Some things are simply inescapable. They rattle around in their cages, nor away at your insides, screech into the emptiness. Until one day, something, someone, pulls back the blanket, opens the box, sets them free.
“B****”


“ungrateful cow”


“no wonder he couldn’t loved you”
And there it goes, spreading it’s malignant wings, pecking loose another strand of the rope that binds us, the umbilical cord, broken on the birthday she forgot.
Some things you can’t take back. But some things you can. The same two fingers, at the back of the throat, releasing a torrent, of sins? Of lies? Of love? – Are they all the same thing? Head spinning, leaning against the forehead of it’s phantom twin. Four eyes locked in an eternal staring competition. No one will ever win. In love with their captor, but who looked first? And on which side of the mirror? Echo moans and howls around the taps.
I am wet. preening on a rock, my slimy, ugly tail bouncing gently in the sea’s sighs. Dreaming, dreaming of love. I loved once, I let him rule my world; let him glimpse my heart, my pearl. But he was scared, terrified of the light inside of me. So, blinded, he kept me in the dark. I used to be a hurricane, unstoppable, but with him I was just a gust of wind. He blew out my fire, stole my pearl and took my legs with it, left in search of the girl who set the sails of a thousand ships. Alone. Water suffocates me, yet land is denied. Frustration, rage, and seething anger broil in my cold blood - I will have my revenge, but my heart remains a stone.
I sense men, a white flutter on the horizon, a scrap of paper, a discarded love letter. Is it him? No. I begin to sing anyway, nothing but sounds to the ignorant, untrained ear, unintelligible blabber. But if you listen, the notes ring true. They are coming, intrigued by my seductive song, unfathomable. An empty voice. An echo. They drink me in like water, unaware that it is salt. Red hot, wet hair draped across pale points, newborn shells. My gleaming white skin and icicle eyes blind them, but they are drawn like flies to the flame. They burn in the cold sea, consumed with desire, realising too late that my pearl is gone, it is over. My cackle slices through the murderous waves, my head thrown back, exposing the wrinkled neck of a crone, the unmasked glee of a siren.
Sirens screech in the street outside the bathroom window, rousing me from my reverie. I tear my gaze from my own reflection, pale, and ghostly luminous in the blue moonlight. I will not wait to wither. I can still taste salt on my lips, tears. I can hear his breathing and picture him, head thrown back on the bed he used to share with my mother. I wonder if his dream s are as twisted as mine. At the moment, the monster is sleeping, stuffed from his earlier feast on the horror in my heart. But his cage is not locked, and before long he will grow twitchy, start to groan, and then growl with a hunger for more, emanating abundant anger and frustration in anticipation of another binge. But why must he discriminate? Why is it always me he’s hungry for? Is my terror so sweet? I am the trigger, the last straw that sends the neurones speeding across the synapses, through his fist and into my heart. People say that no one has the right to make you feel inferior without your permission, but parents don’t need permission, they’re the ones who give it. I am hollow, empty as the cage from which the horrors fled, empty as the shell, moaning it’s lost pearl. But there is something left, a twinkle, a sunbeam – Hope.