You walk into the mirror box and it’s like walking
into the imagery of one of your own poems.
You’re caught in the mirror maze, searching for yourself
in the mirrors at angles but all you can see is yourself,
back to back in the mirror tunnel, yourself again and again
until you can’t recognise her anymore.
Is it me? you ask and it is, but you’re still not convinced.
Is it just me in the mirror box, legs up to my chest, eyes closed
because I am horrible, you quote, but you’re standing up.
You’re standing up in too many of your own poems, in this permanence
of your fleeting reflection which proves you are real but has become
so metaphorical that being in the mirror box makes you question
the possibility of yourself as this person who is being reflected.
But this isn’t a poem, I tell myself. I don’t live in the second person.
She tries to cast aside the metaphors for a moment to try on the clothes
but you’re stuck in the mirror box, in the nightmares of my own poetry.

I find you in the margins of old school books,
in the cupboard where I keep my old notepads,
in the stories I’ve forgotten I’ve written.
It’s all scraps of myself in rounded letters,
uncanny because it looks like me,
sounds like me,
but it’s you and it is you
but it’s like me too.

I’m opening you (and me) back up and I hate you.
I hate you, but here we are,
in the mirror maze,
all these mes and yous
in the endless tunnel of mirrors,
back to back, side to side,
caught in ourselves at every angle.
We’re all the same: We’re all so different.
None of us are good.

I hate you.

I hate you at every age,

Then reality splays, sprawls flat out in front of me, exams, money, work, decisions, tight nooses that bind me to life. Get your head out of the clouds, girl  *(2012)

at every stage,

Big smiles, A stars, clever girl, the anomaly, dry compliments, sand paper against my skin. Locked in, not a word, just a mind gone grey, a growing mass of dust that swallows the light and only allows for glasses poured half empty* (2014)

at every moment,

I don’t fit in, never have done, never will. I’m always one step ahead or one step behind. I’m never quite there. But no one understands. They say they do but they don’t. I’m different and I don’t like it but I don’t want to change because this is who I am and whatever happens, I have to put up with it (2012)

all your hatred, you happiness, your ignorance and your sadness

The scab peels and leaks. Too soon to heal, too late to undo the fall. Tomorrow, you’ll trip again and your skin will bleed but this time you’ll know where to find the first aid kit. (2013)

You make me sick.

The world was blue today, a metaphorical wish wash of tears and a meagre ocean. Ice cream dripped in depression, picnic blankets snagged on pebbles and the kite committed suicide on the telephone lines. (2013)

I hate the scraps you’ve left behind

I put bits of you in the bin. I put you out for recycling.
I donate you to charity shops and so you live on and I can’t get rid of you.
There’s no way out of this mirror maze,
no way to avoid the mirrors at angles,
no way for me to escape you or for you to escape me.

There are so many of you and I literally want to beat you all to death.
Oh, I hate you. I hate you.
I don’t think I’ve ever hated anything more than I hate you.
I hate the tone of your words,
I hate your stupid sadness.
I hate your happiness.
I hate your hope.
I hate the memories of your laughter.
I hate the memories of your fun.
I hate you for all the things you’ve done and
never had time to feel bad for.
I hate you in the photographs,
in the words, in the schoolbooks,
in the poems that I’ve shared,
I hate, I hate, I hate.

I wish I could smash up this maze of mirrors and you,
but then I’d only be left with myself
and I hate her too.

We’re back to back and you’re resting against my shoulder blades
or your fingers are digging into my collar bones,
and you’re resting your mouth against my ear to spit in it.
Or I’m standing up and you’re kneeling behind me,
banging your arms on the floor until they break or
maybe you’re at my feet, tearing your face off
or you’re at the station, waiting for the train
so you can jump in front of it.
I’m just trying to have a normal conversation,
trying to smile and be interested and sound normal and good
and calm and happy and all those things that I should be,
and you’re right there, spitting in my ears,
scratching your arms off, breaking your bones,
leaning your head against my arm and murmuring,
I wish I was dead. I know, I say,
I know, I know, I know and then
I manage a nod and smile and a yes,
and you’re back at my ear, banging
your arms against the wall,
carving your chest out and
laying down on the floor
to break your teeth into the carpet.
I wish, you say, I know, I say,
I was, you say, yeah, I say,
dead, you say and I attempt a laugh.

I always imagined you’d be the forever kind of girl. The girl to sit and shake her head at me when I threw stale cake out the window for the birds. The girl who’d lie down on the floor with me and tell me it wasn’t the end of the world. The girl who’d come in every evening and ask me whether I thought it was going to rain tomorrow.

I thought we were forever kind of people.

My mind turned too quickly to fairy tales and to the stories of first love that I always pretend I don’t believe in. We strolled arm in arm down a beach, off into the sunset, but it was a sunset scheduled between work, scripts, characters and miles and months apart. It was only the warm, sticky arms, the smooth fingers and the morning hair that turned it into a forever kind of feeling.

There were always clocks between us. You prized your watch above anything else and you let its hands turn and turn, conscious of every tick, every tock that came between us. You were waiting for the ending but I didn’t want to stop living in the story.

I thought our impermanence was permanent. We were living in forever in fleeting moments, in an hourglass continually turned round and round. I was writing us a forever kind of story that didn’t end with happily ever after because there was no final page.

You kept looking everywhere for that final page.

I kept it blank in my pocket. I couldn’t build you a house to hang your clock on the wall in, I couldn’t build you a fence or plant you a garden or bake you a cake to throw to the birds when we’d had enough of it. The only ending is the end of the world and I don’t think that was the ending you wanted me to write.

Maybe, maybe you were a forever kind of person but I just wasn’t a forever kind of girl.

You hold them all at arms length
and hug yourself into yourself
and you stand there, so remote,
so angry that everyone backs up
behind the yellow line.
And you sew yourself up
and put yourself in the freezer
and you don’t miss it,
don’t want it,
until there’s wailing in your ribcage
and you’re sitting, looking
at your own reflection
and it suddenly hits you
how pathetic it is.
So then it starts to scare you
and you feel it, tossing
restlessly inside you
and you want it to go back to sleep.
But what are you going to do,
because it’s frightening, really,
isn’t it and you’re not going to do anything.
You know it and you know it,
and you’re going to end up so alone,
and you know it and you know
you’ve done it.
So then you think you’re in the brown space,
slipping between the folds of the real and
hasn’t anyone ever told you there’s only
so much air to breathe in the liminal?
But you know it and you know
you’re going to be so alone
and maybe you deserve it
because you made it
and you know it.
So it scares you and you
don’t do anything about it,
because what’s life anyway,
but a game of trying not to
cry into books at train stations.

(This mentions suicide)

Scene 1

A university campus, just gone five.
It’s already dark and the moon is out,
distorted as though the sky has been
blocked out with a pane of frosted glass.
There’s something not right,
what with the moon and
the lack of light on campus.

I enter, running away.

I: I’m wondering how fast I can move my legs
without running. I just need everyone to get
out of my way. It’s too dark and the moon’s
not right. How rude am I?
How rude am I?
The shadows are walking – slowly –
too slowly, and I just need to get out of here.
I ran out of classroom, the first one out.
How rude am I?
I want to apologise for who I am as a person.
It’s too dark to be here, amongst the shadows.
The people are the darkness,
everything is the darkness.
How rude am I?

SHE needs to calm down.
The dark is nothing but winter coming on,
and it’s only in poetry that winter
symbolises death, misery and decay.
The trees are losing their leaves,
but there’s no loss if it keeps
them safe.
Campus is a dark place,
but SHE needs to calm down
because it’s her who’s
made it haunted.

Scene 2

A hill, steep and sluggish.
I is still half running,
stepping into the road
and back onto the pavement
before the headlights can catch her.

I: It would all be fine if I could just get out on time.
Why do I need to keep running away?
I want to run.
(She was hit by a car, smashed a leg.
What happened?
I wasn’t looking, because I was rushing.
I just stepped out because I didn’t care anymore
because I just needed to get on the train.)
I hope I’m not making noises.
If the headlights catch me,
will I look scared?
What do I look like?

I crosses her fingers, still half-running.

The house is fine. The guinea pigs are fine.
It hasn’t been set on fire.
(What keeps you alive?
My guinea pigs.)
No, imagine everyone else talking about
all the things life has to offer.
(What keeps you alive?
Laziness.
Laziness?
I can’t be bothered to **** myself.
That’s all that keeps you alive?
Yes.)
No.
No. I wouldn’t do it anyway.
This self who talks like that is the fictional self
in my head, the one I want to sometimes be
who can talk about things
and get into these perfect situations
where she can talk about things.
You can’t look at the time until you get to the bottom of the hill.

Scene 3

A road, leading to the station.
I looks ridiculous half running,
as if the university is
going to grow legs and
start chasing her.
I can barely breathe
because she’s got ten minutes
to do a five minute journey.

SHE needs to calm down,
but cut her some slack.
The moon doesn’t look right tonight.

I: (I missed the train so I go up,
over the bridge and wait
for the freight train and then
I throw myself under it.)
I try to think how much it will
hurt but I can’t imagine it.
I won’t do it.
Nearly there now.
The moon doesn’t look right.

SHE really can’t imagine it.

I: Time to daydream.

I puts herself in another body
and goes about in their life
whilst her feet touch
the ground and her body
touches the air.
Her mind is
literally
elsewhere.

Scene 4

A station. The ground
is dusted with grit, ready
for winter – the practical
winter, not the poetic one.

Enter I. She finds her place on the station.
Her legs hurt.

The train is due on time,
and sure enough, it
curves round the corner,
lighting up the tracks.

SHE *really needs to calm down.

I feel at home in the liminal        in the space inbetween,
between past, future, reality       fantasy, this, that.  
In the liminal, the past and         future lap around me,
demanding waves that climb      high and share their spray.
The salt water clings to my          hair, stiffens it like straw
and I stay, ungrowing in              the liminal.
I live between thresholds             on the threshold
and sometimes the tension          tugs and tears and rips
my fingernails, my hair                my skin.
Thresholds are supposed             to hurt, to push, to compel
but it’s where I rest and               make my home.

The liminal does not rip me apart as it should.

It’s hollow in the liminal             a void that digs my insides
out. It’s a cave in there                 walls of apathy and dread.
My mind grows in on                   itself and I live in it,
where it plays in the                    liminal.
It cannot survive                          beyond the threshold
so I stay in the house                   where the windows are
clear and the doors                      are unlocked. Nothing is
keeping me in but                        myself.
I feel at home in                            the liminal, where the tensions
hurt and erode                              but it’s safe here,
or safe enough                               in the space inbetween.

I fear the sea and the tides so I stay on the shore.
It hurts but not as much as it should.