Street cleaners gather beneath crisp tree leaves,
Collecting cloudy tears along the hem of their hoods,
Their oversized coats reminding me of the night
we shared a bench within the downpour of the city,
You demanded I kept my hood down,
Allowing raindrops to trickle atop the bridge of my nose
As your fingers traced the cherry red tips of my ears,
I spent many minutes contemplating how
I would explain my state to my mother,
Settling on the notion to flee to my room the moment I returned,
Soon enough sense turned hazy,
Your violet lips nicked my own,
In a sickly speed.

I don’t believe in good or evil, heaven or hell.
My idea goes-
The only true punishment for Eve’s
Alleged temptation,
Would be a forced breath, a rebirth, repeat life for
As long as humans are able to walk the earth,

That will show us.

As midnight hit, I lay in the warmth of a near spilling tub.
Silence pollutes four steamed walls, echoes of pitter-patter
From the infant upstairs, distant voices from the movie
My mother watched in another room, an occasional drip
Of the hot tap, the scrape of ink across damp paper,
A slurp of tea between my lips, are the only sounds.

I should have been washing, instead I thought of your hand
Caressing a blade across my legs, your shampoo soaked fingertips
Tickling at my scalp, your mouth pinching kisses from my *******,
Your eyes following soap suds descending down silky skin.

My chin rests upon my knee, tea leaks from wet lips
Staining a pale leg, dispersing beneath the surface,
The water browns, so I bathe in tea and sugar
The sweet stench unable to distract me from you.

I was cruelly young,
When I first pleaded for God,

A God I was unsure about,
To free me from this life,

Presenting him the
Sign of the Cross,

To follow with a demand
Of a silent, painless, escape.

To this day I count myself lucky,
That I lacked the knowledge

Of death permitted
By one's own hand.

As *** bled from your
fingertips, I could only
fall towards your blade.

Sometimes the need to grab strangers by the shoulders,
And beg-BEG- for them to hurt me,
Pretend to love but actually hate me,
Romance me, only to ignore me-

Sometimes the need to grab strangers by the shoulders,
And ask for their prayers,
Spill out my darkest confessions,
Grieve my past self to them-

Sometimes the need to grab strangers by the shoulders,
And preach the importance of freedom,
Inform them of the world’s woes,
Bore them with politics-

Sometimes the need to grab strangers by the shoulders,
And demand they save me,
Pause my loneliness before it turns foul,
Accompany me during my days-

Sometimes the need to grab strangers by the shoulders,
And scream help, so the birds flee,
Becomes ever too powerful.

So powerful I recoil from human interactions,
Until I can perform the average conversation again.

Putrid smells of dirtied innocence,
A veil of eager stupidity,
Misfortune converts to violence,
Roots caged by the ashes
Of what once was,
My hometown of resilience- staled,
Replaced with glory seekers
Spewing words void of value,
Pickets of dishonesty,
Weekends of gloom,
Shame.
I feel foolish as I reside here,
Bleeding within the garden of thorns,
Punctured by the claw of the bird.

As kids we were close,
Pushing each other on a swing during humid afternoons,
Scrapping over the biggest piece of cake,
Singing and strumming old rock songs on a video game,
Cheesing in the odd school picture together,
Hiding the family dog upstairs, cartoon shows on the tv,
Volume at its highest, all to drown the rows vibrating the walls
From downstairs,
It seemed back then we had each others back,
Sobbed for the same reasons at night,
Nervously bit at the skin around our nails over unknown noises,
Shook a knee with every thought of fleeing our hometown,
Yet now we don’t even know each other,
The distance runs thicker than blood,
He said she said infiltrating a possible recovery of a bond,
I often wonder how it can be, two people from
One home, both living on different planets,
Almost generations away from beliefs we once shared,
Pinching at each others emotions from another continent.


I found a journal from when I was my angsty teen self,
Words of fury coated most pages,
Some rhymes of regret,
Plenty of mischievous essays,
Page 94 had no explanation, just a date, some doodling
And one sentence,
“You were the first one to break my heart.”


As kids we were close,
But what do kids know.

I see you in the drunken man on the bus, singing hits
from the 60s,
I hear you when a man near your age belittles me, over a
job he knows nothing about,
I feel you when that initial rejection from someone hits, craving
validation you failed to gift me,
craving to be enough,
I smell you as friends open bottles of cheap ale, a scent
embedded into my bloodstream,
I miss you when I see a father and his child playfully race in the
park over the road,
I'm always wanting what I don't have.

Berry trees fall glum
At snowfalls greeting; Ruby
No longer loves me.

I awoke unhinged, just as the curtain in the back room,
The pale blue reminded me of what the sky could be,
When it didn’t look like gloom.
Single fabric rippled against a windowpane,
Mocking me in my solitude,
Ridicule for my foul mood.
Their twin horrified,
Scrutinising during a manic moment,
Keeping themselves securely tied.
I’m sure they look down on me as well as their sister,
The pair of us once neatly laced, now dishevelled-
Result of a nasty hormone blister.
But their sister and I
Bathe in different consequences,
My being suffers from the inevitable expenses.
I sink, I don’t float.
I seethe, I don’t sway.
I’m real, I’m forced to feel.
The curtain has no eye that aches,
No grease ridden hair, or skin that flakes.
The curtain can easily be pushed back in place,
Unfortunately, with me, that fails to be the case.