I will, with thunderous voice
Shout love love love
Even if only
Just to hear the echo

Concept: the cities are empty, vines grow through top-floor windows and trees stretch taller than the buildings. Nature has reclaimed herself.

I rip off the bandaid
And uncover the terrible truth beneath
It weeps afresh
Gaping red eye staring at me
Bleeding it’s own tiny sorrows
The walls press harder and harder
Boat in a glass bottle that lets the whole ocean in
The rush of it swallowing everything else
Mast, hull and keel becoming sodden
Driftwood piercing lungs and letting
That whisper trickle through
Seeping poison and rot and wrath
Truth enough to drown in
Truth that stares to the splintered ship of myself
Truth that ripples only the world and not the water,
I look away first

I will not always love myself
I do not, and cannot
In a world like this
With a body like mine
That dips and rises like a mountain range
With its too-dark veins
A stark and unflattering contrast
To my moonrise skin
The rivers and tributaries that swim
It is not always as beautiful
As an awakening earth
This hair like mud
Eyes like mud
Barren soil that cannot always
Yield great harvest
I will not always bear fruit
This body, small and easily crushed underfoot
Do we always love the bug?
That breaks beneath our heel?
Body of mine that does not sing for me
Voice of mine that cracks and breaks
I will not always crave to hear the echo
But ...
But.
I know that though I will weep
On mornings where I do not glow inside the sun
In all the ways I am so desperate to
On mornings where his palm on my stomach
Is the soft tether that keeps me dreaming
On mornings where his kisses
Are the only warmth I want to bask in
I know that he loves me
That he loves this body
Moreso the battlefield beneath
And sometimes, mostly, always,
That is enough.

Steal all your gold
Back from those who do not know how to treasure it
Take it from their careless hands
Hold it gently as you coax it back into yourself
Tell them 'this is not how to handle a heart'
Because it was, a heart
That you put into their tender care
See how bruised it is now, how aching?
Do not learn from this the act of anger though
Do not now hoard your gold, dragoness
You can be fierce and gentle at the same time
Give your jewels to those who you adore
And if they break them, bury them, treat with roughness that which you gifted
Then rear your head back, firechild
The sun is inside you, and she says sometimes it is okay
To raise a little hell

Tiny cracks that echo into chasms
Lining the great brass wall of my chest
Where once was darkness, now
Light like you have never seen
Sunburst, moonkissed, every shade of silver and gold
I am erupting into unknowns
I am splintering into beauty
It is a wondrous thing

I don't know how to stop giving myself to people
To stop wanting to pour myself into the empty wells
Of those who do not know how to take their fill of me
I am parched for love and overflowing with it
But the ceaseless torrent of me is torture
And I am leaving both drowning and drought in my wake
The ocean inside of me is fathoms deep with yearning
But the world is a cracked, aching thing
It does not know how to grow anew from salt
I do not know how to dilute that which I spill
The thirsty earth, my thirsty mouth, my gaping, hollow everything
Everything sinks come the flood

Everything moved and nothing changed
Stepped three ways to the right
Clung to the monkey bars of my childhood primary school
Looked out through new eyes into the same world
From frightening unhinged angles
Shadows were still shadows
The sun still beat behind eyes that looked recklessly into it
The shape of you against the ground that was now the sky
And how well you fit there
Looking like you owned the dawn

I will speak with the sea’s own voice
Kiss with her gentle mouth
Call down the moon to me
And hear the gossip of stars
I will lie with the oceans bloated tongue
Scream with cresting rage
And drown the whole world with myself
I am fathoms deep in a watery dream
One where I had boats in my stomach
And the bones of long-dead monsters in my depths
I am endless in the dark
I am tidal when I sleep