i keep my thoughts in boxes.

On the back shelf, tucked away
Where I can’t see them
Can’t hear them shuffling
Waiting to spring free

I refuse to open them
Touch them, even think about them

Because then they exist
Then they have to be dealt with
I can’t do that
I’m not strong enough

Not as strong as my aunt
Who lies in a hospital bed, miles away
Pins in her back,
Cancer cells intertwined with her spine
Infused in her bones
A tumour in her knee
Fluid in her lungs

She can’t ignore the pain anymore
Her organs are failing
And she knows it
She’s starting to hallucinate
She’s fading, after two years of battle

They say I’m like her.
I’m nothing like her.

I’ll never be as strong,
As brave or determined
To keep on going
My words are nothing, can do nothing
To describe her courage
And immense love for others
That has kept her heart beating

She’s the strongest woman I’ll know
And she doesn’t deserve
To be kept in a box on a shelf anymore

I need to be strong
But my chest is so heavy
I can’t let this pain out
Or it might tear me apart

How can this happen
It’s not fucking fair
How can someone with so much love
And so much to live for
Be stolen from a world that needs her

You can’t take her, you can’t

I can’t stop crying
It won’t stop hurting
I don’t know when it’ll stop
But at least she’ll be resting somewhere
Free from suffering, at peace
That’s what matters.

anxiety.

Can't sleep

Can't sleep

Can't sleep

Heart is ticking

Mind, beating

Veins, pulsing

With life, adrenalin

Worry, 

ANXIETY

Boom boom boom

Thought after thought after

Endless noise

My own voice

Marching, drumming

Screaming, 

Echoing round and round and

Won't stop

It won't stop

Pace quickens and

Breathing faster and

Palms unclean, sticky, sweaty

Always guilty

Always guilty

Need to fight it

Must control it

Push me that way

Pull me this way,

Someone's shaking my cage

Let me out.

peace.

The sky shimmers before me

An ever-moving surface, ripples and

Blades of white and blue

Through the gentle, curving arms

Bark and leaves above

Greening in the sunlight

The rain has passed,

I could move, but

I'm paralysed in place

All sound has gone,

It's peaceful

I wonder how cool and 

Quieter still, beneath the surface

It could be,

I wonder, if I never moved

From this spot again

No one would notice

Until darkness later

But the voices would fade,

Gradually

My heart would stop hammering

In my chest, the pain would calm

I'd stop shaking,

Tears would never fall again

All the worry, the weight

Would cease to be

It'd melt into the ground

Through my feet, cementing me in place

Rooted, but free

The breeze again my skin, stone white

Mind encased, words faltering

Preventing me from causing anyone

Any hurt again.

Silence in my head and heart

I'd fall quietly from the world

It'd be a far better place

If I stayed here in this place.

disgrace.

I have never been more disgusted

At myself, my very being

I want to rip all of my skin off

Tear every strand of hair from everything

I am loathsome

Vile.

I try so hard to be a good person

Maybe thats because, really

If I'm honest with myself

I'm the shittest excuse of a person

That ever lived.

I don't deserve, anything

I'm a disgrace.

half a wordsmith.

Frozen by inadequacy,

I can't move.

Don't think I deserve to.

Words like knives

Fall from my mouth

They hurt her, and 

I can't seem to stop them

A person like that

Should be broken in two

The sincerity of my apology

Lost because,

I've uttered it so many times

Yet I can't seem to stop them

I don't deserve her,

I should be locked in a room

Alone, so that my words

Can only hurt me

As they do now

I use to pride myself

On being a wordsmith,

A lover of the written and spoken

But I am a sham, a waste

How can I be anything worth

When my words carve hatred,

Breed hostility, mean nothing anymore

I don't deserve her.

I never wanted to hurt her.

I should go.