we were exploding anyway.

things aren’t right in my head.

     a disconnect
     a thrumming
     a need I don’t know how to sate.

things aren’t right in me. they don’t match up or correlate or slot together like well oiled gears.

I’m not a machine but modern art. Not a car but pieces of one, stolen from a junk yard and repurposed to look pretty. I create a shadow on the wall and wealthy happy people walk around and look at me, humming and harring at how innovative I am, how my broken pieces must have great meaning, how well I don’t work.

     then, they get into their fancy cars that run properly and drive home.

it’s a strange kind of existence; one that doesn’t line up with What People Want You To Be. does that piece of art, once it is left alone in the quiet of night, imagine if it could drive home? does it long for an easy motorised existence? does it scream at all the people who said it was so beautiful, too beautiful to work properly?

things aren’t right in my head.

     a humming.
     a screaming.
     a shattered piece that no one knows what to do with.

things aren’t right in my head, and so I sit in my art gallery with glazed over eyes and hear peoples’ admiration.

oh yes that girl is beautiful but she’s oh so broken up.

simply

Why is it that every room I walk into
becomes filled with water?
Powerful and crushing—loud enough so that
it’s only my own head I hear.
Each street I walk down becomes a river,
each playground a lake;

and I wish I could be more upset
over how many casualties is causes but—
just think about how beautiful that cemetery looked
with its headstones
towering above the ocean.

Dear (maybe kam maybe you maybe someone else,)

                                                                              I’m sorry that i like you

the way that I do.
I wanted to exist removed from all of you.         Not, 

          well, 

liking you,     the way I 

happen to.

     I want to kiss you until you have no idea that

  I want to do sinful things to you.

(my lips on yours, my heart beating frantically against

                                                                                     yours.)

I was on the bus and looking out the window. The sun was setting and
     well I didn’t want to worry anyone but the clouds—
                            well the clouds weren’t clouds but a smear of blood   above the horizon,
a glint so bright coming off a blade at its end. 
I know how to act now, so I didn’t reach over to the person next to me,
               ask
       did you give your blood to the sky?
like I wanted.

Because, you see
                           I’ve seen that red line before.
I’ve seen it on tissues and on
          the inside of shirt sleeves. I know that smear better than I know 
the back of my hand; almost as well as
    the front of my wrist    (you might say)

Should I send out a survey maybe? Dear so-and-so, 
                                                                            Did you give your blood
to the sky? It was a Tuesday, if that helps and far too pink
      to be mine. 

Dear so-and-so, 
                          Your face looks awfully brave but I know how
it must feel to give your own blood up for someone else.           So
     would you like to crawl into my bed,            take your split open skin and-
well I guess I didn’t think this part through.
                                                   We can watch a movie! Read a book!
Or you could go back to the always giving of your days.

Is the glint of a blade on skin really the worst that could happen? 
Is a bit of blood in the sky really worth all this panic?

I guess not, 
               so I will go back to my book, let the shaking of the bus
     lull me to sleep.

(Dear so-and-so, sorry I couldn’t help you but,
                                                                                                       well,
                I’ve never seen the sky look so beautiful.)

it’s gotten to the point where
i see photos of women smiling
and imagine them screaming.

i’m not unwell
but i’m not happy

and 1 am and I am
are starting to look like
the same word anyway.

what if photos really
do steal the soul and
we’re all that’s left?

what if when you said
sorry, you really meant
I’d do it again, if I could.

what if everyone is
being fed lines by the
relentless monster
in their heads?

(what if it isn’t fate;
just the way the ocean
is never sated)

to mr. k

      Your writing was beautiful,
 but are you okay?
It became some sort of sick joke,
repeated after each assignment
                                          I handed up

                      (each one like sawing off my own hand
only to offer it like I wanted it gone the whole time)

I’m fine, I would reply because, well,
                                      I was supposed to.
no english teacher wants to deal with
  a whisper of a girl too young to even know what
                    depression means

so I would be left alone.

        (but didn’t you see the words
                      I carefully printed out
that were screaming for someone
                                             to help?)

(I guess not)

                              I wonder sometimes,
if they would have given me all those awards if
they knew what I did in the bathroom that day

(one hand covered in sin from how I touched myself)
(one hand covered in sin from how I cut myself)

Swan Lake has lasted for over a hundred years. Is it the love story that tears the two lovers apart? Is it the deception of Rothbart? The black swan? Or is it that, somewhere in our mind, we know that we are secretly meant to have wings sprouting from our back, able to part water like god? Is it that the Prince is deceived, or that we all have madness inside us like wings unfurling.

What if we take the fairytale, twist it around another. What if the black swan is not an evil creation, a deception by a figure in black, but the image of yourself reflected in a thousand mirrors, madness creeping out at the promise of a crack in the glass. Can you keep it contained? How, when it is so close to the image of you? It has your face, your movement, your eyes, your sly way of looking at each other whenever the chance presents. It has your madness kept in it’s mirror-image heart, ribs like a cage to keep it locked away. You have the key though, not that black swan. You can choose to pick it up and reach into that gap between your fingers and theirs, unlock the blackness that always seems to be seeping into their glass eyes.

Maybe it’s not this; maybe it’s the fragile nature of the swan that draws people in. Maybe it’s not the promise of something else but just the beauty of a girl who doesn’t know better. Maybe it’s not madness that people want but the order and lines of those white cygnets, lining up ready to be shot through their cage heart. Maybe it’s just you who watches their black swan half in the mirror and wonders when they will take the key that you’ve already lost and unlock your mad mad heart.

Maybe it’s just you who sees the hairline splinters along the glass and counts down the seconds until your ruin.