lyzbrown

[lyzbrown]

growing

never abandon hope even if the pain shakes you to your core. perseverance is the seed ready to be cultivated into the fruit you’re waiting for.

#poetry #recovery #mental health #mental illness

[lyzbrown]

memory

a memory should be nothing, for you cannot see it, touch it, or hear it, but it’s something enough that you cannot destroy it, even if you try to drown it in the bottle or force it out with smoke or bleed it from your veins, intangible and yet indestructible.

#poetry #mental health #mental illness #ptsd #self-harm

[lyzbrown]

and while others change from one day to the next as it suits them, you remain the unique face of your soul.

[lyzbrown]

disarray

the fact is, you sent my heart into disarray. it happened somewhat by chance. i didn’t foresee meeting you and you didn’t foresee falling in love. but it happened. we found each other and then devoured each other. one evening, our eyes decided to enchant each other and they haven’t moved since.

#poetry #love #relationships #The Welsh Dragon

[lyzbrown]

hello again

and the sky in your eyes, mysterious and infinite, becomes more familiar, welcomed in by the presence of my listening soul.

#poetry #love #relationships #The Welsh Dragon

[lyzbrown]

The strange serenity in falling out of love

I will fill the plate that is my life so that I won’t even notice that all you give me is breadcrumbs, and I will feast on it, on everything that is not you.

I have been starving for too long, the void inside me all-consuming. No more. No more. Now the emptiness is filling, calm, and safe, the cavern within me is now a lake, still, smooth, a perfect mirror from which every mistake I’ve made stares back at me, beautiful and wrong, like you, beautiful and wrong for me, and maybe someday someone will pour oil across my smooth surface and set me alight again, but it is high time I came to terms with the fact that you stopped fanning our fire long ago and that trying to rekindle it alone is as lonely as it is pointless.

You say I seem distant, because I have stopped pouring my lake endlessly into your black hole. If you wanted me to want you, why didn’t you act like it? If you wanted me to love you, why did you stop trying?

#poetry #sadness #The Welsh Dragon #love

[lyzbrown]

Tumour

I wish that I could excise the need for love from me like a tumour all it does is make me sick with disappointment and heartbreak and your radiation is just a poison and your chemicals aren’t worth the side effects and I wish I weren’t so addicted, wish I was a different person who wants different things and doesn’t need the things that I need. I wish I could cut you out of me and it would just leave a hollow hole, not a raw gaping wound. I am bleeding anyway I wish I could stop you from bleeding me dry.

#poetry #love #relationships #heartbreak #The Welsh Dragon

[lyzbrown]

i’d do it all again

i hope what you’re searching for will make you happy in a way i couldn’t i hope it will satisfy that thirst in a way i never could.

my heart broken again, more a crater or a bombed-out building than an open door. you got what you came for.

and i’m weary for a home, for someone to love me more than pride or shame more than the pain from the push and pull, the tidal waves that rip through my brain lord knows i don’t do anything by halves.

and i’m longing to no longer have any sadness to outrun, or at least a sadness that isn’t quite so crushing. life is terrifying, but with you it felt less so. with you it felt less so.

the last time i saw you when we got out the defibrillators and tried to resuscitate our love i was so shell-shocked by how cold and dead it felt that i couldn’t even cry as this precious thing withered away in my arms and dissolved into darkness like a night bus pulling away.

give me back that piece of my heart, please. in any case, you never really wanted it. i need it because my head was lost so long ago, melted like wax like a candle burnt to a soft malleable mess unique and oddly beautiful in its deformity.

and maybe when i return to this city when time has passed and seasons changed it won’t taste like your wine-drunk lips in the dark and i won’t see us kissing in the rain at midnight. maybe it won’t matter anymore. maybe it will just be an interlude, a madness we indulged in. maybe i will have stopped thinking about how i’d do it all again.

#poetry #love #relationships #breakups #heartbreak #The American Boy

[lyzbrown]

looking for me

we don’t say it but we both know you’re looking for me in the taste of her mouth in the noises she makes in the things she lets you do to her

tell me does she turn the same shade of blue does your name sound the same on her tongue does her body contort like mine does she know how to struggle against you does she know just how much of a fight you like

you can keep looking but you won’t find eyes like mine anywhere else.

#poetry #love #sex #relationships #bdsm #breakups #The Warrior

[lyzbrown]

Moments I would live again if I could

Standing on my grandad’s shoes while he held my hands and we danced Sitting in a shopping trolley while my friends pushed me down the street Making rainbow pancakes, both covered in flour Sledging down the golf course and pelting snowballs Tuxedo junction, trombone slide in my face Falling asleep on my best friend’s shoulder in front of a film Long walk on the beach with the dogs, sand between my toes First clandestine kiss which was the beginning of the downfall Curtain up, under the stage in the lights The bandleader grabbing me by the arm and hauling me up onto the tour bus Making love on the beach in the dark with the most sublime mistake I have ever met Sitting by the duck pond and longing to reach out to him The strongest man I know holding me so tight in his arms that I forgot what fear was Long tattooed legs across my lap, the leopard print dress, her voice, her laugh Drunk, low murmured American voice - I love you - the canal sighing beneath us The first night, August heat, scalding kisses New Year’s Eve, your eyes glittering when you told me you loved me and everything that had been so blurry and nebulous suddenly clicked into focus like a kaleidoscope.

#poetry #love #life #relationships #The First Love #The American Boy #The Welsh Dragon #The Warrior

[lyzbrown]

what a waste i am

and isn’t kind of wasteful and sad that a woman with as many talents as i is better at falling hopelessly in love than at anything else she knows

#poetry #love #relationships

[lyzbrown]

all that remains

one of the hardest things i had to learn is that you can’t love someone into being good for you, or good to themselves. you can’t make the pieces of the jigsaw fit if the other person keeps blindly knocking over the table, and if you set yourself on fire to keep them warm, all you end up with is two piles of ashes.

#poetry #love #breakups #heartbreak #relationships #The Warrior

[lyzbrown]

if i could tell my younger self anything

if i could tell my younger self anything, i would tell her that the size on your clothes’ tags matters to no one. i’d tell her that once she stops caring what everyone else thinks, they will stop offering their opinions. i’d tell her that if she fakes confidence long enough, it stops becoming an act. i’d show her how to walk into a room like she owns it, like the men do, i’d tell her that no one can tell her she doesn’t belong if she places down roots in doc marten boots. i’d tell her that the rules are made up, that she can do literally whatever she wants, people will offer their unwanted opinions until she learns to shove them back down their throats, then they will judge silently, then they will learn to see that she is happy and not care. i’d tell her that fear is her friend, that if it feels wrong, it is, that her instincts are her best armour and truest allies, that listening to them is the biggest kindness she can do herself. i’d tell her that no one will be surprised when she admits she likes girls, and in a few years, people will be more surprised when she says she likes boys. i’d tell her that love isn’t divisible, that the people who would tell you otherwise are just trying to sell you their unhappiness. i’d tell her that no one ever fucking notices if you don’t shave your legs. i’d tell her that in a few years time, she’d regret the years she wasted trying to fit in. i’d tell her to embrace her weird and buy those ridiculous shoes. i’d tell her to kiss that fucking boy, already, when they’re both single and calm and not while freewheeling through breakups and wreckage and grief. i’d tell her to answer the fucking phone when her grandad calls, every time. i’d tell her not to hyperextend her joints, even to freak people out, she’ll pay for it in a few years. i’d tell her that she’d work it out with her family and they’d be close. i’d tell her that those pink leggings are fucking atrocious and belong in the bin. i’d tell her not to wear her hair up unless she wants to. i’d tell her that any man who offers his unsolicited opinion on how she looks, speaks, or acts, deserves nothing but derision and a punch in the throat. i’d tell her that the only thing better than a frenchman in bed is two of them. i’d tell her that no one cares that she still sleeps with a teddy, you get your small comforts where you can in this life. i’d tell her not to confuse brutal honesty with cruelty. i’d tell her that good things come in threes, but so do bad things, i’d tell her that any man who throws things or punches walls when angry is just making sure she knows just how much he wishes he could hit her and get away with it, i’d tell her that relationships aren’t projects, and the only person worth developing is herself, no one will do it for her, she shouldn’t do it for anyone else. most importantly, i’d tell her that it’s not enough to be in love, that she can’t save that boy from himself, that she can’t fix the broken part of the next boy, for she didn’t break it, that sometimes leaving someone is the only way she can love herself, even if leaving leaves a hole in her soul. i’d tell her that when the chips are down, the only person she has is herself, that she’s stuck with herself forever, and when she learns to be okay with that, it will only get better. i’d tell her that the men who will tell her she is broken have a vested interest in keeping her self esteem low. i’d tell her that needing the medication doesn’t make her a failure, even if she needs it for the rest of her life. i’d tell her to be present, to be there in the moments that matter, to remember each caress of the mediterranean waves, savour each kiss, relish every laugh, squeeze every hand tight in between her fingers, i’d tell her to love with wild abandon, not that she’s ever needed any encouragement with that. i’d tell her that she would only ever regret the things she didn’t do, to kiss that girl, to take that job, to go to that party and stay out too late, to seize every moment of life with both hands and squeeze it, for it’s just a fragile flame that can be extinguished any second, and i’d tell her that it will be okay, that if she’s true to herself it will be okay, in the end.

#poetry #life #love #growing up

[lyzbrown]

Reignite

I’ll spread myself thin, stretch myself out until I am imperceptible, indistinguishable from the night sky. It’s not like you can see the stars in London anyway, no one will notice that mine have gone out. Right now I’m just so tired of having to reignite myself on less and less fuel with more and more to burn each time, denser, heavier, darker, every time just more. Wouldn’t it just be easier to drift off into the sky like a wisp of smoke from a cigarette and dissipate as if I were never there?

#poetry #mental health #mental illness #depression

[lyzbrown]

Drowning

Sometimes the thunder that shatters through his body is just too loud, his eyes like the stormiest seas and I’m fucking drowning I’m drowning and no one is fucking listening

#poetry #relationships #fights #The Warrior #mental health

[lyzbrown]

Sometimes

Sometimes it’s like poison burns from my brain down through my veins, sometimes my hands shake with the effort of holding it back from seeping through my skin and corroding everything I touch.

Sometimes I feel like insanity ablaze, skin cold as if touched by a chill, eyes wide but unseeing. Sometimes I’m paralysed by fear of things I can’t see, have never seen or never will again, as long as I’m awake.

Sometimes it’s like a lead blanket draped over my chest, sometimes the weight of the air crushes me, suffocates me, sometimes my brain is like a ball and chain. Sometimes I wish I could turn it off, take it out, exchange it for a functional model. Most days I know how to work with what I’ve got, but sometimes I just wish it could be easier.

#poetry #mental health #mental illness #depression #anxiety #ptsd

[lyzbrown]

In the stars

I search for him in the stars, hidden from me by the London smog and wonder if he can see them under the same indigo sky, wonder if he is looking for me too, wonder if his soul reaches back towards mine, wonder if he too counts down the hours, the minutes, wonder if even a lifetime will be enough

#poetry #love #relationships #romance #long distance relationship #The Welsh Dragon