14.

Everyone is afraid of the slinky feeling that arrives in the night and twists itself around your heart. Farming its poison into your blood stream as it travels up into your brain. It starts just as a shadow of a doubt, giving you the slight feeling of discomfort. From there it twists and pulls your emotions out of place. It whispered in your ear little lies that make you unsure of your own judgment.

This shadow, this tiny and insignificant shadow has brought down kingdoms, pulled apart families and divided so many relationships both platonic and romantic. And there is no weapon for us to use to defend ourselves against this silent destroyer. We can do all we can to put our trust into our decisions, but this shadow is as patient as the ocean.

It wants.

It sits and waits, coiled around our hearts, waiting and eroding until it makes a move on our emotions. It can control even the most peaceful among us, influencing one small decision at a time until it is a powerful enough to go for the kill. What do I do?

The slimey feeling it leaves behind is tainted with betrayal and shame. Every time it leaves my body, I make an oath to my heart and emotions that it won’t affect me again.

But I always break my oath. I can’t help it.

How?

How can this one feeling have the power to bring down civilisations? How can this one emotion overrule all the others and drive us to commit acts we know we shouldn’t? Sometimes it crashes over us like a dark wave in a storm, shaking and dislodging everything in its path. Other times it floats down to us like a leaf falling off a branch. Should we be embracing it? Is it a normal emotion that over time we have come to exclude? Or has it slowly developed over the millennia as its hinger for chaos grew?

Sometimes we attract the shadow ourselves. Sometimes it is justified that we listen to the slithery shadow that whips around our hair to whisper in our ears. Maybe this is why we can never overcome it, because there are those rare occasions that the terrible gut feeling is right.

13.

The ocean is as mysterious as she is untameable. I think she’s one of the most beautiful entities of destruction this earth has to offer. She is always moving, always changing. Following the moons pull, the two work together in a harmony that is only shared between two loves who can never be together. She is so beautiful, sometimes so calm on the surface but dealing with a raging torrent to those below. She’s patient in her revenge to those that cross her, eroding slowly away over hundreds of years. Her destruction leaving beauty and chaos in her wake. The ocean never stops. Maybe she’s like us and can never bare to be in once place for too long. Maybe she’s not happy yet, and one day she finds whatever she has been searching for and she’ll fall still and silent. Or what if the ocean’s been unable to calm the raging tide of revenge and that is why people say they can hear the seaside filled with her constant raging? Her tides getting closer and closer to shore but never quite reaching their destination before getting pulled back to her great expanse by her lover in the sky. Constant chaos and unpredictability. It is easy to see why she’s so loved across the universe. But while she sits in her rage, she also nurtures. She hosts a whole universe beneath her waves. A self-sustaining world that would suffer without her existence. Maybe she is constantly shifting for those she keeps alive. One can never fully know or understand her secrets. By the time you get even slightly close, she has already moved on.

The ocean feels a lot like my mind, the never settling and constant chaos. The consistent rolling waves that mimic the rise and fall of emotions. Eroding away just the same, ever so slowly overtime but still constantly destructive.

12.

What does it mean to be depraved?

Am I depraved in my words and desires? The things I have done?

How can I explain that when I die I want all of my loved ones to receive a bone so that I’m always with them?

Or that I would carry my loves blood on a chain around my neck for no other reason than wanting to always be close to them.

Is it always outrageous to acknowledge that to be as close as possible to someone by sharing their skin that it would be a privilege?

Depraved or not, I would stake myself to the ground to stay in place if a friend asked me to. Rooted in place as they grow with trees and fly into the sun.

Or that I would carve out my organs for them while I was still living if it was the difference between life and death for them, even if it killed me in the process.

Suppose it’s possible to love someone so much, where is the line?

Is it before or after presenting your heart on a silver platter alongside a knife and asking them to cut you open so they can see how much space they take in it?

But what about depravity when it comes to ones self? And not on their actions towards those that would walk across knives for?

What makes ones soul depraved when alone in the world?

Is that even possible as long as the acts and choices are not downright wrong?

If I enjoy pain as a way to let my emotions bleed to the floor an leave my body but not enough to leave me decaying in the earth, is that depraved? Or just not quite right?

What if I just enjoy a little bit of pain in all aspects of my life?

How and why is that so bad? Just because it may not be a shared sentiment with the majority of souls on this planet, it should not mean that it is looked down upon unless it is inherently evil?

I suppose depravity can be used to describe anything that is fun.

11.

Our bodies were made to decay.

We are born with systems that have a finite span of life with no clue on how long our bodies will allow us to live. As children, our bones are strong enough to allow us to test the lengths that we can go to before we break. As teenagers, we live fast and reckless with the time and bodies we've been given with no thought on the consequences.

If you think too much, you’ll only ruin the one chance at life that you’ve been granted. It is only when our bones start creaking that you live in regret of what could’ve been. The inability to run with the birds or jump for the stars starts to ground us before we are ready.

Our bodies keeping our feet planted for long enough that the weeds can spring from the ground and root us into place. Or those that live in regret of all the little things they could not achieve in their short time on this earth. Like flying a kit or ice skating. Some never get the option to even try, being forced to work their lives away so that they’re allowed to survive. Or those whose bodies who have betrayed them and stolen the ability to live without assistance.

It is confusing, one can assume, or even scary to know, that one day your body and mind will start betraying you instead of serving you. All those years lived, memories carefully stored away and yet one day they might start slipping away with no reason why. What is the point in even making these memories if they will just be forgotten? They’ll join the millions of other dead hopes and dreams of the human race, swirling around the universe waiting for someone else to give them life.

We are all terrified of growing old, all of us with different reasons why. What if we lose who we fought so hard to become? What if we have to rely on others to help us live with simple tasks such as eating or looking after ourselves? What if we reach a certain age and despise ourselves for not having lived more when we were young? What if we never reach old age? And is it better to grow old and weary alone of with one who you have spent your whole life loving?

Humans are designed to love, with most finding the other half of their soul upon this earth. They spend decades growing, living loving and hating them, some making families and securing the survival of their bloodline. But what happens when the darkness and the earth claims one half of that whole? How can one continue to live in a world that stole their reason to wake up in the morning? How does one adjust to living for one when they have spent so many years living for two? 

There is always the fear that you won’t go first, that you’ll have to shoulder the grief alone until your own body decides when it is time to join them in the darkness. Or the fear that you shall be the one to go first. That you’ll cease to breathe with the knowledge that you are leaving your soulmate to deal with their pain alone. For some, the thought of this pain is too much that they lock their hearts away in a tote and refuse to open the gates again. They know away the key because they deem it easier to live within their own company, than risk opening their heart to someone and giving them the power to break it. We all know that our bodies decaying is inevitable, yet we all fear it happening to us. Some even get to extreme lengths to halt the efforts of ages, but in the end it always catches up to them.

Why? Why have we stayed away from the acceptance of privilege around growing old, and instead become fearful of it? Maybe one day we’ll find the answer, but I fear we will all be lost in the wind when that day comes.

10.

How cruel the universe is to allow the wind to fall in love with a mortal. Not only is it an unrequited love, but the wind goes unseen in its acts of romance. He swirls longingly around her hair and face every time she leaves her house. He waits by her front door daily for her to open it, always assisting her by gently blowing it inwards. He follows her and always makes sure her hair is blowing away from her face so that all can see her beauty.

His breeze capturing her perfume and taking it on his back he carries it around the city. The sweetness of her being on the tip of the nose for all those in the city. Never able to touch her, he settles for creating a barrier around her so that she cannot be touched by anyone else. He gets angry sometimes, I suppose, that he cannot even approach her. He cannot help it. He knows it’s wrong, letting his anger manifest in gales so strong that the trees become victims of his wrath. But he also knows that she loves the storm. The rain battering against her windows with her wind swirling around the streets and trees with a ferocity that demands attention. If she dares venture into the open on those days, he makes sure to send a zephyr into the rains path so that she can be kissed by proxy.

But he always calms down. And when he does he circles and whips around her torso in apology. He swirls under her feet to cushion her steps and helps her along to her destination. Acts of service, that’s all he can offer in this world. Always moving unseen, his acts of love come easily to him and he never has to think twice about it.

As the years passed, his cycle of love never never wavered until the day she lay on her death bed. He knew this day had been coming, he had been watching the cruel joke of life take its toll for millennia. He could tell when her last breath was coming as he always carried them off to live in the sky forever. The air was still the day she was able to take her last breath. And he was slowly swirling around her hair, almost like her was stroking her hair in farewell. As she inhaled his air for one last time on this earth, she whispered two words that couldn’t be heard by anyone else other than who she intended them for.

“Thank you”

Her exhale had barely passed her lips before he swooped down and shouldered the words on the back of his breeze. These words were not to be swept into the sky to join the others. They were to be kept with him for the rest of time.

9.

Let us love cataclysmically.

I want to burn so bright that we’re mistaken for the birth of a new star. I don’t care how long we burn for, as long as we both give it our everything.

As much as I wish for a love to last across lifetimes,

I crave a love that will be told as a story of divinity.

We may crash & burn, completely failing in our duty to live through it, but god did we burn bright before we crashed. Much like Icarus we was having the time of his life before his wings melted, we enjoy the thrill of the high before we fall.

We may fail, our match may burn out before we are ready, but I want it to be a love so intense that I am left questioning my existence in this world.

Let us take all the risks.

Let us go all in and all out together right from the start.

Let us be so unhealthy in our love together that our friends worry about out wellbeing.

Wrapped up in each other, we sacrifice our life force to burn as twin flames.

Oh what an experience you are to love.

8.

Without our bodies giving us life, we would just be a consciousness floating around in the dark. They provide us with limbs to be able to run and jump in joy. With eyes and ears to be able to hear and see the beauty of this world.

So warm and full of life.

But if they are giving us the ability to live a life high up in the clouds, why don’t we worship them more often? Why aren;t we laying down offering daily so that they keep providing us their divinity? We house our own temple. Within us there lives an entity that is higher than the gods themselves.

We are the closest we will get to divinity in this lifetime, but we often forget this.

We treat our bodies like secondary vessels deemed not worthy of being seen. We judge, hide, betray, poke and destroy the very things that allows us to stay alive on this plane of existence. We shame ourselves for not looking like someone else’s temple, when we know that each temple is different and serves a different purpose.

But our bodies say nothing. The being within continues to work for us timelessly, even though we are ungrateful. It’s no wonder the gods look upon us with such disdain when we treat out own personal temples in such a terrible way.

Long ago we lost the art of appreciation for true beauty, mainly that of ourselves. We are alive, we are living we are able to love and we are able to exist. How is that ever not beautiful? We used to understand as a collective religion, that beauty differs from temple to temple.

There’s a certain softness to be admired on a female body. That every woman and man deserve to be loved. That each temple is glorious in their own way. Appreciation of our own divinity has been lost for a very long time, but I am on a quest to find mine again.

I have a lot to make up for, I haven’t visited my temple in a very long time. She’s been neglected an deserted for no other reason that a lack of faith rooted deeply in fear and self loathing. When exactly I lost my faith I don’t know, but I do know that a pilgrimage is needed for me to make it up to her for taking care of me all these years when I know I haven’t deserved it. I think she’s like me, yearning to be appreciated and seen, and not making it anyone else’s issue but her own.

It makes sense I suppose, that we are one and the same. Goddess and disciple, bound to the same fate. We cannot escape I, however most of us still end up trying. I suppose it’s interesting that we will spend days and years praying to be allowed to worship anothers temple, but still we refuse to worship at our own altar.

Bring me back. Bring back my faith and show me how to appreciate you again.

7.

I munch on my words as I speak. 

I want to feel every syllable roll around my mouth before I spit them out. 

I need to feel the weight of each word before I spit it out.  

Roll them around my mouth so I can get a taste before you do. 

Sometimes the words are so sweet that I end up swallowing them instead, 

Sliding down my throat like hot honey. 

I can’t help it if I want to keep this sweetness inside of me.  

I think sometimes, though, I chew on the syllables too much, 

The gristle gets stuck between my teeth & I can’t tell the letters from the space in between them. 

I try to pry it out with my tongue, but I am almost always unsuccessful.  

Maybe it’s the words way of not wanting to leave the comfort of my mouth 

Maybe they know that staying where they are is the better option.  

All I know is that I’ve always been one to eat enough, so what does that say about my words? 

6.

Sometimes it feels like I’m watching my friends from behind a glass window. I treasure them beyond any gemstone & yet it feels like I am only fools gold to them. 

Why? 

Why am I always so alone? 

I am not meant to be alone.  

I can be, I have to be. 

But I crave love & light with those that I love. 

I am hopeless for my friends.  

5.

I wonder what it’s like to be a flower. To feel your roots grow down into the earth and forever rooting you into place. Twisting the ends around other roots and pieces of dirt until you’re holding on so tight that they have to keep growing. I wonder what it feels like to push through the surface of the soil for the first time and feel the kiss of the sun on your newly grown stem.  

I wonder what it feels like to grow a centimetre day by day and to slowly have my arms grow out and stretch wide across the earth. Each new arm bringing an opportunity of shade for the insects below that travel over the dirt in a hunt for food and shelter. At the end of each arm brings promise of a new bid of life that is waiting to flower with its brothers and sisters when the time is right. 

I wonder what it feels like to finally reach the day where you have grown to your tallest and most majestic heights where you finally are ready to show the world the secret beauty that you’ve been working on in the long months that you’ve been growing. I wonder what it feels like to finally open all the buds along your arms and push out the many wide petals that you’ve been hiding in their wombs of leaves. To stretch high up towards the blazing orb in the sky that fuels their growth and beauty in this world. I wonder what it feels like to have bees & other insects use your blood as a food source. To suck the marrow out of your core $ leave behind a faint memory of thanks from their touch. To know that you are playing your own special part in this world.  

I wonder what it feels like to feel the wind rippling through your petals on a warm summer's night. Or the feeling of rain on your leaves during an autumn shower. Or during a winter storm that blows a strong gale, yet you know you’re not going anywhere thanks to the roots that have stayed strong deep since day one. Or I wonder how it feels to come to the end of a life cycle and feel each of your petals slowly die and fall to the ground below. To have the womb of the bud grow back around all that’s left once all the last petals have fallen. I wonder if the new buds ever remember the life of the ones that came before. Each cycle having been the exact same but also oh so different at the same time. Do they hold a tiny fragment of bone from all their ancestors inside the bud? Whatever it is, I wonder what it’s like to be tall, strong, proud & beautiful in a garden filled with others exactly like me. 

I wonder what it’s like to be looked at in admiration for my beauty by those that were just happy to look. To have a series of onlookers all the way through my lifetime & love every stage of my growth. Do flowers know what colour they will bloom before their buds open for the first time? Do they get a choice in the matter? I wonder if flowers know how much joy they bring everyone who feasts their eyes upon their beauty. I wonder if flowers know about the weeds that attempt to grow in their shadow. Do they feel the brush of the feral flower’s roots upon their own? Do they mind that another is trying to anchor themselves to their own hard grown roots?  

I wonder what it’s like to feel the pain of someone picking one of your arms to steal your beauty for themselves. Do they feel the disconnect of nerves from their body as their arm is ripped away? I wonder if they utter a silent scream for the gods every time someone wants to hold their beauty for themselves. Do they remember each arm that has been stolen from them as they regrow one its place? I wonder what it’s like to regrow an arm. To feel the growing pains once more of a fresh limb as a reminder of what was once there. To feel the loss of something and know that while the replacement will be just as pretty as the arm before, it’ll never be the same. I wonder if the flower remembers all that steal their beauty, and I wonder if they then refuse to show them their beauty again.  

4.

You remind me of a warm summers evening spent with friends on the beach.  

Of sun rays streaming through the leaves of trees in a forest,  

of the sky being painted by every shade of orange, purple and pink at sunset. 

Of fresh spring flowers blooming across the fields, filling the air with the sweetest of scents. 

You remind me of all the beauty in this world, 

Like the lakes that are surrounded by weeping willows, 

Of the brightest stars shining on a clear winter night surrounded by the planets.  

By saying this into the mirror I hope I can believe it.  

3. Thalassa

The raging current inside her refused to be tamed by anyone other than an equal. The white sprays of water that came off the tops of her waves found their outlet out of her eyes. Those that saw them were scared away, afraid of the corrosion that almost always followed. The only one she had met that could weather her storm was destined to be destroyed by her. As stoic and solid as a mighty cliff face, he was there to let her crash into him time and time again. His only punishment was that he would ever so slowly fall apart, until one day when she calmed down and he was nothing but an empty shell of his former self. They both knew this, and yet they couldn’t do anything to stop it.  

2.

Why am I such a lover girl? Why do I have so much love to give, but no one to accept it? I serve my heart on a silver platter with my feelings as a garnish, only for it to be returned to the kitchen untouched. The chef stares at the returned, cooled and deflated cor, only to agree with the customer that it is not good enough to consume. How many more times can I carve my heart out of my chest before I have no more blood left to restart it when it eventually returns unchosen? I don’t have much left to give.  

1.

The calls of the birds. The songs of nature pull me from slumber, stealing me away from your warm embrace. The cricks and cracks of mother nature remind me that we are all on one journey that will end just as cruelly as it began. As much as I am afraid of man, the birds and faeries of the forest are afraid of me. It feels like home, however, being in the wild wonderland. The primal feeling of being free calls to me within my life as a slave to the expectations of the bricks and mortar jail. The wind rushing through my hair, the dirt underneath my toes, the bark of the trees beneath my fingertips. I feel my blood calling to those who have come before, and to those that could teach me many things about the way of life. A fire not just to keep me warm, but also to see it for what it truly is, a force of nature. So destructive but yet so beautiful at the same time. Like Alice in Wonderland but I’m Alice and the Wonderland is the Australian outback.