Yes but really though Darling
what even are these 'angels' that you speak of
I do not understand
why it is my hair that you say is remarkable
or the way I throw myself off of bridges
or smash bottles against the cream walls
or the ways in which I threaten to **** you
whilst in the midst of kissing you.
For if these angels you speak of were
anything like these things
then I can find no difficulty in
realising exactly why Heaven
is precisely where I need to be.

You remind me of the autumns I spent
walking down through the cemetery as a child,
hands clinging to my mothers shirt as I walked alongside her
before things got sour and the season changed.

You remind me of the one time I fell badly
and scraped my knees and cut open my lip,
and cried for the very first time
in front of a girl who grew up to die
at the age of 12
after getting into the car of a stranger
who promised her affection in the form of
bittersweet niceties.

17 and with a sadness as deep as the ocean
which you feel yourself slowly being dragged into
as you attempt to drown yourself in an
abyss of emptiness.

I could spend a lot of my time writing of the ways in which you make me feel
but really, nothing can summarise the way that you laugh,
or the way that you smile at me,
when I say something dumb or confound,
or tell you that I love you.
Nothing could represent the tilt of your head,
or the dent in the corner of your mouth
or the way your eyebrows raise in sync with my own.
I can't put into words the feel of the butterflies knocking against my ribcage -
fighting to escape from my abdomen -
jumping and clambering up desperately until they reach the back of my throat.

Nothing can tell anyone exactly how I feel about you.
I think maybe that's for the best.

It took a mountain top of drugs
and a cabinet full of alcohol
to numb the obsessions and the cravings
for the perplex taste of the spittle
that always collected in the corner of your mouth
and for the protruding veins which gathered
in the crook of your arm
and freckle at the base of your spine.

It took a mountain top of drugs
and a cabinet full of alcohol
to numb the obsessions,
and the cravings
and the infatuation
with calling you mine.

I think it's maybe the way that you look at me
from 6000 miles away, through a camera lens attached
to the top of your computer,
or the way that you laugh whenever I sneeze
or say something absurd
or tell you that I love you,
or it could maybe be the way you tell me every 4am
how lucky you are to have found someone
who appreciates the arson you committed
back when you were 15,
or how you talk to your mother about me
and that one time I told you about when I
clambered over a fence, drunk and silly,
3 years ago, and sliced open my thigh.

He laced her morning coffee with Ecstasy and prayed for the worst.
Trudging footsteps down the stairs as she slips on his shirt,
buttons done up halfheartedly as the soft blue denim hung delicately
about her.
her hair kissed at her shoulders and her breath lay in her mouth
tainted with whiskey and malt liquor, as she yawned and stretched;
bare feet padding against the cold floorboards, as they creaked beneath her.
She walks to greet her lover, grins painted on faces as the coffee cup
simmers and the drugs dissolve; as the love she had for him, dissolves alongside it.

The sun tends to forget to shine
when you're not around to encourage it
and my coffee cools as I forget about it
and the crumbs on my bed all seem to
congregate and conspire against me
as I toss and turn at night
pleading that maybe this 3am will be different
(each morning)
and that maybe I'll manage to sleep a little
but those crumbs seem to always
get underneath me
and lay under my bare skin and irritate
and annoy and cause me to shift and turn
in probably the exact same way
your words of goodnight and farewells
always seem to do.

a son sits in his fathers desk chair
swirling and playing with the levers
as he asks his mother
when his father is going to be coming home
                                                                                                
the boy is met with a swift answer of
"Darling he isn't coming back"
and his 9 year old heart shatters into a thousand pieces
for he simply
does not understand the concept of death or abandonment;
even though that is all he will ever know in the actions of his father.

darling wouldn't you let me haunt you for a few minutes
when you're sleeping & cold & sweating & dying
I'm a God, the sky and a girl
I'll kiss your mouth until you bleed flowers
and stroke your fingers with my thumb
until you get pins and needles
and ****** every intention you ever had of hurting yourself
I'm merely a butterfly fighting with a lion
in a game of toss and tumble
under bedsheets and in swimming pools
the ****** and the ecstasy that balance on the tip of your tongue
and in the crook of your elbow
are what grounds and holds you
but my love for you is what saves you
sinks you
kills you
makes you crave redemption
but I'm not the daisy or the tulip which you have in the vase beside your bed
I am the cat you always throw out
due to mewing too loud at 3am
and trying to cuddle beside you
just as you drift off to sleep.
I am but a God, the sky, a girl
And you are but a God
The earth
And a boy.

My dog is barking and my head is spinning again I think I drank too much of that cough syrup, I don’t try and do things like this too myself you know – it just happens – like that one time he tried to kiss me and I said no – but he continued anyway and then that one time following this where he slipped his hand over my mouth and told me not to tell our friends of the ways he touched me then left me. Oh god I’m so sorry I never meant to hurt you I never meant to open my mouth you’re on my mind all the time whenever you are not on my fingertips – tap tap tap – I’ve lost the past week in sleep I’m losing my mind again – my mother did that when she was 19 too, y’know. I’ve lost my beckoning I do not know what I am doing oh god I’m so sorry please open the door, I’m knocking so hard I have to come in, in in in.

You often told me that
I was your Queen of Silk
and Maid of Lavender Island
and I would tell you that
you were my King of Chevron
with kisses as sweet as
Cyanide
infused with a bout of
Ethanol
and sweet Cherry *******.

You kissed me once
and I prayed that I would die
for I would love to die
wrapped in the taste of
your bad habits
and
King of Chevron sway.

Sometimes I think about how it'll feel when I finally hold your hand.
Or lay eyes on you for the first time,
and it hurts a little bit.
Well, actually, it ******* aches. A Lot.
I ache without you.
I ache at the thought of you.
I can't even breathe.

The sun illuminates the freckles that lay positioned on the bridge of your nose,
as you sit across from me on a fallen log.
You press cigarette after cigarette to your bitten lips
and you ask me to "at least smoke one"
because it is
"making you feel bad" that you are sat across from me,
inhaling smoke when you should be inhaling my perfume.

"but you're so beautiful, darling!"

"I don't understand why you're so sad!"

"Whatever you have done
it can't be that bad!"

"Oh? You're back on meds?"
"You're happy now? I'm ever so glad!"

"But wait, what's that? A cut on your wrist?"
"Pull up your sleeves and show me your arm."
"We told you and told you"
"Don't ever self-harm."

"You see doctor, she's not very well.."
"We don't know what happened-"
"We can't always know, it's quite hard to tell!"

"We tried to help her, in the best way we could"

You don't try hard enough. Maybe you should.

The rain hits the window with a peculiar pattern
which reminds me of the way your fingertips
would tap
tap
tap
against the firm structure of my ribcage,
that one night in August.

A girl will stand on the edge of the
Brooklyn Bridge at 7pm,
The water will stare back
at her
as the cars will glide past her,
(the rejection of her resume meant nothing
in comparison to the rejection from her lover.)

A man sits in the car in his garage
a capsule in his hand
and a gas leak in the trunk.
(no amount of promotions
which earnt him that car
could keep him afloat
as tax collectors harass his neighbors
for a tax return they are not going to
recieve.)

A woman will stand on a 2ft high
stool,
a rope in her hands
and a letter on the bed.
(the unborn child she caressed with alcohol
poisoning lingers in her mind
as she cannot bear the thought
of telling her husband that she loved whiskey
more than she did him.)

A boy will reside
in his fathers study,
his favourite book rested on the desk
and a gun in his hand.
(it never really was quite the same
after he left.)

The dying sun flickers light upon your dark hair
and there's something about the way in which
the birds are slowly beginning to cease their singing
and the trees are rustling under the weight of the
evening breeze
which makes me want to stop for a second
and tell you precisely how lovely you are,
and how I wish you would never leave me.

@illhuemanity

We would meet most Sunday mornings,
always before 10 o'clock, when the dew from the night before
was still blanketing the grass
and the birds were still sleeping silently,
the trees cracking as they awakened from their slumber
and fog still hanging above the air like a burden.

We would meet outside of the public house,
a sign of green metal with gold lettering hung just outside
the door, welcoming cyclists and families;
advertising their beautiful beer garden which we would
often traipse through,
admiring the rose bush that the landlady planted some years ago,
and sometimes stopping to run our hands through the water
of the water feature which stood proudly in the corner.

Brick dust would hang about the air, as we perched our bodies
against the structure of the decaying wall outside the pub,
holding onto each other with our faces pressed incredibly close together,
your hands in my back pockets
and my lips pressed firmly to yours.

We'd often walk hand in hand,
passing dog walkers and old couples, who would
smile and say 'good morning' to us before passing on their way,
and you'd always be so polite to them,
and offer them smokes.

You took me to a bench by Aubrey Pond one time;
and you sat with me, taking my hand in your own
and pressing your mouth to my cheek,
"darling there is something I must tell you"
you muttered
and for a moment my heart froze and my brow furrowed
"I leave tomorrow evening," you paused.
"I won't be back."

-

It is only now, that six full months have passed,
that I have stopped to notice the dew on the grass,
and the silence of the birds
and the cracking of the trees.

I no longer read the gold lettering of the metal sign
that hangs precariously just outside of the pub door,
advertising its awfully kept garden,
and rose bushes planted by a mad old woman,
who paid a small fortune for a badly placed water feature.

I no longer invite strangers to converse with me,
and I most certainly do not acknowlegde their kind words,
and I refuse to give them smokes.
The couples will sneer at me abnoxiously and they will be
shoved on their way,
as I stare bleakly at the ground on which I walk upon,
and scuff my feet against the ***** path of the
frightening woodland.

You took me to Aubrey Pond one time;
and you sat with me, taking my hand in your own
and pressing your mouth to your cheek.

And I never saw you again.

There are far too many things which need to be done, and they are no closer to being done, not one bit. The dishes downstairs lay stacked upon the work surface in the kitchen, crumbs gather on the floor and dust accumulates on the carpet which has not been walked on by a foot other than my own in almost 3 weeks. The windows need cleaning as the sunlight can no longer find its way into the room I currently seek my refuge in, and it is a pitiful thing to have to watch as the sun clambers desperately in an attempt to claw it's way through to me. The notebooks littering my desk are all but half-full, with its paper coffee stained as mugs of rotting liquid gather beside them, one by one. There is a rather distinct stink of mouldering books, as my taste for fine reading has become belittled and seemingly extinct as of these recent days.

There are far too many things which need to be done, such as clambering my way out of this hell-hole and seeking a refuge in something other than the room in which I have imprisoned myself in. There are far too many things which need to be done, in terms of escaping and finding a way to crawl to you, even though you reside in a place which is out of my reach.

You came to me when I was enraptured in
the art of drowning myself,
in half-full ***** bottles
and bathtubs full of bleach.
You became a personal sanctuary,
safer than the four walls of the churches
I was always denied entrance to,
due to misadventures as a young child
and community rumours which I knew not how
to rid myself of.