your departing silhouette was ringed with gold
and even the light suddenly thought your face was too good to be touched

who are you?

i heard your name today and it sounded like someone said "God"
my synapses screaming Why are they saying that Don't they know that's taboo Why does it sound so sharp

this internal frenzy shows itself on the outside as a mere nervous chuckle and a pool of crimson under my skin

You are A Deity now

Something I pray to sometimes as if it is omniscient
something that echoes my thoughts like a carbon copy

My God is Shaped like You

You were always the last bus home
As though
If I didn’t catch you I’d be stuck waiting for a lift I’m not sure would come
I missed you often.
Always went to the wrong station
I read your numbers wrong
You were vivid, neon flashing
But I wasn’t wearing my glasses
I couldn’t see you properly
I thought I deserved the long walks home
As if chalky hills and borrowed books torn up into pieces were the only things I could hold onto
I always managed to lose my return ticket
Some days I did it in the hope that you would let me on for free
Let me in
Do not close the doors automatically
As if I am not worth the wait
I am worth the wait
Don’t drive away from me again
I am not begging
I am not praying
I am asking you to come back for me
Reverse to a time when we discussed frame sizes and half flamed dreams under fairy lights
Come back to a time when you thought I was something special
I met you in gold and black shadows
Like we were sweeping statements of colour
Thrown together
Into a palette
Paint with me
Do not separate me like ink and oil
Do not separate yourself anymore
We are not cheap materials
We are quality
Treat us like it
Treat us softly
Take my hand and follow me across the canvas because honestly, it’s all I am good at doing
Making a rough pattern of a future I was never sure I’d have
I can find the destination but I need the petrol of your spirit
I need your headlights, your windows into things I don’t understand, your compass into things I am not brave enough to dive into
Guide me
And once you have finished
Please. Take me home.

When they ask you to identify
my body, it is okay
if you reveal our secret –

how you move the hair from my eyes
with paper clips
and melt them into my skin
to try to make me indestructible.

I am broken.
Or at least that's what they've told me for years.
"No one will love you".
"You're pathetic".
Well I say "no".
I won't be labeled by black hearts.
I won't be tossed around like a restless body in the dead of night.
I will not listen to the blind's recollection of my image.

You said "let's play house".
Years later and you're still playing.
You decided to play the trophy wife,
The kind that I had to share with other men.
Life is a movie to you and you're the star.
No, you're a poison; you play the lead role.
Suffocating every suitor that falls for your charm,
Your words are empty and the only thing you mean is harm.
You're a poison; you play the lead role,
Now you're under my skin and a part of my heart.
If I die, its likely you are the cause,
You're a poison; you play the lead role.
At this point,it won't be long before I'm gone.

I think too much
Is that why two years after you wanted to leave this earth
I still can’t get the thought of you collapsing out of my head
Why the idea of you alone in your room
At four in the morning, clambering out of bed
Deciding whether it’ll be a good night to give up your life
Is still in every thought I have, I dread
Those thoughts
The idea of my own future is too much to handle when I still worry you nearly didn’t have your own
I think too much

But were you thinking at all when you drowned yourself in pills
As if paracetemol was the answer
And death was the cure
I couldn’t bring you any closer
You had locked all the doors
But there were broken windows, cracked walls
And I should have seen through them
Maybe that is why I can’t sleep, because my doors are locked tight too.
I think too much
Maybe if I opened my house to you, you would have wiped your scarred feet
And your bony knees could have rested in the warmth of my bed
I would have held your hands for hours, my friend
I would have held them until you fell asleep
Until you didn’t have the energy to find the labelled bottles I still keep
Maybe- Maybe- I could have helped – I
I think too much

I still cry over you
I still cry for you
I feel the blood of your attempts on my own hands
As if they were clasped around your neck
I am not poetic enough
I’m no Lady Macbeth
But the guilt still plagues my skin when I now hug you hello
Because when you are suicidal
No best friend should not know
I think too much

I think about the sirens
Did I hear them that night when they rushed to your place?
Finding sixteen year old child, in her mother’s embrace
Was she crying?
I think about it all the time
Did you pray to the God you’re not sure you believe in?
Did you pray for the end or did you thank him for starting your heart again?
I think about it all the time
Would they have you cremated or buried?
Force you back into the ground before you even had a chance to grow out of it
Like clothes owned previously
Working class families
We bonded over hand me downs
And straps for cash to hold tight what we earned
Would they have dressed you like dolls you could never afford?
Pristine and price tagged
Between us girls, you never suited body bags
Your body shape is best suited to the rise and fall of your chest as you breathe
It does not suit a coffin
Are you finally coughing up the truth now?
The truth is you are alive
You are still alive

I think too much

You were always like a sister to me
And I know things are different now, and we’ve moved away, moved apart
But you still creep into my subconciousness
As if making up
for the two weeks before you told me you’d tried
“I wanted to die” You told me
And in that moment, so did I
It will never stop hurting to imagine it

You are eighteen now
You are beautiful
Smart
All the clichés
But just because something is said often, doesn’t make it untrue
People will never stop saying the words ‘I love you’
I think too much

And that’s why even now that I see you smile
And laugh
And your happiness is so genuine, so true
I still have this incredible, guilt weighing need to write an apology letter to you.
I still don’t think this is enough.
I guess I think too much.

I want to tell you that I miss you like every friend I have ever lost.
The wind mocks me, knocking me off my feet just to try and replicate how you used to make me feel.
Every single thing reminds me of you.

The stars are not poetic, they're dead.
You said to find poetry in everything that leaves,
but you never understood why I tattooed the names of everyone who has ever taken their lives too soon on my wrists.

I yearn to be a museum,
to be every prayer you never said.
There is no religion that worships your smile, so I am an atheist.

Whispers flood my ears, telling me to stop poking holes through my skin.
To stop finding solace in pain, in the beauty that comes after it.
I want to whisper back that every rose has it's thorn,
but I really hate that song.

I sometimes wonder if all of our plans will stay intact,
if you will still come to me in the summer, when the water is half-warm
and my nerves are on fire, waiting.

I hope so.

I've never been good enough for anything except illegal things,
I want to stop relying on synthetic euphoria to keep breathing.
I want to stop but I can't.
I just want to rely on you.

You're so far away.