windwake

If we were to sleep with no ceiling, we could have woken to not only falling stars that night, but the whole universe in our bedroom. We would have been safer then. But the ceiling buckled, and the attic - its cobwebs, its dust - has been on our floor since September. The universe lights could have given distraction from the screaming. But the tarpaulin roof is not nearly as bright as the sky. So we still hear the tearing of the earth, the screeching of our sister, every time. We are learning about loss these days, and they are teaching bravery in schools. But still you've held my hand since September.

She says she's going to be a tree with birds tangled in her hair. In Winter she will shed her skin of avocado string. She will fit somewhere in green lands, in a forest where clouds fly low. With candyfloss for friends she doesn't need her pencilcase or study notes. She flies higher than ash clouds. Three hundred and eighty for her oxygen. I'm not a normal criminal but there's something wrong about a broken cemetery. We took their bones and buried them beneath her branches. In green lands where the trees are.

i. On writhing roads you never learnt to never cry and drive. Tears transparent, irrelevant, inept. No phoenix; can't rid your skin of shaking string. ii. Accelerate Apollo's light, he's fast and wrecked, he sulked and stole all that you kept. (Ready the chariot and if we're quick, take back what we've lost.) iii. Smoke is black your blood is red. Poseidon doesn't care if you're scared. Hermes calls but it's too late, says Thanatos and Hades are greedy today. Poseidon's mad and Zeus agrees, they watch as fifty thousand scream. iv. You are committed to the accelerator, and the flickering of the re

Marigold was alone when they came to her. "No, no," she sighed. "It wasn't me who sold all the beans. i was merely just holding them." A laugh. Zoom in to her face. She's sitting on the sand, her hat lying gloomily beside her, its colour is leaking on to the sand. She stares at it. "i should've known that would happen." Scene 5: Echoes. Flash a shot of the girl with the blood. Colour lifts off the floor toward the sky. A following shot of the same girl with colour in her cheeks. She's running down the street with a smile on her face and she's catching wind between her fingers. She's holding out her life to the trees and telling them to ta

Once, i was stardust. Raw. Burning. Cold and light and heat and fury. Dust. i flew through my galaxy. i landed in soft golden grass. i danced through clouds. i buried myself, layers and layers of sand piled on top of me. Sand. Rich and thick and scratching. But i couldn't feel it because i was stardust. But as i fell through the layers of sand day after day, i could hear. i could see each moment. Each pure, unresolved second that once started and once ended. Then i lay at the centre of the planet. Gravity had a hold of me. Then came the noise. Then came the shaking. The sand i had fallen through was gone. And i was in the air again. In the f

You have hollow bones but they don't believe you, because you are to blame. You and the spiders that crawl through you. - It is too late. You have already torn your self apart, you have lost your self, but you are still mine. i lost you. - They label you like a star, HX2847, but to me you are Mintaka, you are holding Orion together. - Soon you will die and everyone knows that when a star dies there must be an explosion. So you are waiting for a collision, but you say we don't touch even when we collide. So you are just waiting.

These people are not poets. They try to twist their words, throw in a line to create a rhyme, or some assonance. Padding out lines to reach a word count and putting in line breaks to create a nice shape. And you can't rhyme, you pretend to write free verse and they will look upon you as genius, as an artist knows how to make breaks like you do. A word is not enough. Pencils to erase, but not good enough, you cannot venture into woods if you are sitting at a desk inside four walls. You cannot live deliberate lives if you change your words to what the critiques say. Instead you study the masters, their wisd

Your heart is beating, but it is not a symphony. You are bars of rest but you are not sleeping. i carve crescents into the sky and your eyelids punish your pupils and you are in the woods, lost in trees, too many trees. Too many people, too much noise. There is a melody in your throat, and you would sing it if it weren't so quiet. You cannot be heard. That is what happens when you don't make a sound. At night the wind sounds like winter.

They come in pairs, eyes dark and living beneath themselves. Laser eyes burning into each other. Nowhere to go except where they are. Embark the battle. Drawing swords, not a word. Blades of ribbon, silence of stone. Fight for the fight, breathe for the life. Not a weapon can kill here not even the knife. They will leave painting the roses are red. Red for love, red for hate, red for nothing will have changed. The trees whisper and i raise the flag. Silence.

There is something beautiful that i have to write but i do not know what it is. i know there are skies melting into oceans to create a song, but i do not know where the sky is. i only know that i will fly there one day. But for now i am a cat, chasing butterflies and birds, digging my nails into the trees as if they deserve to be punished. As if when i reach the top branch i will be flying but i am not, i am only falling. i am a cat and cats do not have hands to grip a pencil, cats cannot tell you that i love you, cats are kicked and yelled at because master is angry and cats cannot carve a hole in my skull to l