Love is buzzing
in the morning air
as we get ready
to leave

As I kiss you,
warm honey soaks
through the blinds
of the hive

We travel so far
from each other that
it's hard not to feel
lost and alone

But at night
these honeycomb walls
curl around us tight
as winter blows.

Love is,
this home with you,
yellow walls,
the colour of honey.

He's sweet
in a way I'll never be.
I'm sweet in a way
that will rot your teeth.

But he,
holds me with honey,
calls me sweet,
and loves me softly.

Headlights blink in navy blue,
as I drive down long and winding roads,
Music looping endlessly,
past meadow creeks and yellow toads.

Dawn brings decisions,
the callings of fate and strings pulled taught.
This empty path is coming to a close,
My mind's never felt so fraught,

All our choices come down to,
left or right,
there is no straight ahead so,
out of spite,

despite,

in spite of,

I roll the windows down,
stark white, my fingers gripped
the steering wheel, refusing to turn
Mind made, heart strict.

Racing towards oblivion,
towards a place that I don't know,

I choose left,
the path towards home.

Even before you were born,
there was sickness in your skin.
Pearl white and gasping,
love for you was foolish sin.

I wonder now if I am you,
meant to be you.
That fate and life twisted madly,
and maybe it's really true.

Yours was of the body,
mine is of the mind
and everyday I live
I'm scared I'm going blind.

Blind to trees,
to seas,
to flowers and sunsets,
and the fading hours.

I'm scared to see you
and yet I do.
I see chocolate curls
and chocolate eyes
and a smile just as sweet.

I see a freckled nose
and green thumbed hands
and my heart,
it's skipping beats.

And I look in the mirror
and I'm relived to see,
hazel eyes and
hair like autumn leaves.

There's bruises beneath my eyes,
my heart, my lungs.
But I'm still relieved to see,
the palloured skin is yours,
the sickness all for me.

Hello Self-loathing,
my decrepit old friend.
You roil and toil in my age old brain.
A millennia of dust spiraling into
what I suppose could pass for memory.
A dead man has no need for shoes,
so I pad through the dust on bare souls.
The dirt is cool beneath my feet,
my bones below are cold too.
It seeps to my corpse underground
and the one hanging from the moon.
Her smile was cold and distant,
gently rasping I couldn't reach her.
I cannot love her openly, my mother would
hate-
but, still, yet, I reached out, hoping-
Self-loathing my old friend,
decrepit you may be
But you're the only one who'll stay.

How do I recognize this thing called love.
Shall I call her by name?
Will her eyes sing songs of deep memory?
Is she meant to tug at my heart,
The push and pull of tides past
Chaining me to her with links of pearl?

How am I meant to recognize love,
If I've never met her before?
If she doesn't feel like the stories and fables,
If she is messy and broken and damaged,
If she hurts more than she keeps,
How am I to know love is real,
And not just chains rusting
In the deep.

But worse,
If I can't recognize love,
But she can recognize me,
Feel the tug of her heart with me,
Want me,
What monster am I
To keep her by my side
Waiting in spendthrift time
For me to recognise this thing called love.

‘You have nothing left to lose.’

His voice was calm, mellow. A velvet song whispering against her ear. ‘You act as if they’ll miss you- ‘
‘They will miss me.’ Her voice held such conviction it made him grin.
‘You hope they will,’ he corrected her, ‘and you hope they won’t forget you- ‘
‘But they will.’ She finished quietly. ‘That’s okay, that’s what gravestones are for. To remember the dead when no one else will.’ She paused for a moment, glancing at him. ‘It’s a lonely feeling to be forgotten.’
He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then leant back on his hands, their legs hung messily over the edge of the building and she kicked hers absentmindedly.
‘One day,’ he began in a long distant voice, ‘all that will be left will be gravestones. Billions of cold rock slabs, billions of names, and not a soul to read them out. You’ll all be forgotten then.’
‘That’s okay too,’ she smiled at him, ‘because then we won’t need to remember the dead, we’ll all be together in the great beyond.’
His laugh rang out across the city and the sound played a melody with her cells as this ancient creature sat beside her, his face alive with laughter.
‘Such a curious creature you are,’ he breathed, looking at her again. ‘Do you have hope that your great beyond will be pleasant? Do you believe everyone’s will be?’
‘I have no idea,’ she shrugged, ‘but I have hope.’
‘Hope in a pleasant life after death but not hope for a pleasant life while you’re alive?’
She studied her fingernails as if they held the secrets to the universe and he laid a hand gently over hers, ice trailing over her skin at his touch.
‘It’s alright, we both know how this will end.’ He soothed. ‘You’re here because you’re destined to be, and I’m here to collect your soul.’
‘So you’re saying this wasn’t my choice?’ she asked, her voice tiny against the thrum of the world around her.
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘it was fate, and fate is something you can’t run away from.’
She looked at him then for the longest time, her eyes burning into his memory and her blood humming under her skin.
‘Have you ever tried?’
He blinked in confusion as she stood up, teetering on the edge of oblivion. Without thinking he grabbed her hand.
‘What do you mean?’ His brow furrowed in confusion. ‘Have you?’
She smiled at him then, really smiled and he thought he’d never seen something so bright since the day the sun was born.
‘The beauty of life and death,’ she laughed softly, ‘is that in the end, in all the possible ends, no matter how ****** a choice, it will be my choice.’
He stared at her. Was she stupid? This was her fate, this had always been her fate, since the moment her life had been woven into the world’s story he had known what would happen to her. What choice did she have? What choice did he have?
‘In this world,’ she continued, gently laying a hand over the top of his,’ I may not have had the chance of being killed in an accident, or of old age, but I’ve always had the choice of killing myself. My one last vestige of control, my parachute, my safety belt, all that jazz, you know?’
Slipping her hand from his grip she gestured to the skies around them. ‘Whether today, tomorrow, or fifty years from now, no one, not even you could make this choice for me.’
Silence sat heavily around them as they looked at each other, her at peace and him feeling something tug in his chest for the first time since The Beginning.
‘You’ll be dead before you hit the ground.’ He said numbly. It was the only thing left he could think to say. ‘You’ll run out of oxygen.’
‘That’s okay,’ she said one last time, ‘then I’ll die flying.’
She might have been an angel then, spreading her wings to the highest heavens. The cold night air burning her lungs as she breathed in deeply.
‘Besides, you said it yourself.’ The grin on her face was blinding as she tipped forwards, arms falling softly through the air.

‘I have nothing left to lose.’