kiss me goodnight
for i want to hold your hand like gravity holds my feet on the gr
i want to worship your body like i've been waiting a thousand years just to be in the same bed as you
i promise
i'll sew my lips shut so i can't confess my love for the hundreth time
but i'll say it ninety nine times whilst i still can
i love you
they say perfection doesn't exist, but they haven't met you

turning tides and sickening waves
it comes in bouts
sea sickness in slow motion
an uncontrollable desire to scratch at my skin

it comes in bouts
the thoughts, the fear, the feeling;
an anchor of uncontrollable palpitations and irrational thought

for some people, home is where the heart is
my heart is a home
it knocks in my chest and one day i am sure it's going to knock itself down

home is where the heart is,
reminders of where my heart is come in bouts
dizziness and exhaustion
brown paper bags and air thick with lack of oxygen...
how close are you to passing ou-

home is where the heart is,
some people have buried their homes within me
and i cannot take care of my own heart - let alone yours
and i keep trying to stop the world from turning so i don't drown in these turning tides and sickening waves so maybe we can spend longer together but these waves come crashing in fast; like my heart beat, like that unforgiving train as it takes you further and further away from me

i have never felt so close and yet so far from you

some people have buried their homes within me
i am more derelict building; abandoned farmhouse; isolated corner shop than i ever could be home

there is graffiti all over my walls and it masks irrational thought with shadowed wisdom and make-believe positivity

i was not built
i was misconstructed;
the site that gets knocked down before the real construction begins

and no one is safe to live within me;
for as homely as my heart may seem, it is overpowered by turning tides and sickening waves.

not every touch is there to scar you,

some are there to hold you

and you cannot shield yourself away out of fear that every touch is going to leave you crawling in your own skin from the itching and itching and burning and burning

because then, then you miss out on the really ******* good touches

the touches that ignite a fire inside of you that you hope keeps burning and burning and ******* burning

because it doesn't itch, somehow it soothes. it burns and it soothes and you've never felt anything like it and there are no scars, just a house on fire and every time a window smashes the exhilaration and adrenaline and exhilaration and adrenaline pours out of you and into you all at the same time.

fireworks do not compare to the explosion of endorphins, ramshackled and rummaging through you.

not every touch is there to scar you,

some are there to hold you.

i watch the clock tick to 2 milliseconds past 1900 hours and i remember how, at 2 milliseconds past 1400 hours, just 5 hours earlier, i was cradling you in bed
it was warm and we were interlocked and you looked heavenly
the glow of the sunshine a halo around a face full of sleep and too beautiful even for poetry.
i try to verbalise you, try to write you down to make your existence more fathomable –
i cannot.
there are no words for a heart that beats honey through soft-skinned veins,  that swirls around your mouth like saliva and you taste so **** sweet.
i told my doctor i have a sweet tooth, what i meant was i am addicted to you; what i meant was i can’t stop waking up in the middle of the night to fix the cravings i have when you aren’t there.
what i meant was, sometimes i sleep walk, find myself at
platform number 5 of the same station i left you at hours before hoping that some sweet fragrance of you still lingers.
i watched the clock tick to 2 milliseconds past 1900 hours and i watched the train move away in slow motion.
i watched your face until i couldn’t see it anymore and i have never felt longing like it. suddenly i felt like a lost kid at the supermarket trying to find their parent and i wanted to scream for you to come back because although this train moved in slow motion i swear 2 milliseconds passed and you were gone.
i tried not to blink because i didn’t want to miss a single moment.
i sent you “i love you” through a screen that is too familiar to me now and felt the itch of my craving against my spine –
i will wait for you.
i replay the last kiss in my head; it was probably our seventieth goodbye kiss because each one didn’t encompass all the love we needed to express before the train departed and i taste honey.
i cannot make your existence more fathomable because that would mean to understand you and in all your complexity, i never want to stop learning –
so please,
allow me to explore your mind in every neurotransmitter, in every dopamine dosage, in every fight or flight reaction; allow me to explore what it is to be you and let me write you into every poem i ever produce, let me hallucinate you into every city street, cast your reflection in every shop window, replace every tin of beans with jars of honey and settle like dust on my lips –
i will wait for you.
every day, i wait for you.

i remember that
game of dominoes
we played at your
grandma’s house
and your grandad
made us tea and
we ate your favourite
biscuits and all i
can recall is the way
you whispered
“i’m so glad you’re here”
over the table and
we were supposed to
be that couple who
were eighty playing
dominoes with our
grandson and his
new girlfriend he’d
brought home and
they’d drink tea and
she’d eat his favourite
biscuits and their
love would be like
déjà vu and his
whispers would bounce
to her over the table

is there a secret
to making a love
as strong as i believed
ours was, last?

maybe i should have
asked your grandparents

it doesn't hurt to be in love with you anymore; i am merely numb
i've hidden fragments of you in separate stores in my mind
and they jump out like grasshoppers
sometimes one at a time
sometimes all at once
and i receive this unbearable desire to smoke the traces of you into every other ***** so they can experience what it's like to constantly want to jump out of my skin to get rid of you

i've lived for eighteen years
some babies don't make it to eighteen minutes
and it's sad when you wish you were
the baby who didn't
the baby who didn't get to experience
life and what it's like to live
and your feeble attempt at living
is an accurate portrayal of what it means to
exist and it's sad when you wish you were
the baby who didn't make it to four-years-old
so you never experienced the joy
of a park on an early summers morning where
your only worry was how high you could
go and beating your best friend so you
could be "champion" and as you get older
you realise a champion is someone who
suffers but manages to maintain a healthy,
positive mindset and being a champion at
four-years-old means nothing when your
mere existence is an accurate portrait of
failure. people say nightmares scare you,
if so i'd class life as a nightmare. it's sad when
you wish you were the child who didn't make it
to junior school, when you wish that you didn't
make it to the high school prom because then
you'd never have to realise that no one
wants to hold your hand and slow dance with you
no one tells you you look beautiful in a dress
you paid too much for just to feel uncomfortable
for the entire night. it's sad when you get to
eighteen and you realise that there's so much
more to life but you don't want to be alive to
witness it and if a baby who didn't make it to
eighteen minutes can leave the world gracefully,
then so can you.

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.

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.

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

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

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

in a city of shifting faces
we become forgetful about life in different places
succumbed to a world within a world.
construction and history
poverty and misogyny;
the city is lost within me and i am lost within the city

we all suffer the internal blackholes of everyday life

in a city of anonymous faces,
we take no notice
succumbed to a world within a world where only our world matters
and we wonder what's for lunch whilst thousands live homeless and the irony of wondering why so many go hungry
in a city of greed

consumers consumed by consumerist propaganda

all the shifting faces we walk past on a daily basis
bigots, fascists, racists
and we are wrapped up
too engulfed by our own lives to care about others
but selflessness is only selfless if not done for self, but i was told
"no good deed goes unpunished"
but we should do good anyway
because in a city of shifting faces
be the face-shifter who stops turning pages and pauses --
take in the scenery
and be alive for every moment;
it is okay to be a passer-by in a city of nameless strangers
but never in your own life

when i was a little girl i didn’t have dreams
of living in a house with a white picket fence,
or marrying a prince who rescued me from
my abysmal reality; i didn’t want to depend
on someone to save me and i never really
liked the colour pink so when my mum painted
my room pink and purple with love hearts all
over the walls i spent my nights scratching at it
with half-bitten nails

as i grew older i asked my mum how you know
when you’re in love and she told me there was
no better way to describe it than: “you just know”
i’d painted my room black and white by this point
because i believed it was an accurate portrayal of
what was going on internally and i remember
getting my knees muddy as a kid and as i got
older and i’d met you, i remember thinking that
you were like the grazes on my knees except
more painful and the one thing i never asked
my mum was what it’s like to fall out of love or
get your heart broken

but i just knew

and it’s weird how as a kid i never wanted to
be saved but i believed you could save me and
now i’m drawing love hearts all over the walls
and scratching them on my skin at night and
i want a white picket fence surrounding a house
built for me and you and you rescued me from
my abysmal reality. you’re not a prince but you’re
the next closest thing and i’ve got grazes on my
knees again and they’re reminding me of you

my chest ripples whilst my eyes bleed ocean waves
and i cannot make you stay
        i cannot make you stay
i have padlocked my heartbeat and your smile together
please save me
            save me

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

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.

i tell myself
i do not need
to live in the
wild,
as a butterfly
or a wasp
or as a bird.
i tell myself
i do not need
to cascade the
skies, because
to fly around
your ribcage
feels like the
only freedom i
ever need.
i thought that
maybe i would
come back as a
sparrow one day
to show the world
i was joyful and i
was not afraid.
i tell myself
that my sandpaper
heart finally
met something
soft around the
edges, to teach me
that love heals,
helps tend to the
wounds i tried
to lick clean when
my tongue was
laced in acid and
i tell myself,
i must have done
something worthy
along my timeline
to be blessed with
arms coated in baby
powder and blankets
to shield me from
the rain, i tell myself
i do not need to
live in the wild to
be free, for your
ribcage is the freest
a bluebird can be.

we call them
glory days
scraped elbows and
too much energy
we were waiting for
someone to crack
the can open and
release us.
drank too much
pop, jumped in
too many muddy
puddles and got
our clothes too *****
to look like anything
but carefree and
happy. we call them
glory days, rope
swings and crushes
that last four days
until we see someone
new who traded us
a pokemon card and
we played back-to-base
and that was our
first experience of
chasing something we
feel we can’t have.
we call them glory
days, as we scribble
hearts on our school
books and make
acrostics out of our
names and imagine
what their surname will
sound like and that
first peck makes you
feel like you’re growing
up but you welcome it
until it happens
but then i met you
and you became my
glory day and suddenly
i was 8 again, seeing
how high i can go
on the swing and
leaning back to let
the wind turn my
stomach
upside
down
you are my glory
day; all the sweetness
of summer; all the
energy i release in
the form of love only
happened because you
cracked me open and
planted flowers within
all my dark spots, all
the hollow crevices,
all the monsters within
me afraid of the light
you shone a torch at
and i have never felt
brighter. you are my
glory day and i
am doodling love hearts
on all my body parts
in all my notebooks
because you are the
freest i have ever felt.

her parcel heart was the best gift i had ever received, it was like gold in a world dripping in silver.

sometimes i lose direction and end up in a different dimension,
it is one where cats dance the ballet and riots erupt in the form of kaleidoscopes and all glaciers turn to glitter and dust;
it is one where lasers burn happiness into our skyline and it cascades down as rainfall and we can never be sad;
and it is one where she still loves me.

i remember when our energy fields collided and we become a force greater than gravity itself. we were floating.

and now all i want is simplicity: her rawest form, bare and naked in my bed in this dimension, so we can get lost together.

heavy heart,
swollen lungs,
lifeless limbs;
my pulse has sung
"oh bury me
in red
in black
bury me
amongst trees
and rats"
and is still
singing:
"heaven's tide
sweep me in,
caress me in
soft baby skin"
lifeless limbs
pulse still,
pulse stopped.
oh happy to be
amongst treetops.
happy to be
sailing free,
soaring high;
above clouds
above blue skies.

happy to be happy.

*"oh bury me
in clouds,
or at sea
reborn into
the world
happy."

i feel the wind whistle
through my hollow bones
as they crack gently beneath
the weight of a single shudder -
i am a bird
manifesting free-flight
to find a one-way ticket out
of this brick-box.
i should be grateful
i wake up in sleepy sheets
every morning but all i
can smell is the scent of
another bad night’s sleep -
i tell my soul “i’m sorry”
because it inhabits a body
unsure how to appreciate it
to its fullest, a body content on
harvesting thoughts dark enough
to make life’s flowers wilt.
there’s no sunlight here.
this hollow flesh breeds
hollow veins, keeps a heartbeat
rattling back and forth in
this hollow chest.
tell me how to make a song out of
something that sounds like death -
teach me how to see free-flight as
more than something you do off
the top of a building, or a bridge,
or on to railway tracks when
gravity insists on keeping you down.

i tell myself “i’m sorry,” kiss the
bruises behind my eyes goodnight
hoping i’ll wake up and one day,
they won’t be so heavy.

I speak in the heat of the moment; I forgot to tie my mind’s shoelaces and now I’m spluttering in ways I recognise from falling over as a kid. My words fumble over themselves the same way my hands did the first time they tried to find yours. Reaching for something familiar should have come so natural and maybe that’s why I was so shaky, because I had surrounded myself with unfamiliarity and it became all I knew, but then you.

          But then I had seen the walls of your bedroom before.

I had felt your palm.

                                         I had tasted your skin.

I knew your scent, or maybe it just smelt so much like an unspoken promise we made a lifetime ago that it lingered in my mind. I do not know if I was real before I met you. Directionless has never been pretty but I am a wanderer and I have opened fields within myself to plant daffodils in your honour.

I forgot to tie my mind’s shoelaces and now here I am, staggering upon syllables hoping it bows together to form something less loose; something for you to chew on, something to fill you up. I have tasted dirt plenty of times. I sank my teeth into it those times I used to fall over as a kid but I fell for you and all I can taste is honey. I have been pollenated with seeds and I cannot stop blossoming visions of you and our future and they pour out of me on to blank pages and create something worth reading.

I am still directionless, but it can only ever be beautiful with you by my side.

I speak in the heat of the moment and I am ensorcelled by your mind and I try to speak less to listen but you create floods within my throat and it cascades out of me in spoken promises and too many “I love you”’s for someone who agreed to only tell you twice a day – I cannot. I love you, and my heart resides within you.

of one thing
i am sure
and that is
that i am
unsure of
myself
and it’s funny
how i can’t
sleep but my
chest closes its
eyes and hums
with a heartbeat
that is unsure of
itself, too.
i try to morph
into a body
i don’t feel
belongs to me
just so i can
fit somewhere
fit in somewhere
and i tell so
many stories
about the
universe, it
forever feels
like i am trying
to remain lost.
i am unsure
of myself;
connecting the
moles on my
skin as if they
will spell out
something bigger
so i can feel
like i matter,
at least for
a little while.
i sleep beside
myself, stare at
a reflection
so unfamiliar
i couldn’t even
identify it in
a crowd of
strangers, but
i am trying.
and one day
i’m sure i’ll
be sure
of myself but
until then,
i’ll morph into
someone i can
be proud of
and hope that
the universe
sends me back
to myself.

you could start fires with the charcoal under my eyes
and i am so tired of telling people i’m tired
i’m exhausted
i barely get 3 hours of sleep
my mind is tangled with cobwebs that only seem to need dusting at night

i lay awake listening to the creaks of old aged furniture
and i sympathise
i know how that feels, buddy
my joints creak and they’re crisp as autumn leaves
i am surprised i haven’t broken any

alarm sounds at either 8 or 9
day starts an hour later
day continues
day persists until evening lets it rest
evening continues until their shift is over and
night falls
i’m so tired that my body has grown accustomed to it
i watch the time change and the clock tick;
i am so accustomed to it my heart has started following the same rhythm

night fell
a boulder on sunken shoulders
it is still falling and i am trying to carry such heavy weight
i think this is why our backs begin to curve as we grow older
we are crushed and crippled

does the sun still rise even if i don’t see it?
because all i ever seem to see is the darkness of night fall;
i wonder
who can love a clockwork heart?
tick, tock.
who can love a cobwebbed mind?

time to go and dust again.

i've been drinking a lot these days to try and flush out the part of you that's left inside of me

it's not that i don't want you there

it's just that having you there is making my heart itch and no matter how much i try to scratch it, it doesn't go away

i guess i'm hoping that drinking will numb the burning sensation but when it's 3:01am and all i can think of is you, nothing could comfort me quite like your presence

love is as indescribable as your beauty and misery is deep-rooted in your system and like the essence of you pumping through my veins, it just doesn't go away

and i guess i get you because love is hard and if only i could spark and ignite a fire inside your lungs and smoke would convulse out of your mouth in the shape of a heart and you'd never have to say "i love you" because it'd have said it all

if only i could show you that there's no one on this earth who deserves to experience love more than you; i'd paint it in tiny brushstrokes in your eyes so you could see the rawness and fragility

it's a bit like a flower; it grows stronger the more you nurture it but you have to plant it and give it a chance to bud

death is the only thing that lasts, it's the only constant and when time is gone i want you to be my only constant

take everything from me and envelope me with an insanity that feasts off the warmth of your fingertips and the proximity of your lips to mine

you're a leech and you've ****** everything out of me and i feel myself thriving off the thoughts of you floating like sailboats in my mind

i wish there was a tsunami to get rid of you

i wish there was a cure for this sea sickness i feel at the mention of your name

if there was i'm convinced i'd take it but i've never heard a more mellifluous sound

you're a spiral and i'm a circle and we were never meant to fit together but for two shapes so opposite, we've never worked so well

and now i'm drowning again (drinking and drowning)

leave soon,
i can't get used to this itch

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?

so i've been thinking a lot about death and what happens when we die, not in the sense of what happens to us because i'm pretty convinced my own thesis is what happens just like religious people are convinced of an afterlife (i guess we're both the same that way - we both think we're right) but in the sense of what happens to those around us. what'd happen at my funeral, who would be there, who i'd expect to be there but who wouldn't be, if the people who claim to truly care would follow through with that notion when i was gone and i don't know i'm just finding it difficult to trust.

i want to better myself as a person, i want to be good and do good and be honest and pure but i don't think living a life like that is living truthfully. you gotta do bad and be bad at some point to realise what good is and how to be good and you have to tell a lie in order to understand the beauty of honesty.

i have so many demons in my closet that i'm sure would probably be more than happy to see me when i die.

i'm not planning on dying any time soon but i can't seem to stop thinking about what will happen when i do and if i'll have lived a life i'm proud of, if i'll have been successful in my own mind in everything i wanted to achieve.

if you think about it on a grand scheme, we are born as nothing. we are no one when we are born and who we grow up to become is shaped by family, friends, environment and surroundings and personal growth. we haven't come to realise the structure of society, we haven't yet come to realise that we're little more than a piece of paper and a tax code and when we die we become two pieces of paper - one to say we were born and the other to reconcile our death. but see, no one ever knows what happens during that period between life and death. even babies have things happen to them, some have their first taste of food, their first smile.

one day all of it is gonna be gone and so i wonder what it truly is that we're all living for and as a species so advanced and so knowledgeable, why are we so stupid? it's simple. peace is simple. yet it's the very things that are infused into us when we're born that we grow up with that shape who we become and i wonder who i may have been or how i may have turned out differently with a different upbringing in a different location with a different atmosphere and environment. we're nothing when we're born and we grow up to shape our own future and that's scary. we never, ever stop learning throughout our entire lives and yet we are expected to create a future for ourselves without ever being fully, completely educated.

i just know that when i die, i don't want hundreds of people to feel my death. i would rather be wholeheartedly remembered by few than briefly remembered by many. all i know is i want to live a wholesome life and this is something i keep coming back to. i may not know all there is to know but i want to use what i do know and put it to good use. i might have been a different person had circumstances been different but i am who i am and if i'm not proud of that fact, who else is gonna be?

i'm just so sick and tired of this whole system making human beings put themselves down and always making them feel inadequate so much so that even those who are supposed to care begin doing it to each other. i guess i'm a dreamer and a massive one at that, because i dream of a time where the human race as a whole lives collectively, in harmony and tranquil peace and everyone's death makes an impact no matter who they are - homeless, black, african, gay, caucasian, transgender, muslim, christian, jew, atheist. i don't know.

i would love to be a spectator at my own funeral and come back in a hundred thousand years to see how the world develops and i find it a bit melancholy that i won't be so maybe i'll add it to my list of books to write and keep going.

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.

i never did listen to the first words you ever said to me, i was just fixated on your lips and i wish i could remember. i keep wracking my brain because maybe if i remember them we can start all over again and it wouldn’t be the way it is now. maybe if i remember our story retells and i can relive the last 2 years 3 months of my life with an embrace tighter than the moon’s gravitational pull of the tide.

i swear things were never meant to be this way, see, i went to a fortune teller and she said that i’d meet someone who dances with two left feet and you dance with two left feet and a walking stick; you’re not good, at all, but you tried for me and the fortune teller said that it was supposed to last so i’m not sure why i’m sat here in a pool of your love letters trying to find hints of what went wrong. i’m looking for grazes, cuts, scratches, molehills.

i always got told you weren’t good for me anyway and it’s probably better that it happened like this and we’re only young and there’s so many more people in the world i’ve yet to meet but i don’t want to meet people if every trait they possess isn’t yours and i don’t want to meet people if their hair doesn’t fall the same way and i don’t want to meet people whose front tooth doesn’t cower in slightly and i don’t want to meet people if their favourite food is noodles when you hated noodles.

you were good for me because you made me think and i thought about construction and how things are built and how a fire can burn it to the ground because nothing is more powerful than nature itself. i think maybe we were a house but i keep hoping we’re fire and i’ll set fire to the thorns stabbing my heart and it’ll all be on fire everything will be on fire and it’ll be dangerous and exciting, like you and it most likely won’t be good for me but at least it’ll be ******* pretty. i want to hold your hand as my heart bolts out of my chest and melts into a drain outside your house.

i am grateful for solitude
i am grateful for every person who says thank you when i'm driving and i let them pass
i am grateful for every opportunity i have been given in my life, although i may not have taken advantage of them;
i am on my own path
i am here to create my own route
and i am not in a hurry
time is fleeting but i have paused all the clocks on the supermarket shelves
i do not rush
i can taste moments
i inhale them like the smell of fresh bed sheets
i am grateful for my body
it is articulate, it is flawless by design; it is bespoke
i learned to love myself when i stopped expecting other people to love me,
and i am grateful for all those who didn't
because now, i am grateful for me
and i travel like a lone wolf so freely under moonlight
my howl is there to invite you,
to show you that you, too, are worthy of loving you

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

TW: suicide / cancer / brutal imagery

july isn't a good month for me
it is a collection of all the things
i have had taken away. it is a
bitter winter chill through a
summer i do not get to enjoy.
july is lonely.
it breaks apart all the other months
like a pack of werewolves; it is
their alpha and i have six months
before everyday is a full moon
and my legs are tired of running
from it. i have six months to
enjoy the fresh scent of crisp air,
to feel the iciness of snow without
shivering through my skin. i try
to break out of this body, try to
knit myself a new one out of
preloved sweaters hoping their
stories will become my own so that
i may have a july worth talking about.
suicide happens all year round but
your suicide happened in july and
has happened every month in my
mind since. i have lost count of the
way i try to contact you to say
i'm sorry.
maybe my spiritual journey wasn't
my own; i convince myself the
universe will show me your face again
one day and i hope it is not in july.
people suffer from cancer throughout
everyday of the year but you suffered
in july. i watched the sunset through
hospital windows, smelt more chemicals
than fresh flowers, held back more
tears than my throat knew how to
swallow. has anyone ever drowned
without being submerged in water?
i have.
i imagined cracking my skull off the
glass confining you to this ward, to
this smell of microwave meals and
this buzzing of machines echoing
like an emergency and my heart is
on standby, i imagined it would give
the ward some colour because i am
so sick of seeing white.
and this july
this july,
i hold your hand as your treatment
continues. i do not feel the sun on
my face because you cannot feel it
on yours. i watch the sunset through
windows. carry the bodybag of my
soul around in "i'm fine" and "i'm okay."
i don't think my voice could drip
with any more sadness as i envision the
words cascading down glass panels
hoping if i spell it out for the world
to see, someone will stop and ask me
why i hate july, or at least,
if i'm okay.

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.

i'm always
a chore
never
a pleasure

there are rainbows and trenches
deep under ground; circles and
triangles and cacophonous sounds
there are stars and supernovas
and lovers at night, there's an
opaque barrier of which deflects
your misguided light. there are
satellites and sea turtles and
caterpillars in their cocoons, there
are butterflies and melodies sung
melancholy and out-of-tune
there are eyes and collarbones,
the arch of your back, too, there
are daffodils in your garden and
untied shoes. there are wishes
and wonders and a sea as grand
as the sky, there are gallivanting
fish whilst eagles dance mid-flight.
there's me there's you there's 7
billion others; there's a world
hellbent on destroying one another
there's war and destruction and
death uncomfortably close and
sometimes among it all, we forget
we're a rock mid-float. there's
life and there's breath and two
lips in sync, there's romance with
love letters written in ink; what's
important in life is living it
marvellously, take a second to
smile at the people you see,
a moment to give to the less
fortunate, generously. one life
to live and one heart to maintain,
a kindness to give and a world
to sustain. if we weren't so busy
breeding hate, we'd walk hand
in hand towards the horizon, and
create our own tumultuous fate.