Overdose

Every time there’s another break up

My body goes into shut down mode

Starvation mode they like to call it

Hollowed cheekbones

Half dazed eyes that smiles

Normalcy forged

Cannot fake nor hide

Food becomes a scarcity that passes these lips

Perhaps I want to smoke you

The very essence I drank in of your breath

The taste of you on the tip of my tongue

Lingering

It kills the taste for everything else

And my stomach rebels if it’s not you

It doesn’t help even if he’s feeding me

I feel nothing but your hand brush against my skin

I’m sorry, I tell him

I’m sorry if I cringe

Really, love

He was only trying to help me

This hollowed out shell of a human body

Where once these curves you rested so casually

Arms draped over this waist and hips

Warmth in the night

Your arm heavy

It’s been weeks now and I can count my bones

Every bone on my body

I see them all piercing the fog that impedes me

The maelstrom has calmed but holds

That quiet foggy aftermath that the wind doesn’t stir

I don’t think if I can

And dreaming

If only I could have it banned

I swear I’ve seen you more in my dreams than in reality

You were never this close

And my heart knows

Every memory a bitter pill

You’re just another dose

So let me take one too many of it

After all I write best when broken

Overdosing is just another token

Of your love that's a medicine

I'm now allergic to

~Rachel Alexandrina N.C.L.

Poison Apple

You'll be my poison apple,
I'll be your looking glass,
The one dream that cannot happen,
Is the one that in my mind still lasts,
The clock strikes midnight,
Twelve doleful chimes,
Goodbye my sweet knight,
Hello to you whom i despise.

 ~Rachel Alexandrina N.C.L.

Rent

The Lord is my shelter and my strength

In Him I trust

In Him I trust

Yet why do I feel so broken and spent

My heart feels the worst

Torn down, aching

Silently spent

Tears keep dripping

Misery pays no rent

~Rachel Alexandrina N.C.L.

Don't ask me

We forget that our eyes speak

Even if our mouths close

Shut tight plastered with smiles

Our eyes weep silent tears that they don’t see

Nobody gets past the curves

And we fool ourselves thinking

This is right

This is right

This is right

I am alright

They don’t see the waterfalls

Etched down the grooves of our cheeks

The hollow bones carving caverns

Where our hearts don’t show on our sleeves

Don’t ask me why my eyes look hollowed out

Darker caves than before

Like someone blackened them with ashes

Of a heart burnt to dust

Like the bloody bruised remnants of a fight

Internalized so it won’t harm

Won’t make a sound

Not even when I hit the ground at night

Curled up in a ball

Don’t ask me

Don’t ask me why my collarbones stand out so

And my breath aches like a quiet whisper

Snaking past my throat to a smothered whimper

Why I can’t breathe and my eyes go blank

Like panic attacks?

Yes except my ribcage constricts like an anaconda

Winding itself around

Nothing
The emptiness feels like it's splitting me apart
But still

Don’t ask me

Don’t ask me why I wrap myself

Endless swathes of clothes when it’s burning

Furiously damning hot

Why though I sweat and sweat

The shivers run through me

Crippling this body

This same skin and bones  and muscles

That you used to trail your fingers along ever so lovingly

Don’t ask me

Don’t ask me

Don’t ask me

If I’ll be ok

Watch for the signs

Have you lost weight?

If only you’d feel my ribcage

You’d see it isn’t the weight I’ve lost

It’s the beating of a heart

~Rachel Alexandrina N.C.L

You've got to breathe

I tell myself
Breathe
Breathe
Come on
You've got to
It hurts
Hell burning in my lungs
I would sooner die
I'm already there
But the voice goes on and on
Breathe
Come on
You've got to live
Even if I'm clutching
My pillow to my chest
To keep my heart from spilling out
I love you
I love you
Please come back
I hold it back
Push it all in and try not to cry
Breathe
Breathe
You've got to breathe
But all I want to do is die

Rachel Alexandrina N.C.L.

Letting go

I spent the hours before dawn
Composing
It's impossible to sleep anymore
My dawning hours spent
Restful by your side
Watching you sleep with a gaze
That rivaled any cheesy romance
Gone
Now I lie awake
Restless fingers moving
To the beat of a
Racing mind
But empty heart

I'm learning to let you go
Even before you leave
Fighting in a war that rages around me
Like a ghost
My weapons fall unmanned
My cries tumbling into the void
That is you
The war rages around me
And I
Am its first and only casualty
But you will not save me
Nor let me die in peace


Rachel Alexandrina N.C.L

I write your name on my hands

I write your name on my hands
And in a quiet breath
Breathe in the memories you and I left
In the wake of your silence
I contemplate
The ink barely dried yet
It’s never too late
Chin up
Face forward
I’ve never been one to run

I write your name on my hands
And I kiss my palms the way you did
That cold June night
When it was under your blanket that I hid

I write your name on my hands
Because it’s the only way I know how
My hands typed these words
Just as they have typed ‘I love you’s then and now


Rachel Alexandrina N.C.L.

Soft

I'm growing softer, malleable almost. My bones liquid ivory, like milk they slosh around inside of my body, the skin barely holding it all in. I am growing into the girl I never wished to be. My memories are tear-filled nights and masked days, the bruises on my body show just as much as the lacerations in my mind. They never stop bleeding, did you know that?

At night you emerge with your whips and chains, your tongue at ready to tear and rend what is not yours. I have long submitted to it in my mind but outwardly you seem to see me fight. Why else do you wield your weapons even more cruelly than before?

There’s a sinking feeling now when you’re gone, lost are the days of happy anticipation of a word from my favourite person. This body you used to hold has grown cold. I no longer remember who you are. Breaks are filled with a hollow dread of loss even though you still exist. You remain and yet something is gone. 

Like a fruit gone bad, I squish myself into a ball as best I can, wedging the pillows into the hollows your body used to fill. I can almost sense the ghost of you there but when I tell you so you pretend not to hear. I dismiss it and move on to my alter-ego who I adopted at your behest, bright, cheery me. I will put up this mask for as long as it takes for you to remember who you were before. All that accompanies me is a prayer, heartfelt and worn around the edges like my mind. I hold my thoughts at night and worry at them till they fray and possibly, hopefully begin to unravel and make sense of you. 

The sun brings tears of a different kind that I struggle to blink away. I wilt now, softening in the light as I emerge into the world and go about pretending to be human, to be whole. Deep inside, my spine curls in on itself like a flower whose stem is dying for lack of water. Or perhaps it is simply roots it lacks. 

I can paint my face but it still remains porcelain pale. This flower deemed unfit for the table because it wouldn’t bend just so, it still tries to bloom, crushed petals and all. Mother says I’ve seen a ghost and I agree. It was the ghost of you. And me. 

~ Rachel Alexandrina 

Letters for you

I scattered the letters for you,
But blinded you chose not to see,
And I bled for every word I wrote,
Yet you stepped over them,
Over me,
My voice stayed choked,
My mind remained blank,
I wanted you to know,
But I just couldn't say,
Screaming,
Screaming,
But only inside,
You looked at me,
And yet you smiled,
At that moment my heart died.

~Rei Shiori

Grasping at dreams

Heart heavy,
Mind sore,
No matter how much you give me,
Doesn't it seem like I,
Always want more?
Can't tell if I'm awake,
Can't tell if these are dreams of the dead,
I get nearer,
You fade away,
Where is it then,
Where we can meet and stay?
You come in the night,
But dreams fade with the light,
I wake up grasping,
And my pillow,
These tears hide.

~Rei Shiori

Empty Air

You no longer remember,
What it was like before,
Absence makes the heart grow fonder,
But this short distance,
Just rubs the wound sore,
Right within reach,
But never there,
I look right at you,
Empty air.

~Rei Shiori

Queen

Did you just rip that off?
Band aid that,
Your skin's still soft,
Look at this,
All battle scarred,
Don't want to hurt you,
Don't want to leave no mark,
They say life's all breezy,
But I ain't got enough heart,
Left to set free,
Run away angel,
While you can,
See these scars all down my hands?
Bite them,
Scratch them,
Don't bow to my demons,
I fight them,
And this pain is how I know,
I'm still alive,
Still in the show,
Take a bow now,
Don't let go,
Hang on to that crown,
You're a queen,
So let them know.

~Rei Shiori

Exes

There was the time,
When we said together forever,
Didn't we?
But forever is a long long time,
And we were young,
Naive and love,
Or what we thought it was,
Had us all hung,
Out to dry like laundry in the sun,
Forever was in the mail,
But you just weren't the one.

~Rei Shiori

Have your way

I should have seen it coming

Cliched as it sounds

The walls were closing in and

I

I didn’t learn to run

Didn’t learn to breathe on my own

Pinned down under illusions

Of a fairer trade

My heart

For your whiny greed

Unsatisfied despite your luxurious fate

I was content to exist

And you were content to make

My personality fade

I was your little pet

In your cruel gold cage

While you weaved your endless

Wants around my head

Like poison ivy in my dreams

They made me dream in nightshade

And you

Bully that you are

Were simply content

To let me drown

In the lake of guilt you made

Waters closing over my head

No sounds

‘Don’t speak’ you said

You would have your way

 ~Rei Shiori