Misinterpretation

The day is planned.

Until it’s not. Shaken by a few words

that shift what was stated before

and the fire

from this upending

is scorching my actions,

I’m not in control of myself anymore.

Snap Dragons

They snarl, hackles raised at the thought of disrupting their nest.

No words can ease their discontent,

even from their own kin.

Order must be kept,

no rules bent, all traditions adhered too,

though hurt has entered the childling’s heart

and it must suffer through.

A likely story

Ursula stole my voice, though

I made no contract and wasn’t singing.

She latched onto my legs with her tentacles,

tripped me into the deep

where I drowned

despite breathing.

The last bubble of air popped into a scream

that people mistook for a siren’s call

and left its echo to die in my chest.

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Harbour

The skin on my back is raw,

I feel a niggling at my shoulder blades.

Writhing, a separate entity that I have no control over.

I don’t know how long I can restrain it,

one day it’s going to spike out

as wings.

 

After the shockwave

My fingertips drip ash,
all that’s left of the fire that burnt through me.
Everything is returning to its natural colour;
I am the only grey in the room.

Time jump

The pink carpet glares up

as I sit at the u-shaped set of tables

with the rest of the class.

The teacher stands in front of the blackboard,

but there’s silence.

It drags out, thick and dark

becoming a void that eats up the whole room.

It’s coming from me,

as I try and fail to figure out the equation I’ve been asked to solve.

As the void reaches me, I blink,

jumping forward.

The assessor is waiting just like my teacher,

but her fear is clear

as the sea coming from my eyes

threatens to drown the room.

Whale song

Imagine a whale floating across the sky.

You think it’s confused, swimming around up there

and not in the blue.

It doesn’t occur to you that your sky

is not sky, only a level of the ocean above you

because you’ve sunk so deep

that you’ve merged into sediment

where the pressure is holding you down

and this whale is trying to get its song to reach you

but can’t.

You’re already rock.

Restraining a meltdown

Let me scream, let me go hoarse,

these emotions want to rip out through my body.

Crossing sounds and smells, yellow light shining in my eyes

 

and people all around

expecting me to speak in a calm manner

and diligently do my job.

 

My brain is on fire,

my mind just clinging to the vaguest comprehension of what I’m doing.

Voices turn into a babble my ears cannot take,

 

but I’m bound by this uniformed chain

to fulfill my role

so I keep my meltdown locked within.

A struggle covered over with a smile

that is kept from bursting out

 

from the fear of how they’ll react if

they see it fully formed.

 

Roar

To roar

is to expel all hurts as shattered glass

back into the raw sand they came from.

 

To roar

involves building a shield of pure force

that gives a rebound able to buckle knees.

 

To roar

means to burn the leeches from your body

and watch them shrivel as you see your own blood clot.

Clay

The soil clung to the woman’s fingers

as they stuck up from the ground.

It was evening, violet candies crunched underfoot

scattered around where she’d buried herself.

She’d needed to scream, and lacking

a place to release it, had dived into the earth

to let her voice ripple the clay

into the shape of her frustrations.