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.

I am in a *******
I know what you’re thinking
‘Really? You? Standards must be sinking’
But you see
My lovers guard me, they are my protection
On my left is Anxiety
And on my right is Depression
They both think I am…smoking hot
Like I am something worth fighting over
Both claiming my thoughts as belonging to them each
As though everything I learn is all what they teach
Depression likes to mess with my body as well as my thoughts
Running its sharp and callous hands over the flesh of my limbs believing I get pleasure from its touch
While Anxiety gnaws at my wrists like a rubber band ping, ping, pinging
As though I don’t have better things to do like living.
Three is a crowd
And we have tried breaking up
But Anxiety is clingy
And even when I change the locks it still manages to nit-pick its way back inside
Depression is so addictive and likes to hug
Wraps its arms around me and even when I cover my ears
I still hear it whisper it look what you’ve done
D and A are similar in ways
They both like to put me down, tell me I’m not good enough
And then hold me until I believe they have me picked me up
And saved me from killing this part of the trilogy
I am the last part
I am so far unwritten
The last piece of the puzzle
That makes up the picture
Of a self-destructive girl
In the midst of something she can’t understand
She has a nice smile though and a good heart
But the lovers are not attracted to that
Though they don’t mind ripping them apart
Until her lips are too battered to smile anymore
The ***** that once pumped double time is so unsure
Of itself it finds it difficult to even try
You know what, **** it
I can do this
I will break up with them
They have done this to hundreds of people before
And they’ll do it again
This is not right
This is not how I should be treated
I am a strong independent woman
I will not be defeated.
To Anxiety and Depression, you’re not getting custody
Not of this mind and not of this body
I am not letting you through the gate anymore
I will buy stronger locks
And not let you in even if you politely knock
There is no home here for you
You go hand in hand
Like young naïve lovers
Straggling for attention
Even under the covers
I will not call you again
We once were lovers but you were never my friends.

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.

You asked me what it was I ever saw in him,
Over half eaten lunch and cups stained with coffee
And I said I saw everything in him that I couldn’t see in me.
I saw life
And excitement
And beauty.
You told me I deserved better,
That you’d only ever come to our wedding for the free cake.
And the alcohol,
For the company of me but not my husband.
I told you not to worry.
He will always be my unlawful better half.

I keep writing you into manuscripts that I'm never going to publish
as if I could ever find a way to keep you,
immortalize you into something worth loving completely
I am never 100%
anxiety puts me on the edge and depression throws my body off it
everyday
so how could I ever find a way to keep you here?
When I can't even write you down as one person
my characters are full of your traits
he has your brown eyes which I never liked until I looked into yours
she has your intelligence, your Gemini know-it-all but still love you trait
there is a piece of you in every person I write,
in every person I see,
I guess that's how I can keep you here
Because you never really leave.

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.

And a body of beauty
So pick up your floor length and run
Depressed with a heart full of ache
Let it anchor you up to the sun
Sail on through the waves of anxiety
Don’t wait till the sunburn to run.

When we walk back to our rooms,
Talking about what we’ll do in our lives,
Once we’ve grown up and grown out
She says to me
‘It’s ok.
You’ll get a job easily because you are English
And you are white.’
I don’t have a reply
I want to show her the nights I spend studying, coffee induced, trying to make it to deadlines to get that grade
Believe me
There is nothing in this skin colour that can achieve that A, that job or that degree
Yes
I know I am lucky
My family history may not hold your exact pain
But tragedy is also in the ancestry of all of my forefathers’ names.
Does she know that her family earns more than mine?
That if our bodies were painted
hers would look gold
And mine would look off white
Like the old Vauxhall left around the corner
Broken and damaged
Doing its best to still run
It is spray painted white
Of course it works.
I am tired of being made to feel guilty for being the colour of milk bottles.
All lined up,
We are freezing into frosted shadows
Like we deserve the cold
We have been thrown into a snowstorm and told it does not matter if we are lost because at least we are not seen as different.
How can I tell her that snowflakes are all naturally unique?
All different shapes and densities and depths
I could only be whiter if I was dead
A corpse
Would I still be entitled to the world if I wasn’t even around to live in it?
We are told to celebrate difference
And I am in total agreement
But since when were pale shades considered nowhere near as important?
I can’t even be thankful that I was born in this gender
Because being referred to as a ‘typical white girl’ is a personal offender
Offended, offended
I know we are sick of political correctness
But why do manifestos of equality make feel like I’m worth less
In no way am I saying my skin colour makes me better
I am saying we should not target people for something they have to live in forever
We are all born into varying shades of brilliance
So why attack anyone?
Do not resist this
Do you think colour-blind people give a **** about anyones’ races?
It is not about looks or image or even faces
It is about heart and mind and love and affection
So why is my skin colour the only thing that grabs your attention?
Just last week there was an article written stating
That white working class boys were doing worse in the tables
Than any other race in the United Kingdom
Is this because we teach that white working class boys are entitled to everything
Except for an education, except for the freedom
To be proud of their skin colour, themselves, their entire culture
Instead we tell them
At one point in time
You had it all
Complete power and look what you did with it
How can they ever learn to trust themselves if we keep reminding them of what their great great grandfathers have done?
This article entitled them ‘the problem’ with British schools
As if budget cuts and institutionalized bullying isn’t what’s at fault at all
The villain in films often wears a mask – does he do that so you can’t see his skin colour?
So you can’t see that there is good and evil in all of us no matter how dark or pale you are
Do not make a villain of yourself
Do not make a villain of me
Please teach your children it is ok to be whatever skin colour they are born in
Tell them to wear it like their favourite dress or their favourite tie
Tell them they look good, that they suit it
Please teach them they are worth the world
Please teach yourselves, it is ok to be white.

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.

I left you on the train tracks and
I’ve been trying to apologise for
years but nothing feels right
You threw rocks back
I never expected anything less
No china shop but you bull-*******
your way through everything
And I never had the guts to stop you
I kept you in self-inflicted put me downs
And calorie counted sweetness
You still got a hold over me
And now I try to fit you into rhymes
But nothing works
I found you last summer
In empty beer bottles and dead dandelions
I should have known they were signs
Nothing was alive
Not even you

I think too much
Is that why two years after you wanted to leave this earth
I still can’t get the thought of you collapsing out of my head
Why the idea of you alone in your room
At four in the morning, clambering out of bed
Deciding whether it’ll be a good night to give up your life
Is still in every thought I have, I dread
Those thoughts
The idea of my own future is too much to handle when I still worry you nearly didn’t have your own
I think too much

But were you thinking at all when you drowned yourself in pills
As if paracetemol was the answer
And death was the cure
I couldn’t bring you any closer
You had locked all the doors
But there were broken windows, cracked walls
And I should have seen through them
Maybe that is why I can’t sleep, because my doors are locked tight too.
I think too much
Maybe if I opened my house to you, you would have wiped your scarred feet
And your bony knees could have rested in the warmth of my bed
I would have held your hands for hours, my friend
I would have held them until you fell asleep
Until you didn’t have the energy to find the labelled bottles I still keep
Maybe- Maybe- I could have helped – I
I think too much

I still cry over you
I still cry for you
I feel the blood of your attempts on my own hands
As if they were clasped around your neck
I am not poetic enough
I’m no Lady Macbeth
But the guilt still plagues my skin when I now hug you hello
Because when you are suicidal
No best friend should not know
I think too much

I think about the sirens
Did I hear them that night when they rushed to your place?
Finding sixteen year old child, in her mother’s embrace
Was she crying?
I think about it all the time
Did you pray to the God you’re not sure you believe in?
Did you pray for the end or did you thank him for starting your heart again?
I think about it all the time
Would they have you cremated or buried?
Force you back into the ground before you even had a chance to grow out of it
Like clothes owned previously
Working class families
We bonded over hand me downs
And straps for cash to hold tight what we earned
Would they have dressed you like dolls you could never afford?
Pristine and price tagged
Between us girls, you never suited body bags
Your body shape is best suited to the rise and fall of your chest as you breathe
It does not suit a coffin
Are you finally coughing up the truth now?
The truth is you are alive
You are still alive

I think too much

You were always like a sister to me
And I know things are different now, and we’ve moved away, moved apart
But you still creep into my subconciousness
As if making up
for the two weeks before you told me you’d tried
“I wanted to die” You told me
And in that moment, so did I
It will never stop hurting to imagine it

You are eighteen now
You are beautiful
Smart
All the clichés
But just because something is said often, doesn’t make it untrue
People will never stop saying the words ‘I love you’
I think too much

And that’s why even now that I see you smile
And laugh
And your happiness is so genuine, so true
I still have this incredible, guilt weighing need to write an apology letter to you.
I still don’t think this is enough.
I guess I think too much.

You were always the last bus home
As though
If I didn’t catch you I’d be stuck waiting for a lift I’m not sure would come
I missed you often.
Always went to the wrong station
I read your numbers wrong
You were vivid, neon flashing
But I wasn’t wearing my glasses
I couldn’t see you properly
I thought I deserved the long walks home
As if chalky hills and borrowed books torn up into pieces were the only things I could hold onto
I always managed to lose my return ticket
Some days I did it in the hope that you would let me on for free
Let me in
Do not close the doors automatically
As if I am not worth the wait
I am worth the wait
Don’t drive away from me again
I am not begging
I am not praying
I am asking you to come back for me
Reverse to a time when we discussed frame sizes and half flamed dreams under fairy lights
Come back to a time when you thought I was something special
I met you in gold and black shadows
Like we were sweeping statements of colour
Thrown together
Into a palette
Paint with me
Do not separate me like ink and oil
Do not separate yourself anymore
We are not cheap materials
We are quality
Treat us like it
Treat us softly
Take my hand and follow me across the canvas because honestly, it’s all I am good at doing
Making a rough pattern of a future I was never sure I’d have
I can find the destination but I need the petrol of your spirit
I need your headlights, your windows into things I don’t understand, your compass into things I am not brave enough to dive into
Guide me
And once you have finished
Please. Take me home.

I want to leave 100 post-it notes in the glove compartment of your car.
One.
I loved your smile first. That toothy grin, stretching lips wider than life, that wouldn’t stop talking. Fancy dress parties make you happy. High on sugar. High on life.
Seven.
I introduced you to some friends and they had highlighter pens at the ready to welcome you into the group. You laughed.
Sixteen.
You gave me your number but you didn’t realize those were the digits to unlock my soul too.
Twenty four.
My parents pick you up and you wear a jacket brighter than the sun and it makes me smile like the rays of summer. We go to the city.
Twenty nine.
She makes a fool out of me. I’m sorry she embarrassed you by telling you how I felt. It was not her place. I cried a lot that night. But your text was lovely and allowed me to sleep.
Thirty six.
I had given up on you but you were at the party and we took smiling pictures together and we made tea at two in the morning while they were all out of it. I
Thirty eight.
Think
Forty Three.
I
Forty Seven.
Love
Fifty.
You
Fifty five.
You are too much want I want and not enough of what I need.
Sixty two.
I ******* hate you.
Sixty three.
I lie to protect myself.
Seventy one.
You are drunk but I find the courage to talk about it. You tell me we are good friends. We hug.
Seventy seven.
You are not high on sugar anymore. E-E-Enough. Your childhood is over. You are a man.
Eighty three.
We go to the gallery and sit close on the tube. I want to kiss you.
Eighty eight.
You break the shower curtain so I shut the door on us and we try to fix it but you’re too out of it. You hit your head and laugh harder than I’ve ever heard you laugh before. We sit in the bathtub, legs hanging over. Hung-over.
Ninety.
We walk on damp grass and you talk about how weird it is to not see your parents at the dinner table together anymore. You can’t understand why it didn’t work.
Ninety one.
We drive back in your car, in the rain. Music plays. I want to hold your hand.
Ninety two.
You won’t ever listen to me. Please listen one day.
Ninety three.
I
Am
Breaking
Why
Can’t
You
See
It
Ninety four.
You’re not who I thought you were but I still care about you.
Ninety five.
I lend you a Stanley knife. When you carve into that paper, I feel the slice on my palms.
Ninety six.
I can’t save you. You wouldn’t let me if I tried.
Ninety seven.
I am merely a spectator watching you from the crowds. I hope you know I am cheering you on.
Ninety eight.
We are the right people
Ninety nine.
At the wrong time
One hundred.
But that is fate.
And nothing and nobody can deny fate. We will both grow old and I will regret not telling you all these things when my eyes were shining and my complexion smooth. But that it something I must live with, not you.
I want to leave 100 post-it notes in the glove compartment of your car so that when it’s late at night and you’ve stopped at some temporary neon shelter for fuel, you’ll reach over the empty passenger seat or your best friend’s knee and you’ll pull the handle to release 100 different reasons why I loved you.

I am still awake at every 3am
Because I get scared of my own imagination
These meds are making me mad
I dreamt the other night of torturing a girl I used to know
I beat her blind with a belt with no control over myself
And I woke up and I saw her face throughout the day
Unable to stop thinking about what I’m turning into
I dreamt the other night of an elaborate funeral
I was the main attraction
Walking up to the open casket
Only to look in and see myself
My mother had dressed me in a skirt I’ve always hated
I dreamt the other night
I was staring death in the face
But really it was just a mirror
Tinged with seven years of bad luck and depression
It has broken me
I can only be found in shards of anxiety
Brush me up from the floor to stop anyone else hurting themselves
Throw me away
Throw me into the sea
And see
How long it takes for glass to turn into sand.

I haven’t seen you in four months
I haven’t seen you in four months and now it’s starting to hurt
I thought I’d become immune to you
But I just saw a photograph of you again
And I think I’m coming down with something
Something just doesn’t feel right
You’ve not been in my head for a third of the year
But I saw a guy who looked like you today
And it took all of my strength not to run up and kiss him
To hold his hand like I once held yours when we made origami
I don’t think you’re ever really going to leave me
Just like the tattoo on your leg
You showed me the ink just before I left
And I told you it was stunning
But it wasn’t as stunning as you
You are more than skin deep beauty
You are bones and scarred knees
And skeletal structure
And cheekbones to die for
And whenever I felt like dying
You reminded me why I needed to keep waking up
I sugar coat you like ****
But you were always so sweet to me
I keep tasting you in the three spoonfuls of my tea.

You were not a breath of fresh air
you were the choking
of sadness infused
smoking
in every room
tabacco stained fingers
left marks on every table top
and top to bottom the house was so
dust filled
that you had killed
all ******* signs of life
the room was rife
with scents of her and no sense
of morality
you just turned to see
but choked every good growing gracious thing out of me
you don’t hear any noise anymore
lost my voice
somewhere on the floor with her
underwear and
everywhere there’s
another girl’s hair
strands and hair bands
and when I close my eyes it’s her hands
touching your shoulder blades
and the concaves
of your collar bones and
clean clothes
and it’s so clear that when I’m here
she gloats because her hands
have become your hands
and now they’re wrapped around my throat
And so when she chokes
You choke
And I-

They say young girls are the best at keeping secrets

1. I have to pretend I have nosebleeds to excuse myself from having to sit further into the cinema because at some point there is the possibility that I will need to escape these social situations I can’t deal with. Anxiety is taking over my entire life.
2. I want to try ecstasy just to see if the colours really are as vibrant as they say they are. Can the browns really be more beautiful than his eyes?
3. I often think about killing myself because breathing is getting too hard. It’s been too hard for years but I stopped telling my therapist because I don’t want her to feel bad. I don’t want her to feel like she’s not good at her job.
4. I wake up every day terrified that really I should be in Art school because when I talk here, it still feels like no-one is listening. If I drew my words would they see them any clearer?
5. I call God on the landline phone because my mobile has bad signal. It keeps on telling me it’s trying to connect, connect... I think I forgot to pay my bills.
6. I lose potential future best friends because I refuse to be a sob story and therefore I don’t tell them much. The very idea of being one leaves an uneasy feeling in my body. Like pills too large for my throat or pins and needles.
7. I can’t pin this down. I’m not sure I ever did.
8. I’m still in love with a boy who spells my surname incorrectly. He doesn’t care.
9. I’m not sure I will ever be happy. And that scares the **** out of me. Because if I can’t be happy, then what is the point of smiling?
10. Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve my voice box. Most nights I wonder if it’s still there.

I’m not good at keeping secrets.

There are so many things I want to know
And most of the time my unanswerable questions awaken themselves early in the morning
Like a young child vying for attention way past his bed time
Or asking around like he’s gotten lost in Ikea
“Have you seen my mum?”
“Why am I still suicidal?”
“Why doesn’t he love me back?”
“How the **** do you put this chair together?”
It will never be strong enough to hold what’s in my head.
No offence to the shop - it’s not their fault I’m unstable.
I keep wondering whether this is normal,
This constant existential crisis I suffer from
I ask the doctor,
My therapist,
My best friend,
The boy who invites me with a wink to his empty house over facebook,
As if any of them could help me understand why I’m uncomfortable in my own body
As if God made my skin in a size too tight
Less material is cheaper
So why am I still having to pay for anti-depressants
I tend to sway towards the clichés
Picture this
An overcast joyride
Staring out of the window
Glum expression
Absorbed in depression
You’ve got me in the rule of thirds
First: I’m a time bomb of sweet nothings and childhood anecdotes and picture reels of melancholy summers spent in back gardens and dim rooms.
Second: I don’t know whether I’m going to make it out of this. You can have my scraps of journals and make of it what you want. Make a suicide note out of manuals I never threw away.
Third: I’m a teenage tragedy,
Drowning in questions that even the sea cannot answer anymore.

Last night she me asked what your name was
That’s a lie
What she really asked was if I liked anyone back home
But you see, yours was the only name I thought of
You are the only person I think of
Romantically linked but we're still not in sync
A broken mp3 file
Corrupted
Wrongly titled
It begins with M, I tell her
'Two Ms'?' she questions and I look at her as we walk
And she turns to me and says
'Does that mean you’re so in love you’ve become the same person?'
But how do I explain our initials are the only things holding us together
We are so far apart
More like A and Z
At opposite ends of the alphabet
Just waiting for the time to come together
Does this make us crazy?
I’m not sure
I don’t know what this makes us
Are we anything at all?
Last week I nearly kissed a boy with your name
Don’t tell me that is a coincidence
I have believed in signs ever since I could read them
“DO NOT ENTER” my thought stream
Just carry on swimming in the “DEEP END”
Because you know I will always be a life jacket
Waiting for you to surface.
So, face me again
With your real, pained expression
Of a broken home and natural intelligence
You always saw the world through a lens,
Clearer
Cleared your mind of anything to do with me
I am still waiting, holding your camera case
For when you decide to put that life away
Zip it up and find a new one in me
M, I miss you
Like the last bus home from school
Like the sugar in a diet
Like the 29th of February
Maybe in four years’ time, when I say your name
It’ll sound an awful lot like mine.

Dear God,
Are you listening?

I’ve been trying to get hold of you
But I think I forgot to pay my phone bill
And repent my sins.

Water’s been turning into wine a lot lately
Because at least when I have a drink,
I find some form of direction,
Not to a stranger’s bed, I promise
But to the shackles of my bedroom.

The book says you can hear me
But you can’t believe everything you read.
I worry I disappoint you by disagreeing with them.
It’s just – I thought it was only ever about
Love and respect for all.
But that’s not what they preach to the masses –
There’s so much they choose to ignore.

If you are truly with me,
And I pray to you that you are
Please give me the thumbs up
Like you gave the Kings that star.

You put me on this road for something
But I don’t have a map
So if this is the wrong way to travel
Will you always lead me back?

I need the safety of your seat belt
95 miles an hour and every traffic light screams red.
Please stop me before I **** what you made
Because I fear that I am already dead.

When I was a kid
I didn’t understand what love was
I felt it
But I didn’t know how anyone could ever explain it
Or why it didn’t combust when lovers’ arguments got heated
And now
I still don’t know
And I still don’t understand
I watch people fall in love with the wrong people
And I watch the wrong people be loved

After the second time she tried to commit suicide
Her boyfriend broke up with her and offered her a plate of paracetemol tablets as a joke
As if he wasn’t the one making her sick

He was head over heels for her
And she kissed him in an empty bath tub
And he drowned in her kiss
Like it could ever keep him afloat.

And now
she told you she liked rivers but you gave her a tsunami through your fingertips and expected her to make it out alive
you're throwing her a life jacket made of rocks

And I just want to know why love is so ******* disastrous
And if sometimes it’s not meant to be
Why do I still see him everywhere I go?

How do you ever get over these people?
How do you find a heart once somebody has played hide and seek with it?
Ran away and put it somewhere you might never find.

What if she tries to **** herself again
and what if he turns the taps on this time and doesn’t hold his breath
and what if she decides the bottom of the sea is a prettier sight than you off on a date with another girl?

I have no answers.
I don’t know how you can keep anyone alive, when love is their favourite poison.

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.

Oh man,
Auden was right.
I don’t want the stars that work in dot to dot connections to make your bone structure anymore.
Put them out.
Dismantle the sun like every flat pack piece you ever bought and found something wrong with.
Take it back.
Oh Gemini,
You were never as warm as the month you were born into.
Find the receipts of faded love letters and take it all back.

Take me back to when Achilles was the most glorious **** up the world had ever known.
I reckon we could give him his money’s worth.
I’ve been running on cursed soles for years now
And you cannot heel this.
Feet like beat up peaches and boots laced up too tight,
Now all the blood has rushed to somewhere I can’t keep up with.

This ain’t no Greek tragedy.
This is just a messed up human telling another
That sometimes men are right
And love doesn’t last forever
But if you hold him tight
Enough
Maybe you don’t need to return each other.

Māmā, bàba. Duìyú nǐ lái shuō, shìjiè.
Mum, Dad. For you, the world.*

The 14 hour flight reminded me how much I couldn’t live without you
Seats packed tight like the sardines you once shared at dinner
The polyester blanket given freely, just like the love you gave me –
No price
An unconditional offer you once made with God and with life when I took my first breath without needing your assistance. Mother, I
Still breathe easier when I know you are breathing with me
Breathing your life into mine
As I live out my youth just as you wish you could do again too.
Those 5000 miles were not enough to stop the feel of you both in my thick bones, in my blood
And even when the air pressure rose
It could never override the extent of your love.
I thought I travelled heavy, three suitcases and a brand new hoodie
But I flew lightly
Just like all those balloons you once bought me,
The ones that encapsulated my childhood in Disney.
You are both Darlings, and I felt like your Wendy.
Off on some crazy adventure, knees weak, mind unsteady
I was unready
Like a new born thrown into water only to realize it is naturally a good swimmer.
I finally found my strength under the sun of Beijing
Panic attacks in the morn but climbing great walls by evening
Turns out you made me into a fighter without ever knowing
Your encouragement of ‘Just do your best – we’re so proud’ ever present and showing.
Two weeks never felt so long as when I was 8 hours ahead
Starting my day as you got ready for bed
But even worlds apart, nothing felt different
Because Dad, when you said you were my best friends,
I know that you meant it.
Mother, father, there is a bond between us that can never be broken
And no matter how many times I fly away
Or how many lost boys I try to save
You will always be the centre of my attention
My rock, my shield, my battling intervention
And when I return home, peering in through the window
I know the lights will be on, front door unlocked
You will be holding hands, waiting
Confident in your daughter
With love, kindness and patience
And a faith in everything you ever taught her.

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

There is so much blood
It fills in the cracks of the rubble that covers the city like cement mixture.
It takes three shots for him to die.
They ask if there is any rope to throw to him as if he is a child on a lilo who cannot swim.
They cannot bring him back to shore.

It is four thirty in the morning
I am praying.
Please,
Stop killing them.
**** the war that lies in the ink of printed money.
Do not let it resurface.
You have made worms meat of that man who was searching for his son.
The children cannot find a home in either of your houses.

Now, father and son are turning into statistics on the other side of television screens
And I wonder how anyone can expect me to sleep.
We live in different time zones
But I can feel the pain in the oxygen I breathe
It has settled in the air of every nation.
My lungs are red.
There is so much blood.

I’ve being looking through stained glass windows that remind me of your eyes.
All gold and hazel and pious
And I’m still trying to wash bloodstains from my shirt cuff
Because your crucifixion that night in the smoke and the winter
Has left all my clothes coloured in you.

Boy with teeth like a typewriter
And a tongue made of some saviour’s love
And one time it felt like heaven
And another time it felt like all hell was in your bottom lip

And I swear down,
Gracious God,
I never meant to **** nobody.
I swear, down to the underworld,
I never meant to **** myself.

I just wanted his lust like the strong spine of a hymn book
And I keep singing songs about something to do with
The way his chest rises and falls
as he breathes
As if my life ever had any purpose without his.

Oh Lord of lost lovers,
I know you hear me.
Make this pain in my palms go away.
I cannot nail myself into this.

He’s a beaten down bible,
And I need him alive.

You are the bitter taste from coffee I still make too strong
I was in boiling water
You were not.
Too hot, too hot
those words burnt both our tongues.
I still see you when I shut the fridge door
catching myself wearing your empty expression in the window's reflection.
The milk is almost as pale as your skin,
as white as your teeth
when you remembered how to smile again,
as though you were stuck in a bad dream
that no amount of hot beverages could save you from.

My throat is full of untimely secrets
So many admissions I need to throw up
And paint his wooden floorboards with
Because that’s where I used to find my voice
Lying next to his stacks and stacks of paperbacks
And scrunched up t-shirts
And now the only time I talk loudly
is when he lets me sleep in his room surrounded by
Old rock and roll posters half torn down in adolescent rages
And his grandfather’s books with their fractured spines and ripped out pages.
It is in the early hours
When he says to me
‘There are too many holes pierced into your body.
I think if I poured my love into you
It would just seep right through’
For once, silence is crucial.
Because I do not own enough replies to explain the fragility of my blood vessels when they understood what he meant.
It sent an electric shock through my entire ****** system and that was how my throat stopped shaking.
The need to uproot every good bad cruel volatile imploding exploding loving frustrated string of sentences left me after that.
I can’t go back to the semi and collapse on his floor anymore.
Lying down there has become lying everywhere.
And my voice box is no longer prepared for it.

See the only love I have ever been in is
Unrequited
You didn’t need me
Nor want me
But I couldn’t get enough of you
So I grabbed onto you like you were the last ticket out of this town
And I never let go even though I knew
All the trains had stopped running years ago
And that you could never really save me.
I still held on.

I have never been in the kind of love where things are simple.
I love you and you love me
Is something I have never been a part of.

So when I say I’m in love,
Do not think I am happy.
Do not think we share our secrets at four o’clock in the morning
Or that he knows the exact shade of green of my eyes
like I know the bruises on the back of his hand.

Because this love is not like that.
This love is not patient, nor is it kind.
It is hard
And I am hurting
But there is no-one to kiss it better.

My grandfather tells me I am too sensitive
He is sheltered in cardigans and sits in an old armchair,
A walking stick next to his feet.
He is not quite shipwrecked but people around him have already started drowning.

He says my heavy heart is wrapped too tightly in self-made bubble wrap,
that I’ve been so busy looking at my feet I didn’t realise the ‘Handle With Care’ sign has been ripped away from my collarbones.
And all I know is that the world is volatile
and when it storms, my god, I feel the wrath of it in anywhere I used to call home.

I think he forgets he was a soldier of the sea
And so now when he sees the fading scrapes on my wrists and
waves of old blood
He cannot understand me.

He is a tall man.
He spent his youth looking over gates into better places,
Seeing boys with parents who had colour in their faces.
Maybe we chase colours like forest covered streams to their final destination
And perhaps that is why he liked surfing oceans rather serving his mother her endless medication

I wonder if he found a piece of peace in the heart of the ocean
And if since then, solid ground seems so broken.
He is unstable on his leather soles and I think he still misses the kisses he once stole
But now, he is a soldier of solitude and talking without thinking
He is a captain of old bones and loved ones that won’t stop sinking.

My father tells me I have a kind heart.
A good heart.
I think it beats more softly than my grandfather’s.
I can be found in the shallow water, minding my step.
But if I ever look for Sailor George’s,
I know, far away in the distance, out where the sea meets its reflection, it will always be left.

I wanted my work to mean something. I guess everyone that creates something wants a person to look at it, read it, admire it, and wonder what life would have been like had they not come across it.
  Like a French film with no subtitles, but you see the woman in red, and you see the way she looks at him, from across the room, and you know, you just know that she is somewhere between being in lust and in love with him. And it is heavy, and powerful, and it is all red. You know they are going to ****, or make love, or marry each other and live till they are ninety. You know that glance means something, and maybe if you had not have noticed it, you would never know what an affair of love could look like.
  It matters.
  I want it to matter.

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.