arched backs and skin stretched so thin I can see pink.

I’m dodging outstretched limbs,

You’ll never lay a hand on me

and yet you remain there for eternity

reaching

I’d give up almost immediately.

I am surrounded by bodies.

I wonder if they’re embarrassed to be so

flaunted.

I wonder if they’re looking at her the way that I am.

I watch her still marble skin and I imagine it twisting and melting

around me and I finally feel warm.

She’s not looking at me though.

She will never look at me the way I want her to,

but I think she’s beautiful and I think if she could see me

she’d tell me I’m beautiful too.

and the hairs on my body

raise like needles

I thank them but it’s really not necessary

they draw blood from your hands.

I say it’s fine, really,

my skin is

serrated.

and I conclude that is why

you don’t want to hold me

You

were jealous of me.

That I could stomach it

Great minds.

But while I was bruising my knees

at the basin

you were filling up your stomach

swallowing and keeping it down

But after all I found

it was you that was diseasing me

Dis - easy

This is easy

Churn and swirl and dizzy

not with infatuation not with

at least.

you

I became out of touch with myself so I started to shower with the lights off. I used to do this when I was a teenager, so sickened and frightened by the sight of myself, wasting water, sat on the floor of the bathtub. I’d put the plug in and measure time. The water would feel cold around my stomach. My bathtub at home was rough. When you sat on it for too long, which I often did, it’d become so so uncomfortable, but I still stayed.

I always put my guitar back in the same place. I get upset at myself when my fingertips burn and feel so sensitive after playing. For things I claim to love so much I seem to get so beaten down by them. I can never accept a talent. Always have to be better. I will never recognise my best. I think about where I come from and why I think so much about the things I think about. I think about fathers and little girls on their shoulders. I don’t feel lost. I don’t feel lost. I really don’t.

I have always been waiting for something. Waiting to finish school. Waiting to graduate. Waiting to move house. Waiting and distracted. I am someone filled by constant distraction. I use it. I probably abuse it. Someone asked me today what I do to ‘have a laugh’ and I couldn’t answer. Yet I am always occupying myself? I do things all the time but none of it is for enjoyment, for me, just distraction.

It smelt like cooked pasta when I walked home today. I remembered eating dinner with my brothers. I remember they all have different lives now. We are lucky.

I wish I could change the way I think about what I do. I’ve been crying naturally a lot again. It’s grounding. I find it meditative. It reminds me that I am real. My favourite thing I was ever told to do in therapy was to, when I’d feel anxious or anything under that umbrella, pay attention to what makes me real. Grounding. I love to ground myself. Use my senses. Connect them with other things. The taste in my mouth I get when I walk up the hill to my house. How it feels in my throat and my face when I am genuinely happy. Overwhelming joy. Emotion is something I can hold. The way I go cold and hot at the same time when I have difficult conversations with people. Hurt. I feel hurt. I can bring back feelings of hurt from when people have hurt me or I have hurt myself.

I don’t know how to finish this but I don’t owe an ending to anyone

ouch

I wanted to be famous. For a really really long time. But I think that was just because I had such a lack of respect for myself and so little people around me I believed and idolised the idea of having millions of people worship me. I wanted to be an actor. But I was never confident. I felt overshadowed, selfishly. My brothers were all a lot more outgoing and confident than I was, still are. I used to look up 50+ monologues for teenagers at night and silently recite them to myself. I’d get angry when my mouth would dry up and overproduce sticky saliva when I’d go on for too long. I’d make myself cry sometimes. I thought that I was good. Really really good.

I wanted to be a model until a girl told me in Year 9 that I had cankles, so I started sleeping with my legs up against the wall every night for about 6 months.

I wanted to be a singer. I was good at singing. I’m trying to find my love for singing again. I’m playing the guitar more often after getting my nails shorter — I can’t believe I gave up that passion for vanity.

Still, I wanted to be perceived. I wanted to be idolised. I wanted to prove to myself that someone, anyone, could place me high in their expectations and anything I’d do, I’d meet them, because they loved me and that would be enough.

I wanted to be loved.

Despite wanting to be so many things, I was always certain. But now, not so much. My passions are fleeting, if ever apparent. I want to make people happy and I’m collecting and holding and polishing and perfecting all the ways I can do that.

I think, overall, I’m comfortable with not knowing where to go at the minute. My figs are there, some have rotted and are being eaten by maggots, some are still flowers. But right now I’m happy making coffee and making people smile.

I’m good at loving.

Loving in spite of, loving despite. Loving so hard that I rifle through the words that I love to express the love I hold.

I love and live for evidence of the people I love. The scent of my mother —

Citron, jasmine and teak wood.

Marks from the heat of a thumb in a book lent to me by someone I love.

Loving with such intensity that new muscle tissue grows in my heart filling the gaps from where I was perhaps not loved as much as I should have been

More on my heart, how grateful and proud I am to hear it pound

It’s way out of my chest

Through my throat

Falling out of my eyes as saline, hitting my tongue. Swallowing it and sitting warm and safe in my stomach.

Intensity, simplicity.

Love heavy

Love strong

Love lightly

Find love in the search,

Find love in journey.

Let it in, allow it.

Love is not linear. Love is a piece of string dropped to the floor.

You should not feel

Ashamed to love.

To be in love with love

As much as I am.