I'm not an artist but I've opened up galleries with your name painted all over the walls

they're a souvenir encoded in brush strokes of downward spirals and rose tinted tunnel vision

the lights are blaring and my sight is blurred by tears and the street lamp flickers, almost sympathetically

a street lamp can understand, so why can't you?

being alone isn't always lonely and being happy doesn't always mean with you. sometimes the thudding of my heart is more comforting than your voice and sometimes you never find the other half to make you whole.

there are edges and lines, curves and lies, too intricate the detail that only a master could weave it with the articulation of shakespeare.

my favourite things were moulding themselves around you and if life stopped i'd never press play, with you.

thoughts come in bucket loads and the river is over flowing and my mind can't contain it all anymore.

i said i love you and i know they're only three words but it's three more than i've said to anybody else.

i hold a pen like i hold your hands, tightly, until it hurts. you hold my heart the same way.

i went into an abandoned house once and imagined living there with you and suddenly the smell of death and lingering atmosphere subsided and although the windows were smashed and the drops from the ceiling felt like the whole place was crying, i was comforted. i guess you made every place feel like home.

if the world was upside down in the universe and gravity one day failed us, i'd descend into the stars happy to have known you existed.

but you didn't exist how i wanted.

did you know that fighting isn't always violent? sometimes it's metaphorical. sometimes you should fight, for me.

there are words more beautiful than people and that's why there are no words for you.

if i leave, when i leave, don't follow. my next journey is an adventure for myself and who knows? maybe i'll find my way back, but you'll be skipping along the savannah holding hands with someone much more graceful than me.

take care, and don't leave her empty like our abandoned house.

have you ever believed
in something so blindly
so genuinely
that the moment you realize
it isn't true, something inside you
changes forever?
i wanna tell you a story, see
seldom do i ever
go swimming in drinks
deep enough to drown in
but when i do
i speak in tongues
about things that none
of my memories
are allowed to talk about
like that christmas
at the isthmus
where my girlfriend
plucked a conch shell
whiter than gods teeth
out of the sand
held it to her ear
and stopped time
that day she was a shade of blue
the could've made the ocean sick
see, she loved to play jokes
when she held
the sea shell to her ear
she gasped, called my name
and said "i want you to hear this"
i said "yeah, right, everybody knows it's just the same old sea"
she replied "no. not this one. this one is special. listen. theres music in this one"
she handed me the shell
like a promise she couldn't keep
and i held it to my ear
with all the potential
of seeing shore
after being stranded
at sea for years
only to hear
a tired dirge of silence
spill from its emptiness
i guess she didn't know
how desperately
i wanted to hear it too
because ever since
something inside me snapped
now sand pours out
of every post card i open
i hear seagulls
in telephone static
sometimes i have dreams
where i bury my hands
in every beach
i've ever been on
and exhume this graveyard of noise
every time i try to sleep
i spit up fishhooks
and i guess i'm obsessed
but maybe
if i hold my ear
to enough vacant things
then i could have back
the time stolen from me
since it happened
maybe they would get it
if they knew what i wanted
when i blow out birthday candles
maybe they'll find me
face down in a wishing well
i watch eternal sunshine
of the spotless mind every day
pretending i can forget too
because this sea sickness
has followed me for years
because yesterday
i walked into a music shop
and all the pianos broke
but the only thing
i can think to say is
*do you know how bad
a memory has to be
that you fantasize
about forgetting it?

i wonder if the doors in the house you grew up in
started slamming themselves to save your father the trouble.
i wonder if you can remember the last time you prayed,
and if you had trouble unfolding your hands.
i wonder if your mother knows
about the collection of hearts you hide in your closet,
i wonder if she could tell mine apart from the rest.
i wonder if your shoes know the reason why
you keep them by the back door and not your bedside.
and sometimes, i wonder
if you ever think about that night when i told you,
you wouldn't need to drink so much if you had me.
but it seems like we only speak when you've got body on your brain,
whiskey in your glass,
your judgement is overcast,
and you know i'm too weak to ignore you.
i learned how to translate your texts
from drunken mess back into english.
i am fluent in apology, but i don't ask you for them anymore.
this is just how it is.
it's not enough for either of us
but ******* it we are not above settling.
so i will ignore her name on your breath,
and you will ignore the fact that this means something to me.
i always thought the first time i kissed you,
it would be on your mouth.
i just wanted to be something warm for you to sink into,
something that could convince you to stay a second night.
but i sneak you out in the early morning,
and you take a piece of my pride with you when you go.
i am left to nurse the hangover from a wine i've never tasted,
wondering how this is possible.
waiting for the next drunk call,
for the next time i get to pretend we are lovers,
the next time i get to live out the fantasy i am most ashamed of.
it is the one in my head where you want me when you're sober too.

- m.f.

i pull her, inches towards me
closer, closer; i don't wanna breathe

and she struggles and her grasp loosens
and she's leaving now, and i'm in the same position

eyes to the floor, head bowed a little
trying not to cry from a heart so fickle
trying to muster a smile, but the tear, it trickles

"i love you" i whisper; she's gone and i'm too late
i hear her voice resound in my head; my shoulders are dead weight
her heart speaks a language only mine can translate

but it's foreign now, and my heart doesn't understand
she's changed and i've changed and i don't know her like the backs of my hands

and it's been three weeks now but the lump in my throat is still apparent
it's been five ******* weeks now but the world is still so transparent

why can i only see beauty when it's oozing out of her skin?
why can i only picture life without her as an odyssey of burden?

this is not an "i miss you" poem, even though i do
it isn't a plea or a beg or a self-piteous bunch of love spew

it's from one soul to the other
to one soul from a broken lover
(just to let you know) there will never be another
because there's no lightening without its thunder

imagine if our eyes
reversed our lives
in slow motion;
endless sea sickness
drowning in your succulent ocean,
hoping for the potion
to lead this
sickeningly twisted
endless devotion
into an eternity of
relentless corrosion

imagine if clocks were non-existent
time was an abyss, limited yet distant;
home is where the heart is -
i'm homeless
and suffocating in
your ****** fluoresce

wallowing and distressed
hallucinating and possessed
homicide and loneliness

i feel vandalised
like a building, derelict
abandoned with flowers
growing faces like they're parodists
i blink and free fall;
i'm standing, five thousand trees tall
you're crawling, can barely muster a squall
and i'm soaring;
ten thousand trees tall