When I open the door again I will find
that nothing awaits me. In my mind
the fires of hell are quelled in a flood
sent by impossibility, reeking of blood.

I will see no longer a reflection, I will cast
no longer a shadow, I will take the past
by his throat and the future by her neck
and I will drown them in a tide of black.

Clothed in the skin of time, I meekly revel
in my loss of sight. However far the travel
presents itself, I have known that twisted path
will wind back to the beginning in wrath.

I am my own torturer, but I cannot yield.
I huddle not in fear, but in a tall grass field
where I am but a stalk in the wind,
and I am just a sock in the lint.

But even with my eyes closed, I know
the hallway will never empty. A dim glow
from beneath my door comes as a warning -
I cannot escape what has always been coming.

The monster lies not under my bed but
just beyond my door, the threat of knowing,
the risk of being, the consequence of hoping
will always, always make the deepest cut.

Then I might not have to hide my tears in the space between the wall and the bed.

One day the world will look kinder upon us,
and when the wind takes the ash by the hand
and sweeps it into uncertain horizons,
they will see that I have taken the fire they set

and made her my own child. I whisper to her
that she does not hurt me, that even the sunrises
on the horizon covet her colour. I remind her
that wounds are opened in anger but burns are
borne of grit and hope, the unwanted spawn
of pain and desire scarring itself into a dance
of fire and flame.

Then I might not have to hide my love in the space between my shadow and yours.

in a cosmically laughable accident,
he is born in disorder, created in discord
sent off in a journey he does not understand
but he is already on his way

he can’t stop spinning, unbalanced, unsteady
but there is a path they tell him to take, and
there is a destination he has to reach, and so
he must join the race

and when he tries to breathe like they ask him to,
he suffocates in his own atmosphere,
and everything that once lived within the wells
and dwelled within the rafters,
they had to leave.

but he knows he will never be as beautiful
as the ones who mark the darkness in their
unending pursuit, he will never be as swift,
he will never be angled right, he is too slow
and too small and too weak and

as he misses his entry into orbit,
he realises he never knew why he was born,
nor why he lived, nor why he was dying, but he
hopes that if they couldn’t notice a dying star,
perhaps they might at least remember its absence

and maybe, just maybe, they’d give him a name.

I watch as the droplet eases itself
down from the wound, into a strip of paper,
scarlet on crimson. some might call it a stain,
but this is no mistake, I will fold myself
in, like blush on cheek, I will make it look real.

is it pathetic to imitate what we can never achieve?
the night sky gloats in silent mockery. the trail of
her dress drags along my dry eyes, and she burns
a hole for every jewel I cannot reach.

is it a sin to covet a sin? my fingers run along
the grooves of my carved pupils, and I can't
remember anything aside from the warmth
of a star in another orbit.

I fold my three hundred and fifty second paper star.
Does the moon believe that these are her children too?
Or are my paper cuts for naught? One day, I know
the paper will be skin and the star will be a sun.

but until then I will bleed, and until then
I will have to suffice with a constellation of scars
that glow in the dark on my ceiling.

she covers my eyes, and not even light
dares to slip through her fingers.
she tells me to look harder, deeper
and she whispers sweet everythings
and suddenly the void she has gifted me
seeps through my eyelids and
leaks into my sockets, and I see
everything I have ever wanted.

she holds my hand like no one else has,
palm to palm, and she whispers empty rhythms,
psalm to psalm, the ghost of a dream resting
its head against my chest, bated breath,
vapours of impossibility, tickling, fooling me.
her fingertips bite into the soft flesh, but
the only pain I feel is her/my hand around my/her neck.

when illusions collide, do they fall further into delusion?
or are they decapitated by reality?

they call her helplessness,
I call her finality,
and she tells me she is mine,
but I know I am hers.