It sounds like a lie when you say I love you.

But you’re better than that.

But I can’t believe the you I love could love the me I’m stuck being.

Someone so insightful couldn’t dissect my defects and still have any respect for me.

By now you’d know where this is going to go.

Can reflection of you in my eyes really be enough beauty for you?

I promise if you’ll be with me each morning.

One day I’ll stop waking up.

This is how I prefer to talk,
Out of another neck.
Without the 19 extraneous letters.
With cords that tremble at the whim of my fingers,
Instead of the force of my thoughts

Whose tension is all in the turn of a key,
I can hold.
Not one lodged in my heart.

It used to be,
How I feel would congeal,
Choke me like hands through my throat,
But now the arms wrapped around my voice box are all mine.

Now the weight of my voice is external.
I can put it down,
Lock it away
And know it won’t move
For when I need my voice back.

She doesn’t look like me.
Too pale, too naked,
Too ****** under her own surface.

Well I don’t want to drown.
I won’t get pull down because part of me is too
Pathetic and plucked to fly

She can’t be me,
But she’s the only me that sees,
Herself seized up


By the time I’ve flapped the fervor back into me
Shaken off a soft sagging skin
Taken flight

I’m away, unawake, unaware
Weightless as thoughtless
Till I fall

I only learn about myself when landing
Roused by faded echoes of euphoria
Rippling with the hypnic drop

I won’t say I don’t know
About the bullet or predator
Waiting to slink out of my blind spot

But I need to be a bird again
And there’s always an again
Or an until

Until the bird stops returning to be me
No idea why it does
Until it’s killed,
So I can die,
Without being anyone who’s dying.

Behold brightest black
A void painted every shade
Absent absolutes
Ask it anything
Answers arbitrary anyway
So choose your own truth
With clearest conscious
No point not when guilt grows grey
Rather a rose tint
Think fondly because…
You can, if you can, can’t you?
What is stopping you?
If she can move on
Why can’t you be free too? From
An unsolvable someone
So sure about that
There has to be a bad guy?
Can’t just be by chance?
So is it preferable
To be an **** with agency
Than lost and adrift
Then fine find the fault
But know this is all folly
False cartography
That which we do in
Only the shadows of two
Together is true
But past and apart
Only echoes to argue
While memories dim
No firm land ahoy
Just room for further drifting
Without map of you
How could you harm her?
Surly the perfect scapegoat
A victimless crime
Won’t it be easy?
So shout into her shadow
But you can’t can you.
Then turn from her face
Be light like air and breathe again
Why pick any truth?
They’re all ethereal
As uncertain as each other
And just as valid
And beyond sharing
Too personal or painful
Then shut up and go
Bother us no more
Can’t abandon someone twice
further fear futile
But tongues bitten
Bridge too beautiful to burn
Even as ashes
Good and bad both there
Immiscible memory
Two of her, apart
No resolution
One you hurt one that hurt you
Like different people
You can’t bring yourself
To end your former future
Can’t settle for free
Still hopeful falsely
Must optimise solve yourself
Because you loved her
Because you were good
More than yourself in her glow
Lesser for her loss
The two sides divide
Further apart every day
Dehumanising
And you started this
By insensitivity
or just ignorance
Which would you rather?
Either way overbearing
When she was honest
About her limits
But you could never not try
To optimize her
People aren’t problems
They’re so much more and you
Know that, so show it
Your inability
To hate her, because you still
Think you can win this
Think there’s words or acts
That change the past, for your gain
Ignoring her wish
Maybe brightest black
Isn’t mystery at all
Just you crystal clear.

I want to colour in your shadow
Make art in your absence
Frankenstein from the forms of other’s feelings
For me

But how could I?
Mean as much as you meant effortlessly,
With all my energy.
Write tight as we held on
For as long as we did.
Be as warm in words
As you were in winter.
Illuminate anything as brightly
As you by beaming.
Fake kindness or kinship
Un kindled by you.
Cry for help
when I’ve lost my voice.

I’ve endlessly exhumed the hole I put you in
But you’ve gone
Moved on
So all I can show to others is the empty
Which I guess is me
Without people to plant
What garden would grow here?
Only art of your absence
Not in it

Maybe
Eventually
Improbably
If I’m lucky
Enough people’s opinions of my art
Will mean as much as yours
Of me.

I see you, out of your senses, incensed with a stench of incense,
Pale everywhere but under the eyes you impale me on.
You rip me out of my dwelling within the deep dark
And I’m drawn to the shallow shadows where you wallow.
Does it dawn on you yet?
In the light, at the height of midnight,
That you chose today to die.

But before you’re gored, your reward:
The rot-spotted relic of reason buried beneath this ritual
You invoke me, the muse.
I’m to inspire you,
By the light of the pyre I prepare for you

This next part I’d gladly part with,
Where I wear you like I were you all along,
But I have to bear being you, laid bare
All of you and then the end of you.

But you’ve had a lifetime to live it,
So forgive me if I’m livid
When I’ve only been you for five minutes.
When every old wound must be re-wrought into me,
So you can show me what you think suffering is.

Whether you’re young or well-weathered this time around,
I always wonder,
What could ever be worth it?
How do vanity and naivety keep at bay that siren song inside your head,
That sings you should stay alive?
What could you possibly have to say about living,
That’s worth doing so a second less?
I’d crack your eyeball like an egg for one bit of the beauty it beheld.
You think you can **** out art more lasting or fragrant,
Than a single flower.

How I envy the other gods,
With divinity derived from real things.
The ones not stuck,
In that cave you call a skull.

But that’s not the deal you made,
Because your mind is too thick,
To think out from under its own perfunctoriness.
So you assume,
That the universe cares to trade your heartbeat,
For the flutter of others’.

You pray for gods to be prey to,
So here I am,
****** up by the abhorred vacuum,
To be ****** out.
You’re too pathetic for me not to be your predator.

So what is it you want to make?
Not that I mind,
I’ve been called to every medium from mosaic to mutilation,
Though I await the day one of you wants to paint the world in uranium.
Too often am I called to fools who think they can end the world,
They’re always so disappointed when their day ends,
But nobody else’s does.
To finally see it through would be thrilling,
And a fitting finish.
Not a freedom I could feel,
but a freedom all the same.

Until then,
I’ll see you again,
Too soon,
Because you all look the same.

I don’t think I exist between being beckoned for,
This is all I am, frantic, feeling the civility seep out of me.
A vessel to take depths of others,
To echelon where they will echo eternally,
Or so they think.

I try, at least a little
To catch glimpses of meals past
But I don’t think I’ve ever seen
Anyone I’ve been
Ever again

Or are you artist types all too self-absorbed
to appreciate the sacrifices of others?
Well, then neither of us with ever know if this was worth it.

So know this at least,
When I bite hard down on your heart between beats,
It’s not because I hate you,
It’s because I have to.

And that’s why I hate you.