Staring, casually, with equal amounts of obsession and gazing away,
Foot tapping under desks, with measured patience,
Eyes trailing over long hair and glasses,
Asking if she got the glasses fixed,
Smiling when she replies, and a conversation is struck.

Ignoring the books, a delicate balance of work and talk,
Laughing and remembering why she like her,
Spinning puns and irony into dark humour with a twist,
And perhaps staring at her lips too long.

Watching aimlessly as they part ways,
Her walking sedately off to other friends,
Trying not to stare too long as she leaves,
And look like a lovesick puppy.

Sitting on the bus alone,
Staring outside the window, breath puffing against it,
Missing the time they shared a bus,
Spoke every day in sync,
And now seemed years apart.

Her heart catches in their throat,
As she smiles at it is radiant,
Cheeky perhaps, with a half cynical tilt to her lips,
Just just as alluring.

Invisible love,
I have conjured you from conjecture,
Have twirled your image in my sated mind,
Have gasped mercury down your incorporeal cheeks.

You are fathomless,
Are infallible and mysterious,
All gentle curls and loving smiles,
Eating away at my cursed imperfection.

Invisible love,
I long to see you once more,
To pull your ghostly presence to my side,
And sing you gentle lulllabies.

You are a child,
And aged wine,
Tasting like smoken ham,
And buttered impossibilities.

Invisible love,
I would lead you to the cinema,
Point fingers at those invisible friends of yours,
Whisper sweet nothings of your desires.

Love,
For you do love me,
May you be mine or not,
Twisted symphony of mine mind,
I will always treat you so,
As if you were true.

Truly there.

I close my eyes and waterfalls crash upon my shoulders,
Building the pressures of those burning buildings,
The screams within from the unlucky souls,
Fiddling twisted tales into acerbic tunes of their fates,
Gluing my hand to the rudder of that crashing ship,
The sun burns in blame, branding my body ablaze with the words,
The red stain of blood upon my bleached skin, until I burn with them,
My mind catches alight, singing mournful songs of fallen grace,
Eyes pierce my flesh like guilty knives, twisting wounds that are yet to be made,
I can only lie there while the jury makes their call,
Hands out, arms straight, shoulders curved, nails shoved clean through,
I lie for crucifixion willingly, holding my naked body to the accusing stares,
Let them tear my to shreds, my love, for only then will I be baptised,
Ants make nests in the tunnels of my ears, digging deep into the toxic soil of my mind,
I fear for their lives as they try to crawl out from the darkness,
I fear for the blackness pooling in my gut like subtle mercury, moonlight translated to the waist,
Burst, it calls out, burst until your flesh eats itself and all is left is dust and footsteps,
Let the leeching breath that curses you out, and the new day in,
Let them in, my love, let them in so that you may leave.

I close my eyes and sunsets blaze behind me, forever in a cycle of night and day,
The night captures the falling sun as it falls, leaking out black grappling hooks to pull it in,
I close my eyes as the explosion rings bells in my ears, disrupting the ant colonies,
I walk away, letting things drift out of my own skin until I am sleeping, body marked by the blame,'
Howls paint the hillside grey with indecision, howls of grief, howls of pain,
We all howl for the moon to rise and day to let us rest,
We all wait for tomorrow to take us into its arms, father holding us again like a babe,
Rockfalls roll down the cliff, negligent and searching with wide eyes for a place to land,
Some blame the rocks for falling and landing where they weren't fated to,
Others blame the footsteps from the girl above, who caused the rocks to fall.

Her heart played like a lyric,
A single note and tone,
Thumping against her chest in torturous musicality,
Twisting around syllables and meanings,
Cooing to injured birds and children like mothers,
Thrumming in time with the strings.

It was brittle and smooth,
Still and moving,
Felt hot and heavy in her hands,
Brought tears to her eyes,
That burnt down her cheeks hotly,
...And made her feel once again.

Love,
What an ominous and infinite word,
Her heart played like a lyric,
And that lyric was from a love song,
Curled in angelic symphony,
And always waiting for the other chord to hit,
Like destiny.

She danced to her own soothing sound,
Humming madly to nothingness as if she were born to,
And held on to sound,
As if she were back in her mother's womb,
Happy then like she was there,
To hear the same inherited soothing note.

Her heart was a thief,
Pulled words from her soul without precedence or apology,
Trailed subtle blissful fingertips down her sculpted and aching jaw,
As she sung for hours,
To please her hungry heart,
Which she loved with heartfelt narcissism...

But never could quench the thirst for more.

She felt whispered embraces,
Pooled hotly around her ear and she shivered,
Lips quivering into a shaky smile,
Eyes wet and watered from pent up sadness,
And bitter love tasting like sweet dark chocolate.

Soothing hands held her tight,
Pulled her up against a firm chest,
And she let herself fall to pieces,
Revealing her soft tender and red raw flesh underneath,
She was not brittle and strong on the inside,
But broken and deviously fake.

Sunlight, she begged, was warmer than the moon,
Which somehow didn't make sense,
It did not explain how she so warm when she ran in the starlight,
Skin tingled with icy winds,
Jumper pulled flat and taught around her body,
Eyes dry and itchy from the biting breeze.

Love trickled like gentle lapping waves against her chest,
Coiling her stomach in a vipers nest,
And she blushed a deep scarlet at those compliments,
Burning brightly like a sun that had not yet been quenched,
Hugging arms tight in reminiscence of gentle hugs,
Trailing fingers down her neck in soothing remembrance.

She wasn't alone always, she could now say, not always.

Fleeting,
Its all so fleeting,
Whizzing past on slim fitting wings,
Buzzing away as quick as a bee,
Shooting off like a rocket,
And you cannot truly see it until it is gone,
Just in memories or nightmares,
Of things you love,
But didn't love enough,
And can only hold onto the hope that it will return.
Happiness,
Moves on so fast,
At the whim of a comment or stare,
At the flick of a thought of the tip of a tongue,
So heavenly and cruel,
Too fast and invisible,
And you barely know it is gone until you miss it,
And are crying.
Love,
Moves along such as anything else,
Let it be a day,
A year,
A decade,
A lifetime,
It ends just as anything does,
At the cruel smile of another,
Or tears of apology and forgiveness,
Love is immeasurable,
But so longed for,
For to be loved is to be wanted like nothing before,
To be addicted,
Obsessed,
But allowed to do such.
Time,
Passes just as oceans and rocks do,
Burned back or blown away with the sands of time,
Wearing away at us all,
Rusting buildings and lives,
Creating and destroying in an eternal cycle,
And eventually time will pass to,
Heart beats will all stop,
The breaths will end soundlessly,
The wind will no longer blow,

And there will be nothing.

Silence pounded thick and humid upon his skin,
His pores leaked heavy sweat as he panted with the consuming dread,
It screeched docile and corrosive lyrics in his head,
The level and taunting thump of those phantom memories,
Sweeping gentle and iced fingers across his burning throat.

Black, his eyes closed and he was plummeted into the dark,
It surrounded him on all sides, shouting melodies upon his closed lips,
Sweaty hands grabbed at his shirt and tried to pull him under,
The crocodile in the corner of the pond leapt out at him like a frog,
All green scales and hungry eyes, beckoning him to the water.

Denial burned his eyes black until he was blind and crying like a newborn,
Hoarse and broken sobs left his mouth like cries for help,
He tore at his hair as truths and twisted fates begged him closer to the edge,
Childish fingers and stubbed nails scratching at his ankles, leaving goosebumps like warning notes,
Bumbling officers of protection fled the crime scene of his shattered psyche.

It was porcelain, fake, too thin and too fragile,
His crystal city was crashing down with the force of an earthquake,
Lives cracked in two like that broken heart chocolate wreath that hung on his door three months early,
Blue tinted lips let out a breathy sigh of defeat as his eyes bled closed,
He gazed upon the rising sun like it was his enemy.

Lies.

I am an eclair,
With brittle thin chocolate on the outside,
A hard layer of lies that takes little to penetrate,
Followed by fluffy cake beneath,
Soft to mould and ruin with words and teeth,
Following is my inner cream,
My turmoil of delicious darkness,
Liquid courage sliding through my fingertips,
Always out of my grip,
And the soft taste of defeat on my tongue,
As I hit that creamy centre,
Biting away at myself,
Until there is nothing left but breadcrumbs,
And sticky fingers.

I wash it down with passionfruit juice,
Because the tang offsets the misery.

It is a four wheeled vehicle,
With sharp edges and soft seats,
Turning perpetually until the gas runs low,
The lights dim,
And the ceiling droops in despair.

Hands trace steamed windows,
Drawing stick figures and love hearts in the snow swept smoke,
Dotting 'i's in elegant script,
Tracing 'I love you' with insincere infatuation,
Puffing breath against the window...

So the hand-print of the one you love remains.

Cherry Blossoms bloom,
Fleeting and beautiful, gliding gently from the branches,
Pink curls softly drifting to the ground,
Velvet and salmon as they fall, clean and soft,
Only to land in muddied puddles.

They dance in the subtle moonlight,
Chins and smiles twirling with their hands,
Eyes sparkling with rain and tears,
Lips wetted from midnight kisses,
Fingers warm from interlaced palms and digits.

Summer mist pools around springtime hope,
Pulling large trees from the ground for them to walk under,
Cooing birds into life, spilling water down streams and into softly traced lips,
Shimmering under the surface,
A clearing of all that had been taken that Winter.

They part ways on a harsh Autumn's evening,
Leaves shedding like skin from the canopy,
Rain pounding with a bullet's finesse,
Puddles murky and grey from cigarette smoke,

Eyes dark and solemn.

“Goodbye my love”

She held out a dainty hand,
Long dainty thinned and perched fingers filtering sunlight,
Shadows danced across the ground, twirling in the evening rays,
She looked out upon the horizon,
Staring at the magnificence that was the sun.

She had spied it a thousand times,
A thousand mornings every morning,
Trying to find something beautiful in her broken world,
To see the orange glow bleed through the trees so gloriously,
And to try and remember it for when she fell.

This day had seemed impossible all those months before,
When she had drowned,
Toppled down, patted in mud and grime,
Looking up from the well,
Trying to see out of the darkness that had consumed her.

Back then only thoughts of change and time had sated her,
Had paused her rein of terror,
Of pounding thoughts upon her thin ***** skull,
Drumming upon it like a redundant beat,
So repetitive and meaningless.

Her stance bowed ever so slightly forward in defiance,
In the holding of her breath,
And she gazed out from the hill,
Out into the sunlight,
No longer with the heavy want to jump.

She had waited endlessly for this day,
For this torturous frightening day,
When she could finally smile with truth,
Eyes shining with hope,
And look upon a new dawn.

She had waited for the darkness to end,
It had blown away with a subtle and elegant wave of a hand,
Barely noticeable, but oh so delightful,
For she was now freed from the chains that held her down,
Even if she knew it would come back,
For now was enough.

Cheese,
What do you want from me?
You sticky mouldy piece of flavour,
Literal illness conjectured into 'food',
Don't try to fool me with your pretty wrappers,
Tied in a bow of plastic and laudable fashion,
Cheddar, so generic I can barely taste it,
Mozzarella, like plastic blobs of mucus I strive to avoid,
Parmazon, so snooty, hair tied back, eyes dark and elegant.

Cheese,
You are the devil,
Dressed in white and smelly creams,
Topped as some sort of ostentatious filler,
I hope you burn in that oven,
Hope your skin melts in agony,
Until you have sullied my lunch,
And I have reason to sneer and throw you away.

What self respecting food group has holes?

Its just abysmal.

Some hold curses on their tongues,
Tight with stiff and achy arms around their waists,
Hugging themselves until they can't breathe and can only smile,
Eyes twinkling in uncertain inane gestures.

They aspire to think that two colours means two perspectives,
Equal sight from varied shades,
One blue, soft like the ocean, a reflection of the darkened sky,
One green, the colour of ripe apples and fresh air.
They see the world through tinted glasses,
Not red from a rose, believing lands to be green and sunlit,
Nor ***** grey like blooming storm clouds, perishing thoughts of joy,
A tinge of green and blue, calm and chaos, forever entwined in ying and yang.

Anarchy reins as an agent of peace, twisted in its convolution,
The more laid waste the more spared for time to come,
Chaos sits on their throne, eyes sparkling with insight,
Clothes ablaze in a fury matched only by that of a grieving mother.
It is the only predisposition that the world shall change,
Colours ever moving and mixing on the canvas of life,
Beauty melding to disgust, hate twirling to love, more declining to less,
A world is not a world without father Chaos at the helm, steering ships into rocky harbours.

What's the point of a film with no explosion at the end?

You have been still for so long,
Too long,
Your muscles are stiff and unforgiving,
Heart slowed almost to a stop,
Eyes closed to keep them wet,
Throat parched and burning from the sun.

Your arms hang out as branches,
Catching rain and falling leaves as things drift down from the endless sky,
You see butterflies making nests in your hair,
Settling down on the flowers growing from the moss and dirt,
You can feel them, soft, delicate and leeching,
The pitter of their tiny feet on your brittle nose.

Your mind has drifted,
From today, to tomorrow, to hours, to galaxies far away,
Your heart beat is the only way to tell the time,
Night and day has abandoned you.
Friends and lost ancestors no longer visit your grave,
No longer plant flowers on your skin,
And you are alone and empty once more.

You stare,
Mesmerised,
With eyes that have not opened for years,
At the lone blue bird settled on your neck,
You wonder absently,
A buzzing at the back of your ears,
If the blue bird will hurt you,
You remember reading centuries ago that blue birds were carnivores,
Would you be baby food soon,
Would that be better than soft stone skin.

Its wings flutter with unearned grace,
As if it were born to fly,
And did not even have to try,
Like those people born happy,
With no trouble,
And you had thought they were only myths carved by wishers.
The bright stark blue clashes against your mossy green fingertips,
Its feathers ruffle in the faint wind you can no longer feel,
And the warmth of its beating heart makes tears pound at your eyelids.

You have not cried in millennia,
It seems,
But the bird is so beautiful.

Sunlight pours through open leaves above you,
The forest has grown heavy around you,
Rainfall no longer pools like icy seas around your toes,
The rain is eaten harshly by the soft soil,
A paradox of lift and drop, condense and fall,
You wonder if you have become part of the cycle,
Or if you are breaking it.

You can feel the stars watching you,
Burning bright suns spinning in infinity,
Shedding light upon darkness,
Even to your corner of the woods,
With solemn eyes and stiffened smiles,
They pity you,
For even they do not last for eternity.

The body sneers in hatred,
Girl, she is always hurting it,
Pulling it this way and that,
Cutting hair off like limbs,
Scratching marks into the functional skin,
Leaving the stomach empty for the cold to get in,
Pinching skin and chewing lips,
Girl makes the body look like a circus act,
A crudely drawn picture littered with cuts,
Face splotched with make up,
Girl is beautiful, the body can tell,
But Girl lies to herself,
And refuses to believe the truth in front of her,
Blandly pasted on her skin like a brand,
BEAUTIFUL, even the body can read it,
Scowling as the walls rumble in starvation,
Skin itches from melted candle wax,
And eyes burn from staring at the sun.

The sun is not as beautiful as Girl,
The body does not understand why she stares so long,
The only reason can be stupidity,
And Girl is not stupid,
No matter how many times she says she is,
The body knows the truth,
Sees the intelligence behind her eyes,
Curled despair around her wrists,
Trailing up her shoulders and through her hair,
Like searching hands,
The body can feel the phantom hands,
Scratching like pins on the skin,
Drawing blood with the ghostly presence,
The body does not remember the hands,
The body had healed from it.

Only Girl remembered,
And knew her reasoning,
For the flat torso and scratched skin.

He crunches fragile fingers on brittle panes,
Eyes wide and glassy, nose flaring at the smell of blood,
He tells himself he does not do it for the pain,
No, he begs, he does it for the colour.

A crimson dark red that he can find in nothing but blood,
He paints with it, large murals of torturous beauty,
Portraits of forgotten loves and most brutal enemies,
All traced with the gorgeous acrylic, eyes deep with the brutality of raw blood.

He is a criminal, an agent of deception under his own skin,
He is a cliché, forged from misperceptions and guilt he tries not to read into,
Dark hair falls in knots, thick with dried blood just like him,
Thick with blood, waiting to be dried.

He smells the metallic paint on his skin,
Tinged with iron and red rusted mistrust,
Unbelievable in its simplicity,
Blood, plain and simple, straight from the source.

Anger, it boiled under her skin like a furnace,
Blisters bloomed like flowers in crystal moonlight,
White pustules of burgeoning desire,
The desire, pulsing white hot behind her eyes,
Hate swirling in the depths of her soul,
Heart pounding as her dreams pulled thoughts of destruction.

So small, and innocent, and they had never done anything to her,
Pumping, day in, day out, taunting her with that sound,
Metronome, tick tock tick tock, her time was running out so...
Why bother?
Hate, flashed, fast furious and ugly in her lungs,
And she choked on it, words coming out jumbled,
A red flush bleeding across her cheeks in reparations,
Those voices in her heads, so cruel and wanting.

Guilt undulated like a smirking nemesis,
Laughing as she fell down down off into the deep,
Plummeting off the edge of the waterfall,
Clothes pulled tight against her bones, just like her skin, so tight,
Fragile,
Easy,
So easy
It would be so easy,
Hate roared in her veins once more, taking hostage the pounding of her heart.

Fear, easy to grasp, hard to get rid of, drenched her in cold sweat,
Drew pleading gasps from her torn lips,
Torn, like skin, pulled sharp and ragged, from her teeth,
Always talking, always biting she was, mellifluous words of torment,
They spilled like heavenly gospel from her bleeding lips,
Smearing ugly and smelly shame across her belly,
So easy to let it fill her, so simple to let it consume her.

But she fought.

For she would hate to let it win.

She is at war with many things,
Too many to relay,
But her arch nemesis is of course herself,
The inner being that hisses insults in her ear,
The raven that claws at her insides,
Making her stomach turn in anxiety,
And her head pound in fear.

Sometimes she think she is a vessel,
Not a vessel for the gods of a vessel taken by a demon,
Simply a vessel, trapping the truth inside,
A slick skin which looks so realistic, tied all around her like binding ropes, that people believe her to be real,
Even when Inner Her is screaming out in pain,
And Outer Her believes the skin to be too tight, and brings up a pin.

Inner Her is not kind nor sweet,
She is judgemental, selfish and filled to the brim with toxic self hate,
But she supposes she has trapped her honesty in a web of lies,
So it is only right to hate herself.

Doubt is a slimy liquid poured onto her skull and into her eyes,
She thinks it smells too nice to get rid of,
And perhaps that was a lie too,
And perhaps Inner Her was banding on her ribcage, just below where her heart rests,
Screaming in righteous resentment “I hate you” over and over,
Like a song's chorus she cannot help but hum to.

She goes to the beach,
The sand cool between her toes,
Wind howling in early morning protest,
She smiles when a jogger passes her and smiles,
They smile back,
Inner Her rocks back and forth in insanity,
A thought coursing like poison through her veins “Can they see me?”

Both of them have become invisible with time,
Their skin flayed thin until it doesn't exist,
Hair pulled away from many nights trying to steady herself,
Bones crumpled under the weight of her incoming mortality,
Eyes hollowed with restlessness.

For there is no sleep for the walking dead.

Inner Her laughs,
A big mad cackle that stretches over mountains and down into animal burrows,
She points a finger held out as a weapon,
Laughing with no humour,
Only burgeoning and treasured insanity.

She has done it,
Finally.
And now Inner Her rests on the flesh of her dead enemy,
...skin and bones blown with the wind,
joining the sands of time to an eternity of darkness.

Outer Her was fallen.

Addiction,
Oh how she longed for addiction,
that she could understand,
Like a gentle tap on the door,
A little ring in her head,
A buzzing in the back of her throat,
Reminding her it was time to sink lower,
Down into the pits of her own damnation.

Addiction,
She would prosper compared to this,
She would fly,
Wings out like telescopes cataloguing the night skies,
Pain was only a replacement,
A repression of her bottled sins,
A soul deep binding that kept her Outer Her from going nuclear.

Addiction,
If only she could let herself go back,
Take steps back down the staircase and away from heaven,
Climb down into the well and huddle in the bone deep chill of that water,
Iced veins, burning under her skin,
That peculiar smile on her face..

The distraction,
Like triple rainbows from a school bus seat,
All the children turn their heads in wonder,
Eyes wide in innocence and joy,
Sweeping away from their little lives to witness that majesty,
And her,
Lying,
Crying,
Dying,
Drowning,
In that bed of hers,
Sheets seeping into her skin and biting cramps at her limbs,
And her fingernails,
Sharp enough to hurt and pull her mind away from dark alleys and harsh truths.

It was not a world of infinity,
Not a world she could escape by regular means,
And it pained her everyday to be reminded,
It ached in the pit of that tomb of snakes, writhing around in her stomach,
Smelt of ash and soon-to-be-lit matchsticks,
Phosphate, red, burning, like the sun,
And her, with skin, as soft and white as the curtains going up in flames,
Eyes wide and begging for something else to look at,
A summer snowstorm out the window perhaps,
Anything but the digging thorns of truth that tightened around her throat like a noose.

Anything but those thoughts,
Of how sharp her fingernails are,
And how locked her door is,
And how small she is compared to the majesty of the world,
Glorious and frightening.

Anything but how easy it could be.

Ants are crawling up my arms,
Biting and squirming like a second skin,
Pulling my heart from my chest in frantic tones,
Eating at my organs like leeches and beasts.

They squabble with one another,
Fight over who gets the fingers and toes,
Bring chills down my spine regardless of the donned layers,
Itch at my scalp just waiting for me to pull my hair.

I glare at them,
But am pliant and suave,
Simply lying there,
Letting them take control.

Am I nothing but a planet?
A hill for them to rest upon,
And eat,
And survive,
At least I serve a purpose for these ants.

I long for them gone,
And know if I stand they would fall,
But do not,
For uncertainty and lead in my limbs weigh me down.

The ground stares harshly up at me,
Whispers of grass ruffled spitting insults to my coiling stomach,
I see the ants crawl away,
If only for a moment,

And I miss them.

She stares into the abyss.
Lungs battling with mighty gales,
Eyes open wide and stinging from the spitting rain,
On one foot, balanced, teetering ever so slightly over the edge,
She has looked,
Has gazed upon the ultimate evil and ultimate peace,
Believing to be safe on her side of the cliff top,
Not concerned when the inky black talons of eternity sink into her skin like knives,
She thinks she will fall one day,
One day when her foot does not grip as harshly to the side,
And she is scared too,
Terrified,
But knows she would also be relieved,
For she would have an answer, finally.

What is out there, over the edge?

Home

The taste of granite flushed her mouth,
Felt like brittle sand between her teeth,
And she grimaced harshly,
Blaming the crust on her teeth for her situation.
Her knuckles cracked as she pulled her hands into fighting fists,
Her heart beat sung cruelly in her ears as she stared,
Black eyes dancing in unanswered danger,
At the large looming presence in front of her.

She could die,
Truly die, splat, gone, disappeared,
Wind howling with her absence,
Never to be seen again.
And she didn't know how to feel about that,
Was undecided,
Twisted and curled and gnarled in darkened thoughts,
Couldn't quite wrap her fragile mind around reality.

She was walking,
Back and force, pacing with side stepped tracked expectancy,
Eyelashes swaying like whiskers in the wind,
Cold eyes opened and ready to see the end, the coast to her city.
Her feet clacked like a horse's hoof beneath her,
Her shoes, never cleaned, smelt quite similar to a horse too,
Musty, sweaty, *****, filled with unleashed stench,
But she did not plug her nose.

The smell was hers to disgust on,
She embraced it.

She tucked stray hairs behind her angled and alert ears,
Letting calloused and shredded hands do such a gentle action seemed wrong,
As if they only mimed the part they were meant to fit,
Even though they had been her hands for as long as her hands existed.
Her eyes raised slowly, in key with the slow moving sunrise,
She gazed in mesmerised and petrified wonder,
At the unveiling scene of terrified beauty before her,
It didn't seem real.

She dropped her arms in shock and amazement,
The two falling tactlessly beside her sides with the agility of a ragdoll,
She found herself walking on slightly bent legs,
Towards the glorious picture.
A child, no older than four,
Demon eyes the colour of the blood,
And silver hair the colour of the moon's reflection on the sea,
Lifted out a curious arm with gentle innocence.

The child was not normal,
Though neither was she with her black eyes and doomed expression,
They fitted together, their palms folding like two clashing pieces, and slotted seamlessly,
She had thought her hands would fall off if they ever touched another.

Why was this boy so special,
And why did she not hate him for it?

She lifted him into her arms with a maternal grace she had never understood,
Tugged him close until his small plump face rested on her clothed chest,
Could hear his gentle and fragile heartbeat thumping softly against her squished torso,
Banging harmlessly against her ribcage.
She felt tiny hands play with her straight locks of hair,
Running fingers through the tragic art of her style,
Sniffing the smell of unwashed hair,
Of unbathed pale skin exposed to the elements.

The little boy's nose did not wrinkle as expected,
He did not appear to think she smelt of horse like her shoes.

The little boy smelt of woodchips, of forests, cooked chicken, and clean air,
He was far too precious for her to be holding,
But she couldn't seem to let go,
Not once she had him.
He brought his butterfly soft lips to her ear,
Gently brushing hair away from the opening,
And whispered softly, as if he had no idea how glorious the words were,
Against her shoulder and into her heart.

“I'm home, right?”

He rolled the words over his tongue,
Tasting them like fine wine,
As if he could not believe them himself,
And she could only hold him tighter.