Here Darling. Summer Isn’t So Bright This Year So Come Lean On My Shoulder And Baptise Your Sorrows

you are like clockwork, like misguided irony that you can’t yet identify. I see you’re still chasing me though, even if its only subconsciously now. She doesn’t pull off what I am though, and never will. Happy hauntings.

When Alexa Demie said “You think a girl like me gon be single for long? You wrong. You think a girl like me gon be trippin for long? Dead wrong. You think a girl like me, fuckin girl like me, goddess like me, gon be tripping? You’ll see, with a girl like me.” I felt that.

I love the fact that you need to lean on me, a boy says. 

He loved my vulnerability and how big I made him feel, 

But would get annoyed if I’d call him in the midst of another anxiety attack, 

Begging to know if he still loved me,

 if he still wanted me.

He called me his broken little thing. 

Wrote a play and in it I stabbed myself with a blade.

I would write him a suicide note thanking him for his bravery and his charm.

He finds me on the floor, cries over me and goes on to be a doctor, 

It’s only now that I realise he never loved me. 

He just loved the control.

just to be clear, you can do this too

trigger warning: self harm

it’s been a year since I last hurt myself, an addiction that took all my willpower to overcome. I know I can fashion words into something beautiful but there was nothing pretty about all that self-hatred, all that anger, loss and pain. all that pain coiled in my stomach, gnawing at me from the inside. there was absolutely nothing beautiful about scarring a body that works so hard to keep going. I can’t make this beautiful or romantic or wistful. but it’s over now. I can breathe. I just want to let that fact be.

things my abuser has tried to take away from me but failed:

1) Love in the form of sunflowers and surprise dinners and intertwined fingers. Romance and deep kisses, warm and safe. Dancing and giggling with him to Lily Allen. Kissing him and wondering what I did to deserve a body so soft, a love so raw and honest.

2) Love in the form of looking after this heavy body, even when it doesn’t look after me back. Face masks, showers and brushing through my matted hair, knotted like a unkempt garden. Dragging myself to therapy and loving all the charred parts of me. Loving me flawed, loving me regardless, loving me unconditionally, loving the me that survived.

3) Love in the form of a best friend. Nights spent sleeping next to her, nights spent crying into her lap, nights spent singing at the top of our lungs. She loves me silently, knows me when I’m down, knows me when I’m up. She doesn’t love me different, even with all the flaws.

4) Love in the form of family, with their misguided love and tentative support. Love in the form of my mother’s perfume and food she tells me to eat even when I feel I don’t deserve it. Weeks spent in hospital, bringing me my favourite food in the ward. Love in the form of her imperfection and how I wouldn’t change it for the world.

5) Love in the form of music, of dancing around in my room to the anthems of my youth. Of belting it out as loud as my lungs will allow. Songs I’ve cried to, laughed to, kissed to, lost to. Songs that held me up and gave a melody to all the hurt.

6) Love in the form of the poet in me. On my best days, she is all that I am. On my worst days, she is all that I want to be.

7) Love in the form of hope. A love that screams I made it. A love that believes it happened. Recovery has finally, finally begun to taste sweet.

You deserve all the happiness in the world, and I’m sorry you deal with so much pain. I love you, and I’m always here for you.

“Lips of honey, eyes of fire.”

— Meleager, tr. by Peter Whigham, from Greek Anthology; “Epigrams,”

my love, there’s never enough time is there? I always say to myself after I’ve left you that I wish I had kissed you harder, wish I had hugged you tighter, wish I could’ve stayed a little while longer. the clocks are just never on our side, are they?

please, leave your phone in my bag and come visit me tomorrow to get it. please, call me when I get home to check I’m okay. please, spend your evenings at mine, curled up on the couch like you belong here, next to my notebooks and coffee mugs and paintings. It seems that I don’t quite know how to midnight without you.

when I turn to leave you after I’ve kissed your cheek goodbye, every single time I wish I could run back to you and say “oh, 5 more minutes won’t hurt”. every single time, I turn to look at you and find you still waiting where I left you, smiling, saying that you love me. you love me. you love me.