Everything is white.
White walls, sterilised hands and diagnoses.
White walls and white noice. White pills.
I’m cocooned in white sheets.

&

I rise a butterfly.

I have loved you so much. Even after the first crack, until the last tear. It was Christmas eve again, and I felt the distance, but I didn’t feel you. Emptiness. Emptiness. The day I lost you forever. The day I looked through your eyes and I did not see us. Not us together. I saw your eyes and in them it all was someone else’s future. I saw you but this time you weren’t perfect. You weren’t everything. My everything. This time I smiled, for I have already cried so much; I’ve cried for so long. This time I wasn’t going to break down. You never loved me and your empty promises, your hollow words mean nothing now.

And I cried my last tear for you.

I’m the girl that fell in love with a boy with dark moon eyes.
Pain-filled eyes that leave me helpless.
Breathless
I want to sink into the black.

I’m just a girl, with the kind of longing that breeds eternal sadness.
Lilies and loneliness and teardrops.
I’m the girl that loved you so much. But now she needs to let you go. Because holding on hurts too much.

I’m the girl with the broken heart that makes herself bleed and gets drunk so she won’t have to remember how hope only gives way to disappointment. The girl that asks you to hit her because pain is all she feels. (And deep down she wants to see if you’ll do it.)
Maybe she wishes you’d save her.
But you can’t.
You won’t.

Maybe in another life you could have loved me.
Maybe in another life…

But deep down I know the truth. I know the sun will have to set. I know it would have to die. I know Hades would climb up from the depths of the earth and he would drag me down to the darkness. Always. He always comes and I always fall.

I know pain, but I also know hope.

Life’s so fleeting. Our dreams caught in gossamer webs, in strings of time.

Tell me, when did we forget?
Tell me, do you love her like you love me?

The darkness, deep and thick, covering the whole sky. Like black feathers – a raven’s song, a harbinger.
There’s a quietness, a pill-induced numbness, but the pain is not really receding; I can feel my heart beating erratically.
The heartache and the emptiness. The heartache and the surrender.
I swallow my meds like a liquid promise – a promise already broken.

A nightmare-drenched sleep. I bargain with death, but either way I lose.

A tear that clings to my eye. A single tear…
and then comes the pouring rain. Drowning, drowning everything and I can’t stop.

Despair, a stillness, before the burn. “Do you want to die?”
“I want to sleep. A dreamless sleep. Silent moments before the dawn.”

All the tears I didn’t let fall, are now threatening to drown me. The sky is stained and I know you think I’ll be here forever, but I won’t wait forever. I can’t. They say it won’t be raining forever, that the sun will shine again, but tomorrow is just a word and promises are brittle. They break. Easily. And once they do, you can’t put the pieces back together. Once I leave I will never come back. And it’s not that I didn’t love you, I loved you so much. But you couldn’t. And I’m barely breathing. I have to forget you. I have to let you go. I have to go.

I wish we met in a different timeline.
I wish we were happy, the way we will never be.

This pain, this piercing, acidic pain; this pain I have to carry with me, that only bleeding can distract me from it, this pain – a thousand suns burning inside me – I never asked for it. My only crime

And I tried to forget,
but your voice echoes in my head.
A constant longing.
A constant noose around my neck.

I wanted you so badly to be Rory. My Rory. But maybe I was never Amelia, just Ophelia drowning, and you’ll never be able to resuscitate me, because you don’t love me enough to put breath back into my lungs.

I’m the girl with fires behind my eyes and lighting in my head that makes me unable to concentrate, unable to stop moving, to stop the noise in my head, the voices that aren’t mine. A million thoughts at once – confusion overcomes me. I cry moonlight, I’m burning up, I want to touch the sun, until I’m ashes.

And then the pain comes (so much pain – it constricts my breathing) and the grief, the endless grief, so dark, like death in my mind.
Despair creeps up on me, the agony of a thousand dying stars, the death of tomorrow – they drape me in midnight, in a black darker that the empty sky. Thick, inescapable black that seeps through my skin and replaces the blood in my veins. Every bit of good is gone. Every bit of hope is gone.

. . .

When you see me I’m the girl with the grey-sky eyes, anhedonic and numb. (But you’ll never know.) I hide behind the brightest smile. (I lie, I lie.)
But I’m still fighting the fight that never ends.

. . .

I made you into ashes, I do not love you
you filled the void with empty
the silence, the silence that frayed my dreams
after the fire you did not come back for me
I’m not the moon for you
I don’t love you, I made you into ashes

You can’t destroy me anymore: I don’t love you.

I know that sometimes the sky gets too dark. That you drift between days without feeling anything.
I know how sometimes you have to bleed.
How you are holding inside secrets and wars.
How you want him to stay.
How you seal dreams in bottles for safekeeping, but you never break the seal.
How you are so afraid that you won’t scream.

How despite everything you still survive.

“I came back for you. I will always come back for you.”

It wasn’t a song, it wasn’t really a goodbye, it was more like a sigh. I didn’t even raise my eyes when I let the flowers be carried away by the soft wind. It was like forgetting a dream: I remembered a feeling, a sense of melancholy; a timeline that was aborted. And then a stillness. It could have been great, you know. Maybe.

Realisation comes, as I try to remember all the reasons I’m holding on – and I find none. Darling, in the space of an almost-whole-year I remained locked in the falsehood that just breathing was enough. Just believing was enough. & I waited. I waited for those random moments when I forgot I only saw the world through veils. & I do miss the days that never came…
But I think we were just killing time, you and me, and faith is overrated.
I think I can see clearer now, now that the fog of our breath has cleared and I’m not censoring myself just because the world died before (it will die again) (and yes, darling, we’ll survive that too).
 
– & now I let you go – – –

Who are you?
I’m a girl; brown hair, green eyes, pale skin. A girl writing wor(l)ds and code and dreams.

What are you afraid of?
I’m afraid of black holes pulling me in. I’m afraid of the emptiness, the utter despair, the inability to reach you.
 
& I’m afraid of those doorless white rooms, where everything is white and we are fading and no one notices.

What are you against?
I’m fighting against gravity, against the fear that stems from ignorance.

What would you tell the one you love?
I’m always, always, right here for you…

What’s your sexual orientation?
Kiss a girl who likes other girls and a boy who used to kiss boys. The boy with the beautifully-coloured eyes and singing voice. (I can always hear him singing.)
Fear and ignorance cannot really hold us apart; please remember that.

What mistakes have you made?
I was silent for too long. I let them take so much, I let their words hurt me. I let the hate and anger and fear almost win. Sticks and stones they say. But words, words are so much more powerful…

Have you ever stolen anything?
I’ve stolen the moon once. Hid it behind my ribcage. Away from here, I gleamed like silver fire; a dream of you always pulsing in my veins. I was never fragile.
But it burnt, it burnt so much.

Have you ever lied?
I have been lying for so long… It’s always being too easy (“yes, I’m fine, no, it doesn’t hurt, I’m fine, I’m fine) – hold back the tears, let them burn your eyes – they’ll never, ever know…

Why do you write?
Because when I don’t write, I stop breathing too.

“Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.” – Anne Sexton

“If you want to change the world, pick up your pen and write.” – Martin Luther

What is the most daring thing to do in a lifetime?
Endure, dream, believe, live.
Be yourself and live.

“Please stand up and fight

against the sickness deep inside

You are much too young to die
”
      – The Sickness, Terminal Choice

{This is for all the people out there, who are fighting chronic illnesses.}

 
Years and years lost… I was so young, diagnosed with something so horrible. A life tainted with grief and pain and isolation. I was frightened by my own darkness.
Fire in my head, ocean in my lungs. Take the pills, they say. But who’s going to take me home?

Winter’s over and visiting hours are over too. The roses in the vase will bloom and then turn to dust while I sleep.
Take your pills, they say. But who’s going to take me home?

 
*~*~*~*~*
 
Morning comes and we are still fighting the unending fight; because there is hope embedded in the sunrise, in the nightingale’s love-song to the rose. There is hope in the way light goes through the painted shut window.
So, don’t give up. Just don’t give up. Together we can fight the darkness.
 

Dear Alice,
 
are you still running? Running away? Running late?
I’m supposed to tell you to stop running. But Alice, my dearest Alice, I knew a girl like you once. Falling down rabbit holes that go straight into the darkness. Swimming in her own tears. Crushing tea parties. And the queen wanted her head too.
  
It was like moving in circles. She “ran very fast for a long time”, but still ended up at the same place. The trees were red and the sky violet. The cheshire cat laughed at her and the rose bushes were bleeding. Maybe she was just upside-down. Too big, too small, never enough. And yes, “we are all mad here”, and nothing’s quite real, but she was still missing the key to the door.
 
Alice, are you crying? I’m only supposed to offer you some tea and ask if you are taking your pills…
 
But Alice can’t you see? You are enough. You are the key to the door. Your own door. Go on. Run. Don’t let them stop you. I won’t tell a soul. Go. For her. For me. For all the lost ones.
 
 

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
― T.S. Eliot

2016 was loss and apathy and too much distance from the stars. It was heartache, and sadness, and a reconsideration of things.
 
In January, I made no resolutions. I just wanted to watch the rain, lose myself in gossamer dreams and find myself again among the waves of an almost-stormy sea. 

 
February was cold. Snowflakes fell off my eyes and broke into million fragments of unrequited wishes.
 
Then a colourful carnival came in March and new friends followed.
And I also met a guy with blue eyes and a cigarette between his fingers – you don’t talk, he said. Ask me, I said. And I’ll tell you all about the world, about us and every single star.
 
April was filled with flowers and a cake with maybe-too-many-pink candles.
 
May was about being lost in an artistic haze, almost kisses, and whispers and guys with dark eyes and half-moon smiles.
 
June was looking back and erasing moments of hurt.
 
July was too hot, I swallowed truths and dusty dreams with iced-tea. I’m such a coward sometimes.
 
In August I travelled and went mountain climbing and fell asleep on silent sea-shores with half-read books as a blanket.
 
September was for releasing my book and for meeting him:


He paid for my drink and took me by my hand.

He smiled, the room was dark, my eyes closed, I smiled back.


October was uncertainty and a fixed smile and lying awake counting how many light-years we are apart.
 

In November, days started getting smaller. I went out and drunk behind a cigarette fog and counted days until the fog dissipated and we could see each other clearly.

 
December was for writing cards and getting concert tickets and watching snow fall. It was ripping apart my diary of things that could-have-happened, facing the cold light and actually trying to make them happen.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

2017 is for trying new things and meeting new people and learning to speak loudly in a crowd. It is for peeling layers and layers of protective matter to discover my own longings, my own tucked away desires and dreams. It’s for writing more poetry and making choices… It’s for creating something lasting out of the ash and the dust that I’m left with. It’s for making something beautiful.

I’ve always collected things. Gifts and concert tickets and sea-shells and old books. And sad things. Beautiful, fragile things that are so ephemeral. I’ve tried to preserve them, to suspend them in time. Teardrops, and dream-remnants and memories of happier times. Melancholy and nostalgia. Clocks that only strike thirteen and mirrors with broken reflections. Pressed flowers, that will never wither, but will never be quite alive either.

I wanted to capture rain and your cigarette smoke as it came out through your lips. I wanted to protect those old, handwritten love letters before the ink faded completely.

A candle-wax sunset is dripping like fireflies: silently, silently. The world will end with a whimper, just like Eliot said, and this is all that will remain. A collection of who we were and who we wish we were.

I can understand your pain.

I can’t understand your hate.

Now.

Then.



I did love you.

Then.

Not now.



We didn’t deserve this.

There’s a boy with laughter lines around his dark eyes. He gave me an orange blossom once. And I thought I was beautiful, just for a second there. But he never followed me when I left. Silence fell and it got cold again. And I tried to hold on as tightly as I could. But flowers wither and words fade.

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *

It’s cold tonight. Snowflakes have settled on my hair and the moonlight is pooling in my eyes. I stare emptily at the sky, still clinging on my half-forgotten dreams. I’m stockpiling feathers and secret hopes and all of our guilt. Your black hole eyes are pulling me in, but you are not in love with me. It’s 3:01am and I can’t sleep. I don’t want to be Atlas anymore. I want to soar on starlit skies with helium wings.

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.” – Emily Dickinson

 
There is a girl who cannot sing. Her skin is made of porcelain, yet her bones can’t be broken. Her eyes contain the sea, a grave of dreams – blue and green and grey. Sometimes violet. Like a storm or a late-autumn afternoon.
 
A chronic insomniac, she stares at the sky every night and whispers to the wind.
“Sometimes”, she says “I wish I were the sea. Light falls in it like soft, white feathers: a beautiful, melancholic veil, gossamer and brittle, like memories of happier times.”
 

I have always been one of the delicate-like girls with bones made of moonstone. I’ve been one of the girls who dream and drink too much, who write poetry on them, who try to carve out the pain, the emptiness, the darkness. I have been the girl with the empty eyes and aching lungs. I have been the sunlight, the beauty, the hope. I have written words and code and dreams.

I have always been one of these girls who love loudly and cry silently.

I’m one of the girls who were promised a throne at the Elysian Fields, if only we would let go. If only…
(Yet the wind still whispers: it’s not over yet, it’s not over…)