she must be mad
Charly Cox

A mental coming-of-age documented through poetry and prose written by someone who’s still in the thick of it

copyright

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ 2018

Copyright © Charly Cox 2018

Charly Cox asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in this work are of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or localitites is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook edition © July 2018 ISBN 9780008291679

Version: 2018-09-17

contents

title page

copyright

For the men who broke my heart...

she must be in love

love part 1

to you

she moves in her own way

mourning routine

mesh of kisses

anatomical astrologist

otters

weight of you

lipstick

lovebites

with his assistants

doubletree by hilton

porn

evolution

snapple lid facts

kaleidoscope

rosie cheeks

app cheats

first west service

you sit with your tongue...

the first time

love part 2

she must be mad

mind part 1

‘she must be mad’

@saintrecords

doctor, doctor, don’t help me

selective feeling

I wish I’d not spent so long crying in bed

rapid cycling

funny

I prescribe you this

I know that truth is always beautiful

all I wanted was some toast

a voice I know

wonder of worry

amber meal

unidentified businessman

mind part 2

inner gold

resilience

dysthymia

wrong spaces

kindness

your mind is biased

she must be fat

body part 1

stuff

shoreditch house

kale

kale reprised

wrigley’s extra

trump

filters

london pervs

women’s tea

imposter

hunger

gift for a man

sobriety

cellulite (sells you heavy)

fat

body part 2

bodies

sexy

she must be an adult

age

goldman sachs

I’ll be home in the morning

too young

say you’re sorry

they came out and I stayed in

E1W 3SS/Billy

pint-sized

whatsapp

roots of them/sorry, jacob

kids

forever

baby ella

adult

seaweed – for grandad

expectations

yellow cabs

hospital visits

you will choose...

acknowledgements

about the author

about the publisher

For the men who broke my heart, for the beta-blockers that slowed it, and a chunk of what is left to the sisterhood with a gift tag wrapped around it reading: let’s try and figure this all out together.

I owe this all to my madness and those who have suffered it. I never thought I’d be a poet. I never knew one day I’d slap a title on a cover that encased sometimes lonely and sometimes excited thoughts and say, ‘Here it is! A book of poems! By me, Charly … The Poet!’ But life shocks you and here we all are. In that never tense, I didn’t know a thing – I just knew how to feel. I took to feeling like a sport and I exercised every one of those achy heartstrings that had festered in cliché drivel until they snapped and aortic wells poured and shouted, ‘For god’s sake woman, can you just write these feelings down so we can have a break?’ And so I did. For years in silence and secrecy. I wrote these poems and letters to my past self and in every sort of melodramatic, romantic, ridiculous way, these are what saved me. Saved me from an intensity I was afraid to share until I morphed them into something to share with you now. Some of these were written at sixteen, others at twenty-two; they were all written growing and lost and sad sunk, but they were also all written with eventual hope. A hope that I clung to in the most intense way that only a girl desperate to take a peek at womanhood, battling a wealthy portfolio of mental health issues nervously, could. Finding strength in the contention of such frustrated confusion, in odd and debilitating sadness, in jubilant first kisses and clangs of clarity – in the words of our lord saviour Britney Spears, ‘I’m not a girl – not yet a woman’. And there is something truly quite almighty in that in-between … either that or, I must truly just be mad.

she must be in love

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