I touch my pulse to remind myself I am sane: blood is throbbing beneath my skin in every blue lilac vein. My hands tremble, the pillow and sheet echo every sound, every flutter of panic coursing - swift acting poison - through my limbs. And I know this is chemical, I know the … Continue reading Tiny deaths
Last year began as the previous one ended - quite literally and in the sense I still had vast mountain ranges to climb. It’s a metaphor we use constantly but I couldn’t think of anything more apt; anything more deceptive than a mountain peak disappearing into the clouds. A few months into the year, I … Continue reading Age 25
There is glitter in my bath water. A nebula of healing, medicine and feeling. It greets me like a childhood home, invites me to breathe along with the swirls and the ripples I make because my heart is still beating and I can wiggle my fingers and toes. It settles into the lines in my … Continue reading Painted gold
Today she was reminded of all her faults; the ones she keeps in boxes, rather than the false ones she champions, for social acceptance. Most days, only she knows where they are kept but she forgets she did not walk from her mother’s womb into adulthood. She stumbled and crawled with a bloody nose, and … Continue reading Hung like bunting
I have never paid enough attention to doors and the way they look: pulled open, ajar, or closed. Or how they bear memories, of blows and the passionate kisses pressed up against their spines. The worn lock screaming secrecy and the scuff marks chuckling mischief. Light seeps through them, four clean lines, a … Continue reading The white light
She paid more attention to bird song this week. She heard it at six am and how it had changed by nine. She heard it in the car park after work, she heard it in the trees outside. She heard it at night when she was running a bath. She does not know which … Continue reading She Listened
Small and feral. Green knees and knotty hair, Nanny’s little devil; bumbling without a care along the concrete stones with mossy edges and busy ant homes. How she longed to be feather light, paper transparent and magical within and without. To blink and merge with vivid climbers scaling varnished heights. Her tissue paper skin grazed … Continue reading The Fairy Garden
At the beginning of twenty eighteen, I used a jigsaw metaphor to describe how complete and incomplete I felt. Upon reading this, my Mother said, ‘You know you never find all of the pieces of the jigsaw, right?’ I rolled my eyes, said ‘I know’ when really I was adamant it wasn’t true at all. … Continue reading Age 24
Rebecca Schultz: https://www.facebook.com/wordschangeverything/ Instagram- @penciltopaperseries
The tender age of thirteen and grunge, grime and grey eyeshadow defined me. Pegged me tightly into a hole, type cast and left there to mature. To phase into adulthood with only bangs and black kohl to cling onto. For twenty four months, Avril Lavigne's 'Anything But Ordinary' lit the fire in my stomach. Fire … Continue reading Anything But Ordinary
