privelidge doesn't break through walls

privelidge doesn't scream so loud to be set free so everyone hears

it doesn't suffer so your mother does not have to when she's seventy

'maturity' is the product of growing up too quickly for your age

and by growing up too quickly i mean seeing things you don't even remember because seven year old me did not want to be present

being sad isn’t me crying all the time

it’s my room being messy

wearing my work shirt for two weeks straight without washing

my makeup powders open and spilt

mugs in every corner

it’s cancelling on friends but desparate enough to arrange a doctor’s appointment

and not turning up to it

it’s not brushing your teeth before you go to sleep

for five days

not washing your hair but the only time you brush your teeth is in the shower?

but at least you can send the cv’s for jobs you won’t attend the interview for

starting books you know you won’t finish

but maybe the whole point isn’t in finishing, maybe it’s about starting

one

her name is a wooden ship

to try and force it into his glass bottle heart would only break her

but isn’t that what they describe as- love?

not being able to see the explosion even though you’re the one holding the bomb, and the bomb is also you.

how it’s also like discovering the ocean after years of puddle jumping

it is realising that you have hands

hands that shatter the glass bottle

it is hard to stop loving the ocean, even after it has left you drowning, gasping, salty

and the ocean, it was so wreckless with me that i’ll never run out of things to write about

how well a drought can dress itself like a boy

how i can be trapped under the water yet feel parched

and when he gives me droplets i call myself full.

two

her name is also going to museums to admire wooden ships

realise other things have history too

when you’re not sure whats worse, the nightmares about your sides splitting open or the dreams where he held your jaw like it was the life he was clinging onto.

or how the way his smile creeps into every stranger you meet

i bet if you were to dust my heart for fingerprints you would find his palms

like a child hand painting making their mark wrecklessly

you might aswell tape your eyelids to your forehead because at least you can lie to yourself while you’re awake

stay up until 2, 2:30, 3

brew tea with the bags under your eyes

write

write words because when he used them to lie, they were the only truth you had left

write until you’ve used every metaphor in your vocabulary

until you start using the same ones over and over, because there’s only so many ways to describe being destroyed

one day it will all come to an end like these words, though they say love is inifinite

because you grew new skin he’s never touched

three

why apologise for loving until you burst

my capacity to feel needs no pardon, i need no mending

i am not broken, i’m just a little more explosive.

let me feed you all the synonyms of love apart from the word itself

let me make you feel it but never speak it into existence

let me keep you close so you can provide me with the comfort i need but never indulge in reciprocation to prevent myself from suffocation

you’ll be smothered in your own echoes when you call me

i write from the regret it wasn't blood i shed for you

but darling how can my parched veins bring you life

when they have been drained from the regret of handing my spare oil when his cogs ran rusty leaving my own, faulty

i am not your whick, not the candle that lights up your room and disposed once your passion has burned through.

anger joy despair are universally felt

so it’s only fair

that art cannot exist without emotion

your tears spill over the canvas

brushstrokes of blood seep so deep

you drain yourself dry to show them

to connect

in hopes that someone will understand that the sea you painted is made up from the same tears as theirs

when you release all your cares

and the fear of being vulnerable

to be humble

in the comfort of true understanding

but what if it hurts like hell

i know the ruins

i know the racket so well

what if this is all the love you’ll ever get

and you know you can never forget

you how fell in his opinion

when you fell in love with him

mending each bone of my past lover’s bodies

calming the mind of the anxious catching each wave of their tsunami in my small arms

so open yet not strong enough to carry the burdens of the addicted, relying not only on the smoke that fills his lungs but my home i’ve built around them

built a fence to keep them safe yet in turn trapped myself within my obsession of wanting to be needed.

i am a freshly open wound

red, hot feeling every feather brush and stab at its fullest

if i were a word i would be un-numbed

happiest of the content

saddest of lonely

always giving people the power to open you up

you hand them the map of You

they become your god- all seeing, all knowing

the rush and pain of collapsing into their arms trusting them to bear your weight

they cut themselves open just to show you each and every branch of their nerves

the thickest

most delicate

you trace them careful not to snap them

following them like a path around his body with your fingertips

memorising each and every turn as if he was home and you were terrified of getting lost

straight ahead from his shoulders, left at the joint, down his arm, winding around his bones and around his heart

making sure to never forget it

the road to Him

you poke and prod around observing him to see if it hurts

of course it doesn’t

and he doesn’t tell you when it does

but rather shows and guides you to his thickest most sensitive vein

you feel the rush of his blood- an ocean

hear the rhythm of the tide from the inside of his chambers

not a single space stands in between you

you can crush him with a pinch

stop the flow of his rivers, life will come to a halt

but he trusts you not to

and if they ever do you hope it was never their intention.