every day, you miss me
(i am) hiding by your side
revolving in your orbit
by destiny, by design

every day, coffee
your regular routine
you take it without sugar
you take it like disease

every day, fire
bloodshot eyes, peeling smile
no red-blue lights in windows
to reflect your quiet crimes

every day, i am still here
cruel world and coffee and burning alive
your name hurts this djinn-girl, wrong side of every line

every day, war
i try to write, but all i do is time
and every day is every day i've wasted
and every morning is another day to end
and every day, i plant these words
in my soul, in my wounds,
in your bone-chilling curse
you'll miss me when the angels haunt your grave

malice becomes sweet to taste
tucked under a tongue, behind pearly white gates

if you spent some time with me
your heart would grow too whole, too red

once a landscape drowned in sentiment
now you hide from change, fear violent rain

i've been cursed, losing sleep, far from land, sky and sea
and worms have been birthed inside all of my best dreams

i stir and i am haunted, hollow, eaten, starved, a half
each waking hour flashes by until the world turns dark

we join for a meal, and i'm counting teeth again
we join for a meal; you hide your hands away from me

you speak in song:
i am becoming yours, ever since we met

so tell me about it
what can i say to make you mine?
when you smile it makes me burn
i wonder if you noticed our hands are the same
i want to look at you until i have you memorised
warm and sweet and so piercing when you look at me
all the honey in the north can't compare to your eyes
brown skin like strong chai and this mountain under the sun

you're driving tonight on a road to the stars
and my heart is with you, sitting quiet in your car
this is not real

were your eyes on me when i made myself look away?
i've been all about you since the first day you chose to stay
am i just a sweet but strange child to you?
i have lost my mind

if this was real
i would drive with you forever
along the harshest mountain roads
between these trees watching over me
by all the ducks, cows, goats, moles and geese in the world
you would know we have the same hands
i bet you'd taste like smoke and mystery
i wonder if you have a girl at home
i know you'd love her like the love songs instruct
do you speak in song with everyone you love?
you are a fleeting 4 day dream i want to forget
you gave me an apricot and you made it taste sweet
i hope when i looked away you took the chance to look at me

so tell me, is this real?
i think i noticed you don't like to be too far from me
one time i was counting centimeters; we met at 15
i wonder if your mind has been close to mine all along

now you're on your way home
and i hope you're the boy in this poem

you are the girl in my songs, you'd tell me if we were alone
you'd tell me you liked hearing the poem baba read to you
we'd speak a common language
romance, music, and warm cups of tea
things only the two of us here seem to know
we'd talk about a future on a farm between two high places
what do you see when (i think) you look at me?
can you read my eyes for all the things i don't speak?
please tell me you've been wanting to be mine this whole time

if this is not real
i hope you have someone to tell you, you are the boy in the songs
you are the biggest sunflower in this yellow field
you are the coolest winds in the cold desert
you are a steady rock and i am water falling, falling again

you speak in song:
you are gone and i won't be hearing from you

but you don't speak a word to me

this is real

you look
and look
and look

please speak

these birds, do you love them?
they said this path leads to greatness
i am walking towards you with every step that we take
i want to run, but you lead the way

i decide on a metaphor, and this is real
if you are a stone, i am a river
i am, always am
so then you too must be

you analyse plums as you pick them
i memorise your sweet confusion
there is a story here that is yet to be writ
so tell me this is as real as it feels

swear by the fish, the tadpoles, and blue dragonflies
by the orchards, the flowers, and ancient brown eyes
swear by your history, your land, your glittering sand
by everything here that i see, that is real

you look
and look
and look

but you speak in song, and not a word to me

this home is not a pentagon.
split the wound in quarters,
four wheels, a driver, a crash
lingering bruise, nineteen year old ****
five miles of forest, incinerating
it's his fire, we're in pieces, we are orange confetti
beneath stone i bury words, like roots in the ground
and lately i've seen flowers in everyone's hands
hide the truth, share the shoes, split the wound:
blood clots keep us locked in like a noose
her heart is a house, and he's charring the rooms
so i'd rather no roses than have my hands stained
the sweet stench, a bleeding dead thing, suffocates
and there is a warmth in the soil where i lay
sweep the ashes, close the door, turn away
if trees are your candles, breathe in this decay
split the **** wound! This man is a cage.

every lie is a *****, rusting, digging into more of what lives in my chest. if you can imagine how a spider's walk sounds, then you'll hear my brown bones closing over this thing that is red. my body is a crowd of one, a room full of me: i stay caged between 4 walls, and it is lonely.

be still so the hounds don't bring you down, not so still that they win without a fight. be still, red thing, but not so still that you may never move again. the world has an appetite for your kind of soul: their mouths, yours too, will be used against you; they'll swallow your tongue and say it was their food.

confined to this live-wire city, you wonder if you chose to be unseen. you wonder when you stopped seeing, too, stopped being a girl with a mouth full of teeth and a red rose that bloomed when she would sing, dance, dream, a girl with less to care for and more to care about, a girl who knew a thing before she was told how she ought to know it.

so what do i know? i sit in this car, i go up this road following signs that read 'home', watching traffic lights come and then go, greening it all the way to the highest hilltop. but mountains tower in the backdrop, the way down becomes an endless ***** and these burning lamps line the sides in warning, urging me to keep to the road.

there is wind in my hair, stars in the radio, and the man in the passenger seat is someone i won't know. he has brown eyes, warm skin, a Cheshire cat grin, and he is everything i hoped he would be, it's unreal. he's here in this scene, in the credits to a movie that plays on repeat, with me on this road to a home that never shows.

and everything bows to the clock anyway so i take charge of the man, the car and the stars, i take charge of the hounds and the spider in my mouth, i take charge of the heart and the bones and the dark, and i let the clock pull me out, out, out and into the arms of something new.