Who controls my life?

You.

I gave you the key,

the power over me.

My insecurity

Needing a like,

a heart,

a part of me

craving security

from obscurity.

A comment

on my submission,

to you.

To your acknowledgement.

On my accomplishment.

I'm addicted to praise,

a social media craze.

I'm not enough anymore,

an online whore.

Or maybe I never was.

The insecure child

who aimed to gratify,

 now grown up,

needing a praise high.

Because she's nothing

if she's not seen,

invisible and stuck between,

who she is and who she wants to be.

#poetry #challenge

Water-borne daughter

Born in a storm

Besides the banks of the Thames

Grand-daughter of the sea

Sailor's blood waves in me

Cruel fate raised me in a desert

cracked skin,

parched soul,

I ran to the sea,

San Diego 'n' me

Wet footprints in the sand

Sharp, salty tang in my nose

The water laps, laps at my skin

I drink you in.

But fate and jobs

led me back to the desert

where I wither, a sour grape

a hard raisin, unchewable

I just need water

for a sea-borne daughter

whose cells dry up

and flake away in the heat

of a desert day.

Your molecules bounced around your skin, an aura of anxiety and too much... everything. You radiated sunlight and radioactivity, lighting my world and mutating it. My Gemini dad - the Janus two-faced god of my childhood - I loved you and wanted to punch you in equal measures. You pushed me to the outer limits of myself. Made me achieve - goading, praising, berating, manipulating the best and the worst of out me. Because I am your daughter, kryptonite born of your own D.N.A. We were addicted to each other, I was your heroine and heroin. Now I'm a junkie still spiraling through withdrawal sixteen years later. My skin itches for your intense hugs, my mind crashes for one more debate, and my heart feels cut out. A cookie cutter dad shaped hole slowly bleeding out. When a star dies, it takes the universe with it. 

#challenge #fathersday #complicatedlove #grief