i smell it on my hands, a smell,
like clothes maybe.
or a house i once belonged in.
long gone and fixed up.
i know i know it. maybe i’m insane.
maybe i just haven’t used the downstairs bathroom in a while.
it makes me nostalgic. i don’t know why.
i don’t know how i know it and it’s driving me up the blue painted walls.
i will tear down the coats and smash the mirror to know how i know this smell.
it smells like old love that i ache to forget.
people i once knew.
people i once loved before they shed their skins,
and i wore them as a scarf all winter.
i flick the lock,
the metal lock,
and it washes away the smell.
it is polluted with that copper penny tinge.
so i hold the lock with my sleeve now.

‘recovery’
tastes like olive oil
and vinegar.
in your kitchen, at 1am
after 2 bags of crisps and vegetables.
tastes like cheap chicken breast
with spicy marinade
from the ****** canteen in college
and m&ms you gave away.
recovery tastes like failure,
like pieces of pizza you weakly stole
from your friends
because you spent your money on hair dye and nail
polish instead.

if i went back,
stood in the park i called a home,
i would hear your worn-down
skateboard wheels barreling towards me. knocking me down,
your mass pinning me to the gravel car park
as your ghost passes through me,
eager.

i feel you grab my hand, like peter pan, to drag me
to your own neverland.
sun-splattered walls pull time to an unwilling halt.
i misremember the shape of our tomb, i enlarge its shrinking walls and see every blue-and-red inch coated in a thick golden facade
of safety.

i wish to stay in that death sentence.
in the twelve hours before the guilt kicked in, before you
punched my gut with truth.

the streets stained grey, i walk.
precariously placing one bandaged foot in front of the other.
the green looks yellow.
the gold turned to harsh white
that burns my skin to ash.
your memory lies, basking in its reign
over my blue-and-red brain, ringing with your influence.

i sit on dead grass, outside a house i wanted to call home.
i watch a light flicker off from inside a broken window.
your broken window on your broken room.
silver moonlight casts shadows of the days i held your hand.
i wonder if you see me smiling, just for a moment,
but you don't live here anymore.

sometimes i make a wish for you,
i wish that your girlfriend was a good person.
sometimes, i wish that she was me.
so she could see you through my eyes
and how perfect you are to me.

i have no business letting myself feel blue.
while you glow golden yellow, she burns with a deeply purple hue.
close your eyes, let your dreams consume your thoughts,
and see who you really, actually want.

i’ll leave you alone if you can swear that you don’t love me.
i’ll let you be happy if you can’t hold my hand.
but your love ignites my mind,
it burns through my memories and leaves them
in a gentle fuschia glow.

there's an empty space
in the gap between our legs.
if air could speak,
it would scream for us.

you bring me to my knees.
i hold your coat, you grip my hand.
i would beg at the gates of hell to feel your kiss again.
someone tells me i should stay quiet.
ruining what you have would ruin who you are too.
but it's so tempting,
thoughts of my power creeping up behind me,
smothering their hands over my shoulders,
biting the soft skin of my neck.
your secret, our secret, tosses and turns at the back of my mind.
hers is on the tip of my fingertips
and i long to tell you that she is not good enough for you.
no one deserves you, not even me,
but i would steal every star from the sky
just to see them in your eyes.

teenage girls
taste of bitterness and malice.
of a desire to be liked by those
they punish in private words.
they believe
everyone lives to please
or ruin them.
the golden sun may shine in their eyes
but their hearts are shrunk and black as coal.
if looks could speak,
two piercingly beautiful eyes,
the colour of the sunset over a stormy sea,
would say your self-preservation is bad for their self-service.  
they cast their judgements like waves on a windy day.
cascading over serene shores and making you
never
want to wear those shorts again.

i have no good words for teenage girls.
i wish for all i am worth
that i was not cursed to be one of them.

a sunny day comes around
once in a blue moon
and we flock outside, to the beach, to the park.
these days like to bleed until their golden blood runs dry.
the skies turn grey again and a chill fills the echoing air.
it's gone for a while.

there are days when you yell.
times when i see your eyes glance
away,
and it hurts.
an unpleasant paranoia consumes our time spent together
until you kiss me
and i melt.

i hid from you,
i hid my words.
i told you what you need to hear.
never what i want to tell you.
the rain fell over my face
thank god
and no one had to see my own
raindrops.
you told me
“go home”
i did all you asked.
i hid from you,
i hid all you didn’t want.
i just clung to your hand.
and begged you to love me.

waking up in stark cold,
the morning light already bright enough to stir me.
three hours.
three hours to sleep,
it is more of a nap really.
our pillows and flimsy blankets
have shifted down the ground, and we lie exposed to the freezing air.

i remember what i did.
how could i ever forget?
an act out of sadness and lonely heartbreak is a
mistake in every way.
we fell asleep apart,
i think.
for the life of me i do not know,
but memories live in the cracks of my mind.
i move across to stay warm,
huddling under the wings of our tired friends.
you sleep for another hour, lucky thing.

no one mentions the events of the night.
no one looks at us with judgement in their eyes.
we eat, we laugh, we make the best of what we have.
i go home before my sister even wakes up.
i sit in my room.

i try to forget it ever happened.

I find it futile to pretend you care.
You come to me with hungry eyes and lustful hands,
asking from me what I will always give.
I live as a reminder to the world
of mediocrity
I live as your precious mistake,
nurtured and raised into your plaything.
I go down in our history as a pretty pair of
eyes
attached to a brain that sees more than it speaks.
Though my imprint on you may be insignificant,
I carry a baggage passed down from you
that I may never release.
When I leave this place,
when I leave you at last,
know that I leave my love behind
for you to carry on your back as I carry your baggage.

Forever yours,
I exit.

why is the world so dark while the sky is still
so blue?
orange streetlights burn weak beams through the rain,
my road long, simple, straight ahead.
the end is blocked by parades of cars with headlamps
filling my eyes with stars.
there's a silence in the trees,
no leaves linger on the pavements, gently rustling in a breeze.
there's pure silence.
the cold seems to force the strong echo of
nothing.
i hug myself down this endless road,
longing for a warm bed.
i wonder when summer ended,
when the mornings turned from sun drenched
to frostbitten.
when warm sunbeams turned into worn-out light bulbs,
and we began to dread the blue skies.
why is the world so dark while the sky is still
so blue?
so nobody sees her crying.

my lonely night.
my silent night,
more noise than one hundred jet engines
swirling round my brain.
it is laughs i cannot cause,
it is songs i must sing alone,
it is a voice i love so much whispering to someone else.
each friday night i lie alone
in a bed of memories i crafted with care.
each tear i have shed drowning me over, and over, and over.
sounds of joy resonate in an empty eardrum.
sounds of joy impatiently waited for
and preferred without
me.
that's the time craved,
the time loved,
the time stroked and smoothed until a bitter shred of routine remains and my impact is
nothing.

there is no point in pretending like my nights were the best.
i know you longed for me to leave.
and you let me come on the most poisonous night
i have ever had.
if it wasn't on purpose, it was a lucky coincidence.
i haven't asked since.
it's gotten too late for me to belong with you.
i need to sleep now.

three hundred and sixty four days
later,
i still feel every effect of your choice.

after two days,
i stopped existing to you
the way you still existed to me.
in my head, that wasn't how it was meant to go,

but one week made me come to you
with a broken voice
to ask you
"what's happened?"
"things just changed, you just changed, you're acting like a *****."
"I'd rather be with anyone but you right now."
"I'd **** her."

three weeks, or four,
enough to make me see the malice within you.
my hatred was built
from humiliation and anger,
raised from a truth i never asked to hear.
"i had to think of someone else to.."

i should not have let you finish.
i should have hit you then and there.
but you finished, and i hit you.
i screamed and screamed and screamed and swore i would never let you touch me again.

i let blood fall from my wrists,
before i started to build myself back up.
one month made me stronger, as i laughed and danced my way
through hell.

two months
and it was over,
at last.
aided by friendly lips and familiar kisses,
i became who i am today
still torn apart by your choices,
but a little bit tougher despite.

3 months sent you back to me,
strength to keep promises
never being my forte.

5 months made me repeat all my pain with  
somebody else.
at least he had the ***** to fess up to how he felt.

7 months and a word was introduced to my character
by you.
a title i refuse to hold
and refuse to speak because
it is not true.

so now we sit here.
after eleven months and 30 days,
after fifty two weeks,
with me scared that this weekend will make you leave me
and next week will be the same hell it was last year.

there's so much you need to hear from me,
so much i have to do,
but i don't have the courage,
the strength,
the will,
or the ability to force it from my head.

because of you
and these fifty two weeks.

Justify to me
Why it’s ok to treat me
like a blow-up *** doll
and yet you treat her,
Your Friend, Who I Don’t Have To Worry About,
like a ******* queen.

Sometimes
I like to remind myself that
Before you were hers,
Before I belonged to any other friend,
We were each other’s,

A simple you and I.

mind, body, and soul.
mind,
body,
soul.
i tweak and i tinker,
i change my purebred instincts.
maybe this change,
maybe if i act like her,
or look like your fantasy,
or maybe when i can smile at myself in the mirror.
perhaps tomorrow you laugh at my joke.
perhaps you might stop being ashamed
to know me.
i hope.
it never works.
there will always be someone more than me.
someone who can say they are ok,
and mean it.
someone who is smooth, who smiles, who looks like all you
dream of.
someone who glows gold from deep within.

someone you can be proud to call yours.

you are a monster.
you ruined me forever.
you took the most
important
moment of my young life
and you trampled it into a ****** pulp.
tomorrow,
i will melt into your arms
like a snowball on a fire.
i will keep falling deeper and deeper...

i will love you like i should in the morning
but tonight i hate you.

in a hundred thousand lifetimes,
no one could feel how i felt for you.
even i never thought i could adore one so imperfect-
yet so full of heavenly glow.

it was a time long ago,
when sunlight ruled over my world.
the land was a bright shade of luminous gold,
and your heart spread my joy across our town.

you kissed me the way you kissed everyone,
passionless, desperate, ravenous.
a girl who adored you had her heart broken
for your revenge upon a friend.

we never spoke of that day.
you never looked me straight in the eye.
you forced me to watch you flirt with every single girl,
each one stinging a shred more than the last.

and then we hit a crescendo,
it stacked up before my eyes.
as my stomach hurt more every passing second,
you hurt me. you ruined me.

humiliation.
degradation.
suicide and lost hope.
my love poured out slowly from my broken skin.

i always get you back.
for more time now than we were on pause last year.
every day i feel you slip gently from my fingertips.
no one knows quite how much damage you caused.

pain is temporary,
i can say that with certainty.
hate lasts too little time to bother me.
loving you is permanent, no matter the pain.

on monday,
this monday,
i was told to shut the **** up
because no one cares.

i know that.
but i care
and sometimes,

its just good to talk.

it seems
the same time.
january was three,
five,
six,
eight,

ten months passed.

i still hide in june,
behind happier times.

no time has passed,
not really.
it's all a illusion

just a dream
i swear it.

summer hasn't ended,

never ever ever.


I'll wake up soon, right?

the warm spring
dwindles into summer
into school
into Halloween
pain
pain
PAIN

...

Christmas.

i know where you are today.
probably laughing somewhere without me,
while i make promises to a Friend.
she's probably there, making you happy.
her life isn't cracked like mine,
her smile is always real.
i know she's why you couldn't swear yourself to me.
it would be my fault if you left me tonight.
i'm just a little too broken to be loved anymore.

We are not ourselves, tonight.
Though we all laugh like usual,
And make conversation and merry jokes,
We look like we stepped out of a movie scene.
I enjoy all your companies, all your smiles.
You all remind me there is a world of good to experience yet.

Thank you.

Please just teach me how to love myself.

sometimes,
you cross my mind.
floating in a gentle path around my thoughts.
building a foundation for your stay in my soul.
loving what i do to you, but never who i am.
when you don't see me, you may adore me.
when we are together, you hold me by the neck and use me.
use me like i am,

yours.

No pain can compare to losing my prettiest prize.
My hands still begging you to let them run down your torso.
I still remember what you taste like, every single drop of your purest essence.
I left my mark on your psyche, and you left yours on my chest.
You made me promises I still want you to fulfill.
I need those feelings you swore that I’d get.
I’m no fool, I’m no quitter.
There’s every part of you that still loves my soft lips and pretty eyes.
Down below my emotional oceanic messy state,
there lies a stupid girl who still wants to feel your body under mine.

So I know I haven't brought this up but,
You broke my heart.
And I know I made mistakes,
And I know I can't expect you to want me in the same way again
But I need you to explain what happened that night.
I know you kissed her, but why did you keep it from me?
I know you're with her, but you never decided to stop being with Me.
What was I for you? A settlement?
It's not the first time you tried to leave, but you told me last time.
I will never be quite enough for you,
All by your own fault, I am afraid.
So you walked her home, and you held her the way you hold me.
You touched your lips to hers just the way I showed you.
I am your maker, you are mine.
I molded you into a boy too perfect for my trauma.
Just right for her. Just right for her humor and her mind.
If it is all a ploy to make me want you,
Then it is working. But it is cruel.
And you are not cruel.
And because you are so genuine and so selfless
I know you really, really love her.
I know it too well,
My one.
You were made just for me,
So I thought you were mine.

guess i was wrong.

I wouldn't hurt so much if you had told me first.
Common decency seems hard to come by these days.
The hardest thing, I think, is having to pretend like every time I hear her name paired with yours,
My heart doesn't implode just a tiny bit further.
'I love you' would be a ***** lie.
I adore you, through and through.
I would hold your hand as you led me through the darkest pits of Hell,
Or maybe just a little too far off the beaten track of the woods.
Catching your eye across the room gives me an empty pain, which has replaced the rushing thrill you gave to me before.
When we talk, you drop the loving notes that used to precede our 'Goodnights'.
You pretend like we never happened.
You pretend like you didn't leave me stranded in the woods.

You pretend you don't love me anymore,
Liar.

Words turned to text turned to twenty minutes of waiting.
If you were asking, you should’ve been clearer.
One word and I would show it all to you.
Now your goodnight wishes have become empty space.
Half-finished conversations haunt me.

I’m sorry I tried to talk.

Passion alludes me further.
On single beds in cold afternoons I bare my half to try again, and again, and again.
The fear and the physicality hold me back each time.
I’m used to it by now,
You’ll leave me once more in the morning.

She is your girlfriend,
I know I could never be
Quite that much to you.

View my sadness,
Now.
I promise it’s free.
See my badly-crafted branches twist into the dim sky, floating in the limbo.
See my dark mornings, my eyes fused shut in protest. Never allowed to spend a second on pause.
See my love walk away from me to someone who can always give more, everyone could be more than me.
See my inadequacy, my average ability, my torturous boring brain and impatient anger and selfish need for victory and jealously and judgement and misery and

I drift. No one’s favourite. Ever.

View my sadness,
Now.
I promise it’s free.

Hating you both would be easier than acting like I just don’t care.
I don’t think breaking down would change your mind, even if I cried until tears drowned us, and you would still look at me in disgust.
It’s all I want to do though.

Hearing her name reminds me how little I am compared to her, how much more she glows.
I don’t have humour like she always has.
I’m not as tall or as appealing.
I am just an embodiment of discontent, never happy with less than a victory.
I will be in your way, until I can’t see the beauty in your eyes.

I should hate you for more reasons, for being my ruin and yet never having to look god in the eye for what you did.
I cannot. I never could.

I don’t even want to kiss you.
I just want your body holding mine.
I just want your body holding mine.
I don’t even want to kiss you.
I just want your body holding mine.

If I was allowed to scream, I would.

But I made no promises.

Today you spoke to me four times.
Whispering in a silent hall.
Telling me someone put a hole in our wall.
Clicking my thumbs, which made me feel free just from the grip of your hands.
And smiling at me, just smiling, as you walked away from me.

I think it’s a new record.
At least you finally touched me.

Silly boys, for not seeing what I’m worth.
Leave me if you want, it doesn’t matter, I’ll get you back in the end.
Yes, yes, I know I can’t be your girlfriend. I know I’m not a scratch on your girlfriend.
I don’t mind that.
Silly boys, thinking they’re all I want.

Silly boys, making me cry all weekend.
But so what? Penny told me she’s a ****, so you’ll probably come back.
I’m a ****, though. You know it too.
Did you not see my eyes begging you to stay inside?
Did you not think of me?
Silly boys, forgetting I still feel.

Silly boys.
Beautiful boys,
My shining stars that give me purpose.
I can’t promise myself to you. You know I can’t promise anything.
I tell you, all the time, that I love you, that you’re brilliant, amazing, perfect, pretty.
Am I not enough, though?
Silly boys, you are enough for me.

I haven’t had any trouble getting to paradise as of late.
I am always tired, I am always ready for bed.
For the last week, he has come to me each night, taunting me with his words differently every day.

One day he comes to me, on a dark night behind our old school.
There’s a fence I’ve never seen, and a building that’s too far from the path.
I feel him so close- like I never do in life. He is close enough to **** me with one word, and yet he presses his lips to mine instead.
****. If only he could treat me so well.

The next night, though, I have fears he doesn’t even want to know me.
There was... a party.
His birthday, I think.
He told me it would be best if I stayed home, escape the awkwardness, you know?
But I went. I went at 2pm.
There was smoke, there were people- people who don’t know me.
I think he was angry.

I woke up.

Get out of my dreams,
Get out of my head.
You will never love me in real life,
Please stop loving me from my bed.

I dreamt up a world,
Full of bright lights and warm nights.
Beacons amongst blue oceans and green fields.
I dream of you, stranger.
I dream of the day you will hold me in painted hands and smear your love down my body.
I would be so young- so impossible- but still waiting for you by the beach.
If I pour my future away waiting to be whisked into my fairy tale,
You would never even know.
I have only seen you through glass, through bright blinking lights and colourful screams.
You say you always fall in love, I need it to be me next time.

This dream carries on, and I fall into my routine of boredom and heavy eyes before I see you.
The blinding purple, the glowing blue under desert skies, the neon pink that lights up my heart.
Yet I am just a schoolgirl, staring at cloudy skies in the early morning, imagining my impossible world where all I want comes to be.
The pain carries on, and you with it.

How may I know you?
In fleeting glances,
When you catch my eye from across a dark room.
Blue lanterns in the darkness, making contact with my own greying eyes.
You don’t know my sadness or my tears, or even my gentle rage.
I know your sighs and exhaustion like your pretty little laugh.
I crave your touch and your smiles for me, and me alone.
I go after your friends and you stay oblivious, living in the bubble I want to burst.
See me, please.
Just once.

The semi-colon represents a break; The semi-colon represents her life.
The full stop represents the end.

Oh...
It is so complicated around you.
Never mind why, but I just want to feel your fingertips gracing my legs.
My cold daydreams of you take me from my work,
As your image weaves through my neurones, falsifying our memories.
I can see your tanned fingers gripping a counter- a counter I’ve never seen before- a hand I choose to focus on little.
You played with me from across a room, watching me through red lights.
When you make a split instant of eye contact, I feel everything within me GLOW.
My god, you make me shut up.
I lose all ability to speak when I see your face.
I’ve been so in love with you for so long.
It’s infuriating, how I don’t even know how to talk to you.
PLEASE,
Text me, snap me, hear my silence.
Say one word to me before we go our own ways.

A look over your shoulder,
After a promise so strong.
When you kissed me from below,
And smiled, while walking into the rain.
I see it all crash down.
A blaze so much more hidden than before.
Why weren’t you happy with simply me?
If you’d just gotten over your need to please yourself.
I was always there.
I was always waiting.
You had me before you had her and yet she gets to outstay my welcome.
I can cry into your shoulder,
And stain your whites into black.
You can hold my face and say you still love me,
You still want me,
You still will be there for me.
You give me a hope I will lean on,
And wait for the day when you are alone.
It is cruel, when you can’t promise.
It’s eating me from the inside out.
You didn’t do the right thing before,
Why do you have to start now?

Seeing you now, after two long years, feels like staring into the eyes of a ghost.
I wonder why you walk alone, you mustn’t wonder the same of me.
We grew up, grew apart, I grew out of all we shared.
I grew into your ex boyfriends and best friends, I still bring you up sometimes.
Do you know I am the only one left?
Of our little group, popular only with each other, I am all that stuck around.
Walking past you on the street, the ghosts of our memories haunt my brain.
The happiness seeps through my cracks, and I feel young at heart again.

But you never catch my eye.

The sun rises eastward, as always.
It sets after its bold curve of the sky, burying itself under the West horizon, painting pink streaks through the clouds.
If I were to leave, if I were to vanish, the sun would still illuminate your smile on summer days, and leave you in romantic darkness on autumn evenings.

If I stopped existing, your life would cease to change.
I would remove my petty mind and heartbroken hands from your body, you would feel no pain from my removal, just a sigh as a heavy weight falls from your shoulders.

If I moved away in the future, if I left to achieve my dreams, you would forget me, soon enough.
A call once a week becomes a text once a year, as I celebrate with people who could never replace you.
So why is it so different if I simply go now?

If I fell from grace again, if my name meant sin in your mouth, I am sure you would be glad to see me out.
Your name breeds happiness to all who know it’s power.
Why would you want to be ruined by association?

When I stop existing, a tear may be shed.
In ten years my only memory will be a stone slab in a field.
A statistic to be sad about, but no real human lies beneath.

When I stop existing, the sun will still rise in the east, it will still set in the West.
Why should I stay when no one wants me around?

Blonde in hair and face,
Eyes glowing like the skies above our heads.
In a tired morning, I am in your presence as you sigh.
All I need is to throw my arms around you and hold you until the ground falls away around us.
I just listen,
listen to your pain because I hope it can be mine too.
The deep red lines across my skin don’t matter to you, sweetheart,
But I hope my smile chimes a sweet chord somewhere within.
Yours most certainly lights up my heart.
When your eyes meet mine, my sun starved soul glows in ultraviolet glory.
I don’t know how to get you,
I don’t know what I should say.
So I wait, all year long, until you leave me as well.