I see you through fogged glass in a small café, you are sipping apple juice and reading a newspaper even though you get updates to your phone every time a new news story is published. I assume you do it because you’re nervous and your blonde hair looks beautifully unkempt and I smile, inwardly. I stand just long enough to see you take another sip of your apple juice and fumble with your hands slightly before I notice I too am fumbling with my own. We always had a habit of saying and doing things at the same time, as if our subconscious was connected on a level our conscious couldn’t keep up with. I open the café door and the bell chimes, suddenly there is no one else in the room except us and I feel the open air grow thick with excitement and nervous tension.

I would say I could feel your gaze burning the pores of my skin open, but your eyes are too blue that I could do nothing but dive into them, swallowing mouthfuls of unspoken love and all the words you’ve never needed to say as they fill my lungs and I expand. I think this is why I no longer have an appetite; this is why falling in love is so fulfilling because there is too much to chew and so much to swallow and I cannot stop feasting on the thoughts that whirlpool around in your mind. Every day is a three course meal and I am stacking up plates upon plates trying to build something long enough to stretch to the ends of you. I cannot swim but I still continue to dive, filled with mouthfuls of unspoken memories, the parts of you you’re too afraid to give away yet but I was blessed with patience. I am candlelight and you are the flame that allows me to glow, flickering in draughty bedrooms as we sway to a playlist I made especially for us entitled “beginnings” because I believe we will always feel like this. I have been strung out to dry on life’s washing line since I was a child and it wasn’t until you became home that I felt the warmth of candlelight and we become what we love.

I sit down opposite you in a small café, you say “I’ve missed you” and I tell you that I have never stopped missing you. The waitress asks what I’d like to drink and you reply “water” and I smile, inwardly. I stopped fumbling with my hands when they found yours and you persisted I try your apple juice but I was adamant it just wasn’t for me and you smiled, outwardly. I had always been inward but you had taught me that it is okay to be outward and I complimented your smile for what seemed like the hundredth time hoping it would cause you to smile and it did and I told you that you had a face even artists could not create. I told you that there are universes within me and in every single one I have created galleries for you so that no matter where I am, I can always feel like I’m home.

To drown is considered a tragedy but I would anchor myself to the very depths of you and float within the atoms that enable you to be and I would merge myself into the darkness and find comfort within the unknown because part of it resides within me and I would die to be close to you. We become what we love and all I am is a paperback of romantic poetry with brushstrokes underlining the parts that are most important and one day I will whittle to ash in the flame that burns for you in the belly of my stomach and my paperback poetry will shrivel in your whirlpool and the pen will smudge and the writing will smear, but it is ok. Because I am diving into eyes, drowning myself in mouthfuls of the poetry I never sent and choking it back to you with my own eyes so you can see all that I am and all that I ever will be and decide if my candlelight is worth keeping aflame.

a milky vessel
an open wound on a timeline of unspoken truths
a memory
distant yet so **** close i can feel it and i can feel you
an entity
do you pass by this life into parallel universes looking for pieces to put us together again (i would)
are you real or just my perception
perplexed by such embodiment of perfection in one human being
definitely an entity; entwined with milky vessels cascading back and forth to me
passing by through a wormhole
i catch glimpses
saccadic masking, too much blinking
i might miss it i might miss you i miss you
if you put the pieces together again perceive me
i'll appear all around you like a deity
matter and energy
the milky vessels of your veins run from your body through mine, keeping my heart beating
stay
stay in this reality and we will rebuild our pieces
and that's the beauty of energy, my darling
they were never truly lost

monsters don't live inside my head
or in my heart, or under my bed
they walk amongst me-- in day,
and at night
they whisper honeycomb sweetness
in my abundant ears whilst
blinding me with pale sunlight.
monsters don't live inside my head
they mask themselves in a façade of
overgrown riverbeds--
deep-rooting themselves within my
oesophagus and i am choking, choking
oh but i cannot get enough of this.
monsters live
in bone marrow
in hair follicles
in overgrown fingernails
burrowed like a perpetual parasite
until they become a part of my DNA;
a mutation, the cancer that causes
paranoia and maybe a little psychosis, psychosis.
i am not crazy
i am not crazy
there are just monsters
there are just monsters.
they grip my hand as i walk down the street
intertwine their fingers into the cracks in
my bones and i do not fight back--
i am tirelessly tired of tiresome tug-of-war.

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 wake up,
drenched in lucid dreaming
trying to hallucinate you in my room
holding buttercups under my chin
to resemble the gold in your eyes
and i’m reminiscent
of a time when peach meant
holding hands in your living room
and the specks of dust would
encircle us as though everything
was trying to show us happiness
and its various forms and so i
held your hand and we danced and
the peach curtains lit up the room.
it was your favourite in the whole
house and i remember how happy
you would get when the sunlight
poured in like flash floods.
i am drenched in lucid dreaming
reminiscent of a time when you took
my hand to hold it;
not to say goodbye.

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.

it was raining outside
i tasted cherry in each kiss
ate you up like candyfloss and
you disappeared just as quick.
tasted lightening as it jolted
from your skin, blinded me
with what i thought was love,
disguised thunderstorms as
butterflies in my stomach;
i was not prepared for this
downpour.
tasted cinnamon as our story
blossomed and you kissed me
under archways, told me it was
romantic and you had never
been here before, never felt
this way before, never connected
with someone's electricity so
spectacularly it created firework
displays you can see from
galaxies away.
tasted your poison disguised
as promises dripping in the
richest honey, tasted the tip of
your fingers as they infected my
skin, left me with a constant
internal itch.
tasted the roots of the trees of
your mind and buried myself
beneath them. i wear my
gravestone as a badge of honour
because i died when you left
but i got to love you once.
i am a ghost circling the same
graveyard looking for archways
to fall asleep in, chasing the scent
of cherry like it is holding a
loaded gun and i am running
towards it with my arms wide
open begging it to **** me again.
i die over and over everyday
because there are reminders of
you everywhere and i am but a
ghost and i hope you think of me,
when your door creaks for no
reason in the middle of the night,
when you feel eyes on you and
your palms begin to sweat and
suddenly your room is deathly cold.
i hope you remember me.

there are many things that keep me up at night, like the evolution of life and the existence of time and the meaning behind said existence and whether there’s existence beyond the only existence we are familiar with. and then there’s you. i spend approximately an hour thinking about that other stuff and approximately three, maybe four, maybe less, maybe more (usually more) thinking about you. i wonder if the abyss i feel on a daily basis is because i’m trying to grasp an existence i can find no other meaning for than you. maybe that’s what you’re so intangible, maybe that’s why you’re so far away. it is the universe’s idea of getting me to realise that i will never grasp it and i will never understand it and with this realisation comes heavy weight, like a gnawing on my joints, splintering in case i forget there’s something missing.

with this realisation comes many more realisations: i will never grasp you, i will never understand you and you are intangible because you are a universe to me and all i want to do is hold your black holes in the palms of my hands and crush them with the heavy weight i surround myself with and all i want to do is dot-to-dot the constellations of your mind so i can feel connected to you in some way.

there are particles of your skin in my bedsheets and the breath that clouds out of your mouth as your bewildering mind speaks has entered my own at some point and i am told it takes seven years to get rid of and i’m not sure how true it is but all i know is i have seven years to find you so that i do not lose the best pieces of me. seven years is a long time, but i’ve spent approximately two just daydreaming of the lines under your eyes and the colour of your lips and i am still no closer to you.

when i realised you were a universe, i was sat in a café on a city street we passed many times and i couldn’t stop drawing pictures of your hands and the way they cupped and caressed like no other and suddenly you were cupping the world and there were stars and supernovas and darling, i swear, it all made so much sense. the wind blew that piece of paper away and maybe that should have made sense, too, but it didn’t and i tried to draw your hands again but they didn’t cup the same way and i guess the universe has always been presenting signs but i have been blinded by the stars you hold.

i am sorry i wasn’t good enough to melt the icicles that formed on your heart after she left you. i have been bathing my wounds from your tongue for a while and the saltwater sting mocks me every time. it is not the only reminder i have of you, there is a long list and i’m sure one day i will write it on a scroll for you and for once you will crumble into the dust that i held buried in my collarbones waiting for your lips. for once you will understand what rubble feels like beneath your feet as everything around you perishes under your own fingertips and it will weigh even heavier on your shoulders than when she left you.

i said that i had seven years to find you so that i did not lose the best parts of myself but since you’ve been gone i have been trying to become my own universe. the planets do not align yet but there are more stars than black holes now and if i had to thank you for one thing, it would be that. i longed to be your epiphany but now i cannot stop fulfilling epiphanies of my own. if i was to be anything i would have been your shadow, with you wherever you went; now, i am sure i would be the light that casts such shadow and you will wince at how bright i shine.

i have spent two years daydreaming about the way your lips curve and the movement of your hips on the dancefloor and how you brush your hair behind your ears and i have come to loathe them. your lips do not curve, they fold. they fold syllables and words into tiny shards of glass and pierce the skin of those who love you. i am still tending to my wounds but i heal the same way a phoenix raises from ashes. you brush your hair behind your ears when you want something because you know how intimidating your beauty is but darling, your hair is growing thin now and intimidation is a natural response to things people don’t understand and how mediocre it is to understand you. don’t get me wrong, you are still a universe but if you always believe you are centre, the gravitational field that holds those orbiting you close will weaken and your universe will annihilate itself the way forest fires burn what they find beautiful.

in seven years i will wash away the parts of myself that have been touched by you and not a trace of you will exist in my veins anymore. i cannot wait to finally feel like i can breathe and not choke on your name every time i try to exhale you.

you may be a universe but honey, so am i and how blissful it is to have nothing keeping me up at night.

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.

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?

sunflower,
i love the way your
body dances with mine
the way your tongue
whispers “i love you”
like it is the world’s
best kept secret but
you’re sharing it with
me under blankets
under stars
a room dimly lit by
candles we forget to
blow out before we
fall lazily asleep,
your hand still holding
mine but so limp
it mimics vulnerability
and here i am
dreaming of you,
sunflower
we wake to the candles
still burning
we wake to the scent
of last nights
confessions, we wake
on a planet we have
built in our minds for
us two and we dance.
you hold the heart
of my heart in the palm
of your hand limply,
i am swallowing my
vulnerability and
feeling it glide through
my body as i breathe
out promise instead -
i love you but i do not
need to say it aloud
because it is there in
the way i smile
when you enter
the room;
it is there in the way
i try to string
words together
to create a poem
worthy enough of
always being yours.
my future doesn’t
exist without you
and i feel that in this
parallel universe
the sun follows the
sunflower instead,
because you hold
the heart of my heart
in the palm of your
hand and i will follow
you wherever you go;
to dance,
to light candles and
see the flame flicker
upon your face in
a room full of secrets,
knowing “i love you”
is ours.

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

i want to make you melt in my memories so i can rebuild you out of wax and keep you because if you leave i don't think i'll be able to cope

i'd be a river running dry as the sun's soaked up every last drop of me and the mountain that allows my mind to remain in the clouds will collapse and an anchor will attach itself to my limbs dragging me down to a bed of self-pity and hopelessness and your medusa heart will turn everything i love into stone (including mine) because it'll no longer belong to me

all i want is for you to be as happy as you make me and if i can do that everything i was put on this earth for will have been fulfilled and i want to see you smile like your lips are gonna split open if you stretch them any further and i want your laugh to bellow out of you like you're choking up your sense of humour and i want those starry eyes to glisten like they're the only universe i want to get lost in

because i hadn't witnessed beauty before i looked at you and now i can't stop

i want to take your hand and lead you to the place i went to when i first realised i was falling in love because it's a waterfall and with every gush of water my veins burst into song and they were singing your name over and over again and i didn't have butterflies in my stomach i had wasps and scorpions that injected me with the image of your face so it's all my brain could project

all i can do is imagine a world with you where silhouettes of all the people surrounding us graze the sidewalks as a reminder that we aren't alone but alone with you i am and you're all i can focus on and i've never been happier

the sun exposes its smile for you every morning. it breaks through the gaps in your curtains, it breaks through the gaps in the trees and it rises above every building to find you, to show you light will follow you everywhere you go as long as you let it in.

2. you sip hot chocolate on a park bench and look outwards. you are a tiny dot in the vast space sea and yet you are the whole sea at the same time. you are important.

3. you realise life is made up of moments, and each moment is entirely in your control. you are the tour guide of your own life and you always have the potential to make it one worth viewing.

4. these moments string together to create your journey, and your journey is as grand as space itself, because your entire body is thriving with atoms and molecules that all came from a big bang and you are carrying that energy within you.

5. you came from the stars and they are what made you and you keep them alive just by being here.

6. you have an entire universe within you.

7. you are an entire universe; how you choose to perceive it is entirely up to you.

8. the past and the future are neit
nor there, they are as illusionary as the time we schedule our lives by. all, all that is ever important, is now.

9. and now, i hope you are happy.

4:04am:
the scent of your skin lingers on my bed sheets and i never want you to leave

carry me on your shoulders and we'll build our own village beside the sea

we'll submerge ourselves in everything we love (i'll submerge myself in you) and i want your chest to open up and engulf me because burying myself in you isn't enough when i can still breathe; you're an abyss and i want to succumb to you, be enthralled by you and dance with rainbows pouring out of my fists on your heart

there is one truth of which i'm incandescently certain and that's that nobody can take away a truth as it darkens, a galaxy in a glass; and the truth is that i'd be the only ***** donor in a charity just for you because signals and signs have showed me your soul and you're grander than celestial poles

if i didn't know any better i'd suggest you're the sun and i'm the solar system and i orbit around you and i'm not too sure about humans having wings but imagine:

a snowy cabin some place away from civilisation, you and i and wholehearted communication, you and i and books and fictional integration, you and i and mind blowing realisations, you and i and wings outstretched souring across nations

you are the sun and i am the solar system and although i orbit you i'm never allowed to brush the surface, i'm guessing it's for a purpose so i admire from afar, a gaze stretched over constellations and the sound of your voice bouncing off stars into my hemisphere of tangled webs and ripened tears, the echoing trailing behind merely a souvenir

there is one truth of which i'm incandescently certain and that's this:

the only reason my brain hasn't stopped my heart from beating is because the thoughts of you are giving it meaning and it's hard to breathe with these overwhelming feelings but i'm coping because the broken glass holding my galaxy is healing

i have mastered the art of being alone
now i am not quite sure how to be, together

i want to hold your hand through all the season changes; autumn to summer, making chains out of daises and i want you to know that love is probably my biggest fear
but you make me love with open arms
and as deep as outstretched oceans, grabbing hold of you with both palms and as violently as nuclear bomb explosions
i'll keep that fruitful heart of yours safe within my clutch because i know that mine is safe with you and your gentle benevolent touch

you make me remember why life is a joy rather than a burden and when my life draws its final curtains,
your face is the last i want to see
and i'm certain one day it'll all get a lot easier, the sky will be bluer and the breeze will be breezier,
and i'm certain until then we'll guide each other through because there's no one i'd rather be in life's ruthless grasp with than you

they say death is the only constant, i disagree

death is no match for you and me

your love makes me want to eat my own flesh because i can't wash your fingerprints off my skin

i would've done anything for you
and i was like that jacket i bought for you
that you hung up and never wore again

you can't create a graveyard in my memories and not expect the biggest, boldest headstone and i'd rather chisel my eyes out than see your crooked teeth glaring at me and you know what? i'd wrap them in exquisite packaging and address it to you sincerely with a note attached that read "enclosed are all the visions i ever had of you and i"

i'd be like vincent van gogh
he had the right idea

i have never watched a single sunset with you in mind
lie
i have watched one;
the clouds that belonged to the sky had been kissed by the sun itself and they had melted into gold dust, spreading lemon chiffon, papaya whip and apricot; a sunset so beautiful you could taste it
and as vermilion started to seep through, there was all the fire but there was no smoke;
the sky was aflame, enriched and doused in dripping watercolour; i loved it
i loved seeing something so ferociously enticing be so innocent and composed, i questioned
how can this, this that evokes such burning emotion make me feel so at ease?
i stood and i watched the sun set;
there was nothing conceited about the way it moved, slowly;
knowing you'd come back the next day to watch it all over again.
and i did.
but i didn't think of you.

you are white musk smoky rose
burning embers of a forest fire emanating sweet smoke
you are a fresh white wash of paint
bright and vibrant and you make everything else look tasteful and inviting
you are dewy lips and sunken-in eyes
heart shaped cupid’s bow and crystal iris’
you are winter when everybody wants summer
you catch icicles in the palms of your hands
and the bitter cold runs through your fingers
and i never did like the heat
you are a mirrored maze of thoughts bouncing back and forth and straight through
and sometimes when you get lost i am the echo that pulls you back to real life
that pulls you back to consciousness and dusty television stands full of 2D fiction
i am the echo that tells you it’s okay to be just as lost in reality as you are in the mirrored maze of your meandering mind

you are black musk misty rose
burning forest fires to ash and decay
destruction and disarray
you are a mysterious black wash of paint
dominant and demanding and you show others how to be bright beside you
you are hollow cheeks and lack of sleep
sheepish glow and bloodshot tunnel vision
you are winter and nobody wants summer anymore
they want to be feel icicles melt in the palms of their hands
they want to feel the bitter cold run through their fingers
they don’t like the heat anymore
you are a glass maze of treasured thoughts and i see straight through
i am the echo that pulls you back to real life
that pulls you back to consciousness and overused vinyl players
and they want to listen to your music but they don’t want to take a walk around your glass maze yet i have completed it hundreds of times
i will always be the echo that tells you it’s okay to be just as lost in reality as you still are even when the maze is made of glass because it is still as fragile

you are red musk desirable rose
burning embers of a forest fire to ash and decay and destruction and disarray and making it look so ******* beautiful
you are a scarlet red wash of paint
lustful and deliriously enticing and you show others how to love that which should not be loved
you are sun kissed freckles and unkempt hair
loved by that which should not be able to love and imperfectly perfected
you are winter and summer, you are autumn and spring
i still want to feel icicles melt in the palms of my hands like my heart did in yours when i first kissed you
i want to feel the bitter cold warm up on contact with my skin and transform something solid into liquid – a chemical reaction similar to the one that happened inside my head because of you
i love the cold
i love the heat
your mirrored, glassy mind will always be a maze but i am patient and i will always be your echo
you are white musk smoky rose
you are black musk misty rose
and you are red musk desirable rose
and i love every shade to you
every mood
every scent
always

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

write when your heart is on fire and your lungs can no longer contain the breath they inhale

write until your wrist, palms and fingertips are bleeding and your mouth is numb with thirst

write because there's so much for your soul to say and you're trying to cram it all into one lifetime

write for me, for yourself, for a lover, for a friend

just always continue to write