"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching…"

- Martha Graham

"...his hands at any rate are intelligent, they move over me delicately as a blind man's reading Braille, skilled, moulding me like a vase, they're learning me; they repeat patterns he's tried before, they've found out what works, and my body responds that way too, anticipates him, educated, crisp as a typewriter."

- Surfacing, Margaret Atwood.

puddled

In the shower. Red hair sits hatched over my wrists, the strands like opened veins. Draped perfectly to demonstrate my anatomy, or at least as imagined; an indication of where my head would like to be: swimming swirling down the drain with the water dirtied by my skin. So much of me has slid down the drain in my lifetime. You could probably produce a life-sized sculpture from the parts of my body that have evaded me - my hair, my eyelashes, my skin flakes, pimple pus. My saliva into others' mouths.

I recall your forearms; their huge, vertical carvings that wield memories of your best friend running two kilometers to the beach to find you in fully-fledged panic. I had only just met you both and had no idea how to help. I probably couldn't have done anything to help. I sat at home bewildered. I tried to cry and couldn't.

Eighteen months ago I walked into Levin town, and thought how easy it would be to become part of the train. I could press myself into the steel and leave traces of me on the tracks, leaving no trace. I didn't feel like a person. I didn't feel like myself. I wasn't myself. I was the insides of you, a part of your organs and their revolting chaos - subject to your self-abuse and adopting it myself. As if I hadn't already swallowed enough into my own lungs.

Sometimes when I'm driving, I think of setting my route to chance. Especially on the motorway. But I worry I'd only sit again, this time forever, and that would be worse. I'm not sure if that idea floats around my head because you suggested it when I was sixteen. Before I had my licence, I berated you for it. And now I am it.

When I'm in high places, I feel like I could jump off them and my body would never touch the ground. I told you this on Friday night as we leaned off the building without barriers. I think there's a term for this feeling but I can't remember it.

One time, I said out loud that suicide is something everyone must have thought about at some stage. Not necessarily seriously wanted, but considered the possibility of. You said it had never crossed your mind. I felt like someone had prised my eyelids wide apart with their fingernails.

palimpsest

I'm a palimpsest
of all the things I've ever been,
ever seen, thought, heard and felt,
everything I've ever ingested
and even the things I've spat out
remain layered somewhere within the folds of me

I'm a walking archive of my own personal history,
an allusion to the fragments of the history of me
that has collided with every other person,
place, being, space
I've ever inhabited,
clashed with, found harmony in,
been confused by -

there's a flicker of me
in every person
whose eyes I've ever met

whether I've traversed their insides or not.
My footprints are in the dust of every city
I've ever held underneath my feet;
in every river I've swum in
the smell of my skin
permeates the water.

I am a palimpsest of my own experience of the world
and the world is a palimpsest
of me and all the others
that've been here
and left their bones
in the vast, beautiful graveyard
that is this planet.
We're all decomposing here, leaving
tiny pieces of ourselves
around the place
hoping someone will glance the glimmers
and remember
us ...

I'm a living document of my own life
and I want to be read
I want someone to study me
and meld their words with mine

I want to write an extraordinary story.

swim

here I am
writhing in doubt -
when all I really need
is that salted veil on my skin

and perhaps that's why
I'm always looking
to douse myself in chlorine
from the inside out:
to find some pseudo-happiness
and melt myself

into the psych/ic ocean of the universe

true happiness will come
from nature's purging

when flooded and floating
in the salt of me, not
leaking from my eyes
but emerging from
the pores of my skin