Burning,
yet cold to the touch,
we stood out in the street with the snow.

Flakes that danced on the wind,
steadily dampening our clothes and hair,
shook away our troubles with the flutter of a breeze.

You in your fluffy hat and scuffed shoes, me wrapped in your jumper and my too-tight jeans. Both of us content to be cold before we got hot.

Because we both knew the fire would come later, burning kisses and blistering contact could wait.

Right then, we just enjoyed the snow, before the fire could melt it away.

I was there when the cage fell,
a bystander to a new world at its dawning.

I was there when the world went black,
a slow dimming process,
one that robbed so many of their fading courage and misplaced optimism.

I was there when the window opened,
when physical nourishment was provided at the expense of human dignity.

I was there when the plague broke out,
when the whole split apart,
when the first signs of transformation began

I was there when the mirrors were lowered,
when people could finally admire their own plumage,
and envy that of those around them.

I was there when there were only a few of us left,
watching slowly as we all fell one by one,
skin erupting, backs curving, and eyes darkening.

I was there when I forgot my own name,
when my raggedy clothing finally came away from my morphing body,
when I was the last person I knew.

I was there when all that was left was colour,
a flocking mass that circled above,
a rainbow movement that drifted up and away when the cage finally opened.

I was there when the transition was complete,
but in so many ways,
I wasn't.

Trembling fingers that have nothing to do with the heat,
beating hearts and breathless sighs,
are all symptoms of your love.

Flashing phone screens and vibrations on tables,
fidgeting thumbs hovering over keys,
waiting for that little speech bubble to appear,
are all symptoms of your love.

Closed doors and unanswered calls,
inactive screens and stagnant feeds,
wet eyes and damp sheets,
are the sideaffects of withdrawal from your love

Windows open to clear the air,
candles lit to bring in light and scent,
hair regrowth, makeovers, and new bedsheets,
were all cures to your love.

I'm flying.
From way up here, you look so small,
but the fires that you started have burnt further than I can see.

Once a green valley, only thick soot remains, poisoning the soil,
ensuring nothing will grow again.

The rivers, that turned from trickles to raging torrents, now carry ash downstream,
becoming enablers to this disease by transporting it across the land.
Where once life and purity lived,
now decay and dirt breed.

Contaminatation.
That's what it is,
what has been growing and festering since the first sparks popped into life.

That's what you brought,
and the fire had burnt through me,
leaving only brittle bones and blacked thought.

And I never knew until someone taught me to fly,
instead of blindly running from the flames,
lit by a child playing with matches.

I used to run, walk, or crawl to you.

Now, I'm flying.

I stay up til 3am.
I scroll,
tweet,
reblog,
upload.

I keep my mind busy until it's too tired to argue with itself.

I wake up at 12pm.
Unrested,
regretful,
dissatisfied.

I've wasted my day,
swapped a sunrise for a dimmed screen,
breakfast for lunch,
sleep for rest.

My days blur,
with nothing to occupy my time,
I watch 5 seasons in a day,
reach my post limit,
exhaust conversations.

Doing nothing had become my job.

And it consumes me.

Life is made of parts:
Part of you wants romance,
but you would settle wholly for love.

You partly want success,
but mostly want satisfaction.

Part one of life is optimism.
Part two is learning to deal with disappointment.

But, most importantly,
you are part of something big,
and it is part of you.
3
2
1
Go.

If I thought I could wash you out of my head,
I would never get out of the shower.
I would never stop clearing away the dead skin,
Stop soaking in lotions and salts,
just to remove the smell of you.
But still you remain,
Suffocating me like oil on water.

So I lather,
Rinse,
Repeat.

At the touch of a button,
flick of the finger,
swip of the screen,
I can know more than the generations before me could.

I'm exposed to people I could never hope to meet,
their thoughts and feelings condensed to numbers and words on a screen,
introduced to so many thing that i've never seen before.

I'm so overwhelmed by how the world is turning,
suddenly conscious of my own failings:
the homophobic uncle, the sexist teacher, the racist childhood television show.

The shame creeps in and there is no stopping it,
what I built myself up on has eroded as the new world is redecorated in glass and chrome.

I have friends I don't respect anymore, and films I refuse to watch.
Natural disasters and catastrophes are reduced to hashtags, people you've never met can tell you that you're too tall, too short, too fat, too thin.

The digital revolution has already begun, and there is no turning back.
I am exposed, developed, and forever changed for better and for worst.
It's a fact I find hard to accept, so I blame my service provider.

I'll say it once,
once very loudly,
and then never again.

Being sick doesn't excuse bad behaviour. It doesn't mean you're allowed to forget about others; what they want, what they need, the fact what they want might compromise what you might want.

And that is perfectly fine, because the world won't stop spinning just because you get dizzy.
It can't,
otherwise we'd never keep moving.

I love you with all my heart, more than I can express with words before turning into a sobbing mess, because I loved you before and just as much after.

I love you because you stayed, when all you wanted to do was leave. I love you because you tuned out the other voices and listened to the only ones that really mattered. I love you because even after the years of hurt and suffering from unseen forces, you still smile at me, even when I know you don't feel like it.

I love you so much,
but that doesn't mean that you aren't a giant **** sometimes.

It doesn't mean that you get to pick and choose when you want to be involved in people's lives,
and it certainly doesn't mean that you can be wholly self-centered at times for the sake of 'recovery'.

Because we both know there is no such thing as recovery. There is only management, only tolerance, and that means learning how to deal with other people's **** as well as yours.

Because believe me, we're learning how to deal with this illness just as much as you.

So don't be a ****.

Ask us about our day went BEFORE you launch into a rant about people on public transport.
Sleep in until 3pm, but stack the dishwasher or make the bed before we get home.
Tell us that you've had a really dark day instead of starting a fight about something you don't care about, because I guarantee you, we've got a fuckload of grievances we won't tell you about, so don't pull out ours because you want to fight.

Most importantly, tell us that you love us, because sometimes it's hard to tell.
Don't follow it with how we couldn't possibly understand or reciprocate it, just a simple 'I love you' will carry us for longer than you think.

Cold,
the kind that chills bones,
cracks teeth,
and freezes blood.

I long for the warmth of a bath,
my self-made womb,
steaming and inviting.

I long for my bed,
soft, plush, and blanket clad,
my domain of sleep and pleasure.

Above all, I long for you,
your eyes that smoulder,
your kisses that sear,
and fingers that burn as they trace circles on my skin.

You are my spark.
And I need fire.

You were like a 90's movie:

Completely consuming to my younger self, every line, catchphrase, and sequence embedded in me. Becoming as much part of me as my own personality.

Totally embarrassing and shameful to my older self, a harsh reminder that I was even young and ignorant. That I confused quantity for quality; in love, affection, whispered sweet nothings on stale bed sheets.

But remembered with a nostalgia that can't quite be recreated, no matter how many times I try to relive it in my head.

Perhaps it's because I'm still too young, and the best metaphor I can conjure up when people ask me about my first love

is that you were like a 90's movie.

As pathetic as it sounds, it is no doubt fitting, because we outgrew each other with age.

It was only with time that we saw each other as laughably outdated.

Perhaps we are all just products of our time.

People say love is like a budding flower.
Like the sun.
Like waves on a beach, hot tea on a cold day, like light breaking though the clouds.

They're lying.

The best example I can use is that love is a bus.

You have no choice in getting on, it comes when it wants to, and if you're not careful, it will move too fast and leave you sprawled on the floor.
Falling will take your shame, your self esteem, and your faith.

But eventually you'll find a seat,  learn to enjoy the ride, and get where you need to be.

His eyes said disinterest,
his hair said maintenance.
His smile said slyness,
and his laugh said cruelty,
but all my heart said was 'kiss him',
so that's what I did.

Thunder cracks across a cloudless sky,
Creatures scamper, crawl, and fly,
The world inverts when you deny
That you were never there.

Waters freeze, and forests burn,
Children cry, and never learn
To guard the truth and love they earn
For when you were never there.

The cosmos is once again aligned
Humans, bleary eyed, emerge to find
There never was a woman so blind
Than to see you when you were never there.

For there was no cloudless sky where thunder roared,
No freezing water, or child crying left unadorned,
Just a boy who took the girl that poared
All the love she had into a heart so flawed,
A heart that was never there.

When the wind drowns you out,
when the thunder roars,
when all you can hear is the pounding of your blood rushing through your ears,
call to me.

Because I have lost my voice and can't call you back when you waunder from me.

And I'm left,
standing there,
calling.

Scars on the inside can do just as much damage as those on the outside.
If a cut opens internally,
you could bleed out silently,
still smiling and attempting to heal the visible scars of those around you.

Fading as everything circulates,
trying to find its way to the surface.
Only after the first external cut happens,
and everything bursts out,
do people realise how bad the bleeding was.

Scars are ****, until they're psychological

Confidence is envious, until it you find out it's false

Patience is a virtue, until people abuse it

No one knows what they're doing, so don't beat yourself up.

Just cover the scars, smile, wait patiently,

And fake it til you make it

Lay back and look at the sky,
time moves slower when you stop and think.

A million miles away, there is a ball of gas about to go out,
but you will still see its light twinkling for years to come.

That's what we do,
burn bright even after the flame has died,
hoping someone out there will see our light.

I never knew that I could find so much beauty in such little things.

Like the sound of our bathroom door squeaking as you sneak inside, well after you should have been in bed.

Like the way the pillows smelt after you fell asleep with your hair wet, saturated and crumpled on the bed.

Like the wet, slick razor left on the side of the sink, because you know your stubble hurts my skin.

Like the beep of the fridge telling you you're taking too long to decide whether to have juice or chocolate milk. You always choose chocolate milk.

I never realised how much those little sounds meant to me, until it fell silent.

I never realised how much those smells comforted me, until they were replaced with others' cheap cologne and cigarettes.

I never realised how much those little traces of you left around the house could keep you with me all day, until they became the only means of having you near me.

Don't ever expect to own someone.
They may give you their heart,
their mind,
or their body.

You might know their thoughts and desires so intimately,
to the point where they become your own,
but don't misunderstand.

You do not own them,
they need to exist outside of you.

"You are mine" and "I love you" are two very different things,
one is ownership,
and the other a gift.

A heart might beat for you,
a body might ache for you,
and eyes might weep for you,
but they belong to the person you love.

And you don't take things away from the people you love,
even if they give them away freely.

Because it is a far greater expression of love to care for something you don't own,
than neglect something you've branded as yours.

They say that time heals all wounds,
But that doesn't mean I don't remember being wounded.

Cut to the bone and strung out on the rack,
I stitched myself back together and mended what you left broken.

Did you really expect me to let the bull back into the shop?

If I were to be wounded again,
the fault would not be with you.

And that's a cut I don't think I  could survive.

Sometimes my heart is heavy for no reason,
and I need to sleep,
and cry,
and scream.

I know I need these things,
but I just can't do it in a crowd full of people,
which never gets smaller,
nor any further away from me.

So I will wait for that blishful moment when I am left alone,
but then I will realise
that it was the crowd that held me together all this time.

You will never leave this place,
not as long as you exist within the dark recesses of my heart and memory.
Every sound is you,
my senses are betraying my mind.
Because you're not here.
And you never will be again.
And I just can't ever accept that.

Your opinion isn't valid,
not until you've supported it with at least four secondary sources.

I want to write beautiful words
that will make you fall in love with me,
but all I have are the sad ramblings of a girl
who doesn’t know what she’s doing.

I couldn't think of anything worse than having to face cleaning out your drawers alone.

That is, until I came home and they were already empty.

Move fast
Move slow
Move out of my way
Let's go

I want you around so I can tell you about my bad day.
I want you around to hold me when I sleep.
I want you around so I have someone to focus on besides myself.

But there isn't a 'you',
there's never been a 'you',
and that's the problem.