It is often incomprehensible to me why it is essential that I form such refined shapes out of my imperfect basis. In times when I am faced with the impossible task of organising not only my existence but also that of other less easily-pleased individuals, I often ask: but why place such responsibilities on a child? For, my dear audience, that is what I am, in the eyes of the law. Those who judge me may judge according to their perverse senses, but it is the law itself which forms our modern world. It is amusing to note that - although I reside under no real constrictions - it is the tough binding of much older factors which restrict my actions. The true irony of the situation lies in the fact that I do not believe in such culture.

I am, and always will be, a child of the free and wild-hearted. My wings may have been mercilessly clipped by the shears of doom-destiny, however my heart wishes that it could have moved to places it preferred. I will continue to preach the words of liberty and wave the blood-stained flag that I have fought all these years to obtain. With knowledge comes great power, however the proper articulation of said power is key to real independence.

Regularly, folded in darker thoughts shadowed by lightning-sharp malice, I dream of the horizon unbroken by the harsh interruption of iron bars, and the feel of the sun on the right side of my face. I will watch the sea set on some colder shore, and with the dip of the moon, will fold myself into your arms and rest, well-assured that my dangers have passed.

Once, I was nothing more than a child chasing the darker shades of my dreams. I longed for the false perfection of fragility, and I lingered in the crimson stains of agony. I believed with all my heart that it was this slumber that was truly beauty. Perhaps I started from my nightmare once or twice at the fleeting touch of warm lips, however I quickly sunk back into the azure sea. I built myself a grave suitable, engraved my various sins into its marble surface, and lay down in its cold walls so as to wait for the end of my time.

Through the wavering currents I glimpsed the demon swimming in butterfly-patterns down towards me. Its taloned fingers traced the lines of my face and I was forced to admit defeat. My own enticing, seductively rotten core had eaten into the cracks of my foundation. I became nothing more but ash, serving as a reminder of the dysfunctional creature that is no more.

Yet I have morphed, leaving the broken tombstone like the twig from which a pupae hangs, spreading star-murmured wings behind me. I ascend quickly now, to the arms awaiting my return. I long, broken no more, for the fixation of breath upon the nape of my neck. I am familiar with belonging. I am acquainted with home.

You have aged me nicely; a well-priced wine left to ponder upon a dusted shelf. I will be poured into your chalice and consumed as such, for were you not the lumbering shape I glimpsed in my dying visions? I will taste your fangs as they sink into my neck. You will feed me your eternity, and I will create my own magnificence from the ashes.

I see many fools in the world, and more often than not, I indulge in the occasional critical analysis of their pointless lives. I laugh behind painted hands, turning my head away; their fair complexions and well-trained lips never leave a profitable impression to my cold indifference. I linger in the magic and the splendour of what I define as magnificence.

Others call it loneliness.

Thus, am I not the greatest fool after all? I lock myself into the deepest, darkest compartments of my soul. The smile, the indulging nod of the head - this is all drawn up according to careful calculation and preparation, as seen best to suit the audience to my performance. I allow the butterfly to emerge, let the heart seeded with happiness to dance and frolic in the sunlight. The half of me which is happily amused by the rare explosion of expiring sunlight on the stretch of horizon, or the whisper of a blade of grass as it shifts in its structure in reflection as a summer breeze unfolds - this I project. The demon, I hide as deep as I possibly can.

So perhaps, perhaps now that there is no longer a bleeding hole in the depths of my soul, I will not have to reveal my dark sister. Perhaps she will not have to fight my battles. It is most likely, dear heart, you will never feel her wrath. She will never curl her forked tongue over yours, she will never spit venomous words at you with her clawed hands raking your skin. You shall not be subject to her lustful glares, or her manipulation.

Likewise, I may never see your black wings. Your smile will linger, though.

I believe that that will suffice.

There are so many creatures drawn out of the same mould that roam this planet in this new century, and consequently there are many grand creatures drawn into the canvas of life. They have been shaped by the hands of their educators and their providers, pulled into magnificence by the constant drive of natural competition. It is the age-old call - this urge for control by force - even though it will wear a mask of well-versed tongues and precise articulation of accumulated data and knowledge. The previous attack of the fang and the defense of the claw have been replaced by the battle of quick debate. One day behind our backs a little twelve-year-old girl will stand against her fellow classmate and hold her encyclopedia mind in her right hand, and her skill acquired from hours of speech training, and humiliate them completely without a second thought.

And somewhere, in the depths of this harsh, cruel movement, there will be the children of the children who have been crushed in this decade. They will be taught humility, pride, strength, and somehow the yellow pages of wisdom will be opened and read again. In this sparse new land, they will be the ones to hold the sapling in their small hands as they face the oncoming storm, smiling. They will be the writers. They will be the painters. They will be the composers. In this deafening havoc, they will be the gentle beams of sunlight filtering through. 

The artists will save the soul of humanity. Regardless, it will be the machine of the converted human brain which will be praised, and the unsung romantics will be captured in the hearts of the future. One day, hope will be an underground society, a fairy-land.

We often forget there is a reason for flaw. It is to remind us of the illusion that we have so masterfully crafted out of cellophane perfection. It lingers upon the threshold of humanity in the hope that we might believe in imperfection, instead of pursuing the never-ending dream to run after the furthest goal. Our children become even more intelligent than we have been, breaking boundaries and records that have been previously set by proud adults, however there is a dullness behind their eyes.

It is not only in paper and ink that our worth must be proven in figures and consistency. It is in our shapes themselves. We pursue a set target while we ignore the pain growing within us - in fact, many of us enjoy the headiness of the fatigue. We run until our feet bleed, and then we pick ourselves up and run more. We developed methods of keeping our eyes open at almost all hours of the day, ways of hearing people talking across seas and even with the empty, gaping vacuum in between. However, the essence of true living has been snuffed cruelly and prematurely. Listening is no longer a necessity of the human character, nor is the civility of interest in beings other than themselves.

Humanity is no longer enough to quench the thirst for constant improvement. Soon we will lose our grasp on the crude wealth that is our natural form, and to adapt to our own concerns we shall mutate. Never again shall we return to this crinkled earth we called home; we shall fly, invisible, among the glistening stars and name those giant balls of gas our own.

There will come a nation, and a time, where children will be born several stories high. They will enter the world in a shrieking mess with the plastic-encased hands of a doctor whose face was not the one his genetic sequence had planned, and be wrapped up in a polystyrene blanket - a cruel mockery of warmth and comfort - and be placed in a fibre-glass cradle. Under harsh blue light they will be observed through tempered glass: an exhibition of filthy plunder dressed in false cleanliness. They will be transported in cars and they will live in the sky with long windows overlooking the smoke-smothered world. Nursemaids will stroke their little heads and feed them processed foods; their mothers are too occupied with bleaching their dark-souled hair and sticking their ears to handless phones. They will walk among highways and they will board sky-trains and they will fly further than we shall. In the endless dip of horizon pools they will learn to swim, and they will learn of the dream of the blue sky above the clouds. The skyscrapers will finally scrape the sky.

But they will never feel the whisper of grass bending over their toes, the soft tickle of bugs crawling gently over their feet, or the dampness of moss and soil sink into their soles, and thus, into their souls. They will never understand the soft shimmer of translucent blue of the Mediterranean, the kiss of the warm wind as it rises and lifts each strand of life into the cerulean of the sky. They will never appreciate the roughness of bark under their fingertips, lie while the filtered sunlight makes dappled patterns on their sun-browned skin and know what beautiful music the silence of machinery and speech creates.

Be not hurried to step into the future, be not hasty in the gap between today and the apocalyptic future. It is no longer distant and dreamlike. The golden fields of yesterday have become iconic - but we threw them carelessly over our own shoulders in our swift pace towards the horizon. Ask yourself this: is it truly too late to turn away and retrace our steps to when we believed in something greater than ourselves?

For a moment, a solitary moment, I am often foolhardy enough to let the veil slip over my eyes and cut off the scrutiny of my vision. I sit at the table with my pens scattered over the pale wood, scribbling away notes, while the man and the woman discuss moving into an apartment. The apartment is beautiful, as is this house I reside in, and the living is easy and perfection is attainable. They turn, smile at me, and as though this were some fifties televised sop, we continue on our routine with my smiles and our kisses goodnight. They could be my parents, they could be the warmth that fills in the darkness the world presents at the doorstep - if only the darkness did not already manifest in my soul.

They are not my family; the illusion disintegrates swiftly as the sunlight burns its way across the stone tiles. The garden shrivels - no one is caring for it - as I watch from my bedroom window. This bedroom is not mine: I did not choose the four-poster queen-sized bed, my trophies are not the ones hanging from the stuffed toy another girl in another time took as her friend, my paintings are not the ones so neatly strapped to the wall. This is not my land. It is borrowed land and I am living on borrowed time, wearing a face I do not recognise as my own.

When such a realisation hits you, no matter your age, you begin to distrust the meaning of intimacy, and the world slips through your trembling fingertips. The chaos and destruction overthrows the beauty - but there was no beauty to begin with.

As I put away my homework and head for bed, the rules the man carefully typed out sits against the refrigerator doors, beaming at me through subclauses and aged signatures.

Curled alone in the depths of the creeping cobwebs, it was ridiculously effortless to grasp the budding beds of loneliness. Curving my fingers deep into the velvety comfort of my rabbit stuffed toy, it was not so easy to imagine a heavier weight transforming the straight unforgiving edges into soft contours and have you here. Having my way seems to grow impossibly trying, and whatever we form out of our expectations never truly condenses into reality. Prove me, desperation, and I will fall deeper still into the muddling messes of confusion. Daydreamers will have their way, as will I, eventually in the decay of the broken and tormented mind.

But we will never believe in the warmth which explodes out of the giant gap in the midst of societies ever again. A soul once told me: the world is made up of cities, and the bridges between them, as cities are made up of people, and the bridges between them. It is not the bridges which make these giants; it is the disastrous gaps between one beating flame and the next. The drum destroys itself with its magnified intensity, and we dance and we dance and we dance. After the sun has revealed itself we begin to realise the crimson dripping down the slopes is truly our own blood, staining the earth until it coagulates and grows black.

Black is a disgusting colour. It is the colour that dances on the graves of hope.

Time came creeping up on me, as though it had never passed, and I allowed myself to remember the pain in the base of my stomach. It moved over me, and washed away into the silence behind the bleeding of the bases of my being. Because you are no longer here, dear, I wish that you were so often that it encircles my throat and I begin to gasp.

It is similar to floating in the midst of a blue lagoon, with the tendrils of some sea creature wrapped tight round my legs while I look up at the fractured manipulation of sunlight filtering through one of the world’s greatest one-way mirrors. Through the surface I see legs, I see boats travel in slow motion and I wish that I could rush forwards into the hectic movement; it is impossible to simply desire when one is so trapped.

Emotion bails, feeling fails and I find myself dreaming of the descent of the broken dreamers. When we catch the noose in its elaborate knots, bring it about our necks and wish for the quicker end, it will never simply obey. We will hang in our asphyxiation until our feet end their tireless dancing, and as our last heartbeat resounds in the Underworld, we will have danced and moved our entire life.

But the point is, you are not here. You are not here and I wish that all of space and time would bend a little to ensure a safe passage from your cold bed to mine, and perhaps here on my collarbone your lips might dance one last time. And you will be mine.

You endure the agony for as long as your futile breath allows you, hoping for a hand to reach down into the abyss to save you from your own tortured soul. What more can we ask for when the days have gone? But when the days have gone, the days will never return. You will falter among these fallen leaves, you will understand the screaming keen of the wind and understand this: you will never be complete without or within.

Your heart yearns for his touch - it is not lust, no longer do you require a single kiss or a single thrust of organs meeting. You want to be understood. You want to be allowed a little of the human in you. Broken, imperfect, unbound. Break free of the boundaries, leap of a cliff into the ashen seas where the sharks encircle and he will still save you.

We never come across these knights, for they have abandoned their rust-crusted armour and taken up the bandit’s sombre black instead. Why fight for love when one can fight for profit? Break, bend, contract and expand with our trembling beams, for lo, we are the magnificent and we are the meek. We shall encounter the darkness inside and eat it bit by delicate bit. Indigestion is irrelevant.

The point, of this, in all simplicity, is to tell you that perhaps she still does. 

Love you, that is.