The other day, as my tears weren't drying,
I wrote   'stop hating yourself'
in hope, on my left arm.

I carried it round with me the next day,
hidden under clothing and smiles
praying the words would sink in.

That black ink would slide under
Subcutaneous layers; deep within marrow
Sparkling kindle within.

A week later there was no trace to be found
of those words or that false hope.

Those permanent marker promises
which I can't say I broke,
because I never made them in the first place.

It’s just that I had something extraordinary once
and I lost it.
And I can’t even blame anyone else
but myself
because I did not fight for it.
But how can you fight
for something you no longer believe in?


I lost it.
One could even say, I threw it away
it slipped from my fingers
but I did not run to pick it up
I did not scream nor rant nor rave
nor bleed and burn and break
I just
sat.
And watched my world crumble,
passively hastening desolation.

I feel like burning myself, stepping in front of the never ceasing stream of cars which fly past my house and off into the dark. Except they all have places and people to be and how could I ruin life for another?

I just don’t understand any of this. I thought that I didn’t love him, but now he’s left I am bereft and can see no other reason than this loss. I put too much into one person and now there’s no one to turn to. In five days I see friends, that’s such a very long time right now.

All I can hope is that tomorrow brings the numbness which I used to loathe. All I can hope is that every feeling freezing through my veins will solidify and harden to such an extent that I cannot feel them any more. Perhaps then they will fill in the cracks which have emerged from my core.

I am afraid of all the things which came after you:
The smoking, starving, sadness,
the silence and locking my secrets away
and the sight of your brown eyes seeking to look to another.

But with times passage these now have degraded;
I am sometimes happy
Though there are the days when thoughts are
want to wander, unprovoked

For have you ruined me?
Because now
I am afraid all of the people who come after you,
well, my love, they never seem to live up
to the standards that we set.

The mourning by the sun for Venus has particular relevance
On a day when optical illusions earmark the transition
Of your face, from lover to something I am not sure to like

Thickened atmospheric eyes, now cold to the touch of mine
As they move to less pronounced planets, in the endless game of galaxies within galaxies
Tricks within tricks held within the circumference of your palm
which holds still the very sun in reverence
… And fear, of your fingers closing and snap!
Snuffing out the brilliance of the light.

And I stop and try to hold the cosmos steady in your wake
Before these eddies of instability wail and break all down
Hurricanes gathering, electrical storms cascade against black as meteors
follow paths of collision long since drawn in the dust of stars

Down we are to spiral as you become the supernova
Gorging on the **** that we left behind, dark matter seething
disrupting the peace of heavens vacuum as you ***** starlight and magnitude unconfined
The sheer brevity of the universe, whose expansive inertia is forced
to abandon apathy as its constellations are devoured and disgorged

Silent, my darling rips the stars from the sky, breaking fundamental laws of physics with energetic destruction
Radiant rays of glory emanating, mutating all ever known
As she spirals Saturn,
Seeking solstice in the free fall of dusty decimations as
  the sun
          falters.

Its brilliance diminished, total eclipse.
Bringing confusion to corneas
faced now with the explosive onslaught of love and dust
As the astronomical causation and implications of desertion
Rocks universal.

Apathetic atrophy to be favoured now over expansion
as the pieces begin to fall way. Such a day of great reverence,
it's relevance uncontested as time and what didn't come before
is forced from its final, infinite march to cease.

You face, from friend to foe, your name a once so simple,
celebrated noun transformed from the precedence of dawns chorus
to something I cannot force myself
to say aloud.

Black drops, bitter like a shroud
as the sun mourns for Venus, for Venus orbits another star now.

I leave you
Stood silhouetted in the doorway
With light spilling onto the steps
Like liquid brilliance, amplifying my dark

I smile, wave and turn on cold heels
My rictus face falling into lines
As my back faces you and then retreats

This betrayal is so evident to all involved
That we make a mockery not to speak of it
As I leave you and you?

Learn closer and put your arm around hers
And whisper words once previously practiced in my ear.

Darken my doorstep again, you effigy which no longer exists
Bring rise to my mornings and depths to my dark
I seek you; he who does not exist
but in the recesses of remembrance

For time has corroded him and changed him
To be both more and less
And no more to be he as I, in turn, move from she
Who remains tied to the one I loved best.

Move me, like you did when you sighed from the skies
And told me, with one look, the sorrow I saw
You broke your own heart
Disappointment, I was not the one you thought

Come darken my doorstep again,
You effigy of he who ceased to be
Bring rise to my mornings and depth to my dark
I seek you, you *******, I will never be right.