I wanted to ask whether you liked being found in
Back street alleys and empty beer bottles
But you were never conscious enough when I saw you
So I just went home and drank whisky and said a prayer
Hoping you’d get some decent sleep

I know you live in that crumbling house with those strange twins
Because your real home doesn’t hold much of a family anymore
I understand
You give me the sweetest, saddest vibe
So much so that when I touch you I don’t want to let go

I know I’m a cliché
You told me to never make you into a poem
You said you didn’t want to live forever through words
But I’m afraid I’ve written a novels’ worth about you

You wear a halo of dead dandelions
And t-shirts that are now far too big for you
You need to eat
You need to live

Go to Germany and drink beer
And take long train journeys in the sunshine
Soak up all the warmth you can find
Wear your sunglasses, smoke your cigarettes and take everything you can.

Sometimes I find Jesus in the left over sugar of coffee cups
As if he was waiting for my bitterness to go down fighting
Until I’m left in a kind of sweet serenity
But it doesn’t last long
I think God knows I’m ******* terrified
I tell him enough
My God
I’m scared of life
Of war
Of peace
All of the **** and beauty and pain in-between those
And since I’m in pieces I think he already knows
Now, I’m not catholic
But if that box can make me confess everything I’m scared of
And all the things I struggle to tell you,
Then throw me inside.
Lock the door.
Let my watery eyes do the talking.
Call it art.
Make an illusion out of my anxiety.
Call it magic.
I always wanted to be my own kind of magic
But now I’ve just got car crash eyes
A heart of fire on the m25
All going in parallel lines
to you.
I’ve been left with a bad sense of humour
Because the burn took all the fun out of me
I am a shell now
And someday
A child will pick me up next to the shore on a winter’s morning
And without warning
Will make a trinket of my bones
Of your bones
Of ours?
Maybe then God’ll throw me a sign
He could knock me out with it
I wouldn’t blame him
I wouldn’t mind
But I think you know, sweet boy, that
We will always be the ink stains on an artist’s palms
And a puzzle of rough bits the sculptor doesn’t need anymore
And I’m trying to find a way to feel like my disillusioned existence is ok
It’s going to be ok, I tell you
My God, I need to be ok

When we have sleepovers, we do have pillow fights in our underwear.
In knickers and crop tops we beat the **** out of each other for fun.
And then we eat pizza.
A lot of pizza.
And then we cry over mean boys and boys who don’t love us back and girls who are confusing.
We talk about ***. About *** with our crushes. Whether *** would be fun outside behind bushes or inside on cushions.

We talk about ***.
I say how they don’t give us enough education on it in schools.
Everything I’ve learnt about *** and my body was from the internet. I was never taught what happened to girls when boys got ‘happy’, only ever the biological logistics.
Us girls were never told how we’d feel like we were on fire. Only that we had to wait until the water pipes had done their job before we even felt like the flames had been put out.
We were told to wait.
Wait until you’re older until you get another piercing.
Wait until the puppy fat has gone and then you’ll feel attractive.
Wait until the strange boy at the party puts his hand on your knee to find yourself worthy of another person’s touch.
Why did I never feel like my palms were enough?
My friend tells us in dim lights under the quilts that she’s never kissed a boy she was in love with.
And I realise I haven’t either.

We have thrown ourselves around like an unstable fairground ride.
But I have always hated the way rides make me feel sick and like I don’t know what I am doing.
These boys make me feel disorientated.
I should call them men now.
But I still think of him as the young kid I went to school with.
Leant over piano in-between classes and squinting until I told him to wear his glasses.
I see him every time I clamber off the helter skelter.
I tell my friends that every time I kiss a stranger, I just see his face in those distorted mirrors. I don’t want to play anymore.

We stay up until 5am.
She tells me she wants three kids; two girls and a boy.
And I tell her I want to get married abroad, get drunk on merry-go-rounds with him, and hold his hand through the haunted house because I’ve never been not scared of something.
Girls are always taught to be scared of something.

In the morning, we make pancakes.
Sit on the kitchen floor, listening to the old radio on the counter and the sound of rain thrashing down on the windows.
There is a safety in your best friends.
There is a safety in knowing you are all scared of something; together.

SHE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE HER OWN KIND OF MAGIC.
BUT SHE'S JUST GOT CAR CRASH EYES NOW AND A
BAD SENSE OF HUMOUR BECAUSE THE BURN TOOK ALL
THE FUN OUT OF HER. SHE WANTED TO DISAPPEAR
WITHOUT THE BLACK HAT OR THE RABBIT OR THE
LOOKING GLASS BUT SOMEHOW SHE EVAPORATED INTO
PAINT PIGMENTS AND THE INK STAINS ON YOUR
FINGERTIPS FROM WHERE YOU WROTE HER OUT OF
YOUR LIFE. YOU SCRAPED THE LOVE FROM HER SKIN.
SHE DOES NOT BELIEVE IN MAGIC ANYMORE.

1
Fall in love with every ****** stranger you meet.
Despite feeling inadequate 99.999% of the time,
wonder why the boy you just gave daggers to across the room because he smiled at your best friend in a suggestive way doesn’t want to be the father of your children.
Despite the fact also, that seeing as his eyes are blue and yours are a greenish grey there is a high chance your children will be blonde with blue eyes. How lovely.
And you have calculated this all the while he has walked over to your friend and asked her if she wanted a drink.

2
Don’t take your anti-depressants. You are magical. You do not need any drugs to keep you alive.
I don’t believe that. Do you? Who cares!
You know everything.
You know more than the doctor knows, more than your parents, more than the entire world yet you are so impressionable you take them anyway. Sometimes with the help of a guy called Jack Daniels. He comes into your life some times, usually at night and helps you…swallow.

3
Pretend like you don’t always want to **** yourself. Or you know, bring it up at every meal out with friends, everytime you have any amount of alcohol, or don’t, every time you get to close to a guy who doesn’t know your surname.
You know how to work this card.
Flash it
Like a neon light on a cloudy evening.
I
Am
Already
Dead

4
Have an existential crisis every ******* day whilst also believing you are the best at everything.
Because really,
Who is telling you different?
Other than yourself?

5
Don’t treat this like you treat everything else
Push it back push it back until you’re unable to see it
You’re so ******* blind to everything
So what makes you think you see anything at all?

6
Stop talking yourself out of your own life, as if you don’t deserve it.
Stop writing quickly. Abbreviating everything as if lingering on paper makes you a spectacle.
I know you feel like you are always being looked at.
But really,
It’s just you looking at a distorted mirror in a circus town house.
And you need to find your way out.

Would you think less of me if I told you how much I want to kiss your thighs?
And your hip bones
And that v of skin
Feel the heat of your body that I can’t turn off
Even in the depths of winter,
Your warmth is in every cheek to cheek hug
Every brush of your hand over mine
We could be in the icy temperatures of the north pole and I would still feel a hotness in your fingertips when you pass me another layer
I’m a good girl
But looking at you makes me feel like I deserve a thousand detentions
I hope you know I love you when I think about your skin tight against mine
Your mouth hot on mine
My hands untucking your checked shirt
I refuse to call these thoughts *****
Because your body is so **** beautiful
The muddy soil around a bright flower doesn’t devalue its worth, does it?
I hope you know I think your heart is as powerful as the sun
You’re what burns every piece of wooden structure that holds my body stable
Human jenga
And even though you have no game plan,
You always win.

He told me he stopped smoking.
Threw away the packs of Mayfair
into the river next to his house.
The river where we once spent the evening
talking about why stars align the way they do,
As if they know what they are doing.
Neither of us knows what we are doing.

We are tea stained maps,
And fragile lungs,
And he is bruised fingertips from writing ‘I don’t love you. I’m sorry.’
I am shallow breaths in early winter.
Waking up at five to five to wait for the sun to rise.

He is made of sugar cubes
And campfires;
Glowing in the dead of the night
As if they have a right
To be the main attraction.
We are 3am scribbles in notebooks

And origami warriors.
You folded me so easily
With your piano playing fingers.
And when I wasn’t looking,
You made me into a boat and pushed me onto that same river.
Lit matches for a sail and finally, let me burn.