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)