i have one hundred pocket pieces, they are parts of a jigsaw i never had the patience to put together and i carry them with me. i walk around like i'm on a tightrope from where i am right now to where you are. i try to make it in one piece, but i drop pieces. i can't lose too many because they are the only things that fit together and they resemble our hands.
i remember,
the last time our fingertips touched (do you?) you let go of my hand and i captured how it felt to be held by you, a vision i replay like a memory tape stuck on repeat; do you think our hands were jigsaw pieces? (i do)
you let go and you got on a train and i emptied my pockets for you, a trail so you could find your way back to me but i am still walking a tightrope.
is this a circus act?
is this an act?
can we cut to the scene where my legs buckle underneath me and i freefall through bottomless clouds (i'd probably still be searching for your eyes, or your hands) and all of a sudden i land on my feet and you are beside me just like you have been the entire time and i feel those fingertips again lace their way down my palm and you smile and tell me you've been expecting me?
i've watched too many romance movies, this is what you told me. you told me real life doesn't happen like that, so why am i still leaving trails?
am i losing my mind?
it kind of feels like i'm too far away from home to know where i am but yet it's so familiar and i am so at ease because i am walking this tightrope to get closer to you,
just follow my trail,
please.

come back to me.

pulchritudinous rolls off my tongue and on to the pebbles beneath her feet; i bend down to pick it back up, to pass it to her, to be like "here, hey, i got this for you, this is what you are to me" and she smiles.
it's a smile that never falters, it's an introverted "my mind is an alice in wonderland casket" smile. it is a pseudo smile and her persona speaks in the same tone.
i don't understand her language which is why i keep throwing words at her feet - i swear i'm trying not to but she has these eyes and i swear i've died and relived my entire life in parallel universes within them.
i tell her "here, hey, i don't know much, but i know that pulchritudinous was probably invented when someone saw you up close for the first time and didn't know how to speak and hey i know this pseudo smile hides so much but please note: i would let pulchritudinous roll off my tongue and pick it back up a million times over just to see it again and again,"
she smiles.

she smiles.

To whom it may concern,

I am fragile. I will pretend I'm okay when really my shoulders are collapsing under the weight of the heavy universe I do not feel a part of.

To whom it may concern,

I am tired. I have been running from things I dare not face since monsters began appearing under my bed and now all I'm left with are mirrors. I would rather join the monsters under my bed.

To whom it may concern,

I guess you could say I'm running from myself. Maybe I am. All I know is that the reason I hear my heartbeat so clearly is because my chest is hollow and I push people away for fun, like they're the dinner table I'm sat at and now I'm full.

To whom it may concern,

My name is Victoria, the meaning of Victoria is victory but the only thing I've been victorious at is ripping my own soul until it bleeds black. I've been trying to dye it red from the blood of others but colour fades and I'm tired.

To whom it may concern,

I am made up of layers, some are impenetrable by choice and some are just hanging under my fingernails. I can't seem to get them clean.

To whom it may concern,

I am a riddle, to some, I am a muse. For me, I am trying.

it's a melancholy sadness and it grips hold of my joints with steel chains and i am bolted
bound to internal torment like a sadist playing sadist tricks oh i am bemused
wrap me in cotton wool and sing to me
nursery rhymes or tragic blackened symphonies
melancholy melodies / mad and misused
play the piano on my ribcage and sing your sadist tunes
this little rib went crack crack crack
everything in the room faded to black, black, black
what a bitter hymn oh and there is nothing holy about this
beetroot is red because you beat the root of me dead so tell me
where is your god?
i think i set him on fire with the acid in my chest
my blood is scathing / possessed
i drew a cross on his forehead with what i had left
monsters are manufactured; a product, you see
a deformed social escapee
non-conformist unmoral idiosyncrasies

laboratory rats

setting the world on fire with gasoline and dynamite
study the ill mind of a structureless parasite
understand that monsters are manufactured,
and they were once
just like you

i'd cut my own heart open and bleed without a sound as you lay next to me to show you that tiny vessels string together within me to spell your name and i would bleed it all out to prove that to you i would cut my lungs out of my body to prove to you i breathe because of you i inhale and exhale for you and i want to cut my tongue out of my mouth to stop myself from talking because it splutters out of me like clouds of baby powder and it's so foggy i can't see light anymore

The first girl I ever apologised to
created craters in my veins and filled them with love and she didn’t even know
how beautiful she was, lying next to me face-to-face with nothing but TV reflections and an orchestra of words spoken in silence
I wanted to tell her I love her over and over again but my eyes stole any sentence I could form in my head from my mouth and did nothing but stare
They say a person’s face gets more attractive the more you look at it but I feel this is a lie; if I had only got to glance at her face for a second, she would still be the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen
and we fit together like tetris blocks, building a foundation to plant the root of forever
and I want to grow beside her, watching her blossom from a caterpillar into a butterfly, from a star into the sun
and I want to be the steady trees that stand beside her, humble and proud, showing her that I meant it when I said I would never leave because I am rooted deep into our soil of forever
and I couldn’t even if I wanted to and I kept my heart chained to my ribs before I met her but she waltzed in, handed me the keys and I haven’t been the same since.
I felt her come crashing into my life like an asteroid; I am sure I was wiped out and taken to a universe where only good things happen because I can no longer see bad, only flowers where bullets should be
I can no longer only see red, but violet and magenta and mahogany too and she has opened up a world where everything does happen for a reason because it has led me to her
like a sleepwalker looking for home only to find something much better than that
like a sleepwalker waking up to find themselves immersed in golden sands and out of touch with reality but rife with the knowledge that she’s real
and her touch is there to remind me of this,
the world’s biggest mystery gracing the palm of my hand with their own fingertips, two DNA connected and the vibrations of my love for her bouncing back to whatever God introduced me to her to say thank you
and I remember the first time I held her hand. We sat in silence as I traced my fingers over hers and back again, like a visual of tentative attraction on loop.
I didn’t believe in anything until I heard my name on her lips and suddenly angels existed and
Sometimes I feel like I’m hallucinating but I don’t mind when her presence in front of me is tripled and I can see not just one of her but three and each one outstretches their hand as they morph back into one person, as if to show me that in all her various forms, I am safe
and I have never been safer
I can no longer only see red, but hues of cyan and aqua and agate blue and they merge together to form eyes I dive into searching for the very depths of her ocean and I never gasp for air
because I am safe. They merge together to form irises that look at me like I’ve never been seen before, like a rare breed of an extinct animal discovered again; irises that look at me like they could stop time with their intensity
and I want to stop time with her
I want to contort it to wrap around her and I and protect us in the promise of eternity
because the stars will set the sky on fire and everything will melt in embers and ash without her
the planets will misalign
the soil will sink the trees at their roots
and the ocean will swallow the earth it once harmonised with
and I will, simply,
cease to exist.