TOPICAL DIS/ORDER, POETRY
Death of a Sun
—A Poetry Selection
by MERCY FERRARS

23/10/2022
The following poetry bled from a borderline heart. Always caught between feeling everything at once and nothing at all, it swings from euphoria to depression with reckless abandon. A borderline heart which sinks in the sea as you vanish from its skin. Stories cannot capture the ocean in which it’s drowning. But my words always find a home in the unsteady rhythm; between smithereens of emotion and the vacuum of line break [they thunder.] Death of a Sun is a record of the things I never got to say, maybe because it was too late and a sun had already burned out, maybe out of fear or pride, or maybe just because sometimes you miss the right moment, and the words never seem proper again. This is a foretaste.
TW: rejection sensitivity dysphoria / the regret and self-hate we experience after being rejected
We see the flames too late
Shyly, she takes a step out of her bunker,
doubting glances are directed at
the one who knows better.
Half-healed burns adorn her face,
and she pulls away in agony,
with breath stifled she retreats to the
safety behind iron walls.
She turns around,
watches with a wistful heart
the rain pour outside the bunker
on the peonies.
She longs to understand
trust without fear,
a memory so pristine
she had forgotten its face.
But I, who had walked through the flame,
sheltered in the darkness of the bunker,
I remember the blazing fires,
the smell of burning flesh,
the screams which shattered my throat.
But the rain.
The rain smells sweet. On tiptoes she waits by the door,
with aching eyes.
A drop falls on her skin,
startled, she flinches, before she is overcome with a smile.
I would never let her leave the safety of our iron castle,
had not the rain promised intimacy and the caress of passion flowers which lean towards it.
She stretches out her hand with novel trust and my heart
stops. But the flowers softly hold her hands. She cranes her head
towards the sky, and holds her breath, and for a moment she is love.
We see the flames too late.
Sensing the stench of their avarice, I leap to my feet, run to the door, but stop, as if separated from her by a transparent wall.
She whimpers, pressed against a tree trunk.
The flames pass her by, the rain continues to patter,
but instead of the scent of flowers, it spills blood,
its caress nothing short of rejection.
The rain may have invited her, but safety was mere illusion.
Why it feels like she is dying, she cannot explain.
She looks at me, covered in blood, and whimpers, “Not even the fire wanted me. ”
The rain drops now hit her like rocks. The passion flowers turn to roses, sting her with repulse.
When the tears burst,
she feels relieved—
Drop for drop creating space for her ocean to flood over the lands and the flowers and the bunker.
But the rain. She looks at me, suddenly reliving the flames.
TW: splitting / the violence in brutally burning your feelings to the ground
Butterflies
Butterflies,
gutted, blood spills from the walls
in the morgue.
Butterflies,
rot from the inside, a shape disfigured and deformed,
charred maws whisper with burnt voices—
Butterflies,
creep behind my eyes,
burrow into my chest,
force themselves against my eyelids
and wrench them open.
Butterflies,
crash against my skin,
tear my flesh to shreds until
my love is but a perforated envelope—
Butterflies,
scratch out my eyes until
the truth I had taught myself to see
has choked itself out of existence.
I am cannibalised fingerprints
beyond recognition.
TW: perceived and actual abandonment / the feeling of betrayal
It’s always been you
“It’s always been you,” you proclaim
and rest your head on her shoulder,
and take her to the concert
that was supposed to be our second chance.
“It’s always been you,” you say,
before you hold her hands and tell her
she is nothing like your previous mistakes.
“It’s always been you,” you confess,
but it was never me
quite enough.
TW: a bpd fantasy comes crashing down in a reality check
Pennsylvania
I had stood by the edge of my earth,
listening to the seagulls serenading me
with the song of you
just across the ocean
you would be waiting too
and somewhere between us,
our oceans would melt into one
I couldn’t know you’d never go to sea
but settled for the simplicity
of Pennsylvanian streets.
TW: emotional dysregulation
Vessel
ON SOME DAYS,
I need another vessel
to contain this
abundance of me
this scarcity of you
too much and too little
make woman like no other
TW: intensity / all or nothing
Teeth
Bury me in fire, love.
Rupture my soul.
Watch it evaporate into a black sky.
Sink your teeth into my skin. I want you to leave scars:
Drown me five oceans deep.
It’s all or nothing when flames consume me head to heart to feet.
EDITED BY LARA HELENA.
More poetry and fiction by Mercy:
A M N E S I A I—III
Snkllr
The Eternal Program
Please Don’t Leave: Verlustangst
DEATH OF A SUN will be published in fall 2022. More information on www.mercyferrars.de and on Instagram (@snkllrpublications). Mercy Ferrars is a writer and photographer based in Berlin. She is madly in love with Scotland, dogs and Bojack Horseman.