her fingers trail along his jaw, stubbly and speckled from the harsh colchis sun, her voice dips in a whisper, trembling, quivering. “i can’t”

his answering rumble chilled her blood.

“it’s the only way.”

he asked, with the sweetest hint of malice,

“you love me, don’t you? if you love me, i will love you too.”

_____

blood pounds through her ears, sunspots cloud her vision. she sees her brother, face tight with betrayal and grief-stained wrath, chest puffed out in a hapless attempt at intimidation; blinks back tears and memories of a chubby, fair-haired boy hugging her tightly around her middle as her father and his advisors argued in the next room, as battles raged around her home and her gilded world began to crack and melt slowly around the edges. blinks them back as the same fair-haired man strides towards her now, boots clanking on the ship deck, soon to be inked red and black with his blood.

she knows already those stains will never really wash out.

(“medea. return at once to corinth. please, come home. leave this foolish bastard behi-”

blood spatters the wood. her eyes blurs with tears and her mind swallows itself in waves of pain, but her traitorous hands grasp the blade /stabbingstabbingstabbingstabbingstabbing/fleshandskinandbone/weavetogether/inalurid

masterpiece/

and her lips twisted into a bright, manic leer.

those lips, which she had kissed her brother goodnight with countless times, bade goodbye to her mother, said “i love you father” every night like the filial child she was. those red lips were now pressed against jason’s, tongues thrashing, a display of desperate fervent crazed passion and love. because this was love, wasn’t it? this embrace, blood painted across her arms and offal embellishing her robes, hair a rat’s nest, and all she could see were his blue, blue eyes.

in the background, a steady plop, plop, plop sound as her brother’s arms, legs, torso were tossed into the seas.)

he did have a name. absyrtus, her baby brother, her bloodline.

but he is no more, and all she knows is jason of the argonauts. jason, her hero, with she, his heroine.

——

but readers, who know the rest of their damned passion, cemented in mythology; you see, don’t you?

jason broke his promise. he strayed for another woman, and when he did, he tossed medea aside. left her stranded outside of corinth, her only home, with nothing left and no-one to trust, the blood of her brother crusted in her fingernails, the tears of her kingdom salting her eyes, and the black ink of remorse splitting her heart.

and so she didn’t really owe anything to him, or his pretty little lady, or anyone else, did she?

she was a free fucking woman now,

and free women always had the most fun.

i remember the last time

your flesh

touched

my flesh,

embraced in

the clothes of death,

painted in saline.

last goodbyes

veiled in the lyrics

of scribbled ink

falling

falling

through the sink

Fuck the fancy words

and fuck the pretty phrases; 

I want to write I love you 

until my lungs collapse 

and my fingers 

bleed with the weight of it

I want to empty every ink cartridge

of every thick-smeared pen, 

to wear down laptop letters 

until they fade and fall apart.

I love you

I love you

I love you

I never said it enough. but 

I loved you

I love you

I’ll love you

until the very end. 

the sky falls,

spins like some crimson horse

shatters like your heart did,

when she said she didn’t love you anymore,

and the melancholy wail

of some long forgotten rhythm

moves you

to rosy tears

that spread like wildfire

and hurt

just

as

much

You join the circle

to throw the frisbee around

my heart speeds up

you pass to me

that stupid blue disc

slides through my fingers

you don't react

to the easy throw i couldn't catch

the game goes on

i watch you from out the corner of my eye

i notice how you throw

gentler just to me

wish it were just me

and you

wish i could tell you

your the reason

i can't catch

the cold clenching in my heart

beating senseless into my temples.

someday you will leave me.

beauty seeks beauty;

so why are you here,

what are you waiting for?

the softness of an amber dawn,

the touch of sun on skin,

and your skin, your absolute tenderness.

how are trees still flowering.

as i am walking away from a love

which will not come back to me.

why is there birdsong? why is there joy?

and where is the fire?

(bring me the pomegranates.)

{railway station, 4am}

I exhale, breath crystallising briefly under the harsh fluorescent lighting. The cold bench digs into my hip, but I lean back anyway, eyes fluttering shut as my mind wanders. How strange, I muse, that I sit in the veins of a monstrosity of a suburban metropolis buzzed up on adrenaline; yet, for all the company I enjoy, I might as well be nowhere.

I could stay here, suspended in this moment, forever. How ironic, choosing to stay permanently in a place designed for quick transport. How would it feel, to watch countless silver snakes shoot past to various Exotic Destinations, with no sense of urgency to go anywhere, to do anything at all? I wonder. What kind of a warmth can a railway station yield when all people can do is leave them, over and over?

The answer is simply, none. Or perhaps the opposite, the definitive absence of any warmth at all – the kind of cold that overloads the senses to somehow convince the human brain that, yes, you are in fact feeling a fiery burn- but of ice, not fire.

The sharp tang of cigarette smoke teases my nose, and I turn my attention to a shadowed figure farther along the platform. We regard one another for a second; in that second, mutual wariness and something else is shared; in that brief moment, we are bound in our isolation. They look away- the spell breaks, and my eyes follow their footsteps as they fade away to Somewhere Else.

All I know in this moment is the Solitude. If I were to leave, what would the Reality greet me with – a kiss and a welcome back? I doubt it.

“Miss! Ma’am, this is the last train to the city for tonight. Are you boarding?”

I open my eyes, leave the vestments of my mind’s reality, and stand. I leave the hard wooden bench, the harsh white lights, the unknown stranger who may have never existed at all.

“Of course.”

People with real depression don’t take pictures of their scars and post online. They don’t cut themselves and show to others like a trophy to the world. Perhaps some would, but most wouldn’t because depression is a very secretive, humiliating thing to them. How could it be not when they can’t even have control over it?

Most of the time, people with depression sailed through life without red lines on their wrists. Instead, it’s carved into the threads of life, carved into the shoulders and back of these people. If you look closely, you can see their backs slouching, as if under the weight of something. They smile and laugh but at another moment, they cry and get angry at small things that don’t matter to you, but matter to them.

People don’t get depressed because they want to. People get depressed because they can’t look further than their pain and they are wallowed so deep into it like a whirlpool sucking in material. There’s no escape route for them, or so it seems. They can’t help but to wallow in it because they don’t know how to get out of it. It’s that hopeless, empty feeling that they have to live with. Pain is better to feel; at least you don’t feel empty.

So stop romanticizing depression. Stop making it seem like it’s something you wish to have because it’s easy to have attention on you. It’s not the cutting that defines them; it’s the feeling they feel. Don’t put these feelings so lightly because more than once, they wished they were in your position, free from that whirlpool of pain that seemed to be endless.

in this house

we flush our problems down the toilet

so that suffering and grief is only ever the gurgle of water/ wondrous/

thirsty/ as it swallows whatever we need to get rid of.

this is how we did away with my goldfish

& they say,

too, that this is how my mama did away with my baby sister/ coathanger and toilet/

felt like wet paint. said it was all dark

/and warm red.

in this house we break teeth not bones;

here we are taught: love is not gentle or pretty.

love is mutilation, soft /soft hurt,

feeding me your bits of rotten meat/ and tender fatigue/

and praying

that when god forgets you

& you become nothing less/ or more

than carrion amongst carrion in still water,

she will give you a (new) body

so much greater

than this.

#poetry #fiction

it feels like death follows her every move

wind against skin, lost in the dark of midnight, the wind that makes the smell of the death feel like home.

a serene ambience where sound is muffled out. the movement of water in the harbour

as she stands on the hill onlooking like some kind of higher power.

we’re alive

we’re alive

sat wondering why we’re here

lovely dreams of escaping to foreign land and spending the rest of her days in a small village off the coast.

far, far away from everything and everyone.

we’re alone

we’re alone

yet we are brought back

cutting her body in familiar ways

in ways the remind her of freedom or perhaps control

we’re hurt

we’re hurt

troubled children we have no right to want to die

lives perfect and laid out in straight and neat ways because this is happiness

when formalities are obeyed because in their eyes she can't possibly love her?

or we can be lost and found at once and be left fucking dead in the arms of past lovers

we’re dying

we’re dying

young children they don’t understand the consequences of their actions

and did they stand there alone wishing for the wind once more

because they're capable of a future in which the wind isn’t needed. we have money and security.

we're safe

we're safe

did you pray at night

for a returned soul without a receipt?

because we can’t escape now

this is our fate

we’re happy

we’re happy

and yet we’re still left wondering if life is a curse or a blessing.

we're a curse

we're a blessing