I kneel at your altar and beg you to look through me so I don’t have to repeat my questions anymore. The last of the light spills through the mosaics of the windows, as the last of my energy spills from my drained and bled-out body.

After all, blood doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t spilled.

Will you fill these empty veins with some substance I’ll understand? Will you pull these thoughts from their foreign land? Will you craft me a steady statue I can hide behind? Will you cry if I let go?

The hands of the clock tick backwards in time, I hide in fragments of fragmented lies, broken reasons tell me I’m better now. Still, I remember everything.

I’ve knelt here before, gifting my bleeding body to an empty altar, memorising the emergency exits. I freeze or I flight, I dissipate like the fallen fog or I rush past you like the angry wind. Either way I am cold and categorised, I colonise the pages I pay you to write, while I try to fly with feathers and no wings.

I am freezing cold so you don’t expect my touch to burn, I apologise, I didn’t expect it to either. I backed out of the race, but I’m still surprised when I don’t win. I know what it’s like, and yet I forget how to be when it happens. I feel it approaching like rain darkening the clouds, blood running cold, I notice the signs but can’t make the alarm bells ring.

Will this awareness one day erase me from myself? For I am sick of feeling rotten at my core, sick of rotting my core, sick of watching my core rot, not knowing what plan to plot to save this rotten spot inside of me. It’s not enough to analyse my observations and write down the theoretical solution.

Will it be enough when I’ve written the obituaries for every time I’ve died and collected them like coins? If I hand you the instructions, could you instruct me on how to be? Will you tell me how to breathe, how to take a step without stumbling, how to dance and not fall?

I’m conditioned to know these things, but I wrote them down with invisible ink and I arrive empty-handed at an empty altar.

Hi beautiful souls! I’ve had a bit of a rough day today, so I tried to untangle the web of conflicted feelings that made itself at home in my heart the only way I know how to, through words I spill onto empty pages, or this time, blood I spill onto empty altars. Remember to let yourself feel whatever it is you need to feel, and it will be alright! I love you all dearly, thank you for reading!

With love, Ella