Creative

It is 1am, and the hospital is dreary. The woman next to me is listening to the heartbeat of her baby. Her neighbour prays for his fever to drop. I am waiting, hand over mouth, for the nausea to pass.    It is 1am, and I have exhausted all my favourite daydreams. My friends are asleep, there is no-one to turn to. My thoughts drift to you (but that's nothing new).    Spring time. You drop me off at uni and pass me a pen. It’s early morning and your hair is ruffled. It makes me want to crawl back into bed, hide under the covers with you, but I’m already late so I kiss you

Mia Deans When he told me, we high-fived. The air felt light as he opened.  She echoed my thoughts back to me. We weren’t the same, but similar enough. Finding comfort in each other’s uncertainty. I watched her cry and felt myself turn inside out.  I asked if her best friend was also her girlfriend. Yes.   She slipped it into conversation. I choked on the nonchalant-ness. For her, it seemed as simple as telling the time.  I told her I wasn’t sure of myself. She let herself go for the first time, took off her cloak and blossomed.  He never

Content Waning: body dysmorphic disorder, allusions to self harm Act I When Estella was young, there was only one part of herself that she truly loved. Her eyes. Clear and bright, her pupils shimmered blue like marbles in the sun. But that was all. The rest of her was haphazardly round. She wasn’t soft - the way fat people are often thought to be - but disproportionately swollen and spider-webbed with seams of cellulite. Brown remains atrophied under her fingernails, and the friction of skin on skin secreted a salty odour between her shoulder blades. The worst part of all