the moon is a lesbian,
which i know because she has
kissed every inch of my body
more often than any lover
i've ever known.

i have watched the way
she kisses the ocean
and guides her gently home,
have seen her face reflected with love
in the ever-changing sparkling surface of the sea,
and i don't know any other word
to describe a love like that.

the day we smoked a joint in the woods
and then walked eight miles in the rain
to gas station coffee,
we passed two other gas stations on the way,
but you were holding my hand and
i didn't want it to stop.
you said
"you're beautiful"
and i said
~~~~
because you were the most remarkable
person i had ever seen,
leaned up against the hood of a stranger's car,
smoking a cigarette like a lesbian james dean.

you'd call yourself
"lesbian" sixteen times before breakfast
until it stopped sounding like venom
and started to sound like a prayer,
because how could i ever look at
love like this and feel anything
but holy?
my new church was the woods
by the river,
and i learned to worship
at the altar of your body.
you took me in your arms and you said,
"baby,
you're beautiful,"
and i told you i loved you
because beautiful had never
meant anything to me
except that i had something
people could take.
i heard "beautiful" from your lips and it sounded
like a blessing.

the moon is a lesbian because
she knows how to love without taking,
i have scarcely loved a man
who has learned how to love without taking,
that is not to say that no man
can love without taking,
but it is a skill that is learned
through a grief
that i have shared with every
queer woman i have ever met.

when you kissed me in the attic,
it was not the first time
i had been kissed,
but it was the first time that a touch
felt like a gift and not a punishment,
and it was the first time i understood
why people write love songs.
i wanted to write you a love song,
but after a lifetime afraid of my own voice,
all i could sing you were hymns.
not because i had made you an idol,
but because your hands on my body
made me feel clean for the first time.

the moon is a lesbian because
the night i stumbled out of
the apartment of the man
who only loved me when
he thought he could keep me,
blood on my lips and nowhere to go,
the moon kissed my fingertips
and she said,
"baby,
what took you so long?
welcome home."

isn't it funny
how i write more poetry when i’m around you?

i never understood
why poets held such eminence in words
until my heart was awakened by the breath of your presence

words, inherently, don’t carry much meaning
mere symbols inked onto a page
their fables derived from ingrained aphorisms

but the heart doesn’t follow these rules
she sees color differently
vivid and auroral

and she does not simply view words with guileless eyes
she lives them


x.

i told my therapist about you,
while your lips were still slathered alllll over my body.
i showed her the places we had been,
and all the things we had seen.
i told her what lies underneath that pretty
                                              pretty
skin of yours,
and i told her how i knew.
i spelt out your name as she scribbled it on her cute little clipboard,
i told her about the   first     night
and the      second
and the   fourth
and that time in the closet.
i told her everything,
i really just wanted to   get
                                                  you
                                      out  
of my brain,
it didn't matter if saying these things put me in  sososo  much pain.
because you've  moved   on  so why can't i?
i told my therapist about you,
but i still can't tell you
                                           goodbye.  
i know i'm  s t u p i d,
for holding on this l
                               o
                                n
                             ­    g,
i know it's useless,
for wishing you weren't                              gone.
but my words carry on like a heartbeat
s     l      o      w
steady
                          fast
u   s   e   d
  n    t   a   y
i   keep   keep   keep  breaking and breaking and breaking and
i told my therapist about you.

Your smile wakes the butterflies in my heart,
Eyes like honey, like art
Lips so sweet, I could kiss them all night
If you get any closer, I just might.

Your hip is pressed to mine
As the stars above us shine,
I touch your heart.
And you touch mine.

I keep a flower under my pillow when I sleep to remind myself that I still grow
Just like something green
And when I can’t sleep, I keep two coins on my eyes,
Just in case I need to pay to keep my dreams

I think I’ve said it once before, but I won’t rest until I shake that feeling somewhere in my veins
Like I’ve got stars under my skin burning holes through the softness at my fingertips

When I lay down tonight, chin buried under the covers
I’ll keep a picture of you under my cheek to remind myself that sometimes,


These Things Take Time.

I'm drunk and the skies are a little hazy, and the stars, a little like Van Gogh's, but tonight, I'm still an astronaut angling metaphors from the mesophere and you're still the moon to which these poems orbit around.

time is the best sugar-coater; retrospect is a master con-artist.
like sugar and honey and smoke.
like all the things that catch in your throat and make it that little bit harder to breathe
               like her lips on your neck in the dark when your tangled brain is permeated by the space between her thighs and the only constant is the soft hum of the speakers.
i only believe in astrology when she is answering my calls.
when my rising sign indicates that i will wake to the smell of her apartment
i believe in the tarot readings my friend gives me on her bed when i am underneath her.
                                  anatomical; catastrophic
a symphony of vulnerability and sapphic contentment.
i am not a connoisseur of intimacy, i take what is given to me
yet this
her
there is something about the way that she holds my gaze that makes me want to analyse her birth chart whilst she makes tea in the kitchen whilst we try and convince ourselves that our lives are only falling apart because mercury is in retrograde. (again)
the nights spent passed out whilst everyone else cuts lines on the breakfast table, the bottles in the sink and the side glances.
it was messy
you
were messy
i am a mess.
it’s smoking someone else’s cigarettes out your window and pretending that your thighs are not the pillow that i dream of resting my heart on.
i will ***** out pretty and soft words about your smile your mouth your tongue
when you’re around i hold my coffee in my mouth for just that little bit longer, long enough to stop me spitting out the fact that somehow you wind your way into every ******* thing that i write.

What came first? The flies or the act of flying? This is going nowhere.

You had teased me about eventually writing about this moment. This moment and every other moment. Cigarette in hand, pink blushing my cheeks “yeah right”. I could never grow tired of this. Feeling so incredibly close to somebody that you know there will never be room for regret. We are not two, we are one and I’m pretty certain I’ve loved you since you were born. Probably longer than that. The sun looked over her shoulder to say hello to us that day. Watched you run around the cement staircase and discuss your orbit around me.

What came first? Forgiveness or sin? This is going nowhere.

I think of you farthest from the boundaries of this existence. Like maybe you’ve always been a day dream. A lost thought. An open-ended question. You in your crinkled smiles and loud poetry hiding behind punk rock. You in your black coffee and sarcastic comments about my own soft words. You in your never-ending paradox. I don’t think we’ve ever apologized to each other. What is there to apologize for? I’m sorry for finally finding you? I’m sorry for becoming the person you would eventually love more than life itself?

What came first? The lovers or the love?

It's okay if this is going nowhere, so long as i end up there with you.

// she falls in love the same way that she falls apart; quickly and all at once.

tumbling into his outstretched palms with a startling intensity, his fists clench and she cries.

she wants him to hurt her, leave smouldering bruises around her neck. Force your fingers down her throat and make her beg. maybe this love; choking sounds and blood.

it’s almost funny, the fact that she still hasn’t learned yet; make him your everything and you will be left with nothing.

and it feels like hell, almost romantic.

her lips part in the dimly lit room, gasping for air.

that’s the thing, there is nothing he could do to her that she wouldn’t do to herself. hold a knife to her neck and watch her soul drip from her mouth

one rib at a time you snapped them all like twigs and complained that she made too much noise. too much,

too loud.

lungs swimming in fluid yet she breathes out flowers, because that’s what pretty girls do; that’s what you wanted isn’t it babe? beauty. perfection.

don’t let him inside your head, keep him between your thighs or else everything around you will become white noise; fading into the background.

go on, romanticise it. i dare you.

force its unwilling bones into a metaphor or a simile.

pretend that we fall apart into beautiful, tragic spectacles and simply glue the broken fragments back together

she sat in the dark with a cup of tea between her shaking hands, resisting the urge to split her veins over the white walls and string her organs from the ceiling like fairy lights.

wanting to die in the most violent of ways is a lot less convenient than it seems; an unholy addiction of the rawest degree.

darling, i’m sorry he made you feel like you are hard to love,

because loving you is the easiest thing in the world //