i am ambidextrous – i can count how many times you’ve hurt me on both hands and i am ambivalent, i love you but i hate you

there is a certain ambience i recall in flashbacks and unspoken memories, however it fades as quickly as my smile when your name is mentioned

there is so much ambiguity in your eyes when you gaze at me – i stopped marvelling over you and your thoughts and instead marvelled over myself

who am i, without you? what am i, without you?

i am a life of ambition
you are a life of indifference

there’s a lullaby the wind chimes used to hum as i sat outside my house. i observed synodic epiphanies in the sky until all i could do was make a dot-to-dot of your face out of the stars that were almost as intangible as you are and as you always were.

i always found myself searching for traces of you everywhere. the sound of your voice as a symphonic ultrasound echoing from the wind chime to me, just for me. your effervescent hazel eyes (you always insisted they were brown but i’d studied them as a psychologist studies mental health) but you never came.

and trust me, i waited --
i waited for so much as a murmur or a rustled blade of grass when the world stood still and i waited in the morning, the afternoon and i waited all night.

i waited all **** night in nothing but a pair of leggings (you told me i looked “pretty sweet” in them once) and your jumper, the jumper you left at my house on may 16th. hummingbirds were the highlight of your morning and the highlight of my morning was always you.

you made scrambled eggs with milk and only a dash of pepper because too much gave you an itchy throat and then you took my hand and we slow danced along to the sound of the microwave; it was like a heavy duty drill begging to explode but we didn’t care.

i wore your jumper then the way i’m wearing it now, except i’ve tucked my hands into my sleeves because yours aren’t there to hold anymore.

i always found myself not only searching for traces of you everywhere but also searching for you in everybody i've ever met (and probably everybody i ever will meet). where’s that succulent sense of humour? where’s that desirable distaste for all humans besides me? you were intangible but somehow tangible to me and i mused over your ability to turn me from a servant into a queen but my gratitude overwhelmed me too much to question it, or you.

your name is euphonious;
i swirl it around my mouth like expensive champagne.
my stomach can tolerate neither.

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.