Not Always

Your thoughts are your handcuffs

Binding you to the dark place inside your head.

You’re running.

Without even realising,

Tears ebb and flow from your ducts and moisten your cheeks;

You don’t even know it’s happening.

You’re being chased.

Villainous beings, creatures and memories flood your brain,

You thought you had forgotten;

Cast them away to your subconscious,

Like a piggy bank you drop, drop, drop

Those horrible thoughts away,

Never believing that at any second the bank would smash

And all at once,

Terrifying thoughts thump the inside of your skull and you awaken,

Shaken, cold, clammy.

Sometimes you cry but usually you whimper like a hurt dog.

It’s funny, isn’t it?

How you always wake before your demon catches you in his grasp,

Well, perhaps not always…

16 Years Old

To feel alone

Is beautifully oxymoronic.

For true emptiness denotes

A lack of feeling.

To be bereft of companionship;

To lack the warm touch of another’s hand,

To delve too deeply into your own thoughts

Will ultimately suffocate you.

True liberation engulfs your soul

When you take the leap;

Embrace the lips of a loving being,

Release yourself from the imprisonment

Of the four walls

That hold you in solitary captivity.

Scratching the Surface: Inequality

What is inequality?

Inequality is feeling as though the £3.00 in your back pocket isn’t worth as much as the £3.00 in his; the strikingly handsome man in the dapper suit who strolls carelessly into the pub, smiling with the swish of his open blazer. Inequality is that moment of brief hesitation where you so desperately wish to voice your opinion on something, but that woman with the degree in Ecology gets there first; your views are nothing, and your mind cannot rest knowing you could be bottling the solution to an over-polluted society- it’s right there…behind your sore, bitten lip. Inequality is the brick in your gut that drops with a thud as you sit opposite your bank manager; he’s thumbing your statement with a sly side-grin that leaves you even more uneasy than when you walked through the door. He wants to rinse you. He wants to scrape the interest off that loan you’ve just taken out to cover the extortionate cost of your new car tyres, fold it up and slide it into his back pocket. You probably make more than him in one day than he makes in a year; it wouldn’t matter if you didn’t. It’s that suit! It’s amazing; what that blue tie can do with the silver trim. How can something so small and inanimate cause that great lump in your throat- the one that chokes you and causes you to stutter like a small child.