It’s the thought of your cigarette smoke.
Which cracks through the gaps in your teeth,
and into the hollows of your lips -
becoming so coarse because they are soft.

Clouds of your grey
pollute my eyes.
And you hide behind it until
it has threaded through my every pore
and into my tongue as I swallow into my gut.
I savour as if it was you that I inhaled.

I drown in that somber ocean
of your lighter in the side pocket of your trench,
and the packet which you dig from out your jeans.

As you breath
smoke flows into my ear - pollutes them
With late nights you spend alone.
A half dry pen on tea stained paperd notebooks
that are buried under paperclips and mangled headphones.
The sound as you force, pelting creased paper into the fire.
and tears which drip out onto your sweater.
and echoes of dying guitar strings
that can no longer bare the abuse you show them these nights
when the words and notes won’t kiss.like you want them to.

As it drips down through my gut
I taste the rasp smell of your cologne in the morning
after the rain wastes it off in the morning.
Along with the taste of salt that you drench every word in.

The smoke evaporates from my view.
I stare at your bones glowing under an orange street light..
Your eyes hollow,
eaten up by the shadows and I wonder
if you are in front of me.

Or if I only recognised the familiar grey clouds
- that once hid my blue sky.

i’d rather write about the freckles on your back than think about all of the ways in which you quite possibly don’t love me.

i feel sick at the very thought of you picking me apart the way you did; fingers grabbing and stroking in a catastrophic symphony of skin and vulnerability.

let’s read between each other’s lines; share my sentences and punctuate my paragraphs with your mouth; because i can breathe easier on the mornings where i wake up wrapped around you.

because my moods change like the ******* seasons and the spinning in my head doesn’t want to stop.
                                         you tell me that i should probably get a therapist because no one that thinks about all the ways in which they could **** themselves has an ounce of mental stability.
                                          i tell you that i have been to four.
                                          names faded into a blur with hazy snippets of conversation remaining.
20mg.
                    30mg.
you tell me that trust issues and scars aren’t endearing and i tell you that neither is counting up the potential number of pills needed to dissolve your body into the living room carpet.

let me sink inside your skin and make a home in your flesh;
i tell you about the nights where i lay awake in the bath turning the water red.
                       tragic, isn’t it.

you tell me that this isn’t how my head should work and i tell you that i already know. everything you could possibly tell me i already know.
i know that 400 calories a day isn’t normal, and my hands shouldn’t shake all the time.
                                             i know.
please let me stitch myself into you, even just for a while; until i no longer feel dizzy and my world stops spinning.
i don’t need you to tell me that it will be okay, because honestly i don’t think it will be and, that in itself, is okay.
                                                                ­                 let me stitch myself into you, because my own skin can’t take it anymore.

let me call you back when my voice stops wobbling and my vision straightens out, but honestly, i’m terrified that it never will. what if this is it. headaches and tears and shaking and blood.
                                             and the debilitating, gut-wrenching feeling of pure and euphoric emptiness.

                                              tragic, isn’t it.

When the snow melted
it took chunks of the road in its thaw.
Potholes sunk
where the water slurpped
away the under-soil.
Silence left with the white
now more venture outside
overstocking supplies
"we'll n'er run out again,"
one swore.
And cats are back spraying,
and dogs barking in confusion.
And the crocus buds to remind me
nothing has really changed
in all this change

What was it about omnipresence that appealed to me

so much that I destroyed myself -

one mountain at a time, one boundary at a time -

until the alarms stopped going off at breaches?

The magpies don't sing when they're sad, so what am I

when I laugh at myself for crying?

Who am I looking for when my pillows waft voiceless lullabies

from a bed half-empty? (half yours, half mine,

and I don't know which one's missing.)

What was it about hedonism that disgusted me

so much that my body rejected kindness -

every peace offering, every affectionate touch -

until it could no longer hold itself together?

Metaphors, like escaped prisoners, running for a life anywhere that isn't here,

anywhere that isn't me,

and I fold and break into myself

in muted, nondescript implosions.

Enclosed in a conical ***** are a thousand feelings,
waiting to be expressed but the tongues are unwilling.

Each of your stares keeps me startled,
Just a stare at your penetrating smile gets me baffled.

I dream of you,
But I can't speak of you.
I feel warmed by your eyes,
But I dare not reach for your hands.

I've tried many times to bury those feelings in the sand of religion,
Just like a ball submerged in water
It keeps popping up against my decision.
I've let it go several times
But it keeps bouncing back in different styles.

Tingling sensations engulf me,
Flames of sincere passion consume my human will.
My heart dances to the rhythm of your eyes,
Your stare kindles the fire of my desire.

I love you so much,
but I can't say a word.
You are my world,
but I can't offend my church.

Rain drops from my eyes form oceans of passion.
The sky sheds tears as my bowels swell with compassion.