colours around me
fish me up to the light
when i clawed myself
down this deep hole

i feel the sun
i feel the “after you”
i taste the glory
everything
i missed out on

i brea
th
i
brea
l
th

in and out

take my breath that you stole from my lungs
put it back in my rotting stomach
swallowing hard
you sleep
in a nightmare
piled in the
trash out the back

i keep stepping
in the place with no bridge
head up high up so tall
there’s nothing to see beneath

you become tv static
a pedestrian
at the streetlights
a name
recycled

melancholic mosquitos
pin my arms like dot points
as the sun descends to uncover
oblivion
reversely illuminated in all of its
opposite glory

melancholic children
ride in car backseats under bright streetlights
they try to hunt for
oblivion
reversely illuminated in all of its
opposite glory

i search a lie for the silver lining
i pry the silver lining for perfection
i tackle the perfection with the deception
of the empty person
who is interlaced with the coercion
of the fear that made their power possible

for canyons cannot be crossed in the dark
without a beating heart scared enough to run across

i weave into lines to tackle them into oblivion
i eye onto waves and pierce them into obsidian

we shatter glass
for we are tired of making sense

where does the world go
when your body is folded like
still origami?

her burning passion and certainty
allures me

my body is dark blue
dissipates in the rain
becomes indecisive in the night
i bite the side of its cuticles

and she
she explodes with a match
lit by signature grins
unwavering by the wind

i watch my spirit move into the mirror
like a snake
not made to be there

she just is
without fear and
I just don't know how
she can be so sure

she comes with sparkling humour
i arrive late
with open wounds and
no band aids

I enter her stomach
with my own tired legs,
and I whisper
to the heaving metal hisses beneath me;
as perhaps she only yearns to hear
a voice addressing her
in between the sardine packed
after hour rush.
A guiding noise
through the fluorescent lit cabin full of
colourful
hollow
people.

Perhaps she waits for
an
“I know your name.”

what if she was stripped away from her manufactured number?
And perhaps she wants to know the names of the places where she's been,
and where her life began.
Perhaps she wants to know the places she’ll go
before she ever goes there.
I harbour all the knowledge,
any yet lack the ability to speak her language.

I print a hand onto the smooth walls of her insides,
pressing my ears against her cool glass
to hear her constant ringing
and unstable heart.
She brings me along on
her predetermined journey,
and I watch as parasites filter in and out
of the gills
she cant control

square of white i stare up at recently
used to be a canvas for potential dreams
now is just a wall hanging above
boxing me in

We were etched deep into settled sand,
waiting as slow marine snow rained upon us,
you and I stared up at the endless abyss with empty irises,
for who knew how long.

In autumn, a luminescent shadow descended upon us,
giant, overhead,
we eyed the beast, it’s magnificent beauty,
and suddenly, our two halves were met across the perfect body:
on the night of the whale fall.

Used to gnawing hunger; we shared,
******* from the same dead monster with empty stomachs,
I glimpsed you laughing, with shining blubber on your lips,
and there my heart was pierced silently with barnacle and shattered shell,
in the mystic forever darkness.

I implanted my hope and my roots into new rocks,
to view what I might see of our deepening story
- and in long nights I imagined you, swimming in light,
whilst I knew that in our deep black world
there could be no such thing.

I had hoped that you might stay to see our whale decay,
although you never did say
anything about her.

I scoured her sleek bare bones
where you picked at her husk with lazy teeth,
I found her secrets, and you grazed her surfaces;
silently eying brighter places.

I yearned for us to intertwine with her empty rib cage,
swaying in sync to the winds of the ocean,
yet the same breezes I danced to
only ever seemed to drift you down foreign currents.

I had hoped we might have love to tether us, but your wandering spirit
saw the faint moonlight of the shallows
and chased it,
unaware we were destined to stay
in this high pressure.

Once again, lying under slow falling marine snow,
I now wish we did not share
the same end;
as the mother whale
on the night of her whale fall.

you strum the instrument
playing with my heart
we’re on the park bench
saying “i love yous”

the world melts into oblivion
between our summer

you
leave in the dead of night
with your spit on my lips

march comes and goes
like a heart throb
in may
i break it off
like ****** bread
biting my heart into pieces

crying on the carpet floor
for a whole month previous
and a whole month after

you play in the radio beat
and then you go on

ferris wheels
taunt the imagination
of my tap
running on too long

empty eyed
i think about our
“always”
and how
they’re always
a lie

i stand in an asphalt river
and a chill knocks on my heart
as it cascades down the empty street

i eye my dad
as he takes photos
of the skeletons
resting on the grass

my hands are stuffed
in my overly fluorescent
striped jacket,
refusing
to feel the cold

i breathe out smoke

my pupils drift to the rusty shells; their tyres,
and their lack of number plates

the duo rests there together;
tethered to the turf,
bounded by the night,
and the endless winter wind

i wonder if they are past lovers;
entwined forever,
and forgotten to every eye but us
- or if they have a past at all.

Right, left
You said you wouldn’t leave until you saw one, but now you’re crossing that empty road
Left, right
And I say goodbye, but every time a little bit of spirit leaves me
and so; i’m lingering
Right, left
Bark embedded on the sole of my leather shoes
Feet planted in place to search the long street
in search of the thing that
might make you run back to me
Left, right
i eye the path you disappear to
and hope you will glance back
with my same longing eyes

i knew it when
i put my hands out
and she reached back
with cold fingertips
and i giggled
trying to make them warmer

that i just always choose wrong

my heart was racketing hard enough
to untie our trees
in the quiet part of my
imagination

your eyes
haunt me
late at night;
fireflies in the lights
of an abandoned warehouse

our past

our whispers along
my nighttime walk

you paint
my static ceiling

i eye the wonder
in her new eyes
and ask the universe
if i have the strength
to plant the half of my
untangled roots

i ask the universe
if it will finally let me
grow up with someone

eaten by a long hole
taken by a fire
or left as nothing at all