And you realize that yes, your natural urges
your bites and whines of jealousy and possession
do run deep and it is a hard
venom to cut out.

But it can be done.

Slowly.

I tried to tint my hair red to light this night
But it is dull and stringing out amidst my plant-stained fingers
I tried to dissolve away the lines upon my skin to glow with luminosity
But they are wedged deep and have left gouges of pin-****** behind
I tried to exhume the dead and the dry from my face to better breathe
But instead it filmed over stinging and suffocates

I tried to forget you in order to be free of this
But I am not cleaned of you so easily.

Why can I be uncompelled for the majority of my time
Convincing myself that I can love others I can love others I can love others
Yet you elicit heat blooms in the very pit of my bud stomach if you just look at me fondly.

I need to stop blossoming to you, my stem is cut and I only have so much time

I’m so ******* terrified of love
I am so ******* terrified of putting myself out there.
And I feel like I loved you because you were ******* gorgeous and amazing and most of all
you were kind

I felt that love would not be a battlefield of angry limbs
and spited curves
with you

And I don’t know what to do because I feel like
I spent so much of my time working my way up to being capable of you even just you

that I might eventually be able to brave a rougher existence

That when you didn’t happen for me I essentially cut the bridge open beneath my feet
once everyone had hastened across.

And now I’m stuck.

I used to think that I loved you
because you made me feel greater than my frame, made me feel
better, desirable, desiring
of the world and succulent
amongst the leaves and limbs of my arms,
hands and feet.

This morning
I dreamed
That you were nestled, crook of your self
In the very top end of my bunked bed, high and away
From everything and everyone in the room.
She was with you, and I remember
Being taken aback by how friendly you were
Giggling and chatting exchanging words through bright teeth
And uncomfortable close.
And then you kissed her
And I felt the cold, sinking inexcusably entitlement
Of betrayal.

“I think I might just
Be in love with this sunshine.
Come break the earth with me
Sink your roots and be a tree.”

“I think I might just-“

Sign up for the thrill, you said.

Back when young hands would rest
On strong shoulders.

Those withered hands of mine
Now drawn to channel the furrows of my forehead.
An attempt to plough over the years of conflict,
But nothing will erase.

“Be in love with this sunshine.”

For it won’t last, you said.

Back then when I joined as a brother
In all but blood.

I didn’t heed your warnings then,
I guess I foolishly supposed that the sun would always shine for us.
The sun may still play upon the scarred recesses of my skin,

But my eyes see nothing now.

“Come break the earth with me,”

The ground is hard and we dig best together, you said.

Back then when trenches were still reminiscent of childhood hideouts
and games of glorious battle.

But we knew nothing of war,
and our minds grew like a tiny maze
with many dead ends packed in there.
We paid dearly for our ignorance.

“Sink your roots and be a tree.”

Then I’ll do the same, you said.

Back then when you would laugh in abstract thought while I smiled
With my hand around your shoulder and yours around mine.


The snipers got you in the end.


I feel relief now, that you never lost your innocence,
that you didn’t live to see how much of myself I lost
When you passed.

In the presence of the sun I raked the earth
With trembling hands beneath a tree
Pondering upon how ancient your face seemed all of a sudden

Set starkly against the ****** soil of your makeshift grave.



And I remembered
When young hands upon shoulders were still strong,



Now I reach for that same grime-encrusted hand upon my shoulder

But it’s no longer there

And neither are you.



*“I think I might just
Be in love with this sunshine.
Come break the earth with me
Sink your roots and be a tree.”

When I think of you
I want to send praise to the heavens
I want to raise every mountain on this benevolent earth to the skies
Because it even for one second let me experience
The place you hold in it.

When I think of you
I want to rage at the heavens
I want to raze every mountain on this spiteful earth to the ground
Because it even for one second let you think
You had no place in it.

When I think of you
Lately
I seem to want a lot of things.

Today
I Dreamed
That I was sitting with her by a small, rectangle pond
And I was talking to her.
And as she cooled, and sweetly, expectantly, almost apologetically, changed the subject,
I loosened my hair, and began to pull from the pond as it began to cloy and foamed
Handfuls, upon handfuls
Of knotted, used hair bands.
From all the times I had sat there before
And talked to her
About you.

Recognizing the seed of pity in someone else’s eyes
Is the worst breed of evil.

Because it means your demons were right.

I tried to strip myself of hair
In the gentlest way I knew possible
By suffocating it

But I botched it, I was left with a mess of pin-***** edges
And straight, sharp lines dividing the offending limbs from their feet
Cut here.

In a similar way
I still love you
Despite my smothering efforts. Their result a testament to how static this is.

And I can’t keep trying.

I used to believe that love made you beautiful
That you couldn’t help but act upon the world with more grace and instinct faeth
Than was previously thought possible because of it

Now I experience that it does not. I have shrivelled and become less of myself – like my mother will I look upon pictures in the years to come, retrospect and think
“I was ill, then.”

Because with every flicker you remain integral and I used to think that I loved you because you made me feel greater than my frame, made me feel better, desirable, desiring of the world and succulent amongst the leaves and limbs of my arms, hands and feet

But I still hitch for you now even though my skin has honeycombed and the nectar has dimmed and eaten away at my eyes and lips – I was not compelled to love you because you made me feel beautiful, but because you were beautiful and I only felt the afterglow and mistook it for a light that was shone with purpose. I loved you because you were beautiful, and I forgot that I wasn’t.

I love you because you are beautiful, and I recall that I am not.

"But I still hitch for you now
even though my skin has honeycombed
and the nectar has dimmed and eaten away at my eyes and lips."

They say you bite when lost in beauty
So do I

Bite my fingers that is
Till they fray and gulf

The difference is I bite like a displaced animal
Trying to avoid an uncomfortable truth and you

Bite because you enjoy holding on.

Without the angry fetters of tangled heart-strings
You will breathe constant like the rising and falling tide does for the shifting moon


Should they wish it.

And your mind grew like
a tiny maze, with many
dead ends packed in there

All I ever do
Is Wax and Wane. And I still
feel like I love you

I tap my fingers
Against my palm, seeking the
Words to describe you

They couldn’t help but
Crack the maws of those around
Them who became touched

It stings me in a vindictive, poisonous sort of way

That we were never mistaken for lovers

It’s been at least three
Full moons since I gave and I
Haven’t stopped bleeding

Or is it perhaps because

Even when confronted with something so utterly necessary as you

                 I feel the need for you to be reduced to a concept

Because at my origin

I know I only deserve my abstracts.

And you are always too clear

Whenever you would catch wind
Of the swelling foolishness of my ridiculous heart

You would always inquire and hope I would tell you
Who I had allocated it to this time

Until I started yearning for you
And you started loving her.

I felt nothing less
Than whole and healthy around
You. Couldn’t help it

It’s like that one seed that we always would wish we never planted, and
god
am I weak now

that I cannot exhume its roots for theirs have spread too deep and
sometimes I wonder

whether that’s a good thing.

would I erode without you?