Somewhere out there, there is a cavewoman.
She lies, on the brink of sleep, teetering over the edge as bleary heavy lidded eyes close to block out the dim twinkling of the stars above.
It is a quiet night and she sleeps on her side, feeling the weight of her family by her and hearing nothing but the comforting, sleepy whoosh of furs drawn tighter over her loved ones.
She hears her heart, then. A steady beating in her ear closest to the ground, a thumping from deep within. She doesn't know what this is, but she does not ponder it. Somehow, she knows she is safe.
She knows she is alive.

Overreacting, underperforming
Now even sleep is painful and boring
Thinking of death, heart pumping hyper
Overthinking, no follow through
Overthrow logic, quick like a viper
Stuck in the same old patterns like glue.

tiny
inconsiderable
inconsiderate
a series of complicated syllables wrapped in spools of complicated bedsheets wrapped in noise of airplanes and winds and people on the street.
a series of syllables flying through a series of synapses, inconsequential, inconsiderable
inconsiderate until words lose meaning, second guess self second guess thoughts second guess spelling second guess words
words that spill and pool hatred, embarrassment, nothing at all, spun and twisted like bedsheets, whirl of day in thrush of night mind
is that a real word? am I real?
am I considerable?
I am most definitely inconsiderate.

Ephemeral is so close to ethereal,
I thought them the same, once,
For snapshots of time, snippets of film unwound
To be closest to heaven feels cruel.
Memories short grow ever shorter
Stars are small, blink out one by one
As I grow I teeter and topple towards the sky,
It isn’t quite as big as it was before,
It feels like hubris to look for more
Than a fleeting second.
Tiptoes of child pad on wooden floors and the
Clatter of geese in a V overhead are all
That remains of the ethereal in me
Angels gathered in the healed scabs on my knees
And nestled within freckles
From younger, sunnier days.

Do I hate myself?
Yes, instant.
No, because hatred is cruel –
Not to me, now, this moment, this time,
But to her –
Schoolgirl she who cries at songs and writes poems,
She the bug-collector, nail-biter, odd little girl,
She with gaps where her molars should be and sharp canines,
She with nine-year-old knees scabbed and scarred and pride within them,
She who comes alive in dappled woods, abandoned places, windy nights,
She unafraid to be alone, she in her own mind, she with no pennies for her thoughts, she who never tells a soul,
She who lies, she who feels guilt like her mother’s quilt heavy over shoulders,
She who climbs trees and is scared to die in her sleep, is scared of monsters, is scared of electricity, is scared of gaps between the train and the platform, is scared of herself.
She who I cannot hate.
No, instant.
But, at the instant – yes.

Some days, I am more animal than human.
An oxymoron. Humans are just as animal as all the others. The only ones who insist otherwise believe that our intelligence makes us superior.
Gods who look down upon the rest.
But are gods not meant to be all loving?
And at the same time, divine creation is not a gift we possess. We take and take from ourselves and others. We destroy in a way that could almost be divine - a biblical hell of fumes and plagues and pain.
I digress.
I am more animal than human. The animal that we wrangled into a cage long, long ago. I am reminiscent of wolves biting their legs off to escape from traps, howling at the moon as if it offers some escape. Quiet as a cat on tip-toes that flex into imaginary claws when I stretch, each vertebrae in my spine yearning for treetops and swinging and sky. A throat that burbles and vibrates a call which no one responds to, the last bird in a species made to sing in pairs.
I hurt desperately, like my blood will paint the snow for some hunter to track and finish me off, and I hope that my remains will feed his family in the winter.
I buzz frantically at night like a moth at a lamp, this is my salvation, this is my answer, why does it hurt me?
I know nothing at all and I am one of the lucky ones, domesticated and fed by divine beings who destroy and destroy.

Felt like a lost childhood toy, a word on the tip of my tongue,
What I am now is wrong,
this slip, trip, stumble to insanity,
This numbness of mind and skin,
This loss of time, this loss of vanity,
Memories could come from yesterday or a year ago
I do not remember what i did this afternoon.
I lie in bed and stare at the wall for an hour – five minutes – and try to think back to when my skin became loose, an unfitted sheet through which feeling is only a ghost.
It comes in flashes in my days, as a car past a vaguely familiar spot of scenery, a sudden recognition: I Am Not As Real As Most.
I stare at a friend’s face for confirmation, a falter, but perhaps i am odder than i realise
Because this oddity - new for me - goes unnoticed. I unnotice. Clarity escapes me. Thought hurts. Will i ever create again? Have I lost myself? Who am I?

A clattering of Jackdaws blushes and blooms from moment to moment on a sky like
silver, bleached by light from
flashing oaks, clouds still running–
chasing? Escaping to nowhere
upon a wind that carries death like
bellowing stag,
It excites me,
It excites the birds.