my work

Press erase, ignore the shrill alarms.

I stand, half-submerged, in Lethe's smooth waters. Oh, the things that trickle ever past me: tantalising, Tantalusian. These are not mine, but the impulse to lose myself in another life is - no.

Clarity like no other. To plunge yourself in is bliss itself, the pinnacle of sweetness. But I can't bring myself to do it, to let the river bleed me out like ink on paper, to become translucent.

This is a birth. Between held and first breaths there is electrified air.

My crowning comes when I can stand. When I can bear the weight of indifference and still, speak kindnesses through my lips.

My body is my country, and the people feel my achings. And if I am too much in the sun, then I burn, then I burn.

In self-made sovereignty I exist, and you exist, and so do we all. This is a birth.

I've been too ill to write, but I've been doing quite a bit of sketching so here's some pieces I'm pretty proud of

The bark was lifting away in paper-thin layers. I had to scratch myself away from the urge to peel it further. I could imagine it unravelling, a skein of translucent tree-skin, uncurling until there was nothing left of the thing but a pile of ribboned parchment.

What would trees write, if they could? They've witnessed so many things. The root system of a forest is a hub of communication, a library, filled with the knowledge of centuries. Trees die eventually, but their skeletons remain. I wonder what bones I will leave behind.

The carrion-eaters swirl in the sky above him as he - blistering - stumbles towards the silvering hills. Twilit trees seem to engorge themselves on the coming darkness, and stretch their boughs even further into the grey-blue air.

His mind returns to (can't escape from) the thudding in his buttoned pocket. The sound of uselessness, a phone, too far from civilisation for the blinking satellites to reach it.

He told himself he wanted flowers: needled them into his skin. But he shrinks now from the budding blossom, and the needling thorns that threaten to draw him into the open.

i fold a petal between my fingertips and wonder at its creasing. somehow, without command, it is destroyed. the ridges of my fingerprints are pasted with green sap. at night i feel their defiant smoothness - i want to be calloused, i want to know i existed in the end.

my body isn't calibrated but You have Blood flowing through You. i know You've made them bleed: Your Hands seem made for bruising and i cling my lips to them. i'm planting Seed-Kisses; i want to grow Flowers under Your Skin so that You glow with them, with rosed Affection.

the Roughness of Your Fingers tracing feathered Warmth across my thighs. i align the architecture of my scars with the Terrain of Yours. if only We were Cartographers, then i might stop my blunderings. We have such different Bark - scratch it away with a Fingernail, though, and see the Cambium is the same. scratch any further and You'll leave me weeping.

he was born blind, and remained that way. even after he could see shapes and colours, and the god who cradled him.

come to my jaws

the blindness of pride, the blindness of hope. the blindness of love and childhood. love is everything, and love is not enough. not enough to save him.

i bit the hand that fed me my tears were not for binding

the boy was all teeth and sinew, and he knew no better. entangled in a ribbon stronger than steel, the wolf huffed, and he puffed -

you would not put your fingers in between my teeth

who sheds a tear for the predator? father and son are bound to the same fate. his mother is a beast, too, but these are not the games of beasts.

i will consume the luminaries of your constructed world

destructive cycles destroy themselves, in the end. when boys grow into wolves then they grow canines.

Ceris was born to blood. Blood followed her, and she fascinated in its scarletry, its metal tang. Her mother oozed it from her lips and Ceris swallowed.

Dirt masked her body. She smothered herself in imitation, in hope. Her mother, after all, could grow crops on her skin.

Sometimes rains stormed from her and her mother would answer with thunder. So Ceris rained in secret. The soil was heavy on her: clodded clay in clumsy arrangement, a fen where nothing could grow.

Sometimes she would lift her head from the roots and their bustling and scrape herself to the tip of a mountain. From here she could see the fields below, the landscape laid out - so small, and wasn't that comforting?

And here she could pick at her clay coating. He could wear the sky instead, billowing out from his shoulders. Haloed by the moon, the were-man can become. He gives his blood to the earth and returns his name to the rocks. He takes new names - from the trees, the mountains, the screaming sun. They invented lunacy to spurn the moon.

I lie here, cocooned in the symphony of you. The whisper of your breath draws forte this close to mine and here the spent air from our lungs harmonises: a soft major chord.

Simple lyrics, but I feel them to my core. I love you, I love you, I love you.

My fingers stroke the keys of your body. Starting at the resonance of your thigh, pressing the pads of my fingers against the frets of your flesh. I will traverse arpeggiated across your skin, a love letter in tender touches. That place, where your neck meets your shoulder, is my favourite instrument.

You're afraid to be a capella but the spiccato of your breath is my muse. Still, we choose the transgressions: limbs a due but not quite legato. We exist entangled and I couldn't be happier.

'May you live in interesting times' - a curse

Time and time again I have stood in the ribcage of a castle, bones picked bare by the centuries, and been humbled by history. I am ephemeral. I know this, still I wonder if any remnant of me will endure.

Time slows for nobody. The volume of human suffering floods my mind, and the sea levels are rising every day. My body begs for rest. But the fangs are glinting closer, and the gnaw below my ribs is an omen: soon enough I'll have to get my hands bloodied. Ares help me.

I remember when we stood under the arching boughs of eucalyptus pentacles, my fingertips augured with lavender. the silver-green embraced us and we ascended to each other.

do you remember in that silver-green how the tears stormed from me? I never wanted to hurt you. I'm sorry.

I was complacent in my estrangement until you. you stitched your way under my skin to find the core of me, an amateur archaeologist tracing the pattern of my bones. you tied a sanguinary thread to navigate my enmeshments, unravelling the spool of you as you spoke. I buckled under your attack, such an onslaught of ardour, a tenderness that shattered me. I've never felt so safe in vulnerability.

The lyophiliser moved with obsidian caution. Every twitch of the fingers was choreographed, And sometimes she was so still it was death. Meticulous, she would sharpen her nails To barbed claws. She had a chemical aura, Pervading my lungs whenever I was near.

She took pride in her skill with resin. She would use it to keep objects suspended, Always perfectly central. Shells, butterflies, ants, beetles, Corpses preserved to her satisfaction, Displayed in rows above her plastic-coated furniture.

The air around her was devoid of moisture, And if you were too close for too long then You would begin to dehydrate: Eyes raw, lips flaking; I was never around her long. Fear would take over me, Fear that if I stayed in her Hydrophobic presence I would never escape, That I would be drained of all liquid until My body is desiccated, A human shell for her to add to her collection.

I stand at the edges of Hestia's domain: a flickering shadow, gasping at the suggestion of warmth.

I overturned every rock and fallen branch, every plastic wrapper, but in the end it found me. No roaring bonfire or even crackling logs; the red simplicity of a candle, cinnamon-scented, is my humble hearth.

The Witch loved the snow. Waking to a landscape muffled, a landscape softened.

They grew in the cramp of the city, where concrete and smoke and people drown out the hush of winter, thinning it to mush.

Out here snow was a blanket under which the world slept. All the weeds stifled, and the air fresh.

The Witch stood in the doorway conscious of the stinging cold which reddened their cheeks and the stinging hot from the mug in their fingers. This was living. Not grey brick but brilliant white and pure black, intersecting one another. A scene so still it could be painted.

a belated elegy for the ghosts I carry

Melissa lay crumpled in his coffin. Trembling fingers brushed the dirt from his hazard-tape coat. (except, some of it was stomped in) My fangs were not yet grown, so tenderness was my defiance. When did I stop giving funerals?

I can't bring you back, Melissa, but I can mourn you. (who else will?) At the edge of the field, where hush overpowers sun-shrieking, the mouth of your grave is opened. (dry and dusty, even in the shrubbed shelter) You were a labourer, and your thread-fine legs are still dusted with pollen. I lower you in (taking care not to tear the paper) and, twig as my shovel, you slip down the gullet of the earth. In the end, all digestion is cyclical.

i was born with a shell encasing: person-shaped, and it walks, and talks, but it's an inflexible cage for soft flesh. my voice is deeper, i'm sure, i just have to find it.

through all my life it expanded in layers, like the bands of a tree, only with rings forged on the outside. people slaked their words onto it, like slip onto clay, a buildup of earth. i even caked some on myself, a self-inflicted moulding, modelled on the hollow shells i thought could be mine.

i was afraid of the sun. afraid my clay husk would crack with exposure and people would see me raw. afraid that my skin would blister in its glare, that i would be excoriated to bone and die with the scorch of it.