilt could be vacuumed like dust in the cracks of my floorboards.

I wish my mind were as predictable as the lacey curtains which surround me as I sleep.

The repetitive floral motif exactly as anticipated.

The same 217 roses encompassing me each night.

I wish my thoughts were as impermanent as my messy room.

I wish that consolation was as simple as folding and sweeping.

I guess I do attempt to scrub my skin raw each day.

and burn off the disarray.

The dependable 217 calories in my dinner each night.

For there is a brief moment.

In between the scouring and sweating.

Where I am as free and vacant as my freshly vacuumed bedroom.

Where my room is a reflection of my mind.

But then the blood stains my skin.

And somehow I am dirtier than before.

And my core is harsh and coarse.

Unlike the soft and gentle stuffed animal I’ve held to my chest each night.

Since I lived in a different bedroom.

With floorboards coated in acrylic paint and specks of glitter.

Flooded with heartening sunlight which seeped through colourful curtains.

Curtains I could stare at for hours, wallowing in the beautiful patterns.

Like the messy curls on my head.

Before I could count to 217.

Before I realised the patterns were immutable.

Or that my curls should be scorched out.

When glitter stuck to the soles of my feet.

When uncertainty was thrilling instead of threatening.

Nightmares as impermanent as my messy room.

Vacuumed away with loose specks of glitter.

I wish I were a reflection of my childhood bedroom.

for maybe then I could reside in my imperfections.

for maybe then I could be pure again.

And the shrinking stars’ sternums are unmistakable on screen.

A set full of collarbones and sunken stomachs on a children’s film.

A disney movie culpable for death.

Because I met a girl named Lila in a hospital ward.

She tied pink ribbons to the end of her bed and wore miffy pajamas to sleep each night.

She missed her final day of primary school.

Oh ,Lila

11 years old.

The age when you can dream of something bigger, without the suppression of reality which growth only perpetuates.

A childhood wasted.

Because she wanted to look like the princess on TV.

Because Lila’s heart was too fragile, her mind too innocent, her body too numb to know that this is what dying feels like.

She cried at the sight of mashed potatoes on her plate.

Because a sickly woman on instagram told her that carbs were the root of all evil.

And Lila blindly trusted her because she looked like the princess on TV.

Each night I heard her cry through the paper thin walls.

The paper thin walls embellished with fairies and mermaids.

because she missed her parents and her dog.

and the warm solace of her room which the ward could not facilitate.

and the glow in the dark stars on her ceiling .

Each night I head her begging for an adults dose of painkiller to soothe the interminable ache in the centre of her chest.

From the 5am rounds and wheelchairs and bedrests and the acute guilt which followed each mealtime and the kind of pain not even an experienced mind could endure.

Because this is what it feels like to be a princess.

Oh Lila,

She showed me how to paint a bunny rabbit, I showed her how too make paper snowflakes.

We laughed when my bunny looked more like a dog.

Her paper snowflake was beautiful.

Soft and delicate and intricate.

Like a princess on TV.

But abruptly, the current will change.

In the way it always has.

And princesses will no longer be withering away.

And the birds will continue too sing like lilas muffled yells through paper thin walls.

And the world will continue spin as it did before.

And the sunlight will continue seep through the clouds like tears from Lilas eyes at the sight of carbs.

And the princesses will continue to live their liberated lives and forget about their protruding hip bones.

And Lila will die in that hospital room.

Maybe nuanced lines will come clear.

Maybe I can kiss a girl with lips as sweet as honey, with sober vulnerability.

Not vodka stained in a drunken impulse.

Or tainted with the faint gleam of detachment.

And we will know that what we feel is love.

And that wont be a bitter truth to grapple with.

And maybe the world would throw petals instead of rocks.

Whilst our hands and souls interlink.

Not anxiously under the dinner table.

Or shamefully behind closed doors.

But freely in the fresh air, the soft breeze of acceptance, of mental liberation, authenticity without criticism,

without eyes that shoot daggers at our intertwined fingers.

Maybe they wont try to pry us apart.

Maybe they’ll find solace in our love.

Not disgust.

Or perversion.

Two equally unfair sides to a rigged coin.

Maybe we’ll be viewed as natural, unsurprising.

And I can love the way my friends can.

Overthinking messages

And nervous glances in the hallway

Textbook teenage romance.

Where we’re praised for our unconditional love.

As if one of us were a boy.

As if I could love the way my friends can.

Every room would feel empty.

Every birthday a futile waste of time,

Pleading my candles for reunification and receiving nothing more that melted wax and ashes in my frosting.

If I had lost you

Every crowd would be a maze,

Searching for an absent path,

that would lead me to your arms,

The arms which held me from my very first breath,

The arms which drew me in during every moment of uncertainty,

Consoling any bad dream.

If I had lost you

I’d become sacreligious,

Painting murals on the churches of the love god took away.

I would have fallen back into my old ways.

Lying in that hospital bed once again.

Because maybe if I starved enough this time my flesh would begin to rot,

Maybe I could sink into the earth and lie in the dirt with you one last time,

Like the picnics by the playground at 5 years old,

Where I dug my tiny hands into the soil

You beside me.

If I had lost you

I would dig and dig and dig until I found you.

If I had lost you

I would have lost the summer too,

eternal thunderstorm.

I would go outside on a july night to see the winter for what it really is.

Sharp air and heavy rain.

The skin on my legs would prickle and my fingers would turn white and numb.

The tempest wind would shove me to my knees.

My blood sinking into the icey concrete.

But I wouldn’t be cold.

I’d take the long way home,

I’d let the rain soak through my shirt,

Let it stick to my purple tinted lips.

engulfing me whole.

But I wouldn’t be cold. Or warm. Or anything in between.

A nuanced kind of numbness that aches like pain killer on a broken ribcage.

If I had lost you

I’d regret all the little pauses in conversation,

For I should have filled them with “ I love you”

If I had lost you

I would have lost myself,

Because of what you taught me.

Because of what you gave me.

everything.

Men approve women who scrub their skin raw.

Women who are clean.

But love is filthy.

Love is sinking into open arms when your hair is greasy and your stomach is bloated.

Love is them kissing you anyway.

It’s a mutual understanding that your lips don’t need to touch.

Because just knowing each other is enough.

Love prevails through dirt and grime and filth.

Like wiping tears off bare skin, letting your fingers softly trace every freckle and imperfection.

Its cleaning blood from open wounds.

And kissing healing scars.

Love is taking off the bra that digs into your ribs.

Not for lustful gaze.

Or unconsenting touch.

A deep breath after years of suffocation.

Its stripping down until all thats left is two bare souls.

Not just naked bodies.

It takes bravery to be dirty.

Because all society wants me to be is scoured clean.

Appeasing a man is pure, but it clings to every inch of my body like a filthy plague.

Like a nauseating scent no amount of vigorous scrubbing could remove.

Because true love is filthy.

Because loving a girl is dirty, but it provides such profound catharsis.

like finally opening a window after lifelong seclution.

Like the sweetest, softest breeze.

Because I didn’t notice the minutes passing.

Because I didn’t pay enough attention to my perfect cup of chamomile.

And now its a carcass of what could have been.

Just a bitter after taste of the fleeting sweetness and warmth I once had the opportunity to grasp.

I should have drank it with utmost intention.

Savoured every warm drop for what it was.

Like childhood.

Like fingerpaintings and sand castles and monkey bars and the simple joy of existing without guilt, without the implicit nauseating shame that followed adolescence.

Like a bitter sip of stale grey tea.

I should have held the mug between my hands, let the warmth penetrate my tiny calloused fingertips.

Like my 15th summer, like the solace of belonging and the year it all got better before it all got even worse.

I should have smelt the honeyed steam, let it wash gently over my sunkissed face.

I miss the past.

I miss every moment I can never get back, every perfect cup of tea.

I should have woken up at dusk each day.

Just to sit in the comfort and certainty for longer.

Just to cherish the fact that everything was ok.

To let each sip of chamomile alleviate me.

I sit and stare at the frigid mug in my hands and wonder how it was ever so warm.

because the surface is collecting dust and suddenly what once seemed so distinct and unmistakable is so profoundly unfamiliar and obscured.

Like moments turning into memories.

Like the noise slowly muffling and the light slowly distorting.

Like the warm glow of what used to be.

Like a perfect cup of tea

.

These shoes, along with the countless other pairs collecting dust under my bed, were corpses of the kind of devotion only true love can harness.

And I don’t dance anymore,

So do I hold less love than before?

I was never the lead.

I stood to the back in class.

But I could always call myself a dancer.

Since I got my first tutu.

Since I was three years old.

Since I grasped onto the bottom barre and got kicked out of class for giggling too much.

Dance was always there.

As I held those point shoes, as they fit so naturally in my palms they way they always had, I saw an old version of myself.

The smell of hairspray in my perfect bun, sweat seeping through my deep purple leotard, gossiping with girls as we tied our ribbons, the sound of crunching rosin, the sharp yell of our teacher, the sort of comfort and security that can only be evoked by a life long dedication, like the plane hitting the tarmac on a return flight ,like a film I had watched before.

Spinning and spinning and spinning for what I hoped would be forever.

Until eventually the mirror began to distort.

Until the other girls bodies didn’t grow the way that mine did.

Until I attended regular psychiatrist appointments,

Until I spent too many sleepless nights in hospital beds,

my head spinning and spinning and spinning,

For dance to feel the way it used to.

And so I found myself,

Praying for a one way flight,

Searching for a film I’d never seen before.

As I sat motionless on my floor I wondered…

Where did all my love go?

All the hours spent stretching and sweating and crying and rehearsing and torturing my body and spinning and spinning and spinning?

Did it fall through the cracks of the floorboards in my childhood bedroom, along with loose specks of glitter and other fleeting dreams?

Did I accidentally burn it off when running for miles away from my inevitable teenage growth?

Or throw it up in a school bathroom stall?

Or let it seep out with the blood into these pointe shoes in my palms?

I often find myself looking for the gaps in life.

The places along the way where I must have lost my childhood innocence.

The places in my heart where I must have developed some kind of deficiency.

The graveyard in my bedroom filled with corpses of loyalty.

The love that disappeared.

Except true love doesn’t disappear.

It waits.

Somewhere deep in your chest,

Wanting to be found again,

Like specks of glitter in the cracks of childhood floorboards.

hoping to be plucked up by a crisp summer breeze.

Spinning and spinning and spinning

Because I look to the corner of my room, and see a pair of skates.

The ones I lace around my ankles with the kind of love I used to the blood stained remains in my hands.

With creases and smudges and dulling blades

and the kind of devotion only true love can harness.

True love does not disappear,

It persists through uncertainty,

for here I find myself again,

Spinning and spinning and spinning.

I believed the higher power would save me.

Because it felt like it was holding me, not like the warm embrace of a loved one, but like how the winter holds you, forcing you to live a life of isolated solidarity, of lonely comfort, like how the syncopated lullaby of raindrops sings you to sleep.

I used to be religious.

Please heavenly father forgive for I have sinned, indulging in a slice of cake on my 14th birthday.

After I vowed to hunger.

After I promised to devote my life to you.

I snarled with envy at the non believers, with their blatant autonomy and blissful ignorance.

The ones who couldn’t feel the burden of sinning, the profound ache of blasphemy.

I used to be religious.

I prayed to be christened by sunrise when my weak and slowing heart rate echoed through my pillow at night.

Please heavenly father, let me stay.

I starved until my heart gave out.

until the pains in my chest became debilitating.

until the scale brought tears to my mothers eyes.

How much longer must I run lord? For I cant see past the stars.

How much life must I give lord? For I fear im running out.

But worship never ended, no matter the anguish.

Like addiction.

Like cigarette stained finger tips texting a friend.

Im clean.

Because living freely is conviction when obsession is your only source of fuel.

Because to truly commit to religion is to let it fully engulf you, to be molded into something unrecognisable, to sacrifice individuality.

Until eventually the rain stops.

and the winter is just winter.

And you’re dying to appease a god who will no longer repent your sins.

Final impenitence.

Living to praise a father who only loves those who placate him with submission.

Those driven by control.

Those who fear the uncertainty of reality.

Those who want to feel 14 again.

I used to be religious.

God loved me so dearly.

Now I live a life, blatantly autonomous, blissfully ignorant, eternally grateful for the lords final blessing.

abandonment.