Your light exiles my shadows,
Until they cower in the dark
Fresh memories we’ve made together
Re-ignite my spark.
Dazed and dazzled in your presence,
Lights dim when you are gone.
I breathe you while I can,
Knowing I wont have you long.
And every tiny cut
that pains me when you leave,
Is worth the bitter sweetness
for the pleasure that you weave.
So I’ll ignore the voices
That tell me I should flee,
For one more stolen day with you
and the love that sets me free.
Beneath a cerulean dome, your smile lights up my tiny world.
My paper skin crackles while your
laughter ripples, lost on the breeze, delivered to a stranger’s ears.
My heart shines at your careless sound, and I’m proud to call you mine.
You breathe new life into my ancient soul;
you keep me young while I grow old.
Still ruffled from sleep
He leaves silently in the dark
And leaves me bereft
Lizzi mills
All rights protected
Your delight rings out
A tinkle of bells on the breeze
And I breathe your joy
Shadowside
We’ve been bound forever, my shadow and me, through hellish dark depths and sharp, soaring glee.
Where I go, she follows. We’re never apart.
Dogged, determined, she blackens my heart.
In the glare of the spotlight, she grows stronger still, ’til I become shadow, bent to her will;
A puppet, strung up, helpless and weak – my shadow controlling, I’m passive and meek.
But one day I know, I’m bound to be free, to walk in the sunlight.
Alone. Only me.
My shadow abandoned, imprisoned in gloom, with no-one to torture, no space in my room.
I will run free, chased by the sun, my spirit alive, my soul on the run.
But your cruelty’s familiar as breath is to me. And without all your dark, would I notice the glee?
If I chase you away, will I be on my own? No contrast, no texture, as pale as old bone.
Until I steal courage to enter the light, to take that last step, to conquer and fight,
until then cruel shadow my friend and my foe, we’ll go on together, a two woman show.
Honeyed words spoken with a bitter tongue;
In my urgent thirst, I drank them in.
Verisimilitude of love, cloaked in a tissue of lies;
All the while, your sweetness silently killing me.
And you left me for dead.
Partial harpy, partial drudge.
My mind is mud, turgid sludge.
In vicious turmoil, churning round.
My mind can’t hear, there’s too much sound.
I don’t like this me,
I’m not how I like to be,
I’m needle sharp, rough and raw,
It seems you are my fatal flaw
Sunk in quicksand, sucking mire
head so cold, heart on fire
Paralysed by poisoned appetite
It’s you I want, it’s me I spite
So after a rather heated discussion with my ex-husband today (ok, argument then) it occurred to me how many people consider self-employment to mean nothing more than staying home, drinking tea and watching Jeremy Kyle do his worst on daytime TV.
Well, ok, two out of three ain’t bad, to quote Meatloaf. But seriously, when the discussion came up about childcare during the school summer break, I was told, fairly baldly, that as I had “ditched my job” he wouldn’t be needed for his fair share of kiddicare during the summer holidays! Seriously!
Even though he knows I’ve started getting work through as a freelance writer. Even though he can see that my day time is dominated by child-centric necessities, almost to the exclusion of all else, when all three are home.
I mean obviously, I’d love to write through the night, go to bed at dawn and surface again at Pimms o’clock. It’s my natural rhythm. But the presence of three little bodies who awake at 6:30 every morning, simply won’t allow that.
For some reason, as soon as you’ve mentioned the fatal words “working from home” it seems to be taken as a massive euphemism for “lazing around doing naff-all besides drinking tea and contemplating your navel”!
But is this a global attitude, or is this peculiar to the UK? We still, even in this so-called enlightened age, seem to have the attitude that if you haven’t clocked in, clocked out and worked an extra hour at your desk to impress the bosses (even if you are only marking time and playing solitaire on your PC), that somehow, you just aren’t doing a ‘proper’ job. Is it just the Brits, or does the rest of the freelancing world get this?
And it’s not just freelance writers either! Artists, part-rime workers, even stay-at -home mothers are somehow treated as if they are shirking some unknown responsibility to society.
So I guess we’d all better go out and get ‘proper’ jobs and stop arsing around with this writing nonsense?
…ok …I’ll just get these 1500 words down and then I’ll get to the job centre….honest!
There’s a hole in my chest where my heart used to be and I’m trying to fathom what happened to me.
Your wolf’s words dressed up like a lamb did so cheat,
And you softened me up like tenderized meat.
And hard tho I tried to block out the din
Of the harsh little words from the voices within,
I cannot ignore, avoid or pretend
That I didn’t suspect our idyll would end.
I weep from the loss, the precipitous drop,
and I’m breathless and hopeless and fear I can’t stop.
I’ve never been good in the hands of defeat,
so I’m hiding out here in my mawkish retreat
But I can’t run away from the idea of you,
and I need to stop feeling the way that I do
I need to face facts and set myself free but there’s a hole in my chest where my heart used to be
lizzimills 