“Is this artsy or slutty?” I asked, knowing full well I want to be neither
Manspreading on the stairs
Instinctively commenting on it
Taking up a girlier posture before giving into the fragility of being a sapphic salutation.

Funny how I was sent wavelengths
To sit in a certain way by a pretty clairvoyant, her eyes on a voyage
“It doesn’t mean anything” I thought
Until the angel numbers struck
The freeness coming undone.

I wonder where her spirit went
After being killed by the man she loved.
Always men: greedy
Yet remembered in history and literature
That I have to depict
Not once but twice with another man
Who said I wouldn’t like the woman who was literally beat and cheated on by her husband if she’d been alive
To see me dance to Portrait of a dead girl.

I’d like to think she’d realised
The poor traits of the man she’d shoved
Time and time again into beautiful paintings
Because that’s all they were:
Just a likeness of a person who should’ve protected her, not poisoned her
And showed her off to the spectators of the crime, guzzling wine
Becoming a permanent portrait in my mind.
I hope she’s having an amazing time.

They say a staring contest conjures up love
But what if I can’t stare?
What if my eyes are too wonky, too glossy with teardrops
Brought on by simple gusts of wind and a shudder to my soul?
What if those two minutes it apparently takes to fall in love isn’t enough for someone to look past that?

I got asked too many questions when I was a child and didn’t understand
To a university car park where I was asked about the elephant in the room.
I didn’t realise it was so obvious and so I only approached men in the dark
Because they don’t analyse me like women do but still - the dark.

In job interviews, family interrogations, friends I’ve known for years, shops, dog walks, red haired singers I’ve met
I don’t give eye contact
What do you mean I have to look at the whole of their face and not just the eyes?
I must’ve looked like I wanted to **** the blue, green, amber out of them like the undead.

I think I would worry less about this with a vampire.
They use their teeth to communicate rather than castigation…
The living are too focused on the rules of colourless conversation
When the staring contest dies, their attention dies.

What?

When the vastness of the train station and trouble with an umbrella cemented a lack of time
We rushed through the rain;
London annoying me to the point I threw myself into the corner shop
Grabbed my pocky without gazing up at the lanterns
And sweated it out on the tube.

One chance to see Chinatown gone
But we had pizza to eat
An ice rink not to go to as we settled for a record fair
Those time bomb nights metamorphosed into bedroom discos, a carefreeness I only understood once seeing you jump up and down in the midst of like minded strangers.

Before that came the Hebden murderers
A song told through the eyes of ducks
Sisters who met on the internet
Shivering to Frankenstein till the ******* night, ******* coffee
Worst 3am of my life crying down the balcony once not feeling your presence.

I’ll never forget the house of Frida Kahlo, it’s guitar
And the champagne drank out of a pop star’s shoe
Chinatown’s gone but we’ll be there again, even if it takes another year and a bit
Because I never shared the feeling of having a sister until I met you.

Am I your auburn day
In a world of flaxen nights?
It feels like i'm a convenience,
Everybody went home for summer
And I'm the only fool, fool enough
To take the pity like a girl
Never distinct enough to be wanted.

We went to so many places
And still I keep myself locked in.
It doesn't feel real
Pictures never emerge
And what I've found is that
I'm okay for an escapade
But anything more than that?
I'm something to be hidden.

Sapphire tears bleed from my eyes
I look up, I look up, I look up
Searching for a hideout in the sky
To no constellations
Just the empty float floor tonight.
Nostalgia is prised open -
There's no chances to share dances
But on these rare occasions
I feel future latch onto my hand
And so I cry, happy, drunken.

I stand at the cupboard door
Open, close, open, close.
I shed tears,
As shameful as that is,
And bare a hole in my stomach
Though I ate seconds before.
The sad thing is
Is that I keep it down,
I do nothing when I'm done
And I rinse myself of it
I say tomorrow will be different...
Then the gaping comet growls
large in my chest
My belly and my head
One special treat and it'll subside.
Nothing will save me now.
By thirty I'll have consumed it all
I'll be able no longer.
One side of the galaxy is the same as the other - they both die in the same cruel manner.