So we both know how this ends.
When I close my eyes I can hear it
thrum, can march to the very beat of it
And yes, I know you don’t love me. Treat me like a piece of real estate
Cracking my head open like an egg
And seeing putried yellow spill out from the inside.

But bodies are boring now, I want to see that heart everyone fusses about.

Go on Charlie, show me another side, what’s hiding
Under all that skin and leather.

He's too earnest to lie to me,
the same way that dogs kept in kennels
                                don't leave after the latch has been unlocked,

When he tells me I'm a kind person,
the shame of it
almost cripples me.

In a call center:
Hunched over the monitor,
he puts his fist in his mouth and
cries.

Before, I would have jumped into the ring for you. I would have swallowed tar. Fistfight, bad nights. This fleshy body, these calloused hands-
Apology has become a defense mechanism,
because a mouth sounds stupid when it asks
for reassurance.
All I've ever asked for is one ******* Tuesday night
where you gave a ****.
whatever, whatever.
And I-
I am scared,
of your silence.
After indie games and bad films,
my credit card, your bills
The absence of answer
an answer in of itself.

In the backseat of your Audi, the three o clock shadow
slants across your face like a threat, makes you look
dangerous. Makes you look
interesting.
So what do you do?
I tell you
I write.
What does that mean?
It means walking into a crowd and getting lost in your head. It means finding loose change in your heart.  Means the world is your dysfunctional, perpetually disappointed, ailing mother. Means this isn't going to last.

But all you see is a silver smile.

in the east, they tell you
that beauty is something you
work for.
lactic acid, hydroquinine
my fickle beauty time machine-
I stand naked before him
wondering how can I ever be anything
but a body.

His mouth against my lips
turns my philosophy into nonsense
puts his hands on my hips and makes me
feel like I'm just a girl,
makes me feel
okay
to be just that.

Loving him is so easy it scares me because
I've never known
                                          easy love.


He's not perfect, like you were.

But he's ******* real;
                    and when he laughs in the glint of the pool light-
I don't think I've wanted anything more.

My brother takes me bowling.
I'm upset again, another
exam, or a breakup or some other
stupid ****.
But he goads me-
You're just scared you'll lose
I beat him 67 to 25.
I did win, he grins later.
You're smiling.
.

He liked my smile but
not my laugh.
He liked my sarcasm
but hated my scars.
Between hello and we need to talk
I wanted the world and all he could give me were
three idiot words.

The traffic lights
blur your reflection in
a puddle on 6th street-
               You're stalling, saying something like
                                                The world is quiet here
             grocery stores and
                           train stations with
                                   names like liverpool, kingston
                       lundmouth, maurist

You broke my heart here years ago, Mari
saying all those pretty words.
       
I get by just fine without you these days. I make
tea for one,
           dress up for none,
I can walk every street in this ******* city
but this one.

                   Mari, it's just us now.
I'm all out of love.
I'm all out of everything.

                               There are no cameras rolling now darling,
                        
                                                                ­                   So just say it.

i met you when i was nineteen,
you like to tell different versions of this story:
we were in a parking lot, i found you at the subway, no, no it was during the last performance at a festival, we locked eyes and-
all i remembered were your shoelaces
how you laced the string through all the wrong holes
and the funny way how
we never look for
our vices till we're in
too deep.


"out there," i once said over the phone "must be a god for all the sad and willing *******-"


i was your favourite passenger when
you were drunk
at the steering wheel.
it was worth it for how
you always sped a little too fast
talked a little too loud
finally opened up that stubborn, lonely
heart.
the lane we're on doesn't have a name
look- how the lamplights
lurch forward;
up the alleyway, down the steps-
where are we going darling?
where are we going?



neither of us are doing okay.
you're running hard and fast and with those
loose laces,
i'm nineteen again and can't let go of
a bad thing, ****-
Hold my hand.
so it's sunlight. so it's suicide.
till the very end,
don't let go. don't let go.

Call a ***** a *****.
We're ******* in the double mattress with a city view of the skyline.
I'm sleeping with a man that only kisses me
when he's sorry.
Being okay doesn't necessarily mean you're fine,
but who's asking anyway?
Movies always make you think there's an end goal to everything
I'm just a breakfast in an eternal pilot episode.
There's a question he whispers to me
in the early hours, in Paris, in bed when he thinks I'm still fast asleep-
But you don't know what you're
asking for.

My heart clambered out of my chest years ago,
sick of all the ways
I beat it into the shapes I wanted.
I couldn't give it to you if I tried.

Four years ago,

I never tell you about the stick of concealer I apply in public restrooms every time before we met up
Cheap lipgloss,
                    swallowed back.

When you tell me, no offense, but-
I laugh hard, like a punchline I should have seen coming
I know, I know, I know
                                   but sometimes it's nice to pretend.

The first time he tells me I am beautiful,
I smile with all teeth 
                                              and say I've got better things to offer.

He doesn't say I love you, but i hear it all the same
between smudged weekends and the insufferable "what if's"
The reason we dress eachother up in pretty adjectives;
Love, we call her. Utilitarian goddess, I have no desire to be subdivided.
Halves. Quarters. Call me in the dark by someone else's name.


He kisses me on a friday evening at 6pm in an uptown restaurant, the way they do it in the movies. I wipe off the residue when he skims the menu. The speech is very long. The ring is very pretty. When I tell him no, you can see his world shatter. But there's always a ******* casualty isn't there? Him or you. Him or you.

You love me baby, I know
But that wasn't what I asked for.

In anatomy class our last experiment on motor neurons had two hearts joined in saline solution. They showed us how
if you shocked the vagus nerve of one with an electric probe,
                                                               the other heart beats too.
When I tell him this over the phone, he laughs,
Christ, that's morbid-
                                   I don't tell him I secretly find it romantic:
two hearts linked by physics, by nature, by law;
                                                      pumpin­g side by side
           when they're not even
                    in bodies anymore.

June's so gorgeous but you're all
summer lines,
Waking up
Intolerably happy.
The sidewalks keep closing in on us but
pay them no mind darling.
Waffle mornings, the honey gets mixed in with
the butter
how the birds outside sound like
staircases to somewhere else.
The pebble in my heart won't stop
making that clicking noise
The doilies on the dining table. The picket fence.
I love you darling, you know I do.
Just don't look outside.

So we're doing this scene again.
You're doing that voice, the one where it sounds like
                               you're about to cry, right before you do-
telling me
just this once, you must feel so bad, I don't want to hurt you.
That glassy gaze you get when you're
trying to let me down gently
looks so fucken stupid baby.
The director's got his megaphone, he's screaming out the lines I'm
     meant to say
It's fine, the blood looks worse than it is. I don't mind it at all.
                                                         But I'm just a bit tired of it all now.
You've got a new girl everytime,
                            with torsos like
                                                       coat hangers
               I bet she feels like one too.
Don't I spread my legs enough for you? My heart is just a brothel, isn't it?
I take it down my throat.
I take it on my knees.
                Baby, I don't **** with your promises anymore.

People walk into contracts all the time
                                                            ­hands tied,
                         blindfolded,
      you wouldn't treat anyone but your lovers like this.

        Burn the script, gas the car-
                              **** the Manhattan sky and every bleeding heart
                                                                ­                   under it.
the camera man is screaming and the whole world is holding
it's breath.
           Let's do this show some justice shall we?
                                     Fear is a better look on you than pity ever was.
              I'm sick of taking, it's my turn now, baby-
To dish it out and watch you
Swallow.

On the park swings, He told me:
I would never hit you, not like the others. Trust me.
Trust me.
I only smiled and tipped my head back
But I could tell you where it hurts.
The things we don't say.

They keep asking us where we were
last night and we
Could tell the truth
but where's the fun in that?
The world wants answers and we've only
got big dreams and
empty stomachs.
So what do you want to be when you grow up?
Your smile is all teeth.
Someone.
Getting high,
Getting loved,
Getting glamorous on
thrift shop discounts.
Getting plastered.
You'll write your confessions
in the fog on windows,
and worship
deaf gods.

With quicksilver tongues and
eyes like mercury,
We can't wind
the years back
but
we sure as hell can try.

At the bakery, they wink at me
How fast the little ones grow up, eh?
Almond Dacquoise
Shiny laughs.
I tip generously because I can't think of
anything to say.
We strain under the weight of
our smiles.



At home,
I climb into my closet
and eat the whole thing by
shivering forkful.

in another life, maybe i could have laced
your fingers in mine
chasing starlight down the line
and finding out we'd
never have enough time.

when summer ends, when hearts bloom-
you'll look at her,
i'll look at you.

I took out my lighter to
burn another bridge today.
We keep buying things to stay alive-
She tells me I'm full of ****,
but she's always been my favourite skeptic.
It's not that I feel empty, I'm just waiting for something
to hit me, I explained to the train tracks.
In the end, we're all just passing by.

I wonder if God
feels lonely.

I over-salt the cannelloni
again, you laugh and swallow
my tongue
It's an apple sky, crisp and sweet and something
to sink our teeth into-
the radio plays
something in four-beat
ba-dump ba-dump
Living room hearts.

Your smile is an animal that
still haunts me on
Rainy Tuesday nights.
When I'm feeling more fifteen than I ever did
at fifteen.
When my deadbolt ribs
slide loose.
"So that's what you're really like."
******* too.

Some people are just
too weird to love
and I'm done looking
for kisses.

You'll always be my favorite kind of film. The sitcom without the laugh tracks or a romance without the actors. The kind of irony that could make me laugh till it hurt. The way I went from pining for you to vivisecting you against the metal of a surgical table, because maybe if I cracked open that soft, stupid flesh I'd finally be able to understand why. How you unspool me, all these years between us but you're still the only boy that's ever made me cry without hitting me first. Mum says she liked me better before I got off the pills. Honestly, I only cut them up once they're dead mother, we all have our hobbies.  I used to rewrite scene after scene of the woulda-coulda-shoulda's of our script and hide them from you. I used to be a lot of things. Don't we all miss me on pills.

This is how we meet:
It's a cocktail party, ****
big baby blue eyes and
the smell of your skin
lingering in every corner.
Out on the country lawn, we all
give whiskey kisses
and blanket smiles.
Tonight I'm lined with teeth and
you're bored out of your mind.
On the radio, a song plays
I just wanna feel something
.

I once wrote an essay about falling in love as
Biology’s grandest trick
The truth is I've always wanted to meet someone I'd fling myself off buildings for.

I just didn't think I could survive the crash landing.

You said you needed an extra pair of hands
                                    so I took mine off and
gave them to you.
The sun set in my glass,            darling-
                                   can't you hear that?
         coo-ee, coo-ee
                    oh the cockatoos
are jabbering philosophy again.
                                                          ­Sweet-talker,
I want to push my fingers into your mouth,
                                  swirl it in all the      honey in there.
                                                          ­    My hands on the clock
pointing at quarter past five,
                         birds swing up into the air like
                    the half-beat of a pendulum
                                                        ­      lungs filling up with water-
we're all romantic fools here.
                     Sometimes I think of time         as fluid
tick tock tick tock
                my glass dripping into
                                           yours.
                                                          ­We're all running dry,
quickly, before the night ends-
                                 ask me to         dive off
the edge of the world                
                                           ­        with you.

I'm reading a step-by-step manual on
how to love yourself again.
'Cause although fundamentals may be philosophy,
Rewiring is all physics baby.
We all need a reason to escape gravity
and plunge ourselves out of orbit.
Self-sacrifice isn't worth ****
if you're wired for it.
To stand on the edge of a tall building and
think of jumping.
Inertia and hysteria.
The magnetic pull of your body to the ground.
To return back to dust.
Loving myself is
a little bit like that.

If you're a writer your main trade is hating yourself and
finding ways to be clever about it.
Smoke cigar and coffee-stained typewriters,
bachelor in the sixties, suicide in the seventies.
I'm just a cliché, raining cats and dogs, beating dead horses and singing
a little song about death
a little song about love
there is nothing new under the sun.
Dylan doesn't understand what you do is better than
accounting, your trade is people
like stock markets-
string them up and watch them fall
I play with hearts, you say like
a girl showing off her somersaults in the backyard.
But no one is listening.
…
…
…

So you burn your eyes out with hot wax in the living room
and swear
your name is Icarus
throw your diploma into the laundry and watch it turn into tissue paper,
taking moonlight walks down the beach and
straight into the bottom
of the ocean.

(you thought she would hit you
when you told her you wanted to write
but she only laughed...
and you were surprised
how much
it hurt.)

Your father's pride, a phone full of contacts,
seeing straight in the ******* morning and the heart
of a girl that was once foolish
enough to love nitroglycerine,
sold for
a bottle of ink and a scrap of paper
and your name in the
obituaries.
...
...
...

Tell yourself it was worth it.

Seventeen and burning down
I am a machine gun mouth,
A stomach without a heart,
Red dahlias growing with the weeds in your backyard,
I am a stick of dynamite
waiting for an excuse.
...
You are bored enough to hand me a match.

(I was always your favourite kind of shitshow)

I'm writing a love letter to all the stars I've never seen. Blowing sweet nothings into your windmill hearts. A sickness in the bones with the way some of you make me work for it.  Rustic Blues in my toes. I want to be a list of further crossroads, because we're all chasing something glorious.You're no glowsticks or fireflies but the headlights of a speeding train and all I know is I am nothing without you.

I'll stand on the edge of the platform, and call you starlight.  

The writer's paradox: We only exist when we are read and I think I've found my mobius strip. Twinkle me stupid, New Year feels like I could do this all over again.

Sometimes when I
light a cigarette,
I dream of the embers
burning down the line.
My fingers,
my whole body,
going up in smoke too.

Other girls get
Fistfuls of tulip and
primrose,
But my love knows me
better.
Painted across skin are
All my favourite colours
Redorangeblueblackpurple-
I always get the
Prettiest blooms.

Baby let's go
                           tipsy-toed
               Skinny dipping in
         disco lights.
    Drunken mouth in
                              worship,
            you call my body             Jerusalem
till I'm        
spluttering up
                             pool water.


    The ceiling spins
                                 a salsa,
the fridge exhales something
                               obscene when it opens
and the furniture
                         blushes
          I'm jealous of the
                                   love story
                    in my home.


We roll around in
                       bolognese
     I slurp the      happy
            out of
                     your mouth.
                                     Saucy smirks.
Oh keeper of my heart,
                             I chain myself to
your smile and
                              swallow the
                                                 key.

Once upon a time, Oh but that’s such a boring way to start-
                                                          ­                       Once upon a time.
I was little red riding hood that knowingly stepped
                              onto the wrong side of the path,
Hoping that a monster in the woods
                                              would come and get me, but you-
A hurricane,
           car crashes in slow motion,
                              personified heartbreak-
                                                     ­                    Too much.
Too much applesauce madam? The waiter asked, clean-shaven face bathed
            In the New York skyline, ignorant to the gunfire explosions
                          inside me as I waited for you.
                                                            ­                No thank you, sir.


     “Meet me at the station”,
                                scrawled in messy, love- stained letters
In between the railway roars and the clatters of foreign accent, you've flaked again, like the struck chord of a bass
                        Signifying disappointment like a punch line
                                    Reverberating through my skull.
             Okay, repeat the mantra, one-two-steady-
                                                 ­                                     Okay. It's Okay.

Four weeks later
                                   I had your body pushed up flush against bricks and-
No shut up you don’t get to say anything after you go and shatter me like that
You’re sick do you know that? Lips snarling, heart breaking.  

You’re sick.
So maybe I was the big bad wolf after all.
                   Stairwell bricks glinted off iridescence and
                                                       your mouth in that sad, sad laugh
Studying me like a dream brought
                                                         ­                  to the ground,
Puffy lipped and eyes blown wide like I was on some psychedelic high-
            And you said
                               “You’re still a child with fanciful ideas of love, and the way you cling onto them-
                            Quite frankly, it’s terrifying.”
                                                   ­  Please darling, let me redefine myself
Skip the pleasantries and small talk,
                     scrap the story of little red riding hood-

Once upon a time, I was apology and you were forgiveness
I can imagine inside you, of alarm bells and sunken souls
                 as you listen to the static white noise of
                                                              ­            A dying heart
Hello darling, are you there? Can you hear me? Is this mic working?
          I hate to sound like those magazine cut outs-
                                                           ­         I hate to sound like,
Just another lover, just another cliché-
                                       But you were the matchstick to my dynamite
                                                                ­            and nothing feels better
Than my own self- destruction, so won’t you please
                     Another chance? No?
                                Even Lucifer sometimes longs to be let
                                                      Into the gates of heaven again
I’ve cooked some apology,
          I saved a plate for you

So for the love of god come inside and have some before it goes cold.

In the searing airless midsummer-
Clockwork morning rewinds
cobalt into a bleeding orange yolk dripping across
the canvas of the world.

Sky, turn the colour of dreams. Heart, turn the colour of love-
I’m posed over a skyscraper
Because I wanted to touch the stars. Because I wanted to touch you.
There’s a beauty found in the smallest spaces
Gaps in your heartbeat, getting your toothbrush mixed with mine
Honey-lemon on my tongue

So maybe you loved me, but not in a way I comprehended
I’m thinking of your lips, your eyes
and the way you said goodbye-
The word wrapped around your tongue like a prayer.
Pink bleeds into violet and it looks like the 5 a.m. Berlin skyline
might tear itself apart, like a heart bursting or a car crash.

So it’s dawn. So I’m inconsolable.
And if the angel sun sets,
then so be it.