please don't ask
why my words
are so intent on
chaining your heart
to the nightmares I've
stuffed my pillows
full of
with promises rusting
into blackened iron
links and truths that
would shine better as
lies

I never meant
to cage you
in my dreams -
it's just that my
eyelids solder shut
and I cannot pry my silver
eyelashes apart without
cracking at the faultlines
I forget to mention
whenever I wake up
alone

it's just that my
soul needs more
than a little oiling
more than a little
you
to breathe away this
metal corroding its way into my
tear ducts, dripping rust
down my cheeks,
choking on 'blood oxide'
and mechanical residue
buried underneath my
fingernails

it's just that every
******* 'i love you'
is yet another link
around my finger,
wrenching the life out
of me,
blue shadows engraved
on my skin never shine
like silver in the sun
but if this is the
only clanging chain
of heartbeats echoing
in metal boxes
from me to
you;
what can I do?

it's just that there
was a lock somewhere
along this mess of coils
and chinks and mistakes
but oh god,
when did the rust
between you and I
melt into three thousand
miles of mercury trickling thermometer
poison into everything
we say?
I've lost my keys;
they had sunk first and
I will sink last

it's just that
the clinking thump thump of your heartbeat
is my lullaby;
it's just that
knowing you breathe warmth is enough
to cool the burning silver in my lungs;
it's just that
close to you is the closest I will ever
feel to 'alive'

it's just that
if I can't keep you -

nobody can

there are icicles down
my throat that
crumble and fall
apart every time
my teeth shatter and
my fists clench

tell me how long
i will be coughing up
pieces of me;
i am breathing through
teeth that shiver
like graveyard bones
in winter storms and

i can't do this anymore

Aren't we all just broken pieces
Of everything we wanted to be?
All the shattered remains of dreams,
Scattered for the world to see?

I see a piece of you, before me now
Reflecting every word you said to me
If I pick it up, I would cut myself
On the jagged edge of your sanity

Yet I hold it tighter, this little piece of you
I can't give it to you, not just yet
I'm still not done picking up
All these dreams you left to crack

You don't see the way all these pieces
Shine your smile back at me and you
Won't you let me place the last shard now?
Won't you let it sparkle like it should?

Because you don't see the little pieces,
All the ones I've left far behind
Hidden under a smile because
I still need you to pick up mine ~

there is a wishing well
behind your eyes

and i'm throwing all my coins
all my keys
anything that
clinks
at the bottom of your irises

i'm running out of pennies;
wishing is a game of fools
but

let my heart past your eyelashes
fingers crossed for
the telltale clink
and the ripples you hide when
you blink dreams away

is it not heavy enough?
i will weigh it with a little
more rain;
more rusty coins and
maybe then you'll hear
my heartbeat
clinking
against metallic tears

i know your pupils
are not black holes
like the one i have tucked
away from sight behind my ribcage
but still

i fear that all my coins
and all my keys
are not loud enough
to whisper what i cannot
in this vacuum between us


*please just let me go

Please don't tell me I'm
Everything
That I deserve happiness because
That's all I've given
You

You tell me you are
Nothing
And if everything in my
Heart is every bit of
You

Then I am nothing too.

Your eyes turn to rain when
They look at me
I wonder, does it storm when
You look at him?
Or maybe it shines, the sun behind
Your eyelids because he is
Everything you wanted
To see, to hold you

I can't even hold your rain
In my dry, dry palms
Because I'm drowning in my own

I've been hanging off
A ledge, a cliff
And if the aching hole
Beneath my dangling feet
Is waiting to devour me
Toes first then

Why do my fingers curl
Around slippery words,
Promises that are only
Tangible in dreams where
I don't wake up falling into
An abyss, or screaming at the
Rain, or curled up into a ball
Beneath a tattered bridge?

Tattered like every word
I wrenched out of my
Throat, my lungs, my heart
To hand to you


After all,
What's a little vertigo?

i can't muffle this sadness
in pretty words anymore
it screams too loud and
tears apart
all these red-inked pages
with a vengeance of the forgotten
demons don't like to be
denied
and it's january again already
as if rubbing my hands warmer
will melt the icicles lining
my spine
inching up to my collarbone
every day a little colder
god
how am i still alive

there is no beauty in dying this way

i hold myself together with
black stitching stained red
looping in and out of the spaces between fingers
and eyelids shut
and at times,
this needle is not sharp enough;
i cannot sew my shadows into
the background
this tapestry of my sanity
comes undone after dark
it's alright if i unravel,
these demons only play with
yarn and
memories and words strung together in a line
and it's alright if my
hands are suddenly tied behind my back
with twisting thread like blades digging
into flesh
my palms are patterned with rich lovely
red,

please don't
hold my hands so tight

it's alright
i am together
i am whole


and you wonder why it hurts

poetry has been eluding me
I'm hunting the words down with blood
stained palms; can't you hear me?
am I bleeding too quietly

my heart holds no names any longer
these are crevices I want to
paint all over again
I want it ***** under my fingernails I want
it greasing my hair I want art crawling up my
arms I want it in the dark in the quiet I want to
be consumed in colors I'm afraid to inhale
devour me, poetry
I am only the lungs
you are the air

Let me hold you once
And then you can disappear if you must

Maybe you'll leave me broken-hearted,
Maybe you'll leave me numb

But I know that you'll leave me
Incomplete

there is sin tainting
every finger of mine
every inch of rotting
skin

where will i find the
strength to hold up my
hands to god tonight

i never saw myself as a city until you
little hometown boy
with lazy quiet saturday morning eyes and i know my highway lips
are only spilling background noise white noise traffic noise
isn't it too loud where my heart is?
why are you still listening? you are fireplace chimney soft little lover and

i'm a hundred miles per hour too far past the exit sign and i can't ******* breathe when i'm going down this fast isn't it perfect because i never even want to aren't you lost yet i am sharp skyline piercing daydream weekend clouds apart there are no curves on the road i'm tearing up for myself no shotgun for you baby this is me falling apart on the side of the street under a storm cloud

loud little girl suddenly so small because the universe is infinite and i'm just a city of angry broken things can you hear the windows shattering i always tell you i'll burn down my apartment one day do you ever remember the **** i say slow motion urban apocalypse is what quivering mirrors show i'm a ******* movie scene when will the credits roll.

are you waiting too? is that why you want me to stay? you watched me throw my heart downtown little ******* gutter soul and i watched you run after it fish it out from my own rotten ribs and hand it back to me with that shy tangled up in mushy midnight memories when i kept you awake look on your face

you and your soft heartbeat hands for a horizon what do i even say i'm always trying to run away i wish i could slow down for you i wish i wish i wish i could be your little hometown girl with softer countryside eyes and freckles mapping all the secret quiet valleys we fall in love in you want to take me home, don't you? you're aching for a forever with me under soft silent sunlight there's no rush when we have true love right but there is there is THERE IS

i have to move or i'll disappear when i'm not angry i'm not alive i am neon you are candlelight i'm choking on glass shard misery earthquake heartbreak about to topple if you unbalance me IT'S SO LOUD IN MY HEAD all you hear is the laughter rippling out of me because trainwreck entertainment is all i know how to be

listen, boy. i love all the gentle nooks and crannies of your heart, how much you worry when i'm alone in the dark, but cities are only pretty when the light fades away, only irresistible from far away

stay where you are and maybe i'll stay

there is something missing
hiding between words i don't know
how to say
i don't know how to write
this missing away

i was born from
an ocean, tidal wave
crashing background noise and
sizzling foam seashore
rage and salty tears that
burn the back of your
throat on the way down
when you try to sleep but
her seashells are howling
wrath in your ears
so loud your heart gives
in to the moon coaxing
tremors and pieces out
of your bones with every wax
and every wane
until all you are is
shattered crustacean breeze and
unwelcome footsteps bruising the
shoreline every time you
try to scream

i was born from
a man who did not know enough
to cast away his fishing
net far away from a woman
with piranha blood in her veins
and a kraken resting within;
she will tear him
apart
you cannot cage the sea
she has her own rivers and
tributaries like poison
dripping from everything she
hisses at the sky

but i am only the
fire
the gentle, the water in
me has slowly dripped
away until droplets of angry
sun have taken its place
its burning in my
veins
this blood is too dilute
to be set alight this
away
i cannot blame the moon,
sly as she is,
these are no tidal convulsions
i cannot control,
only volcano breath
madness and a thirst for
the burn, the crackle of a
flame of my own
accord

who to blame, who
to blame
she is the sea that howls
endlessly
he is fisherman, trembling as he guts her
away, scale by mirror scale stained
by ****** fingers
that still believe that controlling
nature is what it means to
be man, to deserve woman,
to live and to die underneath
a headstone even the ocean
will dare not touch

and i,
sea salt stings its way through every
inch of my skin
so instead my wildfire heartbeat
thumps lava, desperate to
expel my mother from the
depths of my drowning
lungs

we are not
the same
i don't want her
in me anymore
oh god, why

won't you let me
breathe ashes the
way she breathes
her own sorrow?

you dream of me in
flowers and smiles
summer laughter and sea breeze
sighing in every word we whisper to
the sun sinking into the dark;
the world is so very
small

i dream of me even
smaller
a few feet underground
with nonsense etched into the stone
weighing me down;
will you leave me a little summer
pretty little flowers shivering
beneath the cold of the night and the
silence hanging in the air

don't you know
?
i never meant to leave you all alone

We drop piece of each other
Wherever we go
Maybe we shatter,
Maybe we don't

Just please don't crush me
Into tiny grains of
Sand
Underneath your careless hands

I feel like an aftermath
of a hurricane
That came thundering in from
the corner between your
Heart and my hand
And I don't remember
ever seeing the blood trickle
Down from between the spaces
of pale, pale fingers
Maybe the rain washed
it all away
And the wind tore my
Screams from my throat
Before you heard me

Or maybe you were
Just simply gone.

every once in a while,
my soul sinks a little deeper
in these blue-black stains
of literate misery

i'm running out of ink.

~

as long as i have
this black canvas
and my broken paintbrush,

i'll never run out of ink.

you apologise,
'I am bad with words'
but words are all
you are

you build me
home
out of parchment promises;
tangling tiny houses in
a line with your heartstrings;
whispers of 'forever' trailing
from chimney-topped letters,
the smoke fading between
the lines of notebook poetry
skies

I don't belong in your
pretty paper towns

I have never needed
a lighter in my pocket
to set myself alight;
flame is in my veins,
burning slowly through my
bloodstream until open wounds
drip liquid fire and
smoke is all I exhale

your heart might as well
be pumping kerosene -
flammable like
meteorites burning black
holes where clouds and
dreams hang white
against a night of ink
and my scribbled thoughts
scratched out a million times
over, and then once more
until only apologies twinkle in
the sky

you spit your own
wildfires, I forget
you burn villages on your own;
forests of words and thorns
and tangles, blank leaves of
paper fluttering slowly off branches
of kindling wood,
igniting as soon
as the winds against us
are too strong to fight;
off-white flowers
and syllable petals singeing
black;

we are only ashes
*at our feet

it's just a little drizzle on my shoulders now
my hands are empty of yours and
i've never felt so light before
there you are -
side of the road; last month's heartbreak still on your face
hands in pockets and words shoved even deeper
i bring up love
and you bring up how forever was never ours
to claim, except i wanted us more than
the air in my lungs
(i tried to trade one for the other and you
still didn't know what to say)
the poetry i write is stinking
of greyscale rain your hands are the cold
of another girl's and this will be the part where i
walk away

last january
was colder

instead of morning dew
you woke up with snowflakes in
your tear ducts and
the icicles trickling off your fingers
looked so pretty bleeding rain;

do you remember how your
bones shook like avalanche heartbeats
and how all those broken paintbrushes were
sharper than they looked
at five am with only fireplace
ashes for charcoal and old prose
to keep yourself warm

you have forgotten again -
ice is only cold when
it's crawling up your spine,
ice is only cold when
it's all you'll ever hold,
ice is only cold
when you do not want to breathe
the dawn again

the icicles did not hurt -
these frostbitten nerve endings make
breathing through the numbness almost
as natural as the selfish
sun and the reds and the yellows and the warmth
that will melt the terror in my lungs
into shaking palms
dripping red on tablecloth poetry

the sadness was locked away,
frozen behind my shivering ribcage
and I miss the way this ice felt in
my veins,
almost as if I'd never have to
feel again


how could I forget?
this rain is colder than any
winter I've ever known

maybe I have burned up
too bright -
                     my nerves are frizzled
                     and frayed

i touch
i fear
i love
           yet this dead pulse is only
           the same

as if the blood in my veins
has frozen midway

there is no heart
to be thawed

this hole is insatiable
blacker every night
sleep flees through
the cracks in my windowpane

it cannot rain outside
when the thunder is from
within

just before the red
of dawn
bleeds and stains and screams
against the night;

my fingers will be
bleeding and staining and screaming
desperate words
that silence themselves
when my ink is dripping
too much red

magic is not crafted from crimson
yet crimson feeds
the howling wolf when the
moon is too blinding and
the sun too bright

crimson keeps the demons at bay
the wretched hole has had
its fill of daybreak misery;

i feel lightening clawing inside
and i bleed again
all the while it thirsts for more

all she ever did
was speak of fading
                             away
                                  into mist
into silence; into things you'll never
hold
again

i am an arsonist
and how dare you toss your
own bones into the bonfire
love letters crackling into smoke and emptiness
in the air and your fingers are
aching to play with the ashes in my hair
black and numb is smeared onto
everything i want to touch; your
hands are not
even mine to hold DON’T YOU
dare make firewood out of the
flowers in your heart
all you know is the warmth of
the sun and
if it hurts,


you don’t have to watch
if you just promise me you'll
run when i set myself alight

you're shouting;
i'm freezing

there is a chill caught between
my teeth and trailing up my
shivering arms oh
god you know i can't
breathe when you are spitting
your fire at my feet
and i thought you were the
gentle, the fireplace i wanted to
curl up next to every night until
the frost took me away for the
very last time
right there by your side
warmth i was so terrified of getting
used to because its all so *******
cold

out here where you've
left me to fade away into the
same nothingness, the
same cold i felt under every
shadow of the sun's, everywhere except
when you wrapped me tight
in your arms like
i was a little flower you couldn't bear an
entire winter without

it's always winter in here
the spring never touches my soul
oh god oh god it's so very
cold please
why won't you

let me come home
anymore?