a man sits in the corner
in his hands; the small bits. the aches.

I couldn’t have loved you once
in a voice holding
a feeling stronger than regret.

on shoulders not broad enough
a shadow, heavier than memory.

the fire at the corners of my eyes -
- smoke billowing -
- make blinking that much harder -
- once in awhile ash collects in an iris -
- a promise to burn things -
- blind.

…………something about an end. the scope of things together. in the spiral you’re still connected to the beginning. I’m still here just falling. rewrapping the ugliness of hurt. kissing my knuckles. pushing against gravity. elbows and toes buried. in my latest growth-spite. the line drawn under  unconnected. a context of embarrassment. remember the rule about tying loose ends. speak into my night light. scratch out a chance.  take refuge by the windowsill. the downpour whispered its precedence. he’s out there. drowning standing up. our bedroom. the thunder failing to tick over. lightning like a flinch. hands in hands in gaps. i wonder if the rain knows it might not end. wonder if i might not too……………….

and at the closing
he promises and promises
the last scene is just
around another corner.

and the pile of clothes in the corner is
just a
pile of clothes
but i know things aren’t right.

that the burning in my mouth
the locking of bones and sinew
once a month between us
isn’t satiating.

the thing inside of me pulsing.

i’m a neck viewer
using his curls as curtains.
compromise
watching things burst from other things.

remember
monsters break apart their hosts in escape.

compulsion
emerges from the core because
of the nature of change.

back in the moment:
the screen darker than dark.
my need, this body horror
spills out of me.

curated
left myself hanging on the gallery of promises.
eyes and arms outstretched,
ache and need
follow you around the room.
do a double take,
take my few remaining moments
while you ponder
if you could have done something similar, leaving loss under floodlights
to tell a feeling, to rot under public protection.

download instagram, download twitter, download what’s-app, download flickr,
update I-message, update linkedin,
restore photos from iCloud bin
back-up Tinder, back-up Scruff
X’d twitter, doomscrolled enough
access Pinterest, access Ring,
screenshot snapchat, Grindr ding

face-id open, passcode close
settings, delete find your iPhone
close friends, bank app, sort code,
messenger, poke, block, link, follow, repost livestream selfie be real location tag pin dropbox camera notes volume up siri off
Wi-Fi on,bluetooth disconnected 3G 4G 5G
which account do I logon?

safari, google, duck duck go
buy apple, by android,
huawai’s cheap though

forget this for you page
forget this Alexa home
forget this algorithmic poetry
forget this phone

pale flowers pale proprietor pale ale
i have ordered you to the table
almost funny how quickly you arrive
and funnier
ethanol ice, roots and glasses crash in
celebration
oh branch, gnarled wood with a numbered
engraving - i send thanks
via application
payment as in a pitcher - forget
taste -  order it
sugary with a bit of weight yet
you never took credit for
sake of appearances
I only entered you
knowing you wouldn’t ask as much as
the others past 5pm
to sneak out your doors by 11
into gravel’d outposts -
into the dark crying out for something
like your lost beauty.

it’s only i get a little scratchy across my shins at 1:33
forehead against work desk
leant down to run a track on my legs
phone untouched, shortcuts retraced
HTT ..PS//
ishouldntcheckyoursocials.      us.

couldn’t make me an addict of loss
which really is the untapped potential
for the future internet of things
safari, waystone.
safari, favourer of webpage rerunners,
safari, guide me back to a bookmarked
cliff-edge of ache.

cookies know me better than my housemate who’s sweetness blocked his accounts before something broke and we’d have to talk about it.

once the whiter lines appear on shinskin like my algorithm
I can sit back up
if not satiated at least appeased
the sound my lungs make isn’t really laughing or crying but
a wheeze.

i already cut my hair once
to feel like progress had been made;

and every new year isn’t December
it’s March.

wonder if you still recite my name backwards
the vowels around a tongue;

remind me
that things broken open may never lock again.

he cuts roses to
feel the rain.

Mother’s Day.

a downpour in the garden
he tilts the stems
to sever them
from the root.
he tilts the stems
to drink in
a little more.

corrugated;
this love like
an ugly curve.
draining the airpocket
dry.
nails, wood wounded.
all right, all right, all right then.

it’s -2 degrees.
the sun can’t warm the chill.
overhead, the clouds
blotch daydreams paler.
all im thinking is
it’s been 2 years.
sighing on the glass makes
condensation collect.
like a river,
hold my mouth to the runoff.
i can’t run from grief in the cold sunshine.
but i’ll never let a loss leave me thirsty
for more.

the afters
scattered at ankle height.
bodies and turkeys and bottles
litter the 26th midday.
you’re still not here,
Saint Nick. Last year I drove you
to the north
but you said I couldn’t stay. duty called
& you wanted Christmas
with another loved one.

so I left my flat at midnight
with sweetness in my hands
raised;
to the sky watching
for a red light streaking unashamedly,
but the front of the doorstep
was not
darkened by a jolly frame.

the snow
withheld at cloud height.
maybe 8 billion people means
overtime.
maybe a no show means
it’s over time.
and writing a letter 9 hours after
you put the reins down
seems a bit desperate, don’t you think, Saint Nick?

the not days to new years
rupture at heart height.
the workshop’s shut, elves on annual leave. Loving like this means waiting
on an 11 month reprieve.
now the fireworks have started
Auld lang syne sung
but my arms hold the departed,
Saint Nick, perhaps is done.

so now im waiting
for another ** ** ***
and maybe
this one won’t love me enough
also.

life
(must i dream)
an experience
twice confirmed
three times replayed.

where
is the original?                                                
(to speak)    
isn't performance about spontaneity,          
about the moment?

(the gospel of loss?)                                                                            
what is there to dream of
to get my lines
right, the first time round?

fine then.

               i'll forgive a memory and condemn a feeling.
          

                                                               the arteries
bloodless fingers squeezing
               an expression silent.
          
                         press into gumlines - remind enamel
               no recastings will remain
                                                                           at the end of this.

next to the flat
the neighbourhood
tabby swatting at
the drain.

sinewed fur-lined,
feline; finding
some poor animal
in a cage
outside its making.

i can’t see
below the earth.
the poor thing,
fighting.

i appreciate the
connection. Did you
see the speaker? The way they
gave it everything in this conference
really resonated with me. My names Oskar
by the way what's yours? Oh really, how lovely
are you from a different department? Maybe one day
I'll come and visit. Oh yeah definitely, what's your Linkedin?

left our things
cratering the desert;
palms upturned
pulling the pressure away -
soft-words
talking down the crumpled spine of loss.
the sand,
the sand.
if it wasn’t so fine,
would you be able to trust
the mistaking of
abrasion for absolution?
will you be able to forgive
the belief
that a collapse can come
with good intentions?

deliberation deliberate
how different to consider;
and to do.
tell and wait
show and stall.
keep time in back pockets.
fish for change
and make a
pittance.
surely after words,
came reactions,
and after broken promises
came sanctions.

surely after it stopped burning
things began to grow.
stories of salt,
of salting.
an act to crystallise
and make barren,
make bare.

starting
ceasing.
how similar to filling up,
and filing down,
a feeling.

couldn’t keep
my finger off the photo
could never keep things in.
mourning is just having,
a lack of
trigger discipline.

take me taste me
you are the body
reset me satiate me
you are the body.

touch only
fragments of the full picture
nobody says
the taste would betray me
nobody says
the heart
is the first ***** to commit mutiny.

stabbed, wrecked
punctured, indented
wilt the words so
so my mouth
isn’t responsible anymore.
it cannot be held accountable
for the vowels, unroot my language
supplant love in favour of it

like an opener
                            I remember your laugh
like a close.

beat into me until i'm broken and the feelings
alight the layer of skin just below the outermost,
like the lining of a jacket, catching aflame.

scratch out the remaining worries with the spines of your teeth.
rake me upwards, shred the doubts like old sunburn peel, and peel and peel the layers of mistrust off of me till i'm raw, pink and ready.

never has this body not been scarred
without first feeling excitement.

since you pierced it, now you're responsible. I'll chase that ownership, mutually owed, to the end of all meaning. till the sensations are the only bits that still make sense, and then you can make up for everything else.

only after this, after everything else is spread across a blood splattered floor, can things start again. only once you make up for not returning the parts of me. only once my remaining organs, now calcified, have been cracked to their inner ichor, and you tip me gently into your thankless lungs.

only once the prostration, the words left since butchered into me, have been flayed by your regret, and raised to the height of saints.

hang me up.
swing by my legs and wrap around the root of me like you once would.
debase yourself inside of me again, learn to build something again. dig deeper than needed again, strike copper in my veins so I can oxidise again. watch me alight again, at your briefest touch.

am I more than a drink
taken per food group
swallowed by instinct.
you’re more to me than thirst.
sliced by feeling,
unpeeled heart wrenching
take from all and, Nothing.
I wait for you here,
so perhaps the taste of you
lights back stars, and starlight.
perhaps the taste of you
finds pathways in the back of legs, of knee.
you are permenent in the heat of love
but sliced in essence.
**** ME
and ask very little in return, ask of holding.
your **** as it grows limp in the moonlight,
all I miss is the taste of your absence
all I taste is the feeling of you
finished inside of me which laid the foundations of something larger than what this body can contain,
I love it, the hurt of your breaking into me.
and hurt of the love that remains.

i stood in my new flat today
counting the spins the fan
made in its centre.
an americanism, too out of body
for me to keep an eye on.
what now?
but to wait till the inertion sickness
crawls its way from the soles up to oesophagus.

tilt back till back flat against the black flat floor.
(i hated that sentence but it needed some air.)
wondering if i can melt beneath the new money wood,
can i stand upside down,
ankles halo’d in my space and my head in the neighbours.

the hallway to the bedroom where he sleeps a little more soundly
now i’m out the bed,
dares me to leave him alone.
“you’ve clawed this distance out” i murmur back.
“i can trace it in the skirting boards.”

sitting up i go to close the window
and lock it, unlock it and smile at the little piece of freedom
i can’t ever give back.

sometimes all there isn’t ;
is us.
and that’s ok.

i mourned
us
on the train back.
North East to London,
Norfolk into Suffolk into Home.

England,
a green, scarred patchwork,
blistering apart while i sit.
A woman opposite tries to coax the
context
out of me; the entertainment,
before we're pulled into Liverpool St Station.

to credit my memory -
it frames itself nicely, my mugged up
glasses.
a sunbeaten, reddened, ruddy face -
holding back.  swallowing the
outburst -

"i let myself believe for once."

we sit.
the quiet unbroken.
save for the sounds of me
steadily
getting further from you.  

the sounds of me steadily getting further from you.

i mourned us once again.
ten months in and now
six months out
filled with immeasurable moments later.
there was no woman this time.
and only without her
or us -
i found the truth to say

"i let myself believe, for once."

the most painless way to leave is
non-arrival.
self sabotage as absentia.
the only loss
lacking malice.

i did not want you to get close because
i did not want you to get too close.

i did not want you to take up space for me as i did not
want you to want the same from me.

im not sorry i didn’t want you
im sorry you did want me

self-sabotage as non-arrival.
self-sabotage as a convincing half-truth.
self-sabotage as a refuge.
self-sabotage as the lesson.

and who's to stop me?
management
have managed
their time productively.
                                       shudder to think
                                       they'd begrudge a
                                       subordinate the time
                                       to blast their feelings
                                       off the clock.
leaning over window panes
that lack
balconies to catch
their workers.
                                     my 1-1s have started and ended
                                     with a heart in my mouth
                                     making it harder for the words
                                     'i quit' to get out.

can i just pivot off of can i just piggyback can we just swivel can i put a pin in you and sew up the wounded look that face carries to the coffee machine every lunch Oskar take some sick leave or just leave at this point we haven't identified your fit and our culture of inclusion excludes delays in action i just don't understand how personal problems seep into the workplace what its been five months which is half the time you were with him can't it
just be let go?
just let me go
you're being let go
i want to let go.
                                                    ~ HR will be in touch. ~

We lasted 10 months
to the dot.
it seemed almost comical
how a relationship
could be so self contained.
i wondered-
looking at the freckle on the flat of your hand
whisky coloured on the smooth brown expanse—
if giving too much was really a problem I’d have to solve by myself.
the redlines we’d both crossed
reappeared in your eyes
i couldn’t understand where the stress the pressure summoned itself
begging to blow you up
but I could understand your hopelessness when you said you don’t want me to disappear.

it was only after that early morning walk to Starbucks together where
for fear of
wasting a weekend of sun
mourning
us
i debased myself
holding your hand, putting you piggyback  and running
like if i could make it to the finish line you’d give me a consolation prize and take me back.

watching videos in your halfway home
feeling your heartbeat
slow in my arms
believing it meant
this coldness was going to
melt away and
we’d rematch and be free

Until you spoke so casually
about the life you’d now get to live
unbound & free
the tautness of my heart
snapped me back to reality
cursing until my tears choked me.

i remember
packing myself away
you standing over me asking

“How are you feeling?”

like a taunt
with my fingers
grasping through the clothes
I brought to spend
in the sun
pushed to the back of
the suitcase
I stood and
unleashed all the truths
and half truths
and lies
unspooled
months
of love
in moments
to try to leave you
scarred and raw;

“you never loved me you never meant it really you want to be free you aren’t sick you don’t want to be my friend you don’t know what you want you were lying to me and now you wont even fight for me”

but you stood glacial -
and I realised it  -
was hopeless you had already moved on -
and all ive done was -
sentence myself to exile -

remembering
the day after
a date in the grasslands
where our necks
ached on earthy blankets
and legs mottled by sweet kisses
delivered from flies.

my god the
jealousy
that they had known intimacy
of the softness in the calves i took to
sleep that afternoon we met
filled the short
but beautiful
sunset
with melancholy.

maybe here you found
i held codependency quite closely.

so
you took me to one of those superstores
that sell
beds.

                                   "i have a friend who's closing he always makes and double folds the quilt because it makes him feel like someone's mum."

you half shouted over
the motorway behind us- the demanding
yet
secondary conversation.

how
i wondered, did i end up here
                   - the boy i liked 6 months in -
laughing between
his downy hair and tap touchy fingers
now
so proudly leading the way
as his
friend, tired & mischievous
ushered us into the theatre
of infinite fractal bedspreads.

                                                 "hurry up so i can close to give you your privacy i'm going for a smoke."

spoken like any true
east London mum-
all ciggie ash
and true love.

i got to watch you work

which was flattering to say the least.
to stand beside
kings and queens
doubles and singles
being bent
dragged and persuaded
to your whimsy.
watching the curve of a bicep
seized up in delirious rearranging
                         - the muscles of the neck betray the youth of love-
until a masterpiece emerging
before us both
was realised.

                      "at least now we can cuddle without the bugs...or at the least these are bed ones?"

i remember
unwrapping the currently occupied smokers
carefully settled blankets like a first birthday
gift.
sliding under them,
with my shoes kicked away in eagerness.
your arms
not yet scarred with indecision
pull me closer till i forget to breathe....

this is it.
the mattresses connected sheets and sheets and sheets of feeling and this is it at once to cover and unravel against the texture of the cushions the springs the feathers locked away this is it like the words i whispered through the skin of the pillow your arm not so much pinned as smothered below the crook of my neck and this is it all there is is the smell of us in this beautiful moment that latches me to the frame in my mind against my back with the weight of the future this is it the pressing pressing pressing at the touch of our palms the touch of our lips the distances we'll learn to walk alone or together or side by side but not able to look at the path we tread perpendicular to our hearts this is it this is it this is it it it

....then i breathe.

i think the worst thing
is never knowing how
many photos of us
you had on your phone;
while im sitting here
ruminating how
after
        657
             moments
i ended up alone.

heard the mountaintop
be scraped clear of snow this morning.
some angry man
shouting up the cliffsides
he said:
"take it all and quickly.
before my hands find the strength to close.
take me into the calm
this thin air carries my tears too easily."
he said:
"you were right about my legs
standing for the sake of looking down at you
scared of laying things bare"
he cried
"i was wrong about you
that the words meant something more
and that things get better in the end"-------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------------------­-------------------------------------

"that things get better in the end"

smothered in something icywarm

slighted fingertips
withdrawing from a near-fatal embrace
how does it feel?
to brush precariously
at the edge of something
infinitely beautiful;
to find the void
greeting you instead.

curled at waist height
or tied
to the belt loops of jeans
or smushed into pockets,
balled up
waiting for  another
chance to extend again.

there in the throes of night
unclenching, reclenching fists lay,
wondering

will the next time will be different
and
how will it feel?

body like a Hoplite,
raised from the dust to lay the land-
sent armed
ashen spear and heart,
trunks of armour clad legs
growing into the clay coloured Earth
rooted.

these lyre-heartstrings taut with longing.
to see
a browbeaten Myrmidon,
in daylight.

watch, as the breath of Zeus escapes
Grecian chests,
concave with muscle
Olympus itself exists within those crevices.

i lay offerings,
ambrosia soaked spoken word
at the under-flesh of your calf
laying beside myself
in hope the whispers bestowed to you from the Fates
on the eve of Troy
mean less with your lips, pressed to wine, against mine.