secret rebirth

I’m your greedy, badly trained lab, sniffing at something rotten. We lock eyes. I grab a huge mouthful. You desperately yell: “Drop it! It’s bad for you!” sprinting towards me...

80s parents priority: Are they fed? Do they have roof over their heads? Their daughters grew into mothers who ask: What's wrong with Mr. Bare Minimum? He works. He comes home. He...

Strange, I wore a wedding band. I carried his child. Grand declarations for a man who never had all of me. Funny, how much of myself I hid. Now I wear a necklace with another...

Six feet tall, nearly put me six feet under. A long shadow, cast by a short soul. How can he even stand with no spine? Coward. Cornering me, mistaking his want for his right. I...

I was so proud of my work: teaching the beast to bare its teeth to stop cowering in the corner of the cage. I fed it confidence like raw meat. Watched it grow bold. Watched it...

We both carry weeping wounds. It’s how we recognised each other. Your pain smells like mine. My fingers linger as if I’ve always known where to press. I teach you how. We pull...

I can't even be mad, survival’s got you eating out the trash. Patriarchy's got you doing their dirty work. Baby girl, no man has ever loved you like I do. us. I told you we'd...

21:30 I wipe the tears away. Agree to meet this stranger. Just a rebound, a moment to forget. I know what I'm doing is wrong but I need to feel wanted again. He says he already...

you are the wildfire blazing hot burning through everything you touch. fire consumes. it doesn’t ask it just takes. i am the hurricane magnetic, volatile, full of sudden shifts. i...

I am on the floor. Powerless. Paralysed. It’s pressing me down into the dirt. I can still scream: "Help me. I don't know what I’m doing. Help me not destroy everything." To who?...

He sits across from me, always so composed, so correct. There is a part of him I can't read, something he won't let me reach. But I know he wants me, I know he does. I walk up to...

Loneliness is a siren call. It rings through my chest, and my body shakes like a struck bell. The ringing in my head is louder than my logic. I am standing at the edge of the...

I made a dating app profile. Matched with a cutie. His opening line: "What's your favourite aisle in the grocery store?" "The snack section, obviously. That’s where I belong: I am...

My place is empty. The lonely echoes through the walls. But at least I no longer take the long way home. I used to cycle the long way round, past the park, down side streets,...

We swap memes at midnight about emotionally unavailable men. You send me a photo of a sad cow staring into the void. Caption: “Men are sooo hot. I wish they were good people.” I...

Today felt like an itchy sweater. I put it on thinking, okay, cute. By noon, it was rubbing me wrong. Within an hour, it was scratching beneath my skin, pricking at my nerves. My...

Green wheat fields bowed under morning dew same as my lashes, still wet from a casual 8 a.m. breakdown. Droplets clung, like thoughts I couldn’t shake quiet, glinting, refusing to...

I’ve lived off bright crayons: wildfire reds, impossible to contain sun-warm yellows, blues so deep they ache. The art only stirs others after it’s torn through me violently,...

You arrived too soon. I didn’t have time to properly clean yet. I’d tidied the obvious mess, but I was terrified he’d look in the corners, under the carpet. I was on my knees...

I. You were raised in a storm and handed a paper map, Told to find "north" while the wind spun the compass. Praised when you played dead, punished when you breathed fire. They...

To be read on the International Day of the Midwife or whenever the world forgets who you are. I light this imaginary candle for the part of me that knows how to hold life as it...

Ever since I had my daughter, I have been birthing myself. The labour has not stopped. Nobody told me how long this would take. Nobody warned me how much it would hurt, or how far...