i. (2010)

there are eighteen scars in a row above your wrist
pallid and shameful and white as bones and you’ve
counted them
(still do)
under the sheets with your lips moving around whispers

they remind you of empty hallways and
the cacophony of your steps on blue linoleum
and that you are alive the way your breath in pale clouds does
on especially cold days


ii. (2011)

sometimes you dream of colours
(soft and animate and comforting) but
there is only red against the ivory
of your wrist
you’ve read the stories, you know
about the wolves and what happens to girls in red

there are eighteen scars in a row
and you breathe
and you bleed
and you keep counting

iii. (2012)

you don’t sleep much anymore
you fill your nights with the synthetic emotion
of words and films instead and
bury yourself in their comfort
their fabricated sadness

a substitute for everything you should have felt
there is an emtpiness inside of you, a vast
pale space inside your chest
your breath can’t fill

iiii. (2013)**

you tell people you’re mending
not even you know what that means
sometimes you trace them
(quietly
and with closed eyes)

and there is only the white of your skin
and the press of your fingertips
and you breathe
and your blood keeps pumping

i kept a calendar when i was younger. i filled the columns with big round handwriting and coloured them with markers. the page for 7th - 13th november looked like this:

SUNDAY: -
MONDAY: doctor's appointment
TUESDAY: -
WEDNESDAY: english exam
THURSDAY: -
FRIDAY: -
SATURDAY: i'm going to **** myself today

i chose a green marker for the background.

that morning i got up early. i brushed my teeth. i put on a warm jacket. i went to the pond to feed ducks.

the body is 60% water. i learned that in school.

the body is 60% water, 30% sorrow and 10% coal dust and i never learned that anywhere until it had already spread inside of me, turned all my organs brittle and grey.

the body is not meant for this. i learned that the hard way.

there is a point, eventually, after the hundredth doctor's appointment, after the fifteenth conversation where you bare your teeth like a snarl instead of a smile and you say you're fine and they say they're fine and you-

there was a point, but i lost it.

i spent two hours feeding those ducks. my face was burning from the cold and i couldn't feel my hands. it felt like they belonged to another person. it always felt like that these days.

i wondered whether other people could see the puppeteer's string they were all tangled up in like the world's most morbid arts and crafts project. sometimes it felt like a ****** up retelling of pinnochio, only i don't turn into a real boy at the end.

it's not that i wanted to die. it's just that i kept dreaming of drowning. the body is 60% water and i wanted to wade into it until the world around me had disappeared and my lungs were filled with the same stuff i had been swallowing in my sleep for years.

i was submerged halfway up to my stomach when my phone rang. i still don't know why i picked up. maybe it was the person my hands now belonged to who did. my mum's voice was far away like the world on foggy winter mornings. she wanted to know where i was. she made pancakes. she wanted to know when i was coming home. she loves me.

the leaves were tumbling around me like falling bodies.
the sun was hidden behind clouds.
my hands were shaking and the sky was howling at me:
live; live;
live.

i used to lie awake at night thinking
about all the things i did wrong that day
about whether tomorrow would be the day you decided
i had finally overstepped the invisible line

in our first summer together
we rode the bus for two hours
your socked feet
propped up on the dashboard on the second floor
the sun was blinding that day
my fingers were sticky
from the chocolate biscuits that were slowly melting in the warmth
you turned to me and said
"sorry for being such a ***** earlier"
i looked at the chocolate running down my fingertips
my throat was dry
"it's ok" i said
"it was my fault anyway"

an old friend called me one day
i hadn't talked to her in months
"we should hang out more" she said
"i miss you"
her voice sounded tinny over the phone line
like something from another century
i stared at the instant messaging window in front of me
you were still typing
had been for a while
"i'm sorry" i said
"i'm busy right now"
"oh" she said
the soft sound of an incoming message sounded
just a little bit like a gunshot

"you know i'm just jealous because i love you right?"
you said one evening
your voice was hoarse from screaming
"yes" i said
"i know"

on new year's eve we went out together
your hand curled firmly around my wrist
when it was almost midnight you
leaned over in your seat
your breath smelled like alcohol
"we're going to be together forever aren't we?"
you said
"promise me we will"
your face was hazy around the edges
around us people were starting to chant
counting down the seconds
"yes" i said
"i promise"
i spent the first fifteen minutes of the new year
throwing up in a ***** bathroom
my knees were hurting from the cold stone tiles
you were waiting for me at our table
"i drank too much" i said
my fingers traced lines on the bottle of my untouched beer

i still think about it sometimes
about all the things i could have done to save you
about how i still failed you
in the end
you stole two years of my life
and i turned it into a poem
how's that for *******

i didn’t love you the way people write poetry about.
there were no pretty metaphors, no odes
to the way your tongue wrapped around my name,
no tender words to soften the blow.
i loved you like a vast, white silence,
because i was desperate,
because i had no one else to love.
i’m sorry.
it doesn’t matter anymore.

i wanted to write
      you a story about
your hands, your ivory wrists
                                 your fingers around the neck of a bottle
         and you in the pale light of the morning
with laughter spilling
        over your lips
                        (beer spilling
                         over your fingers)
it was never enough

here’s a metaphor:
              you draw the maps and i follow them

scene 1
            act 1
search for me
between the lines and
               all the empty spaces
you are alone on the stage