You left me with a letter, and your body empty on the floor.
I don’t know how to look at you any more.
I don’t know how to speak.
Behind my eyes you’re tattooed in living ink –
a broken lullaby, a hated memory.
I can’t sleep with the thoughts, the wonderings.
I’m afraid to leave you alone in the house.
(You could do it again. And this time –)

...

You didn’t read between the lines.
My hand trembled over those words – I spoke the truth,
and you missed it.
You couldn’t hear; you couldn’t see my voice.
In every dream I’m drowning.
Please.
Find the strength to mourn, forgive.
I kept a place for you between every word.
(I never
-wanted-
to live)
And listen close.

...

I can’t watch you fall, anymore.
I don’t have anything left.
I’ve listened to every stupid lie,
every laugh from the open mouth of Christ.
You’re not a saint, you’re a sinner,
and I can’t hold my tongue.
Say something. Be something, be someone.
I’ve watched you throw our thoughts into the sea,
and press our hopes into ship wrecks
just to watch them sink.
You said you’d give me a letter –
but a suicide note wasn’t what I meant.

I can be your oxygen. I will be your life raft.
I can be your drip, your drugs, your life support.
Just show me how to help you.
Give me a single word.
The secrets
are killing you.

...

Tell me we’ll never be the same.
It’s too late, now. Nothing can save me.
I am going to die by my hands;
I fall every time with the grace of gravity.
My heart beat is slow beneath my ribs; it’s beating out of time.
My feet are cold; my robes were
soft
and blue.

The nurses showed something in their faces that made me think of you, every day.
(And every day, I thought of you).

Time doesn’t exist in me. I don’t know what I was. My mind seeps into everything.
My thoughts drip onto my hands, onto the floor.
I breathe black poison,
(infectious).
For years I’ve tried, but I never existed here.
(This is not my world).
I’m trapped behind a somewhere,
far away from the soul that ties me down.
(I am not a girl).

The sea cannot remember my steps.
I make believe, but the light is blue, unchanged.
I’m nothing, here.
Lay, lady. Lay…
If I can free you from myself, the world will tremble and lie still.
(Let me cast off my skin, my sins).
The silence wraps my lips.

...

Believe in me, in us, in you.
If you die here, everything will be stained by it; everything will be
marked
and damaged too.
Our lives will be different, irreversible.
One day I will be staring out to sea, whispering “I had another daughter.” Once.
Once, I had another daughter.

...

I was never anyone’s daughter, never a sister, a friend,
a lover.
I am nothing.
I don’t exist.

Today I dreamt of the thick ropes hanging in the trees.
I wondered how my shadow would sway in the fading light, how the colour of my skin would
change
under the sky.
Today I was the leper
who was healed by the red sins
that flooded the ground.
Today my breathing stopped -
I flatlined into death
And there was no
Sound.
Today I leapt off every rooftop and started to
fall -

Today I stayed alive,
(for you).  

They say
There is poetry
In despair –
And hope in us all.