A hole was dug for me when I was 21
I happily died in it
I helped dig it.

Is this bliss?
I think heartbreak exists within my chest
Sometimes it emerges as bile
It tastes like sugar and sea water
Sometimes it is warm and thick on my tongue

You bit off a budded magnolia for me at the branch
You exposed the inner bark so it could drink up iced water

I know the weight of the afternoon, I said.
It keeps you awake but I can sleep, it know it well.

Is it the girl you see in me, her small thighs?
Or the half woman, her madness?

This project might keep me dead
If I held your baby one day would you ask me who I was? Which part of her or him might show up wrong?
Wouldn’t you want to know?

Our lust is a beaten animal,
How much work we put into it.
It is balanced and contained by so many chemicals.

All day I sink deeper into it,
It becomes cold and dark, I am a stone.

Cut your nails before you occupy me
Don't expect ecstasy when I am ignored in daylight
Ecstacy is to be seen
That is a different project

I use more water now
I scrub off the grease of this city before I leave
A head trauma: soft and unsheltered
You could spoon me out like cake, if you wanted to
You could put your fist through my skull
If you felt like it

Exhaustion is not the right word. Instead it is
training your tears, sugar and bread
Rising and dipping
The syncing of an algorithm, you have cheated it. This is someone else!
Beautiful and empty: a political, sensual housewife
Curled like a shrimp: is this too much?
You have a metal chest, lock and key on your wrist.
You wake without an alarm, and hips click and throb from long walks and the weight of LOVE
Its discovery of sickly clues that point toward the deathbed
Girls with little red hearts, there are hundreds of them. You mimic their vanity, it is insincere.

The plumping, powdering and stitching of a patchwork doll. You are homemade.
Fear leaks into the dream state, you cannot speak
Brainwashed girls are always looking for peace or violence. And you are not brainwashed.
You stand with a camera lens, pigtails and hope. You chew discomfort and loneliness.
You analyse when you are home. When you are home you can sleep.

I remember hearing about fish hooks
The bodies of animals between my hands
Their gills and bones and the thump of a mouse's heart
Petrified by the cat who cornered it into a stair

I recall the grease underneath my fingernails when I iced their Christmas cakes
Packed ground almonds into pan cases and filled them up with oranges and raisins

Without a kiss unsaid
A breast untethered from pink or white satin
My questions are heavy and hot
Eyes that stare while you sleep
Suddenly, they are lilies
Obscene, tired, temporary
Suddenly they cannot see at all

Today and all days
Little pieces
Pearls and crumbs, memory and skin
I hold onto structure: houses, breakfasts
Or the earth and trees
Let me be stretched and fixed
Cracked, hit and smoothed by a heavy wind

In love, when I come home he will be there
Smothered by flour and butter and figs
Maybe the gentleness and force I want are more interwoven than I first thought
At a first glance
Maybe I walk towards violence, darkness
War

To be more
To swell and breathe it all out
A nectarine
Full of health and youth
Who are you without your raspberry jam, sourdough, hair gel, the way you travel, your Sunday walks
Without those you laugh with, without yourself: who you cry alone with
Will you still be here if you were left with your apple core, two feet away from the edge, breeze and the sea salt