if you will be the lighthouse, i will be the rocks below. crashing against unanswered prayers. when you were seven, you saved spiders. yes, i was holier than thou because i had to be holier than something. what would i tolerate for love? a difference in faith, a distance between us? our suffering is not beautiful nor is it meaningful. just once i would like to be the waves while you are the light. - (a.v.p)

i don't remember the first time i was called skinny but there i was all odds and ends, angles and edges, enduring pinches at my upper arm, stomach, finger grasping at nothing but air.

i don't remember when i was taught to be proud of it, either.

was it in the compliments i got that my best friend didn't? the girls who had a lot to say about my leg hair stopping when they got to my waistline? i honest to god wish someone would tell me so i could time travel right back and shield me from poisoned affirmations.

i am no longer a child. my teens have came and went i am no longer thin.

my body is unfamiliar to me. a stranger wearing a suit a few sizes too big. my stomach talks to me now, tells me when i am hungry, no longer content to be silenced with green tea and gum.

it's better like this, i know. i know this as lovers disappear. i know this as i turn invisible in changing rooms. i know this even though even though even though.

i never knew getting healthy would feel like a funeral, a solemn procession of respect and attraction falling into a grave.

i want to scream 'love me like before!' but my echo comes back, cool as shadow

'you first.'

Describe a Home

Imaginatively, it was called 'The Big House' and big it was. Four full sized floors and more petering off into the attic. It sat in a row of houses that young me understood to be 'posh' owned by the rich or rented out by estate agents squeezing out every penny from its occupants. I was never sure if the Big House was owned or rented and I harboured a secret belief that the housemates were squatters. It might have even been true.

The façade was white, peeling in places, the bottom wall decorated by some graffiti in electric blue. Nobody had bothered to clear it off. For all I know, it was done by one of the occupants.

And who were the occupants? There were a large number of them and they changed week by week, someone always leaving to go backpacking or to move to Europe to become a teacher. They were hippies, musicians, artists, communists, stoners, skaters, dreamers, amateur everythings, film makers, students, writers and more besides. Everywhere you looked there were dreadlocks, piercings, ink and paint stained fingertips, home made clothes, tattoos. To me they seemed the coolest people in the world and holding my father's hand, looking up at them, they became giants. They were his friends and I adored them all.

The inside was exactly how one would expect a chaotic commune to look. In the kitchen there were dishes mouldering in the sink, empty beer bottles stacked by the bin, a hundred flavours of herbal tea. The kettle was always boiling and it had a window that looked out onto a back garden that had been neglected enough it turned into nothing but brambles, reminding me of Sleeping Beauty's tower.

Ash trays balanced pecariously on the arms of sofas in the living room, no two chairs matching, magazines stacked on the cofee table and books placed here and there. There were a lot of them - books, I mean. And every single person was a reader, quotes tripping off their tongue the way other people might comment on the weather or football results. An avid bookworm myself, young though I was, they made me feel clever too, taking my reviews seriously, nodding along as I gushed about whatever I was reading.

Anders, a particular favourite of mine, a blonde Norwegian with blue eyes, showed me a particularly dazzling secret of the house. A tiny door I had passed a number of times, too small to even be a airing cupboard door. I had been unimpressed until he opened it. Having to crawl to get in, it revealed a set of steps opening into a bedroom. It had seemed magical to me at the time, like a fairy had played a trick. I wanted to stay in this house forever.

One summer day, everyone was stifled. The one negative of the house was the garden couldn't be used and it did not catch the sun. As the evening came and everyone got sick of being indoors, a team effort was mounted to move a couch across the (busy) road and place it in front of the opposite church, in the section of still-golden sunlight that we had so been lacking all day. Beers were cracked open, a battered boombox produced. Here, right on the street, a summer party started and all I could do was beam.

Whoever told you that to be a woman was to be miserable? There are places on this earth Where no woman has ever died. When I say 'tell me something true.' I don't necessarily mean 'tell me something painful.' There were times where I was free. There's got to be more to it all Than suffering. I was born patient. I can wait a little longer to grow.

Things I did not say to my father:

I am making religious history. I am so loved. There is joy in me the likes you cannot imagine. I did not grow up, I grew out. My lovers would go to war for me. My secret self and I will not be taking calls. I survived and I don't want to talk about how. I built the person I am and got blood under my nails. I do not want to owe you anything. I am good at what I do. My friends are not mesmerised by petty applause. I am not mesmerised by petty applause. I will not relieve you of your shame. When I said go to therapy, I didn't mean like a doctor. I meant like an ambulance. If I am brave, it is because I taught myself to be brave. If I am kind it was because the trees taught me so. Do you know how many times you've broken my heart? Maybe it's right I get to do it back.

A Kiss

It was not like kissing Astarion.

Astarion (until very recently) kissed like he meant to win. He moved, positioned, leaving little room for error, hers or his. His kisses were a dance that she followed, as best as she could and probably insufficiently, though he seemed to have few complaints. Knowing him, he probably enjoyed the air of superiority it granted him. He liked being clever and she was in a position to give him those opportunities.

Calen was softer. He guided her with a gentle touch, his hand in her hair, the other resting in the small of her back as if it belonged there, which of course, it did. There was a tentativeness to his fingertips, as if worried she would turn to smoke, or water, or disappear like magic. Lissa arched upwards, moving onto her tiptoes to get more of him, more taste, more touch, more contact. Her hands clutched his broad shoulders, preventing herself from falling in any sense of the word. She needn't have bothered. There was no way Calen was letting go of her again.

When they finally broke apart it was like coming up for air. She noticed their surroundings again, the steady trickle of water down the cave walls, the blue glow casting them both in an unearthly glow, making her hair look brighter than ever. And she was smiling.

She could feel joy right down to her toes, making her want to move with it. Warmth flushed across her face and across her chest, following the instinct of the heart. Her fingers itched to touch him in all the ways they had never been allowed to, to comb through his hair, press fingers to his lips and that's not to mention all the places she wanted to taste -

She took a steadying breath and looked up into his face, radiant. Miracles could happen, even in the dark.

this year, i am reliving all my old traumas christ, do we ever really stop being teenagers? is part of me always stuck in that room, that hospital, that body, that me?

maybe i was an adult, once when i was fifteen.

maybe the only difference between her and me that matters is that she still wished upon stars.

mostly, i write poetry for my friends. once it had been for him, when i was seventeen and foolish. then it was for me, (still is, sometimes).

but now i scrawl some words, slide the piece of paper of the desk, see, i say this is all for you.

it tricks and trickles, chasing it's own feet, moving as if just thawed, maybe spring is coming, against all odds.

the fox has no regard for poetry. it just wants to cool its feet. the stream doesn't wait for it nor would it expect it to.

i didn't know if i was ready for this year.

maybe once upon a time the petals of the snow drop froze in the eternal February, reduced to roots in the coming March. things can flourish here, i promise you. my touch only bruises the petal, softer than soft, as it is. it whispers at me tread gently

the fox leaps over the stream.

one day, there will be air enough in my lungs. one day, i'll be dizzy with the abundance of it all.

those days i was obsessed with joan of arc obsession didn't fade when i was nine and i cut my hair off with a knife, porcelain sink clogged instantly. could have overflower and put out her flames if my mum hadn't come in, shrieking about the kitchen ceiling.

she probably would have preferred me love Bride, the saint of healing hands, hardworking, hard-done-by, the saint of her own name, anything but tempestuous joan.

little did she know they both tended flames one way or another.

how about you reveal something worth seeing. you haven't got a dirty little secret - you've got a hell of an opener.

who do you love the most the creature tip tapping on the bridge or the monster underneath?

i am trying to get to the point where i say i'm better off without you. i wish we'd lived long enough for me to find out if we were as bad of an idea as my gut suggested.

i try to starve your memory out. but you just disappear into the woods ready to cannibalise whatever part of me died there.

"express the inexpressible" all that good poetry advice says. when i turn to the blade and my blood spills to the floor (red poppies blooming in the carpet like my bedroom is the trenches in an unwinnable war where i am both enemy and champion) where is your poetry now, i crow at the empty sky

everywhere, everywhere

the sky whispers back.

She says that I don't move her enough That my words and breath do not Induce in her a fraction of Weak knees, Quick breath, Butterflies.

What she means is that I don't love her wrong. She loses no sleep over me. Never once has she hung up On our late night calls, Cried herself to sleep.

Naïve me, I thought that was a blessing. But a girl who's first love was a blade's edge Couldn't understand any emotion That didn't make her hands shake.

All I can do for her Is transform my ribs into A confessional booth, Receiving no sacrament but The secret pearls That bubble from her throat Landing in our linked hands.

The land doesn't sleep in Winter. It is wide awake. It does not encourage dreaming. It is as it is, and will be no different.

Today the air is white The sky soars upwards in a cathedral of grey The ground lies hard, waiting for feet, Threatening to bite.

The god sits cross legged on the hills Looking into the valleys, Hand poised to pluck a car from the winding snake road.

The empty trees shiver and say nothing.

Brigid, I have not laid your linen. Forgive me flame bearer, I have no fire in my limbs. Press your healers hands Into my back Where it hurts the most.

I cup my hands Drink from the well of my heart Where holy water Looks an awful lot like blood.

I don't want to be forged anew I would settle for a little peace.

Soon, snowdrops. Soon, the coolest morning light. Soon, the poetry that comes from being awake, dreamless and whole.

you know when you cry because jo march finds a good man the ending doesn't feel right you don't know why.

you know when the tomboys get a makeover which really means getting them into a skirt and your own legs burn like embers.

you scan books for grown up tomboys they don't exist. you can't be you and be adult. you reread peter pan again.

you don't know if you want to kiss boys or be the boy being kissed. when you're most yourself you get called ugly.

(is ugly just a word for handsome girl, you wonder)

when you cut off all your hair instead of your wrists victory bells sound. when you change your name into that uncouth nickname you always preferred anyway angels sing.

you couldn't wait to be reborn, in some other, different life that wouldn't be yours. here, now, you become.

My favourite poet has cancer. Across the globe, bullets fall in hails of snowflakes. Drones are trodden into icy ground - Where then, is mercy?

I do not know their fear Only mine, acrid and fresh. Do I pray? Or merely think Hoping it has the power To move mountains Where my purse will not Where my politicians will not Where the rule of the land will not.

Miracles happen. But they happen best with our hands.