by Gill, Nikita
not if it matters to you
your memories keep it alive.
It is the law of the universe
that even ghosts understand
as long as they matter to someone
they still exist and in your heart they stand.
Ghosts of the person you used to be
are so proud of who you are,
they live on inside you applauding you
for living on despite your scars.
Lonely
Who has been lying in your world?
Who has been betraying
your innocent and yet pure soul
by telling you that this should be easy?
Who has been saying
that people are not temporary?
Tell me, do you truly believe
the big bang wasn’t agony?
That our planet’s birth was not made
by coming out of misery?
That our solar system’s creation
in the universe’s womb was easy?
The loneliest thing
you can ever do
is take every instance
where you should grow
and waste it by only thinking
how could this happen to you?
Endings
Look at the way
the stars burn
in the night sky.
Look at the entrails
they leave as they are
passing us by.
They are dying,
and death
is meant to be ugly.
Painful and destructive,
it is made
through tragedy.
And yet
when a star dies
it is still lovely.
Which is to say,
not everything
dies violently.
Sometimes
it is the way things end
that is beautiful.
Even when things
are raw and aching
the endings are still magical.
The greatest magic you have is the
courage you go digging for,
when your world falls apart,
the light you still hold,
when everything has grown dark.
Witch
We are the blood
of the witches
you thought were dead.
We carry witchcraft in our bones
whilst the magic still sings
inside our heads.
When the witch hunters
imprisoned our ancestors
when they tried to burn the magic away.
Someone should have
warned them
that magic cannot be tamed.
Because you cannot burn away
what has always
been aflame.
Magic
The greatest wish
I have ever had
is to create with words,
what wizards cannot
and what magic
never has.
The most elegant bond
I can ever pray for
is aiding in the recovery
of someone who is made of wreckage
and facilitating their becoming
their own hero in their story.
Dragon’s Breath
Girls like you
were born
to tame dragons,
to fight in wars,
to lead armies.
Girls like you
were created
to swallow darkness,
to quell monsters,
to destroy obscurity.
Girls like you
were given life,
to bring tempests
and hail gales,
unto their enemies.
Don’t let a king
or a prince
or a fairytale
tell you you are smaller than that
or who you are meant to be.
Sorcery
Every day, I magic myself alive again
from the near death experience of trauma.
I swallow my heart back from
the lump it has become in my throat.
I taste my own memories
without the flavour of blood but as poetry.
I learn how to whisper my name
without it sounding like a curse.
I murmur spells to the parts of me
others have found too dangerous to love.
And after this morning ritual
I finally smile at the woman in my mirror.
Tell me again,
how healing is not a magical thing.
Tell me again,
how I am not made of sorcery.
With Love From Midnight
When the day’s mistakes
are too much to bear,
when everything feels
like devastation beyond repair,
remind yourself:
how mystical it is that every day,
the clocks reset to 00.00
the reason they say
midnight is the witching hour,
is because a new day rises
from the ashes of the old,
embers breathe new life to its fire,
giving us a chance to mend,
a chance to restore
all that is broken
and what you thought was lost.
The Art of Unmissing
I have been incanting my heart
in how to unmiss you,
spelling myself into mastering the art
of forgetting the damage
you have done stitching back my soul
from the savage way you ripped it apart.
I think I finally know
where I went wrong.
You see, yesterday, someone asked me,
‘How do you heal
from losing
the greatest love of your life?’
I smiled and answered,
‘You make yourself another one.
And you make
that love yourself.’
Wolves
The thing I admire most
about you
is no matter how hard,
or how much the world
has tried to
beat you,
break you,
destroy you,
and throw you to the wolves
you are still here,
turning all your pain
all your suffering
into armour,
into determination,
into weapons
and earning the respect
of that same pack of wolves
that were meant to rip you
limb from limb.
Your Trauma
Your trauma has a name.
It sleeps besides you at night.
It reminds you every morning of your shame.
It watches you swallow your pride.
It snarls at you from the grocery aisle,
it sneers at you when you drive,
it follows you from place to place,
making you wish you weren’t alive.
It hides in the living room,
it buries holes in your heart,
it makes you feel hopeless,
you are so close to falling apart.
This terrible thing, this broken thing,
tells you you belong to it,
this miserable thing, this despicable thing,
tells you that you can’t survive without it.
But what your trauma doesn’t realise,
and what your trauma doesn’t see,
is how by simply surviving it
it is daring you to beat it, to be.
When Love Dies
There is no magic in the way love dies.
It closes away into something tragic,
and no matter how much poets
and singers r
omanticise it,
try to turn it into
something great and beautiful,
something artistic and incredible,
painted with the silver
of a thousand sweet moons
and the gold of millions
of sparkling sun’s rays,
I will always compare love’s death
to the way a hunted wild thing dies.
Alone, betrayed
and desperately fighting
against all odds
to stay alive.
Burning
A woman is most powerful when she leaves
the man who broken her body into purple pieces,
but is now trying to drown her in his apologies,
that then dissolve into a sea of acidic threats.
He will burn her,
he promises
He will shred her skin
to make into kindling.
But this time,
she does not fear it,
this time,
she faces him and says:
‘There is burning
And there is you
and I would rather choose burning
than ever return to you.’
Why I am Magic
There are days
I have been the thirst
and days
when I have been the water
but the days
I love myself most
are the days I am both.
The Well Spoken Heart
The less you listen
to the whispered words
of your gentle heart,
the more you choose to ignore it,
the more you build
the kind of wall around it
that no one
can climb to get to hold it.
Instead,
listen to what it wants
and let it tell you what it needs
and you will find
it growing roots
and thriving
when you plant
these mystical seeds.
Conjuring
There is a conjuring
within us all
a whisper in the air
a call to arms
like an incantation
or the beginning
of the kind of storm
that brings about
change,
transformation.
Some call it
sisterhood,
Some call it
Feminism
But another word
for this paradigm shift
is simply called
revolution.
Wolf and Woman
Some days,
I am both wolf and woman
and I am still learning
how to apologise
for my wild.
Anger
The anger
is like a demon
trying to escape into your spirit,
it claws at your insides
a darkness that relishes
the pain it will cause.
If you keep it
in the pit of your stomach
if you hold it inside your ribcage too long
it will take your tongue prisoner
when you least suspect it
and terrorise everyone you love.
This fiend,
this cruel thing
it can be defeated,
it does not own you
it deserves no space
inside your spirit.
Instead,
channel it,
find a way to let it out
cry, dance, sing, build, create,
do everything you can
to give it a way out.
Take everything that
tries to destroy you
curse you,
and turn it
into something beautiful
by incantation.
Learned Helplessness
They call it ‘learned helplessness’
finally a phrase after years of study
to explain why we stay in hopelessness
with men who leave our faces bloody;
why we ‘let’ the cruel fists of a man
determined to turn our bodies
into a purple storm that began
and ended with fingers that disembody
our self respect, our courage
in that moment, we forget we are somebody.
There is a hierarchy to his chaos
that one learns to simply accept.
There is a beginning to his madness
that one knows will eventually end.
So like those caged animals
they outlawed in circuses,
you let the ringmaster be tyrannical
even as your soul winces.
Years from now, they will ask you
‘Why didn’t you leave him?’
Because, you will say quietly,
he had convinced me
I was no longer human.
An Ocean Called Healing
To heal you must first dive into the deepest ocean you will ever find and you will find it locked in that soft, secret thing you call your heart.
When you first swim into its unfathomable depths, you will first find your darknesses – the memories of your trauma that you sank there to forget.
They will try their best to sink you too, to split you with their shark-like teeth, but if you survive the bleeding they put you through, you will reach where you have kept your anger, chained to an anchor at the bottom of this ocean so it doesn’t destroy you, so the rage doesn’t eat you in seconds the way a piranha does its prey.
When you unchain it from its anchor, embrace it and kiss it goodbye, you finally find yourself wandering in a water cave made of safety, made of understanding till you finally emerge in the alcove of your soul. The light of it shines like sunlight on your face wet with tears. This is where you are safe. This is where you recover. This is how you bathe in the glow of your own healing.
Baptism
I am still waiting
to baptise myself
in the kind of love
that I can confidently
call my own.
I will wash myself
with water
made of self care,
made of kindness
made of joy.
It is the day
I will finally return
to myself.
Learn how to call
my own arms home.
Graveyards and Gardens
There are graveyards
inside you
made of people
that made you ache,
made of memories
that you barely survived
made of trauma
and heartbreak.
These graveyards
need to become
gardens
where you
plant flowers
that blossom,
for you
to let go.
Your Torment Has Meaning
Everything that terrifies you
these monsters
that keeps you up at night
that torment you
that make you feel small
breakable
unable to breathe
like you should not
exist at all,
you defeat them every day
just by being alive,
this on its own
proves that you are
enough,
and you already have
everything you need
to survive.
The Bones of Trauma
This trauma will turn my bones
to fossil if I allow it to grow till I am old.
If I accept it creeping through my ribcage
the way ivy slowly ages the walls of a home,
looking dece
ptively pretty
but slowly corrosive to my very soul.
I will open my flower-like mouth
and let it bleed out from between my lips.
I will open my garden-like heart
and pull at every dark weed till it rips.
Homes
I am done making homes
inside broken hearts
trying to fix the roof
that still leaks tears
over another
and fix broken floorboards
that someone else didn’t care for.
Instead,
I will go to
my own house shaped heart.
I will lovingly fix
the shambles
others have left of it
I will adore it till no one else
can ever called it haunted again.
And finally
I will open the doors
and welcome myself home.
Forgiveness
Forgive yourself
for everything you broke
when you were trying to survive.
Let the rain
wash away
your regret.
Let your blood cool
from the rage
you feel against yourself.
Let the rivers
under your skin
bring you home.
To heal you must forgive
your heart, your skin, your body
all of their mistakes.