Letterhead #12

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Dear Bella,
I feel so shit today.
It's like everything you said last night has seeped into me.
I meant it when I said
"You can't depress me, I've been there already.
I've thought all these things before"
But this morning it got into me,
(maybe it's because I was reminded of how i used to think)
I will not tell you.
Because I can let go of it now,
I can already feeling it sliding away
and I don't want you to think
you are hurting me.
Even if you are a bit.

don't ask

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She was Numb. Numb. Numb. Sometimes she whispers that word to herself, when she gets strange looks she smiles.

What is there to tell you about her? She drinks. She smokes. She starves herself. She does whatever it takes ease the numbness, or distract herself from it.

The other day she cut herself. Seventeen slits, on her left forearm. She used the razor from a pencil sharpener -just scratches, she tells herself. Today she accidentally let them show as she was taking off her jacket. Nobody saw, she doesn't know whether or not she's relieved.

She goes home and listens to music that gets in your head as she goes on Tumblr for hours. Around her, her friends are kissing boys and laughing and studying and growing. She writes things that are similar to the young Tim Burton's poetry. About girls who will grow up before their time. She is in a blur. When she looks around, all she can see is fog.

Mud in My Tears



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For two thousand sessions
and three analysts
and so many tears

I've gnawed over
this division of roles
for twenty years

what happened
what happened to her
what happened to me

I've sorted and sieved
and dissected
I've strained

through this corset
and shamed myself
I've repeated and remembered

and divided
the borders
she was the mother

I am the daughter
I am the daughter
born after the war

after the hunger
after the torture
after the typhoid

after the disfigurement
after the disinfection
after the dead

and well after
the rape
and the German Shepherd

I am the daughter
born after the war
but I've stalled

I am stuck
like a pig in mud
mud from the barracks

mud from the huts
mud from the bunks
mud from my eyes and lungs

mud in my liver
mud in my mouth
mud ringing in my ears

mud in my fingers
mud in my screams
mud in my tears.

-Lily Brett

knowing

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I get it.
That in the quiet moments, you can't ignore it.
When you are in the shower with it's too-warm water pounding on your face
And water droplets gathering like granules on your back.
When you are walking to the bus-stop, your hands fiddling with a shirt-button.
When you are at a party and for a moment your thoughts stop.

I get it. That in the quiet moments,
You can't ignore how unhappy you are.

Monster

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His handprints, imprinted
On her skin, chest, her thighs.
They draw my red-ringed eyes
To the unseen -his prize
Lost, that which showed his lies.
Society decries
Us. Who blames their surmise?

He causes me to despise
Myself. My babe was unwise.
Her failure to realise
His motivation, implies
I failed her, to advise
Her, as a father. Chastise
Her? I can't. In his cold eyes
She saw goodness. But his guise
Misled her. Led to her demise,
Her brokenness. I hear her cries
As she sleeps, blending with my sighs
For our lost years. It's been hinted
They've drifted off to holy skies.

Excerpt #3

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She picks her way. Stepping over the brambles, between spider's webs. The untidy path twists beneath her feet.
The branches pull away and she finds herself with a clear view. A rolling asparagus-green hill, crowded by brocolli. Sunlight leaks through, softening the curved road that disappears behind white gums. She stills, drinking in the sight.
The gaps are filled by the quiet hum of life emmanating from the ground, the air. From those flying, their wings catching the light. Her feet are sinking slightly, into the ground. Look -you can see the air sinking into her skin, the rough breeze catching her.

She swallows the lump that has gathered in her throat. It hurries back, transforming into a laugh, loud and true.
She laughs because if this were a film, the outside world would mirror her feelings, not mock them. The lazy crooning of insects does nothing to ease the turmoil inside her. The sunlight should be rain.

letterhead #7

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Dear Ellen,
We are so similar, so alike.
You don't realise how much, you never have.
We've experienced the same things, but our motivations are different.
They always have been.
I never wanted to be found,
to be saved,
to be fixed.
I never wanted to drag others down into the watery depths with me.
I never wanted to prove anything.
I never knew what I wanted.

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Who's to say that

dreams and nightmares

aren't as real as the

here and now?

-John Lennon

unlucky

creative writers are more likely to be mentally unstable. or mentally unstable people are more likely to write creatively.

it doesn't matter, we all knew that. really.

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Sylvia Plath effect

The Sylvia Plath effect is a term coined by psychologist James C. Kaufman in 2001 to refer to the phenomenon that creative writers are more susceptible to mental illness than other people. Kaufman’s work demonstrated that female poets were more likely to suffer from mental illness than any other class of writers. This finding has been discussed in many international newspapers, including the New York Times. The finding is consistent with other psychological research studies.


The effect is named after the American poet Sylvia Plath, who committed suicide when she was thirty years old.

don't worry.

it will be okay.
this will pass.
it will.
and in two years time you won't even be able to remember this.
writing this
thinking this
feeling this


you won't even be able to remember who you were.

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don't worry
because this,
this is fleeting
and soon enough
                you won't care

Night Terrors.

.
.
.

Words
Pounding
In my head
on my skull

thump
thump
thump

Begging
to be let in out
probably out

Silence.
that's all i want
The dull reverberating neverending drone
of silence
do you understand?
these words are becoming too much
they crush my lungs
suffocating me
they cower in the pit of my being
like monsters
scrambling over one another
ferocious lonely crazed
they turn on one another
and attack
desperate hungry
for freedom for an escape.

when, suddenly-
there
a glimmer
a light of opening, a hope of shaft.

but they're over eager
instead of catapulting into the abyss
emerging
swift and meaningful
they trip
slip
slide
clumsily on my parted lips
they stumble and fall
proving there's no point

believe me
i have the words
i just can't express the meanings
so instead i battle
with the thump
thump
thumping of words
that cannot be expressed

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