This isn't for the best

1. 
m and i sit at the high wooden table with two pub meals between us. 
i put my head in my hands again, 
rehash again, and again, and every time it feels different
i feel like a stranger, or maybe someone i knew years ago
sometimes i dream of myself walking away from me
i see my ponytail walking off with someone i don't know
and that's mostly what it feels like.

well anyway m says it's only a mistake until it isn't anymore
and i store that away, useful thing
i can't remember feeling much else but this, for so long, 
and my heart breaks again for him, only just at the beginning,
but still offering little wisdom
then someone's at the door
and we pull each other back into reality just for a little while

that's how i like to keep my friends
a knowing nod. laughing hysterically about something terrible
growing up at the same time, growing up the same way
understand every mistake, forgive every misstep

2.
and then g rolls her eyes at me at the same time i roll mine, and we both hate new years and she's looking for her old diaries to show me that she felt exactly how i feel today at this time last year. i wonder if we move in little cycles of each other, with me lagging behind, feeling everything late. she's going to the beach, then she's going to bed. 

all the complex people i know are shying away from new years and it makes me feel better. i dunno if that's good or bad. 

3.

I feel fine I feel sick

i wander around dead drunk in love, 
an endless supply and nothing to fill up

i am ruled hopelessly by emotion,
which is an impossible way to be

and i try so so hard to change

but i'm so tightly wired in.

lean my head against the bar
joke about the cancer lurking
what evil have i stressed into existence

everything i'm scared of, i manifest
i'm the problem, i'm the solution

sometimes i feel happy
but honestly everything just feels deeply wrong

in fact i feel like i've been beaten
everything else has won.

i wear a christmas hat at the end of the table
wish away another year

Survival will not be the hardest part

i ride the bus
anonymous old lady
in a new city.

hold my phone to my chest
hold everything i'm yet to give
it's not ready yet

flicker over the bridge
the water settles
i'm flat against the glass

then everything settles.

a few years ago
a couple lifetimes ago 
a beach house with friends
i went to bed with a thousand bodies
lying in a row

'maybe tomorrow' crept under the door

that breaks my heart, i thought,
that's so sad

so yeah like i said 
my heart breaks over, and over, and over, and over,

and in the passenger seat at five thirty in the morning 
i made my peace with the fact
that i am completely batshit crazy

roll my eyes

i know i deserve to hang my head
but i hold it high

I had a bad feeling

betrayal is a terrible word. 

it reeks of its meaning
suck and pull consonants 
say spit all over it 

i hate it, but it's had me a few times
when i was young
when i was sweet

actually i thought i'd made my peace
it has been with me for years now, after all
and it takes only a little space in my gut.

so enter this phone call, right, 
and suddenly i'm standing in the street 
lighting myself on fire. honestly...

you wouldn't remember this but
i recall waiting in my first car
waiting for a good word,

waiting for you, always,
heartbroke and swollen

but i still waited
when i thought 
i saw you changing

well.

turns out it was a trick of the light.

so when i was driving home again today, bewildered,
big red burns tangled up and down my body,
i wondered why i don't feel so bad about it?
(when i always feel so many things?)
(and i loooove to feel so bad.)

i can only think of this.

i know i know i was a child
you can't pull me like that anymore

and i know i know my strength is not your weakness
although...maybe it is

whatever whatever, if that is the case
it's because i'm a cartoon witch, a haggard villain, 
the one who loses in the end

but who hurt you?

well it was the hottest april i remember
w my feet up on the dash phone against my cheek
primary school parking lot leaves on my windscreen
i'm waiting for something 
i'll take anything

'don't you think?'

dial tone

so, you know, 
try trying me again

i bathe in bleach
my stomach is concrete

fuck
with 
me

I see you in spotlights, in visions

alone in my house,

frozen in time,

but don't get me wrong now, honey

i am trying

i am grieving the loss of myself with frightening malaise

when there's weightness in youth, and the sum of it's small,

just stand in the darkness and laugh with your heel on its throat

______________________________________________________________________________

i arrive at her door with two blocks of chocolate

 and she's wrapping up a session

standing there on my own two feet

compartmentalise *that* significance

laugh about it half a block in because

i recall sitting in the shower, melting

i recall sitting in the passenger seat, weeks in, 

i recall sending myself the score i'd kept

then willing it into oblivion

i recall collecting tasks, outings, brunch, 

*this* many songs, *this* many emails, 

*this* is a beautiful day for a walk or a chat

or to convince g to take a trip

a leech on that happiness

trying

to choose abundance, to choose life,

to choose stories over silence

to choose strength and growth

over stagnation and apathy

just choose to be numb sometimes

choose to breathe in deep

when it's spoken into life

and it levers in the air...

and no one else can see it

but i feel it there

that supercut reel

so i'm not quite laughing at the dark

with a heel on its throat

but it is simple enough i think

before i go to sleep 

i choose love

and send it

as far as it'll reach

there if you need

Listen to my headache

listen

barrel down sackville charge through the dark like a bull
yikes there's that pub where NEVER mind i wanna d-d-die
d-dive into the asphalt don't look either way before crossing
the road blinders on, keys between my knuckles, watch
there's a girl ahead of me just as stressed, walking quickly
male voices echo down the street i hope they're scared of me
little dog with a light-up collar, a lunar hangover,
the yellow glow softens everything i know

maybe i'll just frighten off all my friends
buy a ticket somewhere never see that pub again

no, no, grit my teeth, make a fist, hold the street
a promise i won't try to keep

SWOLLEN

the storm that was supposed to come was a day late
wide-eyed they said it was gonna be apocalyptic
a deep adrenaline hit in my gut told me it was gonna be bad

but it wasn't so bad

i bought a ticket, sent it to a friend, answered a personal call at work
warmed up halfway through the set
feet on the steering wheel, little mobile home, truth-telling soothsayer singing:

i'm not ok right now, but one day i will be 
repeat into belief

to be blunt, my heart breaks over and over and over and over and
all it takes is a drive by the park or the shopping centre
i take the long way to avoid the hammer
sickly sticky sweetness spews from my mouth

i'm white as a sheet, glasses burn in the heat
eyebrows blooming thick and fast a big heavy lid
a fixture frown i forget where we were

when i first lost you but now i've lost you so many times

i raised my fist to the cliff and thought maybe i should go lose myself or get lost
but i can't afford that shit, i can't afford any of it
all my money is poured into a dream i never see it

do you remember exactly where you were this time last year?
i see myself there to the day, to the date, to the location
a throbbing motion and i retch it up any second
float in it for a while, then get back to work
repeat repeat

this is the part in the movie that everyone talks about
the part where it doesn't feel like it's gonna get better, 
the vertical climb
(the part every good story needs)
(the part every strong person knows)

but i'm weak and boring
i'm not charming or worth rooting for

do i reach out and take again?
bloody, beating and swollen in hand

(between me and you)

(i think i'm losing it now)

(and sometimes it's like a bullet came and blasted me right out of the blue)

(i've been wondering)

(what am i supposed to do?)

That night you played me Lip Parade

i reach out again, for that feeling

no one knew me when i was coming up
walking towards the portable with a boy there waiting for me
sitting on the train with the new bon iver record on my ipod, feeling cool, 
because finally something i liked was, actually, cool

making myself cry because i assumed i should, 
watching daria with a coffee at midnight
smoking behind the shed with my best friend
screaming and crying into a bale of hay, pathetic but i loved it,
curling up on the rich kid's couch, rolling my eyes into instant coffee in the light

only thing was that eating disorder red alert that i loved to ignore
calculating the calories in the shots i had the night before 
so i could run them off to the number

fuck that show skins, we used to watch it and imitate, fuck cassie, 
inpatient me please!! let me just fuck myself completely up first! 

that sunburn on my neck on new year's morning.
that was the last i ever saw of you people.

and i wasn't afraid, i thought i was
i wasn't sad, i thought i was

i walk down southbank so soon again with glasses and superstars and i feel so sad and
i wonder if the sadness will keep ageing like it has the last six years

will i get sadder? will it get harder?

likely!

will i always tilt my head just so and ask all those questions and touch people on the arm and look down my nose at chance and love and still run away like i have only ever done? every single time???????

likely!

will i always have that rural tic, suburban heart,  
know what road to take if we get swallowed up in flames?

absolutely

i think about those things when i sponge my face
i think about those things with my skin between my teeth

well i don't know what YOU guys are doing tonight but i am going to have a SKYY Blue 

swallow, 
feel that stupid fucking hay beneath my hands

drop it and reach out again

To sit in hell with you

i wish you wouldn't ask the people to turn their flashlights on, 
because i want to hide my face from anyone i might know
ugly curve into myself and will the ground to swallow me whole
so that no one can see me crying to this song. 

i'd rather die than have people know i'm crying to this song

i routinely open myself up with a blunt knife
i dissect it all and even still seesaw daily
goggles on, book-smart lady
trying to make sense of the nonsensical
trying to hold love and quantify it
trying to make a deal with chance

trying to heal.
i wait for the sun
stitch myself up quietly
walk around with big threaded scars up and down my body
tell people i was struck by lightning

i'll never be satisfied and i get it but
why can't i be like everyone i grew up with
centred, and happy, and bright, 
stable jobs and contented couples and cycling back around
soon there'll be little ones and i will be haggard and ancient
still chasing that satisfaction i know i'll never have

i wanna throw up!! the smell
of the clothes i buried deep in a box they're mine and yours and
i wouldn't touch them with a ten ft pole but would you like to hear the scent?

i chase that feeling, that breakdown, rock bottom
i move towards it without knowing i've left

i kick off the tiled floor of the pool and reach for the surface wondering if i'll break it

if you're wondering what i've been doing i spent the month burning alive, 
drama drama drama queen

am i on some list now? i wondered that today, when i was at the back of the room 
teens everywhere - i was one of them once, thinking i was grappling with something
i wonder if i've done the same damage or less or worse. certainly been the worst before

and i truly hate myself more than ever, what an absolute careless idiot

I BOUGHT A TICKET TO A THUNDERSTORM
and i think i bought the coffee first

i sit on my own, i'm getting used to it

i very nearly broke today but then i didn't

Everything in abundance

everything in abundance, including suffering

looking down at my phone and realising every question i want answered is some variation of 'how to stop it'

when i already know there's no stopping it, and that it's just how it is and because that's how it is it's ok with me, make sense?

little things glow
two big strong hands wrapped around my little one
a beautiful sunny day when it was supposed to storm
a tap on my shoulder; my song over the speaker, 
a smile and promise of 'later' -

L laughing at my new glasses fogging up

high street at dusk, an accidental culinary tour of sydney rd 
sleepy studio eyes squinting into the sun
little quiet bodies in between the speakers

K tilts her head, gives me permission to stop feeling like hell

just a small message wondering where i am, what i'm doing today, 

i drive into the country with G keeping me company on the phone, and it's so blissful to talk about anything else for once - to be reminded constantly that everything else continues to turn and age and roll over. 

something warm burns reliably in me when i'm told i'm helping

something hot floods my cheeks, 
a realisation
my voice hasn't done that in months, 
that coloratura indignation
on behalf of someone i love.

then a coward punch - 
i always thought the gardens might be nice 
on a day like that.

just soft focus self made memory
prophecies sit and rot

i get back up

shake, bend, break

a few hours is usually all it takes - fists raised, a toe posed dramatically above the water

i walk down southbank dressed in black with pristine vision

i turn on myself when a man sits next to me on the train

dim memory of what it felt like to stand tall, once

children dance on tables in the park -

i bend over once again to remember how grown i am

go under to coax out the strength i was promised with this age



i leave when i want, i take what i need, i say what i think
i leave when i want, i take what i need, i say what i think



yeah a few hours, usually that's the limit, 

and i fold back into my car

drive far far far back to where i came from


the little cocoon now with a blemish

like touching a stovetop when i remember

that weight we shared

Say yes

_____________________________________________________________

Say what you want with blood and bone
And stick a finger in their faces when they say you’re overblown
Say yes to sun! Say yes to pain!
Say yes to sticking with a city through a thousand days of rain!
Say yes to grace! Say no to spite!
Say yes to this! Say yes to you!
Say yes to me! Say yes to love!
Say yes to life!
Say, say yes to life!

A debt to settle in heaven

(I chase that feeling of an eighteen year old who didn't know what loss was.)

_______________________________________________________________

far away, a knowing voice, a knowing look that i can still see so clearly, eyebrows raised in the dark. laughing, but i don't feel sad, 

"you sound like a mess."

and suddenly i'm ok with it and inconsolable all at once - one thing i know so absolutely is that everything will cycle and roll over again, so i cry and laugh at how that's the funniest, simplest, most honest thing i've heard from you or anyone in weeks. you laugh with me, probably at me a little as well, and i know everything will be alright - even if i have to claw my way up a vertical face to see the sun again.

(something i am learning is that everyone, for the most part, is just making the best decision they can with the tools currently at their disposal.) 

laugh and breathe out, sigh and lean into it again, give up a hundred times but never truly mean it. say goodnight in the morning and take comfort knowing there are people that i love on the other side of the world living happily while i toss to sleep. visit reality in a big wide circle around my bedroom - sometimes it's hard to go to work or the optometrist or the mechanic and all i want to do is die and run away to my car but i stay and get it done because silly things in real life continue no matter what and the one annoying thing about them is that they demand to be done

and i think that's a part of what it means to get better

with the fire that you started in me

said more with my hands than i've ever, ever said with my voice, perched on the edge of a couch, pushing down and pressing something solid. jumper falling off my shoulder. 

(finger guns) - 'ah ha.'

'this is what everyone was talking about, when they talk about ____, when they talk about _______, this is actually what they meant. none of that shit i felt before - i had no idea i had i had so much to feel.'

pause, 

'how do people do it?' shuffle further undercover,

'maybe there's an untapped resource - maybe there's a reservoir.'

_______________________________________________________________

(and i've shed my skin again, 

i pinch it between my fingers and it dissolves, 

i wake up in the morning

 and it's a perfect imprint on my sheets. 

transparent membrane around my eyes 

red raw and peeling,

(i take a blade, 

and press it,

and run it 

against my legs, and my arms

certainly not for myself,

not for anyone)

Should tell my friends when I love them

photo by rochelle flack

said we were leaving an hour and a half ago, told the whole world, but walking down the street i don't feel the responsible pull of work in the morning - rather i feel the impossible pull of something unresolved, heavy, tearing, making me crazy

an arm around me. another pull, a lifeguard reaching, 

i've been gifted nothing,

whether i wanted it or not.

but from nothing i can create so much.

from nothing i can rebuild myself.

then from nothing i can imagine it in thousands of ways

i mean they're all wrong, they're sketches,

they glow and warp daily depending on my competence,

mutate

(the further the further i still have to go)

we fleshed it out in the car for an hour and a half and a half-decision fills me with comfort and dread in equal parts, hot pink mistakes, pathetic attempts in the face of stone-like strength - i think november 1 is an achievement, as is november 11, november 17, december 1, etc, 

and smaller things that make me smile:

my boss talking to me with her mouth full

two speakers exploding with sound

stories fill my car,

other people are happy, basking in that

leeching

(for you i have so many words,

but i forget where we were)

2PM

if i could, i would run,

i would collide into something that's not my career

consider this, say i look tired, not myself

i lean into this entire month, trying to communicate

trying to recall how it felt to erase so quickly

 consider me a victory, remind me of what i've won

and so the loss transforms again, retches, a gaping hole, 

look down, suggest smallness

i'm not sleeping.

brow crease

pen click

clear my throat

if i could, 

i would run

i'll see you in a week

nothing but vain fantasy

1. whatever's coming will come and we'll meet it when it does

_______________________________________________________________

everything i'm scared of in the dark, stacking pillows and holding them like a body

everything that is so normal and everyone that has it worse

(cosy lighting i slam both my hands on the wooden table and lean in manic 'i've never felt anything like this before in my life' g looks at me over her glasses)

my head picks up on the smallest, 

4 lines from bad songs and books i read in school cycle around as though i'm supposed to take something from them

_______________________________________________________________

2. my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars shall bitterly begin this fearful date with this night's revels and expire the term of a despisèd life closed in my breast by some vile forfeit of untimely death

_______________________________________________________________

3. if i spill my life ain't worth a nickel

how much is your soul worth if you don't

_______________________________________________________________

4. i waited for nothing, and nothing arrived

- you act like you miss me

Work for days on feeling normal, and it unravels at the most inconvenient times - sitting on a bike at the gym on a Sunday morning reading Twilight (I'm sad!! Leave me alone) and Outside by Catfish and the Bottlemen comes on the stereo - I can't get away, I can't get my headphones on fast enough, 

I'm in the car by myself to the country with this song and my voice and the sun and my heart bursting, things are perfect, I feel beautiful, I feel alive

and as though I've been slapped across the face angry tears land on the page in front of me, and I'm exhausted, trying to ride through a pool of molasses to tire everything in me that makes it so hard to sleep at night.

we let them knock like crazy 'cause i'd not seen her in months

Never in my life have I not been able to eat because of how I was feeling - until now!!! There was a time when I would pray for that; watch my friends ignore their meals when going through hard times and I would be so jealous of them, because all I ever usually want to do is eat when I'm going through it myself. I used to leave food on my plate on purpose when I was upset because that was the 'normal' thing to do - hoping someone would notice I wasn't eating it and be impressed, like I was impressed. And now here I am, weak and depressed, lifeless, nauseous - manic with anxiety and adrenaline that keeps me going + awake through the night, but running on nothing. I can't believe this is a life I would have happily chosen only a couple of years ago. 

i used to carry you through town, you used to smother me in lippy

now if we ever get an hour together

I understand now

Champagne with breakfast while I'm yawning

photo by @michelle.psd

(for the first time in my entire life, i think i understand what it means to be truly loved by a friend)

love moves and works underneath the surface, feeding from the ground up - friendships are supposed to be easy, and mine mostly are


1. i crumple in a booth in brunswick and arms are there to catch me, hold me

2. i crumple on a couch in north fitzroy and fingers tread lightly on my shoulder



call to see how i'm going

you have no idea how that feels, medium

my true friends protect me from things i didn't need to know about

and when i know, i'm so grateful they stood over me 10 ft tall and infallible

body origami in the corner swirl the ice round with the straw 

unfold my head