i wake up with Stagnancy in my bed
another morning, yet the same day
the rays of sun tear into the room,
ripping open pools of white on his face

he pays it no mind, his hands
clutch my Adam's apple like plucking
fruit in an evergreen garden,
where nothing grows so nothing dies

Constancy begs me to stay, pleads me
to never leave, shuts the blinds
so the hordes of bright people and
brighter voices stay outside our
unchanging paradise

they call him bullish names, they
say he's complacency, laziness
say he's "wasting my potential"

but I've found greater peace in him
than I ever have in the multitudes
of mornings and infinite days
that I never want to experience

so I'll wake up with Immutability
and go to bed with Invariableness
I'll give myself to him, let him take
everything, let him be everything

another morning, yet the same day.
I wake up alone again.

bury me where the sun can't see
where its rays have never gazed
hide me away in the unknown
never thought of, never thought about

bury me where no breath has been taken
in soil where no root has defamed
a garden where nothing grows
is a garden where nothing dies

bury me like an unwanted memory
like a recurring nightmare, an endless dream
if extinction is forgetfulness' child
then remembrance is my nemesis
bury me where they won't know I'm gone
and where they won't come looking

bury me not like I've lived
bury me not like I've died

bury me like I never lived
and like I never died

The grooves of the door handle
clasp too perfectly about your
fingerprints. Push, don’t pull

and enter into my splendor.
The expanse of the corridor
is slightly familiar to you. The
gait, the wait, the bate
of your breath and the silence
that follows and the violence
that crashes through the expanse
of my corridor are
slightly familiar to me.

The master bedroom is
straight down the street and
a left turn after two blocks,
past the cafe you irregularly
patronised for all those years
where I could get but a glimpse
of the sunrise through the window.
It has a his and his, a walk-in
wardrobe and easily removable
wallpaper. If you would like to tear
it down because the deja vu
is too strong then I have about three
hundred other instances of solo
interactions between you and me, and a
colour palette no other interior
redesigner could ever possibly imag-

You peek past the slightly neglected
washroom, clinical scents wafting out
like blood washing off wounds that are
never meant to stop bleeding but
rather are orifices we pretend to
not understand. The leaky faucet hums
a tune you played on the harmonica
three years ago. You recognise off-white
tiles from the freckles of your face. I am
in the medicine cabinet, just waiting
for you to reach in and patch me up
along with the ever-bleeding orifices but even now
as I ****** the faucet with a hundred
unfinished melodies the bathroom is still
flooding.

The living room is a graveyard. But you
can’t smell the bodies because I set a
reminder for myself to put on deodorant
every alternate week when I stumbled
past you to get to the same side of the street as you
but each time a different car
would kiss my knees and colour my bruises in and
each time you would
already be
gone.

This next room is under construction.

This next room is under construction.

This next room is utter destruction.

-

I reach into the medicine cabinet and grab at nothing
and suddenly the wallpaper is just the pattern
of my shirt sleeve because I have long forgotten
the name of the cafe I saw you in once.

I watch the expansive corridor become
fragments of impossible sidewalks and
mono-coloured zebra crossings. I can
no longer see the sunrise through
the window. I have never seen the sunrise.

Do you know my name?

-

The grooves of the door handle
clasp too awkwardly about your
fingerprints. Don’t pull, don’t push.

Enter into my splendor.

i am lost, once again
in the candy floss
fantasy of his candied
nails, leaving caramel
trails as they flourish and
riposte upon the small
of my back

like a child, i want the
sickly sweet grape-flavoured
chapstick of his, glued to
the hairs of my peach-tinted
cheeks, lining the licorice
alleys of my palms

i want to remember and relish
in his flavour (that i have never
and probably will never ever
taste) - i want to store them
in display bottles in the back,
sugar crystals for my eyes
only

i want to be at the front of store
and i want to give him a
bouquet of my candy floss dreams
and wave extra long as the smell
of grape-flavoured chapstick
and caramel fades

he will never know me
as well as i do him

and he will never know me.

the ever-expanding walls
run from me, as I chase down
impossibilities and pipe
dreams, my feet never touching
the ground, not even
once. upon a time

there lived a boy in his
head, and in his head he stayed,
blind to reality but inclined to
imagine. he knew not once
of worldly torment, yet was
all too familiar with that which
the ever-expanding walls ran
from-

the truth.

would it be better
to feel everything
or nothing at all?

would it be better
to let the sun blind me
or to drown in darkness

would i rather
live a life without living
or die a death without dying

every second spent
with him is another colour
in my menagerie

im painting the walls
magenta, hazel, aquamarine
they blend and swirl, a new form
of life, plastered onto a beating
wall

every second spent
with him is another colour
i can picture

im reeling from all the
moss green, the incandescent
violet, the royal purple
im reeling, but i like
the feeling of being spun around
in circles?

every second spent
with him is a shade lighter
than before

suddenly my world is saturated,
and everything is too warm,
and everything is too cool,
and suddenly the scarlets are violent
and the baby blues are depressed
and the olive greens are poisonous

every second spent
with him is a colour
lost in my world

i have decided that
black and white is the
only safe place to be, to
see, and yet the grey becomes
too much, the grey in his
hair, his eyes, his skin

every second spent
with him is bleaching
my colour menagerie

but i am the one with
detergent cradled abreast,
and i am the one making
all these colours bleed,
and i am the one running
into a world of no colour,
because i have given all
i know about colours
to him, and

he has
given
none
back

i am the light when it is too bright,
and when it hurts to see

i am the distraction, the opposing force

i am the third friend, the second choice
and the first to be the last

i am a window in a glass house,
i am a band aid to a terminal illness,
i am the skin scraped off from a
fall we all will forget about in two weeks

i am the extra puzzle piece, leftover food
gone bad 3 days ago, i am the chair
with one leg shorter than the others, i am
a mirage in a desert, i am a spark against
the wind, i am like a kiss to a gunshot, i
am to him like violence is to love,
and i am everything but anything that

he wants.

i sit amongst the wreckage and her sisters
destruction watches as i run my fingers
along an old scar, opening a fresh wound

i ***** every finger on every edge i can find,
trying to find some semblance, some feeling
of what used to be

the dust only reminds me of
how long its been, yet no dust
has settled yet on my
mind

within my fingers, i clutch
a fragment, glossy and new,
another one of the hundreds
i've created, one that i am
finally bound to love

right?

change emerges from the fragile
lungs of a new born, and returns
to the hollowed chests in the hospice

change cloaks us in new skin, change
rids us of old kin, change nudges
frowns to furrow and smiles to grins

change rides on the high tides and cruises
on the lows, change grabs us by the hand
and drags us along, crest and trough
uncaring if the surface tension locks us in

change is a dust mote shivering in the air,
and change is the explosion of an atomic bomb

change makes futile resistance a reality,
for change is reality, and change is you.

i wonder what it would be like
to be a shadow, void of light,
of weight, of stress

hidden from the sun, hidden
from everyone, asleep behind
thick curtains and black drapes

and at night, i'll come out to play
i'll leave my mark in the twisted shapes,
in the uncertain and in the unknown,
only to fade with the day

i will go back into the dusty corners,
alone but not lonely, freed by the realisation
that i am a shadow without trying, a ghost
tethered to plastic store-bought bones, and
i will collapse with all the finality of a thousand
spider webs and a regretful smile

pictures of him scattered
on the floor, on the walls
my words caught in-between
a web of lies, shivering to
the melody seeping from the
ceiling

forbidden dreams die
in the arms of Time, and I
will watch them breathe
their last breath - children
of my own making, memories
for me to keep and wash
in my tears

my life is a play and I
am the tragedy, I am the hero
and I am the villain, I am the stage
and I am the curtains as they close

I am unbothered by the
zero star ratings, because the photos
whisper otherwise, and I tuck myself
into my own woven bed, forbidden
dreams of him and him and him only

i am free to wander as i please,
feel the whispering forest breeze
my shadow splayed like an ugly crease
my face hidden beneath the trees

i am free to wander as i desire,
daydreams of a foreign liar
once bound to the burning pyre
i'll never start my own fires

i am free to wander as i like,
ball and chain adorned with spikes
and crown of iron, my royal hike
to distant lands, no two alike

i am free to wander as i choose,
ghostly kisses on a blackened bruise
uncharted lands mock my rues
i'll never leave my home, my ruse

I am free to wonder, never to wander
trapped within the glory and splendor
of my own mind, the foreign liar
ties his noose and sets it afire

not a stirring storm, rather
a lake in crisis, thunderstorm
rhythm in motion, my body
is used to the churning

acidic vandalism of the inner
walls, scars like stars in the
midnight sky, constellations
of hurt, trapped within the
observatory I am

soon enough, the familiar
pain eases itself through
the rusted pipes, leaking,
faulty, unfeeling cold
like stalagmite formations

it returns home, unfortunately,
again, and I am no stranger to
the wintry tendrils that have
replaced my blood, that give me
life that isn't worth living

my digits twitch and spasm as
the metallic river snakes to
my extremes, shores of icicles
erupting to the surface

if am numb to the numbing anger
then why do my fingertips hurt?

i'd drown myself forever
in those eyes if I could

they are dark pearls, radiating
shadow, life pulsing in the
running veins, and I'd keep
them in a box and roll them
in my palms if I could

they are amethysts, cut to
absolute perfection, and I'd
tear my body to pieces
with every edge, and send my
blood in a love letter if,
if I could

they are a stunning electric blue,
a piece of sky plucked by the angels,
a drop of sea carved out by the devils,
and I'd give the sea and sky, just to
stare at them again
if I could

if I could,
I would.

I can't.

march on brave warriors
feet drumming the earth
draw rhythm out of pain
the metronome of life
the right of way is
your right today

march on brave soldiers
veterans who have seen
everything but nothing
more and nothing yet
cry for the lost
weep for the found

march on brave children
tiny palms hold Atlas' weights
unbeknownst to them
they carve the cliffs and valleys
that they will live and die in

march on brave souls
who live on in us
in the tolling feet of warriors
in the tearful eyes of soldiers
and the tested palms of children

march on march on march on march on

march on bravely
march on knowing full well that we will
march on with you as you
march on.

you are the only white rose
in a sea of red

you are solace in turmoil, where my eyes
lay to rest and my heart beats quick

you are ruler of the bush, star of the
Christmas tree, moon of my sky

you draw my gaze, fuel my lust,
i look to the skies not for the stars but
to stare directly into the sun

but such as the sun does blind me,
so do you ***** me with your thorns,
pale face of rejection, moonshine of
pity, but not love

like the clouds covet the sun,
a hand caresses the spines,
and i lie on a bed of thorns,
for the hand is not mine.

i'd die for your frosted sugar lips,
**** gemstones rolling down my throat,
cutting my flesh into diamonds

seal your cheques in typewriter's speak,
i'd die for the rosy thumbprint over
my eyes, blind me from blood stains and
ink rain

bakery's closed, but you're still open, and
so am i, as we slow dance in the fading lights
of slow burning ovens, creeping warmth like
limbs around mine

i'd die from the bittersweet taste,
insidiously beautiful, black crumbs
in open wounds, ashen eyes hiding regret

as he utters slumber's name, i awaken
from beneath the counter,
dying to live
living to die

we clatter the seabed, grey-blue
curves dusted by sand, collectibles
forever left behind

we funnel beneath the *****,
beige shores, hidden from the sky,
out of sight, out of mind

we grind stones and pebbles,
fine as the freckles on your face,
against our chapped lips

we nurse the cracking carcasses,
saltwater biting at our raw cheeks,
puppets, helpless in the tide

we are hollow, devoid of shine,
and we feel our beating pearls
gasping for air in your poisonous,
silken pockets

a mountain of bricks, glued by memory,
hand-built by you, hastily put together,
mistakenly given life, a glossy trophy,
i am a mountain of bricks you walk over

a splash of dye, a spill of ink,
i lie red, white, black and blue,
you cleave crumbling edges, watch me sink,
profanities in cursive, defamed by you

i bleed over the cracks, paint over the lines
as you take me back, piece by piece, brick by brick,
scatter me to the earth, burn down the signs,
i am a mountain of bricks, sweetly sick

there's a catch in my throat
a lump, a bump, a sudden
crosswords of air and thought
and the notes are suspended
midair, empty, a vibration
with direction but no motivation

there's a catch in my throat,
a hurdle in the road, a pothole
of accidents and apologies
and the music abruptly pauses
a welcoming dissonance,
warm but jarring

there's a catch in my throat,
and I can no longer sing,
and the rhythm has tumbled
and fallen, and I cannot catch my breath,
but still the silence goes on,
and I can only listen

like the snow before spring,
i am the last breath of frost in the air,
a bitter goodbye to frozen mornings,
mornings now filled with sunshine and despair

like the flowers in summer,
i am the reflection of aging beauty,
crinkled wrinkles are my cover,
a dried up bloom fulfilling my duty

like the warmth in autumn,
i fall with the leaves, orange,
and blood red, i slumber at the bottom
a fatal rest in a hidden grange

like the tress in winter,
i wilt my wings, nosedive
from the rain, pitter patter,
awaiting the silence to arrive

like the snow before spring,
i collapse once again into the ground,
tired, restless, unable to sing,
the seasons just keep spinning me round

and in a beautiful show of collapse all around,
a shower of stars bleaches the ground

beauty fallen, but not from grace
beauty sodden, but not your face

a leaf sobbing in autumn winds,
i am but one of many for whom you sing

a song of light from the silent moon
i listen not for the lyrics, but for your croon

and in a beautiful show of collapse all around,
a glowing breath of life i have found
i live not for the beauty, but for the sound
i live not for the life, but to you i am bound