if i were dead,
what circle of hell would i call home?

they are the air
in between.

breaths of comfort
and clarity.

and so frequently
i found myself gulping
and gasping
for more.

(please shoulder this burden with me,
it is lighter when you are near.)

wine glasses nestled between
almost frozen fingers,
sipped by months sore from smile.

laughter warms
and makes the stomachs of
friends long familiar ache.

time can not steal the comfort
found in the stitches of
each others sweet company.

i want to run my fingers
along rock carved
thousands of years ago.

i want to feel the same cold
that ancient hands did
under my own.

i want to stand
where history happened.

let it shiver through my body.

feel the ghosts of people
long buried.
long forgotten.

find phantoms
in cobbled streets:
old and hidden.

to listen to tales
lost and buried
beneath city stone.

someone could light this body on fire
and it still would not be warm enough
to cure the coldness caught in the bones
that were formed from my mothers blood

rain soaked skies,
warm blanketed bodies
laughing loudly
(oh god how sweet is the laughter)

gin painted lips
worn with love and passion.
voices of friends  
whispering prophecies

of a lifetime
waiting to be spent together.

all of this goodness
huddled under the shelter
of a house that holds
arms open.

with people warmed
by liquor that teaches tipsy.
that teaches joy filled tears
(i’m still echoing bellied laughter- it’s beginning to hurt)


there is so much love here.
it spills over plastic cups in hands
as a we dance
we dance.

i can not stop the gratitude
from leaving from my lips.

i can not be the only one that feels
all of this goodness.

(i love you,
please let us do this again.)

it's intoxicating.
the salt air on cool nights.

wind that disperses the scent,
pushing it closer to the deck
that warm bodies
are perched on.

warm bodies
that have full bellies
that grow painful
each time they laugh.

bellies that have been aching
for the last few hours,
because the laughter is harmonising
with body cries.

salt air
that blankets them.

salt air
so inebriating
it forces them into admission.

sweet confessions whispered
over mugs (warm and full).

songs of 'i love you'
swept up by the moon,
only to be caught in trees,
(let the words nestle here, please.
close to the ground,
before they are taken by the breeze).

there's half eaten cake here.
remnants of its body
thrown onto small plates,
forks laid atop them.

empty bottles of cider
stand like bowling pins,
one stumble and they'll topple.
(much like us, one stumble and we'd fall).

drunken laughter,
spoken and unspoken admissions
fill the space between
silence and sleep.

and i wonder if years ago,
if i had made a different choice,
if this is still
where i'd be.

salt seas
and cold nights.

narcotics atop sand:
your bellied laughter,
a little dry gin,
the rising sun warming our faces as it wakes the world.

and here with you,
maroon painted and
drunkenly dancing around words,

everything seems so
light.

time takes us
and we let it.

i want to fight it,
but i do not know how.

anger will do nothing to slow it.
but i will still rage, in hopes that it will.
(it’s the only thing i know to do)

the blood of my mother is sweet.
but the blood of my father is sour.

no wonder i am certain of nothing.
even my blood does not know
how it should taste.

i'm inviting Time inside.
offering a seat;
a room in my house so it can unpack its things.
letting It live with me
until all this tension i feel is relieved.

we're spending moments together (intentionally):
a song of silence sung during the sweet sunrise,
a solemn sulk just before bed.
i'll permit It sit with me.
let It remind me that there is so much left.

it'll wrap Its arms tightly around me;
pat my back in rhythmic beats that once felt cruel, but which now reduce me to infancy.
offer me a tissue in the shape of
'the right person at the right time.'
and for a moment, in its embrace
i find solace.

because there really is so much of it left.

because you are not dying.
(no, not yet.)
and it will be there in the morning,
your life is no less than palimpsest.

so i'm welcoming It in,
offering it a drink.
tea brewed long, but not bitter.
i refuse to live a life
with the string wrapped around the handle.
because seeping and stewing are not the same.

i got a paper cut
and i picked at it
until its corpse
become a permanent headstone
on my skin.

you hurt me,
and i picked at it
until it began to scar,
until it began to
tighten the skin.

i will never be able to escape the ache of you.
never be able to revive myself.
or be able to relieve the pain of the skin pulling.

but i will always try to heal it,
even if it is no use.

sometimes
the moments we steal
are not enough
to make us forget
that life is heavy.

sometimes
the moments we steal
are not enough
to make us fall in love
with life again.

let them love you this way:

with long drives to far away destinations
with the sole purpose of finding a beach
that feels right underfoot.

with car park crying
and laughing and debriefs
that echo long into the night.

with celebratory drinks
and pub feeds
and sometimes the odd fancy dinner.

with mid week check ins and soup left on door steps
messages of poems and songs that make them think of you
(i need you to know that you deserve to be thought of)

with hands soaked wet
by dishes you didn’t want to wash
and with blankets pulled up to chins.

let them love you this way.  
softly and in all the ways that count.
all they ways you haven’t been loved before.

life moves,
and people leave.

my skin will stretch
and my mind will learn.

and maybe it takes time,

but maybe i don’t want to wait,
maybe i don’t have time to waste.

i try to be soft
but it translates to fury.

i try to be water
but i am ice.

the closest i'll ever be to snow
is a hail storm.

nineteen years,
238 months,
1,034 weeks,
7,238 days,
of my life.

i can compress my existence
into numbers.
lay them out like statistics.

tell people i am made of days, hours, minutes.

numbers.
they are easy.
finite.
simple.

but will i ever be able to translate my existence in words?

will i ever be able to speak such complexities?
or only count?

my soul is made of
moonlight and pixie dust.

i find myself in them.
i see the way the moon changes me
and how magic brings me to life.

my heart is made of
fine art and scented candles.

i see myself in the strokes of oil.
feel all my emotions poured out in perfect pigment,
feel my soul storm soothe as i trim and light the wick.

i hear my inspiration
in music and nature.

i listen to my thoughts in song
as if someone has dug through my mind,
and i see leaves as a reminder that change is good.

isn’t that beautiful?
to find yourself in all of the smaller things?
to be everything all at once
and still feel free?

i was born pure sweetness.
a fruit born from my mother
delightful on the tongue.

you were pure acidity.
a fruit grown bitter
hostile to taste.

how does one drop of bitterness
flood, so deeply, the sweet?
is there any way of tempering acid?
or will i stay like this… burnt?

i am most afraid of heights.
and the ocean.
and the vastness of the desert.

i’m also afraid of spiders,
and snakes,
and all things that bite.

i’m afraid of drowning.
of being buried alive.
of fire.

i’m afraid of failure.
of letting people down.
of never achieving anything good.

i'm terrified of dying,
and choking on my words
and feeling this pit in my stomach forever.

they say that some ages feel closer to others.
that memories spiral inside of you
instead of existing on a linear plane.

i can feel the younger years slowly tighten
toward the centre as a i age,
suffocate it until i can no longer remember

a final breath drawn
before a sobbing goodbye.

hurting, so that it can make itself known
one last time
before it slips into the void.

maybe that is why twelve feels like yesterday.
when I was haunted by the ghosts
that lingered in those hospital wards.

and maybe why thirteen feels like today,
when i’m praying for a miracle
to be given to him.

and maybe why fourteen feels like tomorrow
preparing to dig soil to cover him
not knowing that it would never get the chance to touch his skin.

i'm reliving all of the pain,
the aching in my chest,
the short breaths of panic.

it all exists inside me
coiling around my heart and
suffocating.

all the anxiety growing from seeds planted
all those years ago.

and i keep telling myself that it is alright
that he lived
but my mind doesn’t know any of this

because its still
twelve
and thirteen
and fourteen

and it is still hurting.

the wolves are at my door.

what i mean by this
is that soon i will be torn open.
guts spilling out of body
blood pooling and drowning.  

its 4:15;
the wolves are here, pushing inside.
and the moths are in my stomach.
anxiety welcomed them in,
and i can not get them to leave.

i’ll wait impatiently for a text
or a call
that will deliver sadness
on a platter and expect me to eat.

death; he will deliver the aching himself
but first he will call.
tell me to wait by the door,
so that he can tell me that he has you.

and to remind me that i never will
again.

i’ll wait for the details of the crash
or results from a test i didn't know was happening.
i’ll wait for the ‘it was so sudden,’
because ‘it wasn’t meant to happen this way.’

those moths in my stomach are telling me
that death is about to start knocking.

that he will bring the wolves
because they are about to tear me                                a  p   a    r     t.

i wish i could take the art off the walls,
and the moon from the sky,
and brew it like tea.

add boiling water and simmer the world down
so it is just sweetness.

i wish i could take a sip of it,
early in the morning,
before the chaos begins to rise with the sun.

a sip at lunch
a reminder of the world's beauty.

and a sip at dinner, just before bed
to wash away the day.

(it would taste like freedom)
(it would taste like peace)

he talks of the weather
and i secretly hope that he speaks of anything else.

not because i am not interested
in the way the trees will sway
on a certain day,
or the amount of rain that
will come our way.

but because i am much more interested
in who he is.

i want to know why the weather fascinates him,
how the world makes him feel,
i want to know his favourite movie or book
(please let him be a reader)
and the way he takes his coffee in the morning,
and i want to hear about who inspires him the most.

i want to memorise all the smaller
more vulnerable things.
in hopes that one day we will run out of things to talk about,
and then we might turn and say,
“the weather is meant to be nice today.”

you were a flower still blooming
plucked from the garden

stolen from soil

long before your time,
long before full bloom.

what a devastating way to end a life,
ripping roots
while it was still searching for light.

it’s summer here,
and my seasonal depression
slips away with the waves at the beach.
my eyes brighten with the sun,
and at last, i feel my heart warming,

the leaves are falling from the oak outside of my window.
autumn. lets old loves go with the seasons,
stripping itself of the sun damage from summer.
shaking itself clean of scars.
(i’m healing old wounds)

in winter, i slip.
fall along with the temperature.
stiffen along with almost everything
that meets the cold,
why am i so cold?

i sprout a little in spring.
defrost from the frozen winters.
wait for the new.
i see the oaks' new leaves.
i see the flowers in me bloom.

it’s summer here,
and i begin to feel like myself again.
letting my heart thaw
and my limbs stretch.
(the cold can’t bite me here).

my mother deserves more than the hurricane she was given.
i am certain that i am not what she signed up for.

she deserves flowers and fine art
and i am nothing but thorns and cut-throat.

so i buy her flowers,
constantly,
hoping it will make up for my rot.

hoping the scent of them will make her forget
the damage of last nights fury.