Just Red.

By Ellie Stokes

I can't bandage my own wounds so my blood seeps out onto paper instead. While others bleed crimson liquid, I bleed pitch black ink. My pages are covered in scribbles of my efforts to understand my own mind. My poems scream esoterically, their intentions hidden deep in layers of metaphors. My pen flies across the lines on the page, forming the words of a thousand caged voices screeching in my mind. Between these folds of paper are my deepest secrets, my darkest desires and my most dangerous thoughts, that I crafted into digestible stories. If your eyes ever skim these words, I hope you understand that the blood was never a beautiful shimmery maroon. It was just red.

By Ellie Stokes