Clitbait

Victims

You made me shatter / and I was in pieces / mirror shards / your shitty protestations staring / back at you from the floor / where you couldn’t help but throw me / like I was nothing / but a plaything to twist / into a victim

So sometimes I take myself back / and pretend like I’m who I was / before I opened my arms to you / but the truth is I’ll never have the / bright eyes you pierced between your fingernails / without care / because you said they were so pretty

But explosions don’t come without aftermath / and the proof will always be where / you left it / because you have never been more wrong / than when you thought you would escape / in your nonchalance

I like to think / I know your guilt

I know the darkest parts of you / and I know my memory still lives / somewhere you don’t want to address / so you’ll act like it’s fine / that I disappeared because you / couldn’t stop blaming me

You will cover your wounds / with plasters too small / and you will tell yourself / you were right all along

Pretence does not prove anything / and that is a promise because / I am not a saint / and I have screwed things up too / but I have changed and I / would let myself collapse / before papering over the cracks / with lies that will only fracture

Let me tell you / you will not stay sane / as long as you cannot grow

I do not search for a sorry / and I do not plead for you / on your knees / but I ask you / learn / do not look to be a hero / before you have been a victim / to your own mistakes

Katie Proctor

Modes of communication

Would you be surprised if I told you that I want you?

Has the stammering not been clear enough?

What about about the awkwardly timed jokes?

Have my side-glances not been direct enough?

Surely, the spiteful sarcasm, loaded with longing, was a dead giveaway?

In fact, I think I’ve done everything I could to tell you that I want you

Except tell you.

inked

I trace the draft of
the story you planned to write-
in pencil-
but you wanted it in pen.
maybe I did too.
but I knew life could be brighter
if only you wait.

so waiting is what I did,
afraid you might let go-
if I were too fast or slow-
but no- together,
we took the ink
and brushed the page
with a feathered quill,

and together,
we wrote our story
in permanent ink,
the cursive letters
joining words, alike
to the way our hands
connect. eternally.

with the quill, we
write our story into
motion, and the ink
flows free, creating something
beautiful, even in
the stains left

as the ink blots,
as the heart’s passions explode.
art. the smudged
blends into the paper,
the other threads of the tale
to create our own
kind of beautiful.

Lauren Curr

To steady the pendulum

swinging in the dark,
left to right,
I cannot see my own direction.

disillusioned-
unsure of what’s reality,
unsure of me.

dysphoric,
but of what?
who knows,
who needs to know.

maybe, of me, you see,
of me and who I’ll be.

and one day
I’ll know
that I was just for show
and I can be,
truthfully,
the one my heart does know.

Lauren Curr

Jane’s return. ‘Do not struggle so,’ I have been told, and then felt Angered and afraid Of chains and of nets.Now I have returned to youof my own free will…

Womanhood

My long hair is the hood of womanhood
A waterfall of compliments and male validation, a crown
You see me in the street and know i am a girl
If i shaved my head would i be a strong woman
Or an unwoman
Red riding hood becomes the wolf

Lilah Hyman

Little Delhi Girl

A little girl skipped into the road during a red light
No older than four
Bare feet pattering against dusty tarmac

What if it turns green?
What if the cars don’t see her?

Smiling, as vibrant as Delhi itself
Child of the city

The traffic her playground
One note her prize

Lilah Hyman

Washing.

Heart beat pumping aching shoulders into motion
Coarse fabric beneath tired hands
The wail of an infant ringing in her ears

She places a detergent capsule in the machine, shuts it and moves the knob to 40 degrees mixed load.

Lilah Hyman

Unstring my wings.

Pretty little thing – doe eyes, gentle smile –
These things you call me and it’s sweet for a while,

Until they wrap up my wings in tangled twine,
Restrain me from nature and you think that it’s fine.

I have brittle bones and one word could break them into pieces for you to collect:
When this started, I could not expect

To be taken for a thing for you to call yours,
Take me from the moors and keep me indoors –

Babe, I just want to be free
And maybe that means that this isn’t meant to be.

Though tonight I won’t sleep a wink
For all this thinking, and overthinking,

I know it’s for the best.
You – you have put my heart to the test

And I am sick of making revisions
To fit into your future visions

Of a white picket fence life,
For I was not meant to be a wife,

Not really. I was meant to be a wild thing,
Running through forests, free to unstring

My wings and let them fly.

Rhi Henry