Liquid courage to numb the pain.
Intoxicated to forget.
Offbeat blood, sent from heart to vein.
Returns with a guest, she just met.


She closes up, leaves the bar clean.
To her apartment, around three.
In bed she lays, counting some sheep,
That mock her, thinking she will sleep.
She hears the crickets’ lonely beat.
Reminding her of creeps she meets.
Sometimes they have a potential start.
But never truly go that far.


Each night dealt with some other cards.
But slowly starts to build up guard.
She puts less time in her makeup.
But drunks continue to pick up.
She joins in shots, hopes to pass out.
But in her head she hears the shouts.
Her heart’s hunger for real love.
Her clouded thoughts rise above.


A newly turned insomniac.
No longer sleeping on her back.
Till curtains peek with starry eyes.
So bright, leaves a forceful rise.
Her sobs like strings of violin.
A void no liquor can fill in.
Despite how much she tries to drown.
The aches resonate with shrill sounds.


Another night, still found no one.
A man enters, two drinks and done.
She questions him, “What is the rush?”
Always pulled into a quick crush.
But never really tends to last.
As he mumbles about his past.
A bartender, like therapist.
As alcohol reveals the gist.


Now drunk and loud, he starts to shout.
Before his crash, he raises doubt.
He talks about, the best he lost.
Always at home, waits for the toss.
She cheers him up, when in a rut.
He gets up again, “That **** mutt!
To see her hurt, curled up in bed.
I held her paw, up till her death.”


The next night, slept pretty early.
He was perfect, brown hair curly.
Her eyes were lost, but not with lust.
Enjoyed his smells, delicious must.
A piece of her, became a part.
Happy to save his sinking heart.
Rescued him, he slept on her rug.
Named Milo, her three-legged dog.

She left me a gift bag
of coconut oil, expensive shampoo,
instant noodles, and bug spray.

Focus slips as she
presses her face to the bus window,
staring out at a town
she will never see again.

She believed the town was a prison
until I taught her
how to ride a motorbike.

Dodging ***-holes and stray dogs,
I clung for my life,
primed for purgatory-
whilst she screamed love ballads

at the top of her lungs,
believing that if she drove fast enough
she could make up for the time she had lost.

As ghosts appear
along the country roads of Kalasin,
the drumlins will be
a mere sequence of pixels

and Chinese whisper memories.
I smoke, lean on bad habits
across the fence of solitude I built

so meticulously by hand.
Another night spent drunk
under the stars – alone.
Desire spikes a fever in hindsight,

thoughts stray to her upper thighs,
blue eyes, and untouched lips.
I wonder whether reaching out

for somebody in the dark
would have been enough
to abate our bespoke
and desperate loneliness.

She left me as another moment
I let slip through my fingers.
A life-time spent

wringing my hands.

I don't love you
not completely
at least not yet
but I can feel my soul
reaching to entwine with yours
it's tied in a nice neat knot
I love your smile
I love your laugh
I love your stubborness
and everything in between
I don't love you
not completely
at least not yet
not until the knot becomes a tangle
and I love you to the point of stupidity
to the total loss of sanity
to sacrificial limitations
past where I could never forget you
irreversibly wicked
I don't love you
not completely
at least not yet

Remember when we
cannot remember anymore,
the Sun shining through
windows sealed shut,
when we talk about it
we do not talk about it, we call
it with a different name: aberration.
I cannot remember you anymore
so small and languid in this
life. Everything pales in comparison --
offered by chance, filled with hesitancy
as if obligation, emptied by coming
into the fullness of it, saying it as a plump word
with the same accuracy of knives
tucked within the soft recess of the kitchen
counter that same day, you were different
as any other when we cycled through
Alexandrite Street, the world new again
like we were born in the similar moment
splintered by much less of a force waiting
outside the black gate of the home, and so
much more of a name slipping away
from the cliff of my chafed lip onto your
body's sustained pit, the drop barely an
indent, only as if of limited exertion but
possibly a weight for us to solder
through and through. I told you I could never
indulge into the fray and hold armaments
of it, but twice-told this battle I can
fit in: you, my accoutrement for war,
hallowed you are in excess of flow and march
through rain and light smiling through
opened windows with a blank circle of lightness
that is your face held close and memorized
before taking the commute home, force-equipped
with time's persistent pleading and our
untoward compliance like a reciprocal of stiffness:
you are the wall of your home and I,
a suspended pendulum with a dumb clockhand
     in a stalemate.