sometimes my mind feels distressed,

and oceans form inside my chest.

Voices threatening immediate attack,

inside my head I only see black.

the gentle waves lap over my feet,

from my terrifying mind I do retreat.

I take this page and bleed myself out,

my words I could never live without.

sometimes,

when hearing about other people's childhoods,

I go into this place;

a dark place where I zone out from their words and clutch my skin in despair.

and when asked for my experiences,

I spurt out some make believe story of happy moments - after all I have those on speed dial - ready for moments exactly like this.

but they will never know the horrifying truth,

because I will not tell them,

I will keep it hidden between the spaces of my mind,

pressed right to the back where it can harm no one else.

it hurts too much to admit that I don't remember the good things,

half my life is blacked out,

hidden in the depths of my hellish mind,

the bitter memories surface when I least expect them to.

but I am normal, normal, normal;

the ghosts can stay detached from me, trapped in a past that I desperately wish to forget.

You can never be

The only bad memory

That lives in my heart.

My first haiku.

I confess,

I am broken.

my heart rattles around in my chest

like it's lost its sense of stillness.

I hold my breath

and count to ten, trying to calm my deafening mind.

The world tumbles,

turquoise, crimson and black;

a kaleidoscope of colours trickling around me.

The concept of love and sex terrifies me beyond belief,

and because I'm not clutching somebody else's hand,

you think I am not normal.

But the horrors of my childhood, the memories that invade my already crippled mind

would confuse you too, would cause you to run away from a humans touch.

So I am fine,

I am fine,

I am fine.

I will rise from the ashes like a broken bird whose lost its wings,

and continue to strive to fill the emptiness with the words of my heart.

I fell through the cracks but that's ok with you,

I tried to ask for help but no one believed it true.

I huddled in a corner as shadows plagued my mind,

I tried to think of good but I just can't leave it behind.

Did you look into my eyes and realise the innocence you'd take?

Or was it just the pleasure and pain you wished to undertake.

Do you even remember my name or am I just a face,

When I got too old for you, did you just replace?

The pain I hold inside and the disgust my mind does feel,

The scars you left will never heal, my body does reveal.

Fear evenlopes around me, ghosts of my past swallow my insides and spits them back out again. I blast music at the loudest volume to distract my mind from wondering, to block out the voices of my many selves. I am sewing the dismembered memories back together, stitching away at the bad parts of myself, trying to dispose of my dark past.

I am somebody else right now, I am not myself. I can feel my eyes wandering, my heart skipping beats. I am fine, I am fine.

May trigger.

One minute, I'm flat on my face, sobbing and deep in despair.

The next, I'm tearing back up, my body like electric. My head spinning like it's trying to do a million things at once, like it's trying to keep up with my rocketing, plummeting moods.

I sit in the bathroom, slicing patterns into my skin. My arms will, for the rest of my life, be covered with scars. I clench my teeth, cut more, cut deeper. The pain is precise and the thoughts stop. My mind for one blessed moment is aware of only the pain, the pain stops the whirlwind of my mind. My heart beats steadily in my chest, as I imagine the blood pumping through my body, reaching my cuts, spilling over, and running down my arms.

I love you beyond the earth,

the moon and the stars.

I will never forget you,

even after I'm gone.

You mean the world to me and so much more.

You terrified her so much that she will never even think about telling the police what you did. She is terrified that one day she'll open her front door and find one of you standing there, that she lives her life in fear every single day.

Her good behaviour got her absolutely no-where. It got her beaten and raped and thrown around like a doll. It got her hurt at an age where she shouldn't have even known what sex was. Her good behaviour got her a childhood of misery, pain and fear. She'll serve a life sentence in the trenches of despair, her body and mind in agony for the rest of her life. She'll hate her filthy body with every fibre of her being, she'll never be able to silence the wall of hatred that you built.

I can still see their faces when I close my eyes at night. Sometimes, I forget that I used to be one of them. The horrors I witnessed in my childhood can never be erased from my memory, the pain and torment I went through will always play a part in the way I live my life.

I don't think anyone can imagine what abuse I went through, and sometimes I'm scared to write about it. But I refuse to be silent, I refuse to let them win.

One of the worst memories I hold, I'm 7 years old. I'm lying on a dirty, bloody mattress, screaming children all around me. I am the only one who is silent, because I know that screaming is the worst thing you can do. I'm counting the tiles on the ceiling when I hear someone come into the room. I bolt upright, I don't want to see what he's going to do but I'm too scared of the unknown to lie back down and close my eyes.

He marches in, all high and mighty and grabs the nearest screaming child. I hear her begging, begging him in her tiny childlike voice to let her go. He sniggers and throws the girl across the room, the poor thing slams into the wall and slumps onto the floor, she's barely moving. And then he laughs, a high pitched, evil laugh, like he's enjoying himself.

He makes eye contact with me and I avert my eyes, I don't want to draw attention to myself but it's too late. He strides across the room and I make silent prayers in my head. He stand over me, smiling, his fists slam towards me, and then everything goes black.