Strong-Willed: a collection of poems

LOVE

HYPERVENTILATE

Will you come to meet me at midnight?

If you do, please bring cherries.

Forgive my faults and pierce my armour to the core with your patience.

When I see your visageas beautiful as I had feared it would beyou make me feel carefree.

But I worry that I’m being careless.

Far from feeling calm, I hyperventilate in your presence, but I keep coming back all the same.

HERE

A barn owl flies above ussignalling our newly nocturnal nature, as the soft white sand soothes the soles of our feet.

Your broken stiletto heel lies by the shore, abandoned, glinting in the moonlight.

Caught up in our rueful reverie, we are lost.

But I find that I don’t care.

Perhaps it’s that you’ve literally kissed me senseless, but I quite like being lost when you’re here.

REMIND ME OF YOU

Ocean waves of music, a scarlet text message, a little blue dress, rags of dreams, splintered china fantasies— remind me of you.

MAPPING MY LIFE

If my life were to be mapped, The church would have to figure. And a book store full of dusty paperback volumes of the classics And modern novels alike. My family would sculpt the contours, My friends the mountains. My anger would spark volcanoes, Perhaps my tears would fill the oceans. But you would be the focal point, the cathedral. In the map of my life, You would be the only landmark.

(Ilkley Literature Festival, Young People’s Poetry Competition 2017, 1st Place Year 11)

LAYERS

It has layers: scruffy while writing, a cloud- a stop sign.

Temporaryink on the carpet.

Retreating from beauty. Fear of the future and of my identity.

Changedlost.

My trainers on hot tarmac.

Retreat.

The arch and marriage and commitment: improvement.

I have strong roots but vibrato breathing.

I am a sapling.

How can this be love?

How can this be love?

I AM STILL WITHOUT YOU

The water cascades in a cacophony of colourI am without you. The moss moulds to the rugged rocksI can exist without you. There is light reflecting off aqua depths and pebbles shine like metal. God, I miss you. The air is full of sunlight and it caresses my skinthere is bird song in my earsbut I do not have you.

I can’t see your eyesor your smile.

I am alone in the most idyllic natural scene imaginable. So why am I still empty and number than a void or vacuum?

There is algae thriving in the pool of water and lichen on the trees: living indicators.

But I can't call this existence living. A world without you by my side does not look colourless and bland but I am disillusioned with its beauty.

Beauty baffles but bottles beatify my sorrows and I cannot let go of the memory of you.

I am lost for the want of you. Oblivious, the water cascades in a cacophony of colourand I am still without you.

FICTION

My feelings for you can’t be resolved by writing you into a short story as the protagonist or the love interest. They can’t be resolved at all.

Friends don’t skip heartbeats when your name is on their screen.

Friends don’t feel lightheaded just from close proximity.

I can neither capture this infuriating infatuation in the form of flash fictionnor keep it bound like the pages of a hardback book.

I have spoken it aloud to countless friends and family. It has since taken on the quality of heliumbecause it lifts my spirits and yet it is volatile like hydrogen because secrets can become known.

I choose to pine in poetry because stanzas can contain all of my joy and any pain far better than a chapter, or a song’s refrain.

And so, I’ll stick to writing poetry which I hope and pray you’ll never see.

Your fiction made me fall for you but fiction’s not for me.

ROSE

There is a rose in the corner of my bedroom. It is withering and my own blood is crusted on the thorns. It was a gift from her so I cannot yet get rid of it. It mocks me while I lie here, all night, all alone.

LAGOON

The wooden path is not the road to you.

The blue lagoon does not lead to your arms.

The emerald leaves won't stop me being blue.

Lichen caked wood won't hide away the harm.

I can't see sky without seeing your eyescan't swim in water and forget our song.

The sun, the water, the trees and the sky don't look the same when you've gone.

MISSING HER

I want to fall in, share in, and stay in love.

But my neurotic, neurodiverse nature negates this need as I repress my longing for tactile connection with somebody who makes me feel loved.

I replace real romance with historical fiction, Jane Austen and romantic comedies.

Then sporadically, I cry myself to sleep in my lonely room, tossing and turning in my cold and empty bed.

I have not known an absence of this loneliness but I know, nonetheless, what I am missing. I am missing her.

STARS

I reached out to the you but you brushed me aside and looked through your telescope. You really just wanted to stargaze.

What else would you have wanted to do?

But I have loved you since the second time we met. You looked up at me, adjusted your telescope, and told me, once again, that you only love the stars. I said that sounded very lonely.

But when I zipped up my coat and looked up at the night sky, I realised that just maybe you had a point.

YOU, AND YOU, AND YOU

I keep dreaming about you, and you, and you.

I guess it's because I am lonely and I miss you, and you, and you.

You were my first infatuation then came you and you.

You were the first to fancy me. I was not ready for you.

You showed me that I could still feel after you and you.

But I have only kissed the lips of you, not you, nor you.

I need to meet somebody new but I still just want you.

You will never be with me. And I still dream about you.

I try to repress these feelings for you, and you, and you. But they have become a part of me unlike you, and you, and you.

Although I am glad to have met YOU, and yes that includes you, I can’t spend my whole life pining for you, and you, and you.

LOVE, UNREQUITED

I thought that I was over this infatuation, but I am unable to shake my stupid hopes.

When you talk about your ideal partner, I just want to tell you that I could be her.

Being around you makes me feel better and isn't that what it is all about?

We talk about how I never tell people how I feel and I can't tell you that it's you this time.

I must shake this infatuation but I don't want to.

I want to be with you but you deserve someone who has more time.

I hope you will find somebody to love, but I wish the love that you wanted was mine.

UNHAPPY FOR ME

At first I was flabbergasted. But I was also flattered. Then I claimed that I found it "funny".

But, later, I cried in the shower and fell into a melancholy, regretful over missing my chance with you.

It turns out that there's something worse than a love that's unrequited: mutual attraction, unspoken until it's too late.

Fantasies of hundreds of kisses and taking you to see my favourite places will now never come to fruition.

I will never hold your hand while we walk around a Christmas market and you will not come to visit my family back home.

You are so very happy with him and I am happy for the both of you, truly. But, to be utterly honest, I am unhappy for me.

DISCARDED FLOWERS

Take the flowers and throw them away; they, like us, have had their day. You once brought me roses for their scent but now the thorns make me repent letting you into my life at all. I can’t believe you had the gall to lie right to my face. You’ve caused my heart to be displaced. It lies deeper in my chest now, buried. Every kiss from you was hurried. You give her flowers now and your time though you swore you would always be mine. So take the flowers and throw them away; they, like us, have had their day.

THE RETURN: CAME HOME ALL THE SAME

Walking into your childhood home after a long journey you can smell the washing powder on the air.

You try to fit your personality back into the shape that it has always taken within these walls.

You don’t look the same. It has been six months.

There is a cake on the table that your mother has made for you. She has spread jam thickly between the layers.

You decide to wait until they are home. It would be rude to eat it without them.

You walk up to your bedroom and the air smells like polish.

You didn’t say that you were coming home until last night. Baking a cake, dusting. That all takes time.

You wonder if they always keep the house spick and span just in case you decide to show up at their door.

Wishful thinking. Regret. Or not quite sadness that it ended up like this. It would have been so easy just to acquiesce and fit your life around their plans.

Someone to walk you down the aisle. Someone to make the speech.

But she meant more to you than their opinions, and you said you would never return.

Pandemics prompt parental apologies apparently. New start. You can even invite her.

As if it was not an insult not to use her name. And yet, you lied to your wife and you came home all the same.

(Walter Swan Poetry Prize 2021, 18-25 category, 1st place)

CANDLE

The candle drips wax onto my skin as I walk over to you.

It scalds me gently and I find it oddly soothing.

The sensation provides a distraction and an excuse.

I can explain away my tears; I can lie about why I am shaking.

It is just the wax burning my hand. The pain is simply making my eyes water.

But why, then, are you crying too? You hold no candle in your hands.

You take the candle from me, and place it into the tarnished candlestick.

Your hands are cold as they cup my face but, regardless, I relish the embrace.

Then you kiss me and I forget all about the wax on my hands.

Later, the candle drips wax onto my skin as I walk away from you.

It drips like the tears that will escape your eyes when you leave me because you have to.

FAMILY & HOME

PROVIDE ME SHADE

Dead leaves fall to the floor. She is bare. Born again in springshe knows it. But she won't wait until then. Fall. Free falling. Into a sleep–salvaging freedom from the past.

At once calm and frenzied. The forest restscompleted by the symbiotic melody of its songs. She's not alone any longershe's a part of something so much stronger.

The forest glade will provide her shade and when the bashful sun begins to fade, she will come home.

ROLLING OCEAN WAVES

Isolation, some would say, is blissful, like rolling ocean waves.

But when you are the boat, with white sails stretching up towards the sky, you only want to dock.

You want to rest in a harbour or a secret cove, surrounded by sand or pebbles, shaded from the sun’s searing rays by evergreen trees.

You don’t want to be rolling on ocean waves.

Because true bliss is being in a familiar harbour, surrounded by your friends and miles away from rolling ocean waves.

WISH

I wish that everybody could have as good a life as I think I had in my childhood when I view it through the twin lenses of retrospect and nostalgia.

But we all know that time's passage sweetens even as it cleanses.

Leaving the mental doorway back there ajar. But altering the memory beyond recognizability: a distorted reflection.

So that life right now feels subpar and life back then appears perfection.

HERE AND NOT THERE

I did not want this year to go like this. I cannot fix this situation and I hate that.

I hate that my loved ones are mortal. And I hate that I am too.

So much has changed for the worse lately and it is hard to stay strong for the people I love.

I dive into work and try to cope using self-care but I just want to cry in my mother's arms.

This is a part of adult life, I know, but I hate that I'm here and not there.

HOME

I cried my eyes out. But then I carved out some time because I had to.

I need to go home. And so I am going to. Few things could stop me.

Flexibility is now a thing of the past but it's one weekend. I can manage that.

And if I cannot, I'll stop. Those four are my world.

MUM

You are a woman with a heart that consists of precious metals. You nurture young and old and those who, like me, are in-between.

You have, at times, carried us when you needed carrying too.

You are mother, daughter, wife, friend, sister and aunt.

You are a source of light in the darkness. You are you. How lucky are we?

You make the world feel like a kinder place, inspiring awe daily in others and in me.

TRIPLE BIRTHDAY

Walking for miles in my ankle boots, half frozen. Spilling mulled wine and rushing pints of lager. Watching concerts and shows and singing carols; channelling Charles Dickens through contactless charity donations.

Seeing modern art and the pre-Raphaelites all within 24 hours.

Time with family: cups of tea, hugs, stories, and gifts.

I love London's skyline at night when I have people to see it with.

I adore being an audience member, giving standing ovations, cheering until my throat hurts, and clapping until my palms are sore.

It was time off. It was a triple birthday. It was packed and it was perfect and now I can't wait to come home.

GRANDMA

When I think of you, I think of setting your dining room table.

I think of trips to Scarborough and the York walls.

I think of the times I've stayed with you and all the meals we've shared together.

I think of your sense of humour and your love of quiz shows and soap operas.

I think of pub lunches, cream teas and weekly fish and chips.

I think of china dolls and playing hopscotch in your garden.

I think of sweet treats from your garage, leek and potato soup, and toasties.

I think of family time and feeling cosy. I think of toasted teacakes by the river.

I think of an endless cycle of cups of tea and how you've always loved me just for being me.

MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING

PASSION

The audience are watching: I adjust the microphone. It has been three yearsbut they dissipate.

I am a poet again. The pauses I practiced perform their function. I keep a steady pace, make eye contact in spite of my neurodiverse mind.

I had forgotten the feelingthe heat of it, nerves and excitement coupling so that I feel carbonated.

My favourite role has its encoreI am reanimated. It’s odd how surviving feels fine until you glimpse vitality. Poetry, performance, and passion are perpetual synonyms for me.

SEAS OF SILENCE

Nothingyou can hear nothing.

Nothing but the blood pumping through your ears and the slow drumbeat that is your pulse.

You become acutely aware of everything around youevery creak, every footstep is amplified so that it fills youechoing through your senses.

Your eyes are sealed shut and it's as if the world has closed in on you, is orbiting around you.

And it's cold: silence is cold, like a vacuum.

And there is nothing and you are nothing

Just a body curled up into a ball, silence filling you up to the head with nothing or with everything. Because silence just accentuates every other sense, you can feel the world as it spins around you. It never makes a sound but in the slow drumbeat of the blood in your veins there is a noise.

And it's so quiet but compared to the silence, it's a symphony.

There is nothing more beautiful than the sound of the blood pumping through your own body. It sounds like the ocean.

Someone once told me that you can hear the sea in conch shells but it's the blood. Rushing through your ears, it sounds like wavesswooshing around, overwhelming your senses.

Tides of silence wash over you and the undertow drags you into space.

And you are alonewith your thoughts, and the silence, and your heartbeat.

“Wake up,” they say, and you float on seas of silence back to sound.

NOT THAT IT EVER IS

Plastic rice- lead to bulk up bread, It’s all the same story; it’s all poverty. The “general maximum” of France; modern day food banks, All I know is history, but I can use my empathy.

The risky days- I chose not to eat, worried about the size of my thighs.

So ungrateful- when there’s some without a choice. I once developed an eating disorder -not that kind- it’s just that I physically could not swallow. I guess I can use that to understand-feeling empty Losing weight-great.

But lightheaded- hair limp and greasy Faded vision- legs giving way.

Not like my mate on Ramadan, not a fast like Lent. But necessity- so empty. She stares at me; cheeks sunken. She looks like a supermodel; but she’ll die soon.

She’ll die if we don’t help, it’s not a choice. Not fashion, hobbies, or juice cleanse. Not that it ever is- she cannot breathe, her stomach swells. And now we’ll hear the mourning bells.

Except she doesn’t have to starve- find some coinsShe’s someone’s daughter- we’re all the same. Just find it in you, don’t refrain. Help a girl who’s just like me to eat again.

(Leeds Peace Poetry 2018, Secondary School Category, 1st place)

FALL

I wish that this poem could paint a vibrant vital scene with words.

Sorry

I am not always happy but people love me.

Unconditionally

I don't feel excitement regularly and often feel numb.

Apathy.

I'm Petrarchan in my infatuations: frightened of letting people in at all. Vulnerability.

Knowing all of this, could anyone truly see me and yet still fall? Hopefully.

RELISH

It is a mild form of agoraphobia.

I only get it when I'm alone. But I am alone so often these days.

It is hard when you're missing your friends and see them together through a screen.

Together. Apart. Lonely.

I am a coach or a train ride away but I cannot feel calm about this typically and the present is unprecedentedly unpredictable.

Travelling alone scares me because I lack common sense and my fears are intense.

I fixate on worries about tickets but really it's the big bad world that I fear.

Alone. Stranded. Cut off.

I scarcely feel excited because of my dread. But I must still make plans and try to be present.

I have to relish the good times and ignore the anxiety inside my head.

WELLBEING

Singing at the top of my lungs in a room full of lovely people.

Feeling at home and comfortable.

Actually taking a day off on a weekend.

It was wonderful.

My thoughts were drowned out by the hubbub of conversation and the party playlist.

Hearing music out loud; I hadn't realised how much I had missed that

It isn't that my life is torturous but it rarely goes beyond the mundane on an average week.

I'm trying to find a balance and I do need to study. But eat, study, shower, slob, sleep isn't enough.

Not for every day. Not for every week.

I don’t live to study. I must remind myself of that. And put my wellbeing onto my priorities list.

BEGIN

Start a new chapter, both familiar and fresh.

Breathe in … and begin.

PROUD

How can I tell you that I am not coping well when you were so proud?

ALL THE SAME

It is clichéd to say that I still haven't grown up.

But it is true all the same.

I miss living as a family with people who are my blood.

But I cannot change the fact that I am 22.

I cannot stop time and the desire to do so is unhealthy.

But I feel it all the same.

Can I tell you a secret?

I sometimes wish that everything would just stay the same.

GOOD

I rail against the way the world is but it is how it is and it always will be.

I rail against the way my mind is but my mind is just the way that it is.

I rail against my loneliness but I do not do anything about it.

I like to repeat things, obsessively, and then complain of being bored.

I am scared of bad influences but I have forgotten that I need people or I'll sink to the bottom of the indent made by my darkest thoughts.

I haven't had a bad life but my mind is an unpleasant place to abide in.

I have had a charmed life but I feared loss and so failed to fully relish it.

I am able to function on a day to day basis but I am not thriving. Not when I am alone.

I am lucky. People love me. I need to focus on that. Focus on them. Focus on what is good.

LIVING

This year I will work on my mind. I will let my worries wash over me rather than brooding on them.

I will actively practice mindfulness.

I will stay in touch with my loved ones, and aim for daily social interaction.

I will feel the sun and the wind on my skin and make time to unwind.

I will put my unhelpful thoughts into a locked box, bury it on Ilkley Moor, and throw the key into Backstone Beck.

I will reclaim my life from the influence of anxiety and get on with really living.

BE HAPPY

Weeks went by when my most frequent interlocutor was myself. I was bound up in inconveniences: ruminating.

I know that my life has many positives but my mind latched on to the negatives.

Being lonely is a state of mind.

I was not alone. I didn't need to be.

When you're in that state, it feels real. But when you take a step back, it was the mindset that was hurting you.

Your anxiety was dragging you down, making you a drain on yourself and others.

There are positives to populate your glass with, finding healthy habits to replace the unhealthy.

So, I must get back to a calmer state, breathe, clear my head and focus.

I want to be a grown-up and to get it together, but I want most of all to be happy.

HELP

I need therapy for anxiety but I'm anxious about my session. I need therapy to calm down but the prospect is stressing me out. I need therapy for my OCD but I'm getting OCD about it already. I need therapy for suicidal thoughts but worry that it will just dredge them up. I need therapy for fear of loss but I'd much rather repress it. I need therapy for overthinking but I'm overthinking whether I need it. I need therapy for catastrophising but watch me make a mountain from this molehill. I need therapy for my self-esteem but worry that they will judge me. I need therapy for my relationship with food but I don't want to admit I've got issues. I need therapy for my internalised homophobia but I pretend I feel nothing but pride. I need therapy for all these reasons, so help's what I'm trying to find.

SPRING

I walk along the towpath, and let my worries drift by.

Expecting the worst only leaves you constantly on edge.

It doesn't soften the blow when bad things happen.

It just makes the rest of your life less rich.

A stagnant pond is quickly overrun by algae, lurid green and putrid.

Change can be good. Change can be beautiful.

It is a tired metaphor but Spring is rebirth and life.

I intend to embrace the spirit of the approaching season. and to home in on crocus buds.

I will live in the present which is something I had forgotten how to do.

I will bounce back like the Spring and stop dreaming about you.

RAIN

I have to risk failure to experience success and keep going even when I want to fold.

I need to soothe my soul to use my mind: free it from the fog.

To tune out the multiple levels it operates on and just focus in on one.

When I do this, I feel alert, and driven; I am able to achieve any goal.

It's dizzying and brilliant and I want to feel it more.

And so, I'm trying to rewire my brain to look for refracted light wherever there is rain.

WITHDRAWAL

I have turned my world upside down. Or would another cliché be more apt? I am in a liminal space.

BETWEEN

But at least I now have the time to catch my breath. This is not the end of my story.

INHALE

It is not the beginning either.

EXHALE

It is the start of the next phase and I have experience, in my rearview, to draw on as I discover the path that I will now pursue. I will try to build a life and to find someone to laugh with as I hold my head up high to shield my outlook from the negative.

This is a collection of poems on the themes of love, family & home, and mental health & wellbeing.