That year I dug up too much,
wore rose quartz memories
and stared down too many
sunsets,
felt my edges soften
and become sharp again,
the continuum of freezing
and thawing,
in someone else's hands.

That year I realised that
a name itself
can be a poem,
or a will,
or a sentence,
that mirrors assess damage,
scars resemble time,
and bones are just splintered
pieces of those I miss.

That year I was an opportunity,
a calendar choking on rotting number,
a recycled version of events,
already breathed by someone luckier.

strictness ruled down,
ruled out, cursive,
signposted in Times New Roman,
the ninth letter of an alphabet
I struggle to breathe within,
the marker for my psyche,
the superlative, objective,
somewhat subjective and lost in ego,
twisted between tibia, fibula,
the pronoun scarred across
the canvas of my skin,
the myriad,
in want of you,
always needing less,
or more, or less,
an apology,
a last kiss
a hesitation;
I.

I have tied heart strings around my neck
and hoped the blurred vision of my
somewhat self destructive nature
would take away the optic curses
that disallow me to see what I cannot heal.

Sharpened question marks
hook into the aged rings in my flesh.
Left out for too long; forgotten.
He tries not to cry as
suspended interrogatives pull at limbs
and hang body over a myriad of "who?" or "why?"
(I forget which).

I am both the antique puppet and the
incandescent hole in the puppet master's chest,
taught to love my wooden creators
and fall in love with anything
that helps me forget about the skeletons
within my bloodstream.
Pull my strings.
Watch me come undone.

Every inch of our ceiling
is bruised in memory,
watercoloured blues
fade into last Summer's browns.
It hurts.
Night brings the poetry
I'm still trying not to trip over,
the written and spoken wounds
that mark my body
still spell out your favourite weapons:

1) Ginsberg
2) Naivety
3) Perpetuated incompleteness.

I am anatomically structured for
falling apart with one cut heart string
at a time; a countdown only I control.
One only you tick for.

One day you'll learn
that the world is made from tissue paper,
and tears as easily as I.

Oh, I'm a nightmare,
cold, naked, proud,
stripped of all lies
and delusions,
carved by definition,
not devotion;
darkened and devilish.

You won't see my healing,
you'll touch it,
you'll taste it,
you'll love it,
live for it,
sin after sin
after
sin.

Foetal positioned in the womb of her ampersand,
a child to the connected string of unholy clauses,
always adding more and more and more
and,
and,
and,
stuck in the expectation to carry on,
creaked and crusting under the weight of the words
you promise you’d put back after you used them.
It’s getting hard to distinguish between rest and end.








ъ

Stars pulled from their suspends,
I watched the night bleed onto me.

The moon is just as dangerous to your
naked body,
as it still is to my naked heart;
a misfit artist perched softly in starlight,
reeling in hearts with faulty chambers.

Two aortas and the taste of your neck.

Two empty bottles of red wine
and the dark smothering something
I was never taught could shine.