Spiralling downwards,
Bitter taste of coke slipping in between the bumps on your tongue
And months from now when I try to think about you
I will remember the way you looked at me
And how time stood still
So it felt just like you were standing across from me
Throwing your unsaid medals at my throat
I let them slide down to my chest
It burns
Like the acid streams of coke surfacing my lungs
And I cannot breathe
All I can think about is why do I cross paths with people I am not supposed to fall in love with
Coke sliding down your throat
Swallow your golden apologies you never were brave enough to say
Crackling fizzling drink
I have been in love with you since May
And every look out has been a habit, I still try to find you in a crowd
I still try to swallow the bitter fizzy only slightly sweet taste of coke down my throat
The same way I choke
On every apology I never said to you and how I almost but never did tell you how much your cheekbones remind me of the sunset.
Timeless
This drink will never age and neither will your eyes
Visceral bubbling youthful
I have been waiting on nothing
I feel the acid burn in my throat in my chest and it erupts as I ***** every scent I’ve had of you, every gaze we have exchanged while she looks at you and smiles
Electric
Like the fizz that touches the insides of my stomach
I want to look at you and smile
And all you do is watch me
Sipping through your straw
I am drinking coke
And your eyes say it has been a while and look at me, look at what I do I want to show you what I do because it has been far too long
Child
I am not a child I am a hazy incense drifting through hollow walls, corridors and people infested places
Everywhere I turn I cannot breathe
I need something to quench this thirst of longing
I have collected from every instance I never get to see you, every moment you look at me and she is with you
I want to keep these aluminium tabs
I want to push the bubbles down your throat, tell you this is how I feel every time I look at you and you look at me and we say nothing
I want to tell you I have been doing just fine
And that you are wearing the same shade of red I’ve been feeling and this coke can shares the red we are crying
I want to say I am sorry I looked back and I wished so very hard
Sohrab
You are between these lines the coke can holds, every droplet that condenses on this metal surface, cool
I have something to hold and I don’t know what to feel
Only the acid taste of coke

“Can you state your emergency?”
“There’s been a lung collision.”

He’s stealing your breath, darling I can’t feel your lungs
What an aberration, forced to bleed the river of an emotion
You were never taught to feel growing up
I think nobody told you how to feel a colour so hard
Crimson on your neck, on your chest
But I cannot find a wound
Your breath feels like knives
But it’s funny, you’re dying

You’re trying to tell me something
It sounds like the kind of thing you would say right at sunset
Slurring your sevens like you have mints on your tongue
But you are only gasping for air

Marble gazes
Your eyes are lolling back
They are the same eyes that have cut through me
The same eyes I’ve always thought were beautiful
When you were sad

You are weak and you are failing
Completely unlike the times
You would walk in like a sandstorm
No less powerful than a serpent
Beautiful

Now you are trying to speak
“Feels like a fishbone dislodged in my lungs”
And you laugh
You are laughing and you are dying
And this night still feels like day

I tried scraping out the difference
Between guilt and self-loathe
But the answer only lies on the blade of this knife
Maybe I could tell you I don’t know what I did with it
The reason we are not sure from which wound
This blood is seeping from

It wasn't just a lung collision
It was the explosion of a galaxy in your chest
When your ribs bent and cracked
Now they are broken, dust
You are breathing in rust
But it does not matter because you are dying

In the distance there is the sound of sirens
They are coming and they might be far too late.

He smells of nothing
sometimes of trees, salt, rain, and everything pure
like moonlight
he is the colour grey under flesh, muscle and cloth
like rain; fresh, gentle yet violent
a silhouette
elusive but perhaps far more beautiful

The paths have fallen in love with your footsteps
there are cracks in the asphalt where flowers bloom
I swear they are trying to wrap themselves
around your ankles when you walk

I stopped counting
while the mountains stopped screaming
and Sohrab, you are beautiful and breathing

On mountaintops these echoes
are hollow and empty as they should be
exactly how I feel when I look at you
and how I feel when I don’t

It’s a battle of sorts
I need the reminder that there exists
the ability to feel so hard the cold will not win this war
but I know that in the end it will

I know that you are scared to breathe so deep
your ribs scrape the underside of your chest
tell me, who wants to be reminded of their ability to feel so hard?

It’s a tremor under your bones,
you’ve plunged your hand into your chest
to stop the heaving, the hurling, the surging
but everything is fading violently,
spiralling
in a decadent whirl of stubborn silence,
clenched teeth
and eyes that refuse to meet

Nothing, I am nothing

i.


monet's passion written in
whispering tears.
the still lake smoulders
in ripples, all shadows and smoke.

a dragonfly presses the air
into whir, memories in my
pocket saddled to fire.


ii.


the air murmurs with death-shouts.

is this to sink, deep in a dungeon
of opulent blue

or to shimmer, iridescent
like a moon-lamp, empress
of ocean green and river blue
beyond the stilling light.


iii.


this is a bed of decadence
drowned moment of golden fire
in the sipped leaves that trumpet
to the clouds, that this is their day to
die.


iv.


water lily, white light of the pond
following the drowning dark,
flower of drifting quiet,
flower of dream.


v.


root treading past
the stillness of dusk,
utter existence,
daughter of the moon,
daughter of the silence.

When first I did see you,
My heart was a drum, beaten,
A fog horn blew out to sea.

When you looked at me,
Stark, true, across blue sky,
Sunshine piercing the clouds.

When you touched me,
Frost thawing at first light,
Misted dews on the heathers.

When you were upon me so,
Could I not but open, bloom,
Softly, wind on the petal.

When your hot eyes got me,
Set smoulder to stoked flame,
Aye, I burned for you.