For the first time since I can remember I felt like I was graced with the same regality as those who sit on thrones built from bricks of solid self-esteem, sealed with the plaster of confidence.

Every sweet silver tongued sentence that dripped from their mouths like honey helped to sow the seeds of yet another flower on my crown, blooming with the promise of an ever elusive beauty I have never had the honour of meeting before, until my crown blossomed with the sweetest scent and the prettiest petals you had ever seen.

These buds would encourage this forbidden nectar to fill in the gaps, to flow around and in between every crack and crevice in my self-polluted soul, mending, often overflowing leaving distinct pale pink kisses on the apples of my cheeks, and the dreaded dimple that is so often hidden would emerge from the shadows the moment that sweet nectar touched it and it was no longer afraid of showing.

Then you, sir, with your eyes shying from stardust could only speed the process, equipped with nothing but a rusty toolbox consisting of rosebud lips and blistered hands I know would never dare break my fragile stem, but be the foundations for my desperate, clinging vines to grasp so maybe someday I could taste the sunlight coating my lips, and veiling my skin the same way it did that one time I actually felt beautiful.

My legs were solid and strong, making just the right contact with the earth for me to keep my balance, my stomach a valley with just the right kind of hills and dips for my weary eyes to travel on, and I was blessed with a head held high paired with piercing eyes that only said that I wore all my flowers proud upon my crown.

Even if seeds of doubt still plant themselves in the caverns of your mind telling you that they will probably wilt the next day, you still water them with the tears you have left because ******* they are prettier alive.

Suddenly the sweet sound of ‘thank you’s echoed from my mouth to replace the bitter, constant taste of denial, and loathing took the form of loving and I embraced every second of it.

When someone at long last sees the galaxies in their own eyes and the pure luminescence of their soul, why must it be cruelly crushed by comments determined to blow them off course when they finally know exactly where they want to drop anchor, what is wrong if I decide to start with myself because I am living with me for the rest of my life and I realised I had better get comfortable. Self-respect, self-esteem, self-confidence, it all begins and ends with you, you are not just a chapter, you are the whole freaking book, so allow kind words to embed themselves in your skin and etch their outlines on your bones and it’s a pretty good way to start the first paragraph.

So let me be an empress, let me be a queen, no longer the princess of low self-esteem, rip off the nametag that reads ‘handle with care’ because you’re not breathing right you are not even aware of how much you are worth, step into your skin, accept every beautiful inch of you because you’re not going to win a battle where you fight by beating yourself, your body is not a warzone, but darling if you breathe in all the dirt you can take you’ll be exhaling the prettiest of flowers.

I know that it’s hard, but trust me, honey, you will grow so tall, you will blossom my friend, even though you may fall once, or twice while you climb.. keep your eyes fixed on that sun, and you’ll be just fine.

i am a prisoner to your fingertips and i am recidivating and falling in love with a jail cell is not glamorous but i’m not sure how to stop
i have scraped my fingernails with barbed wire trying to get rid of you, why won’t you leave?
there are gaps between our teeth so the breath between you and i can keep us alive during the times we binge on kisses
is this what it feels like to be an addict?
i cannot rest until your lungs have swallowed my consciousness and for a heart to keep beating there must be a reason and this is why people die of heartbreak because ******* it, there is no reason without you
my heart hasn’t stopped beating; i think it is just as hopeful
teeth don’t always have to bite so why do you use them as weapons?
not only am i a prisoner to your fingertips but to your mind, to the gaps between your teeth even when you can’t bear to kiss me, to the idea that one day i’ll receive a get-out-jail-free card and you’ll be waiting at the iron gates for me
i don’t have a release date but i expect i’ll be serving a lifelong sentence
i am barricaded in and all i can hear is your voice all i can see is your face all i can do is clutch on to the voice i lost a long time ago but i would scream if i could and do you know how lonely it is being a prisoner in an abandoned jail?
i am a prisoner to your body and every time you demand my touch, i am there and every time you throw me away, locked up and silenced for days, i am not plotting my escape
i am famished and starved and famished and starved, i think it’s because you keep swallowing my consciousness and no amount of food will fill me; i have grown accustomed to being empty
i am a prisoner to your fingertips and i have fallen in love with this jail cell home

i want a love that consumes me
fills me up until i'm a punching bag of scattered thoughts
and i keep spluttering and spilling my love in wine glasses
and they're overflowing and i can't stop vomiting your name
i want love to devour me
like the leftover pizza you bought at 4am last night, drunk and lonely and alone
how sad it has become to be drunk and lonely and alone with you
i will become pieces within you because i cannot stop shedding my layers
i want a love that engulfs me
that chews me up like that second stick of bubblegum
and spits me out like mouthwash on an alcoholics tongue, acidic and burning and foreign
your mouth is a gun and my eyes are bloodshot from its metaphors
i have run out of armour
i have run out of armour
i am told love isn't meant to be beautiful and it is romanticised
but all i know is i want to romanticise all night long with you under my bed covers because you are beautiful
i would say i love you but how mundane
how throw-away those words have became
i am told love isn't meant to be beautiful and i have run out of armour
how can something that isn't meant to be beautiful look so good?
like a train wreck decorated in fresh flowers; roses and chrysanthemums
a car crash on the side of the road, nobody wants to see but everybody looks
i said i want a love that consumes me
i said i want it to devour me, engulf me whole and then spit me out
i said i'm running out of armour
and maybe if i convince myself it's what i asked for maybe then maybe it starts to look beautiful
drunk and lonely and alone
and i was atop the hill we sat at the first night you ever told me you love me (how throw-away those words have became)
you were brighter than every night light combined, i thought
"love isn't meant to be beautiful," everyone said
"but how? how is sitting here with you and seeing the silhouette of trees across a skyline, a concrete ocean dotted with street lamp stars and the last hours of a wakened society not ******* beautiful?"
drunk and lonely and alone i got it
i am pouring my thoughts into wine glasses and they're overflowing and i keep vomiting
i keep vomiting
i'm not sure if it was the pizza at 4am or you who made me sick
i am waiting for you to spit me out

the mid-afternoon breeze caresses her bare skin and goose bumps form as a greeting; she smiles, at nothing and at no one but the oxygen surrounding her.

the blind draped elegantly either side of her window bellows back and forth and she traces her fingertips along the hairs on her arms and she smiles, at nothing and at no one but the sheer fact she’s alive.

it’s enough to make her want to cry, to hear her heart pumping in her ears and feel it in her neck and her wrist and her chest and every pulse chanting a rhythm of approximately 115,200 heartbeats per day and as the breeze gusts in, her eyes flicker to the table beside her and therein a photograph lies your face and her fingertips stop and she swears for a second her heart does, too.

she loses a heartbeat every time she sees your smile.

she remembers the day vividly, you wore that blue checked shirt because she asked you to and you smelled of morning dew and winter fog; she searches for it in every perfume shop she enters but you’re never there.

sometimes she swears you’re sleeping beside her at night, she’d bet her beating heart that you were but she can never tear the difference between reality and fantasy without you.

see, she doesn’t think she’s dreaming but when she wakes up, you aren’t there, but she swears with her beating heart you were right beside her and she raises goose bumps on her arms every morning because you would have caressed them with your own fingertips and she’s not sure if she could almost cry because she’s alive or if she could almost cry because you’re the reason she is.

she wonders, often, too often, if you look out of your window and know she’s staring at the same moon you are and she hopes the shine reminds you of her the way it reminds her of you.

she writes you letters sometimes because for the duration she can hear your voice replying inside her head and you’re right beside her, she swears you’re right beside her but she drops the pen and you’re never there.

sometimes, when she lights candles, she wonders if it’s the fire you caused inside her that lights it and she wonders if you know she’s slowly being burned alive. she wonders if you are, too, if maybe when you’ve both whittled to ashes the breeze that she welcomes every morning will help her to find you again.

and I would give everything I have to see your eyes light up like streetlamps and you know that time in summer where the steady glow from daylight merges into night time and the breeze dances along the leaves of trees too tall like ballerinas; so gentle if you blink you’ll miss the sway of them? that’s what you remind me of.

you are a glow, an indian sunset and I long to be the sea your sun shine kisses and when your glow transcends into moonlight I long to be the stars who are accompanied by your effervescent light night after night and you know to me you will always be a ******* sunset when you should be rainfall: you pour down on everything I love and leave puddles;  you cause unapologetic floods in the crevices of my collarbones and attach your saltwater to the follicles of my hair and you warp the words on the pages of love letters I never sent and when you fall down my cheeks my teardrops and your raindrops will merge and for a moment we will become one and that’s all I’ve ever wanted. to be one with you. to be a ******* indian sunset in your illuminous eyes.

I keep running through the hallways of my mind and your voice is bouncing off the walls and echoing straight through my chest and there’s a thudding that gets louder and louder, like bongo drums, every time and I’m pretty sure my heart is now a gallery of us, open for public consumption and they can walk along the hallways and appreciate the beauty of our profound love like you never could.

one day you will find someone who melts your heart into your veins until it feels like the oxygen around your body is trapped and screaming for you to try to breathe, try to breathe harder and you’ll scream for them and they’ll stop returning your calls and there’ll be no texts and everything you once had will sink – almost in slow motion, almost as intangible as the idea that I loved you harder than anyone ever could – a ship where you’re the only person aboard and you’ll be watching an indian sunset like you watched their fingertips trace the curvature of your hips for the last time and you’ll realise in that moment that they were your indian sunset and man, don’t you just wish for some rainfall?

woe is catching the last droplets of champagne in a wine glass on a friday night because getting drunk by yourself is what you call a celebration of freedom and independence but that's a smoke screen for the loneliness and i mean, you'd rather not get drunk at all but it's easier to blur your thoughts than conquer them when you're running out of armour and ambition

woe is seeing the person you would've done anything for holding hands with someone new and you pass in slow motion and smile and it's bittersweet and both of you are nothing but strangers now

woe is sleeping within her sheets and feeling like the temperature is minus degrees because you aren't the way you were when you first met and nostalgia hits hard at 3am

woe is watching the sun set because the transition reminds you of her eyes as she fell asleep and the phases of the moon encapsulate her shaggy hair and crooked smile and you're sure you catch a glimpse of it every time and you need it, you need it to hold on to because falling out of love is hard when your heart refuses to let go

you remember the first time she smiled at you over dinner and you couldn't contain all the butterflies spelling her name profusely in your stomach and you felt nauseated from excitement and nervousness and you can't recall for the life of you what she was talking about because there were too many times that getting lost in thoughts of her was more than welcoming

woe is not you and you are not woe
woe is collapsing memories and fading effigies
woe is incarcerations of the mind projecting hallucinations intermittently and protecting the fallacy of a world existing in your galaxy
woe is that galaxy belonging to her
woe is that galaxy being named after her
woe is that galaxy existing because of her
woe is not you and you are not woe
woe is you and her