I opened up for you
like you were also asking me to
but when I peeled back salted skin
to expose those secrets feathered in

you didn't try to patch the pieces
you didn't come to suffer those creases
and now my bones are all alight
and you are nowhere in sight

I called for you like I wouldn't before
because you had been there at my door
always insistent that I let you in
but now I sit here with weeping skin

this is why I bolt the hatches
set fire to our strings with those matches
push away any who wander near
for there is no love to be found here

if you come back will you find
solace or no piece of mind
I don't know if I can stay
or if you want me to, anyway.

There are eight hours left in the day
yet it's dark outside
where those cars keep tearing past
disturbing the quiet in here.

I'm trying not to feel alone
rattling around in this empty home
but when I caved and I called out
you didn't call back.

Steps have been taken
will your path revisit this place?
I sit in our home and remember
the beginning, in this room

with the cars still racing by
and it was still dark outside
and your arms were around my shoulders
and your heart was shouting yes.

the tv is too loud and my peeled skin
echoes bleeding beaching, I can't get out
and  next door are screaming

a riot of colour and life and celebration
hurts so much I am taut of breath,
please I need help but the words
won't trip off my tongue

I can't bear the uproar
water flashing, roaring , oh
god the suffocation with the sound
of inebriation

I am trying but I

can't
stand it
anymore.

You are crying out for aid
I can taste the salt
from across the oceans
from across his seas

your sobs are rabid
and my words soft
the only weapon here
against the frothing tide

A whimper down the lines
yes, you have done
what needed to be done
yet the waters are still churning.

It is dark outside and

the winter is creeping in again and

you are not here again and

I am here again and

it never ends and

it's dark outside.

I kneel
kneecaps cracking, head bowed
under the heavy breath of your adoration
eyes ground into the dust each footstep rises

I am dirt-blind
but the crows can see, my ears bleed
how they cry and scream, weep and admire -
they enshrine him; I, unwilling, immortalise.

I keep
my eyesight clouded, looking down
the soil is my church, inadequacy
a mired crown.

I was sick when we met
and you liked it.

My body was airborne, bones of a feather,
jutting out like a blade for you to
run your fingertips across.

I always left at 4am, half raving mad with
exhaustion, the pinprick bleeding, pale exhaustion,
you closing the door as I fell into the night.

You inevitably commented
on the way my ribs arched, taut rise of bones
leering obscene through lean skin.

They were each a transparent edge,
observed my breath was a desperate pant, I
needed help, not blunt trauma to the lips.

and then when it comes to it
I am reminded
of the paltry promise each beat brings

come, take my hand
for I offer it
to any who seeks its pledge

willingly, I demand it
for solitary I see no worth
in what it has to give

please, I desire your attention
the play wreaks havoc with he
who vows his last breath

too sublime, his proffer
golden-gilded, open handed
blinding triumph

yet still I plead for more

and despite this
I retain that which
I do not deserve.

It is tomorrow as I stray solitary
and walk myself awake, standing
on the grass that grows the greenest
on this here higher side
where the moon sleeps in the shadows
above your mud-cloaked body.

My bare feet ***** down the flora
that grows hopeful from your skin
and up I turn, looking for comfort
in a bare and barren sky

where even the brightest stars,
those thousand sharpened shards
of brittle glass glimmering,
fade too into blackness

as here, cloaked in this shining dark,
I am reminded
that the full fury of the sun rests so still now,
held blind beneath my weary feet.

A trickle of freshwater
transparent, streaming down
building until the rampant river rages
frothing ***** underneath this pale skin

I question the worthiness of my water
crashing next to his, his estuaries wander
of new continents and mine falls,
losing weight, losing track, losing direction

to pool, fat and turgid, darkening in the lower light
stagnant waters reeking of incompetence and mud
whilst the estuaries delight in new discoveries and I
lose myself in my reflection.

Flying under the sky, over the sea

To the next adventure, you and me.

I walk home alone in the darkness,
winds whipping skin and the trees
singing salty that song of the sea.

You taste is tripping on my tongue,
your marks paint my body and your
words trample every fletched thought.

I walk home alone in the crashing tides,
******* dances, unwilling, as seconds
slip into that final oblivion whilst I take steps

away, away from you I sail but your
voice is my compass, your eyes both beacons
sent to set me sweetly towards your shore.

You whistle at me, here witnessed for the
first time in 589 days. I stop.

You stare. You smile. Your warm eyes still
sicken me. My old friend.

Tell me you miss me, see surprise at such sorrow,
but, still, do not touch my skin.

It's brief; I have to go. You linger and I walk away.

Welcome home, food on the table, a smile a little hesitant,
you're angry I am late.

A message reveals itself unwelcome. I respond, bleak
unrepentant work. I love him, not you.

This time, he does not write back.

Vindictive, I want to add
you were just a lesson
never to be repeated.

I'm a ******* psychopath
Chew me up and spit you out
The smoking gun at my fingertips
One taste, one touch
That's all this is.

Getting better, getting nowhere
Steps that twist concave
Round and round the ******* garden
I know how but
I won't behave.

Little whispers, seeing mirrors
The light flashes but no ones home
How many pushes will it take you
To stumble, I'll keep at it
I can hack it
what else is a lunatic to do?

One more secret
slicing soon to retire
the sound that
comes unbidden
I need you
and how I wish I didn't.

"They were not well matched", she says idly

and I catch my breath, sharp winter air bleaching frosted
lungs, scoring skin into breached, breathless, baited sections
as the chambers and valves seize within, sickening

"Such a nice boy", she mumbles, "lovely eyes"

so nice, lips that tasted of stinging sweetness which strayed (stay) strayed and those bruised autumn irises, fighting fire with indifference,
burning tired grey witness to listless ******* ash.

"I wonder where he is now," that crinkled, crinoline mouth utters

wind howling, battering, shrieking of devastation,
fingers clawing cold, brittle blue skin, souring breath with
desperation's pant, oh, please, tell me-

"Not for you to care."

undeniable

in the falling snow, in the striking silence, suffocation sinking in,
sat still with the jagged old woman,
who knows or doesn't know, who cares or doesn't care,

Do you still think of me?

Do you remember the blaze of my breath
pausing taut once more before yours?

No.

The day you told me, plucked up by a poor mans spine
shucked beneath your skin, I whimpered to behold
treacherous lips, last imprisoned by another.

A dry river of salt flowed static down my skin and you laughed.

Parked a pistol at my temple,
with rough fingers and parched breath frozen, indecision fraught.

But letting go was enough.

Sometimes, you endure resolute in my thoughts
like fingers wrapping again around this throat,
singing sorrow when, stupidly, I look too closely.

I cannot foresee time when thought of you
stops shattering these shards that remain.

And I hope you still think of me,
but what use is that.

You go out
not for long, be back by 5.

6 hits like a slap to the face,
smarting, pain turns to anger.

"Will you be back soon?"
Pride bites cheeks, sore from asking.

Half an hour is the parody of reply,
but I wait anyway.

45 minutes and no sound of return,
I burn on the sofa.

Anger grows, a deafening shout of
hatred unleashed, aimed at you

it still lands on me. I leave,
footsteps tracing concrete promises.

Late, I return, you stand with greeting on
fermented lips, I ignore your eyes

and tell you everything is fine. You get
angry now too.

We both burn, you hold weary righteousness
and I, a fire fed by something

I don't even understand.

There was a full stop
hedged on a semi-colon,
but you just flew straight through both.

A train wreck thunderstorm, lightning bolt
smiles that were just a touch too bright.

One thing fell and then another, repeated,
endless cycles of your closed eyes, averted face,
until the pebbles that fell graduated to stones,
to boulders, and you turned and ran towards them.

Each step was a decision, each step another false idea,
another pathetic tragedy, trapped in viscous thought
as silence became a screaming, scorching pain after
you chose to become the enemy.

I was here, I was breathing, I was one step away
from you. But you did not reach for me, you did
not speak. You did not call. I left my phone on for you but
you did not call.

You stole secret to the edge and ripped yourself asunder.
You wrapped your fingers around our throats.
You decided to disappear your problems, to rest in pieces.
You resolved we should be the ones left to suffer,
standing perpetually in your shadow.

I still suffer. I am still here. I am still breathing, but it
is no thanks to you. Your mother cannot look at me anymore.
She says I remind her too much. She doesn't breathe,
she doesn't talk, she doesn't call.

She is the remnant you left behind, cast off like an old coat,
worn and weary and wasted.

Do you remember me? Do either of you remember me?
I cannot do it anymore.

Your legacy is made of salt and water
and all I want to do is forget.

Brother. Mother. Sister;
the family tree is dead.

One drop
and then another

rolling down dusty cracks in a windowpane;
as transparent as the clouds.

Here they fall, whispering widows
traces as substantial

as the autumn leaves
when the wind whimpers,

as substantial as your smile
when I'm not looking.

The drops simmer on,
down the desert of expression

fall down down down
and I will

make sure to look the other way.

How do I explain that
today is a day I loathe myself
till red raw bones slip out of
their skin cages and bitter tendons

snap snap snap, ribs twisted,
fingernails gripping this bloodless face
white polka dot prints darkening
later to purple, I want to run away

but I cannot leave this house, I want
to forget but not to forgive, burning acid
sickening my stomach, I ***** hatred
at the mirror, there is nothing

good here, there is only
violence spinning a coin
and me.

I wasn't sure of
those words, that holy
trinity pressed to give back,

until your heart stuttered systolic.

Contracted, you underplayed every line as
I fought, undervalued, omitted and flat-lined

that singular skip your two-******, beated rhythm
warning beacon, red-flashing, blaring signal flared sign

granted every second second of each stolen time, when those
planets and these stars became so fiercely yet finitely aligned,

yes, I understand now, as we lay entwined, cyclic, chest
deep, life-defying leap, gasp of breath, wake from

sleep, it is this that I seek, sunlight unconfined
crushing breath divine, beat of two, separate

singular, unexpected yet still

defined in-kind, of your
continuation bringing
life back to mine.

I let the water seep into my skin
lying on the balcony in the mist,
head down, searching for the sky.

I won't tell you I did this
you would only say I was insane.

He won't be back at 9, like he said,
or at 10, at 11 or 12,

what is here
to come back for.

I've seen pictures of your old girlfriend
on the laptop you let me borrow, I was
snooping, looking for something to accuse
you of. You told me they had all been deleted
(I hadn't asked) you told me everything
was gone.

I've read messages, happy, hinted, flirtatious
coy poetry played between two parts which
haven't been officially scripted.

"It's weird between us now, isn't it?"
berated friendship, bartered love offered
in the gaps which remain unspoken
yet.

He does not speak of her
anymore. I have not asked.

Was it, unsolicited? Or does she tickle
your decadent fancy; you do the honourable
thing now and flirt with her
behind her fiances back.

Each trial has been blond and I fail
at not hating every single golden glinted thief
who stole something before it was even mine
to take.

You rise and I darken; I smile sticking needles
in your misadvised tongue. Still, these words burn
sweeter than those in my head.

Something whispers about that girl
who just walked past. Inside my crypt
things do not look good for me.

Don't allow
the thoughts of your sisters
to invade you mind and
wrinkle sheets so carefully
folded over the places
you never grew in to.

Do not let them in,
sometimes insanity is
all I have of you.

There is so much screaming, a
mess of self-deceit flashing colours
around blinking eyes; we try always
not to let the light in.

Please, the night has fallen and
I cannot stop myself, these thoughts
of mine rise and plunder internal,
ripping pieces of machinery into
new formations, weapons

you smile at me and I take it as
an affront, you stay away and I
scream (please) I do not need you,
(please) I am only myself.

They sharpen inside and force their
way out, blood lying on my tongue
so I disgorge foul words and this
much maligned vanity.

Is it time to run you through the mangle
with me? We can flounder without falling,
but no purchase can be found for
our wandering feet.

No, I push you away and pull
myself asunder, but you do not
leave until I put the knife
to your neck.

I break it
wholly, this time, the shame a red reef of guilt
traipsing across burning skin.

I keep getting
angry with you, unreasonable, unfounded,
unlovable moments that you always see.

Why were they
all blonde, whilst my long hair coils dark
a sin choking at my neck.

One a lawyer,
two a doctor and three a nothing that sits
at home and eats at your words.

I keep trying
to make myself believe that you do not
love me, when you say you do.

You do, love
me. Speak blasphemous prayer (I am enough)
though, I never have been before.

She faces the wall, studies
those tiles with minute precision, hand
outstretched on the towel rack, a bathroom
ballet dancer, poised, still, silently waiting
waiting, waiting.

Lids so heavy, slow now to blink,
suffocating breath with light caught,
suffocating speech with the skin
pulled taut.

Is it safe yet to face
that most sibilant refraction,
why do these fingers clench tighter
the more I try to let go.

You are but skin and hair
and taut bone stretched simple
over the expanse of what was once.

We lay you to earth, brothers
smiling on the surface, beneath
fuming currents we carry on.

Carry on
we carry you on
in our heads and furtive glances
at the past, now.

What is this?

This mass of magma, bubbling
between silence and laughter

between
life and death.

We either fall

or we fly and there's no

no plateau on which to lay

to rest our heavy heads, hurtling

between each inevitable

windburntbloodscreamingcoursing

drop

and every

goddamnbreathbaringasphyxiating

                                                                  elevation.

Gravity rips raindrops from
the sky to the earth of my face,
as your fingertips violate the soft
skin of each cheek I offer.

You tell me, I make you so happy,
as salt flows viscous in the pitch
of our bedroom and I say nothing
and you say, nothing much, either.

I bring colour to a life you have never led
and I punish you for it with my silence
and my soft steps and my one single smile,
bequeathed so very grudgingly.

You try, it's true, but I am too far gone now,
too lost in her eyes as she looks at this
shadow of you that I have readily created,
this masochistic need to hurt myself.

I love you; it's times like these I know it
best, the times when I am so insubstantial
that I cannot even bring myself to speak
words I am bleeding to scream at you.

What sick love is this?
When the only time I am sure of it,
is when I feel so very very very
unsteady in your palm.

The night slinks away, with the full force
of sunlight unrefined burning
through slotted blinds.

So ends the the first time I have slept with
someone whilst tears leak from my eyes,
and I cannot say I will ever do it again.

The maelstrom circles, patient, waiting,
lurking ever beneath my still water smiles,
ripples never to reach the shore.

As I slip a little closer; cold, I can feel -
oh yes, that blessed razor-sweet breath
burning hot against my tongue, tripping and -

and I can see you're back, burning eyelids
with our tender-stemmed secrets, always
all too ready to explode forth, exhale,

but today you sit there, still here, always -
maybe, perhaps, incessantly, please

I do not want forever, yet I pray,
stay, stay sweet, just for now
we could be nice.

My hands are tongue-tied, my mouth
a shutter that ***** open in the wind;
empty words parade their ground but I

think now before I speak.

You watch my movements, tracking each
for the abnormal; waiting for me to mess up
and forget to hide these crimes

you so carefully cultivated.

I jump in the darkness, so you see things
which are not there; shivering screaming
silence, spoken aloud only when

your distance we both share.

The water falling washes over skin
as supple as your silence,
as I sit and I write and you
simmer still in your thoughts,
thoughts always of her.

Awake;
the morning cacophony of cars sing and
the tread of the many outside our doors
washes through stone walls and into here.

Here;
where we lay and lie and love and the hours
creep by, tiny movements of a hand hastening
the path to our inevitable destruction.

Now;
now as the dawns chorus rises to an inescapable roar
and your arms tighten around my chest; your face
defiantly still buried in the depths of dark hair.

We;
that ****** word, that cage that I cannot outrun,
we move only by staying still; your arms my
sweetest stricture; my breath your way home.

I trip on the colours, blink like a child in
mornings lit by yellow drips of vacuous veins
winding sweet around your neck.

Your smile doesn't visit here anymore,
your darkness significant only in silence as
I touch your skin with fingers too insubstantial
for you to feel them.

I swoop low and cradle you in arms that
chafe like barbed wire caresses and
your eyes don't water from the smoke
I no longer hide.

We migrate, constricted and contained, sinking
like shattering shards of ice, separate atoms
only held together for so long.

I search for your reflection in the morning puddles,
the rain from yesterday still wet against my skin,
but the sky above seems empty; it does not talk back.

Your transparent presence today echoes my own
and time has come to embrace our salt,
for all left now is the places
where you are not.

He falls from my thoughts like
autumn leaves from the trees;
dancing away on a bitter wind.

I survive the winter, easy to ignore bare branches
whispering of ghosts buried shallow
in the cracked and frozen ground.

I continue; I forget to regret as
the dark nights draw in
whilst I thaw out.

No fear of green here, nor of light
bringing colour to what I now
admit I have lost.

But, even so, as the earth twists on its axis
thought of him still will flower;
loathe to grow back as the sun shines.

The threat of tinsel hangs heavy around my house and
every surface I have tarnished with gaudy colours, one
handed angels and effigies of flightless birds.

I remember one year, as nights drew in and wrapped us
in its sightless embrace and my sisters and I still shared
one tiny room and you, dressed in a ridiculous red
dressing gown, crept loudly into our room.

Eyes closed but lips lit, we paraded our false slumber
as you offered a rumbling "** ** **", gifting allies
laughter that shivered in our beds.

I remember the next, as your trembling hands fluttered,
never touching, the presents we had each bought ourselves,
as it has become too bright for you to step outside.

You wept and I drew my face stoic
as those aged hands trembled and these bitter claws
ripped and tore and vainly tried to stick
fragile paper back together with meaningless scraps of tape.

Your face whispered, "shouldn't be wrapping your own presents"
as white salt mapped fresh rivers, traced on giving skin.

I avoided the rain clouds of your sound;
methodically trying to appease this sadness.

My voice lilted of forgiveness but my body, such young bones, so
rough-raged and rigid, spoke of a bitterness I would've died
to hide like the tears you used to try to.

Smoke and gaslight and pretty little parcels wrapped in gold,
maybe if we bury all under forgiving paper, living can
play as happy as the paltry promise of this season.

The light catches his body and
will not let it go, as I lie

and smile and make the appropriate
movements, always thinking -

my head never shuttering, never silenced
as I count up the crimes of the day,

reflected from sight of the light of him,
slapping my face as it hits.

We were drunk and
I wanted it so you obliged.

I put your fingers in my mouth -
you told me this was dangerous

that made it feel so delicious  
as you gave and I took, but

I feel something stirring
and now I am afraid.

You said
"you are so tired" and smiled
the warmth bringing expectation
a need to please

so I made all of the right noises
and you commenced to reduce me
of the burden of my clothes.

eyes closed
body supine,
languid and lying
mouth still.

You put your trust in me,
crack open caged ribs and slip
flawless hands into flawed breath.

I close the weeping wounds and
smile up, with innocent face false.

Shush, you give me such a gift
I could never drown and admit
this was not what I asked for.

You place ruptured trust in me
but never wonder of space carved,
a waiting cavern, empty, unadorned.

I stroke the hair at the nape of your neck,
your head sleeps steady on my shoulder.

I lay awake and remember -
recall, recollect, render pieces
of another

whose trust riddled woodworm
promises, once undermining the
structural integrity of my mind.

Still, my hand moves, a sure constant, trapped
between pulling you close and
pushing you away.

So what has become of
the seashells I used to collect on the shore?
do they build up, unfathomable, now my hand
is too busy carving a life unlooked for.

and what become of the arrogance of youth,
they who knew know bounds;
determined to grow as changing as the tides;
that their dance would be the one
to draw the moon ever closer.

now all to hear is gulls screaming incessant songs
as I learn of rhythms that are caught,
a trapped constant between tide and wane,
an age where there is
no magic in this magnificence.

We never dreamt that such small wonder
(of invisible breath that moves the clouds
subtle shifting of the seasons
sunrises and sunsets)
could be so finite.

Nor did we plan
for a life as fractious,
incidental;
shifting grains beneath
unsteady feet.

He is the sun scorching my irises
as I wonder what I ever did to deserve this,
strong saccharine sugar heightening my spine
as the paths of stars and planets finally align.

But sweet dove, what collar now is this?
I thought my eyes were blind to any but his?

That slight smile and how would it feel
to taste that skin, ah this spinning wheel
in my mind, please, stop. Now what trick it this?
He found true love but we overlooked my abyss.

I love him, I do, but that one talk with a stranger
has placed all that we knew in immaculate danger
was it actually my darkness that blinded his irises?
And what has he ever done to deserve this?

No, we are golden and in his arms I will lay
no more thoughts of a stranger, that parody play,
but now sighted eyes most unwillingly perceive
that is it happy, this heart, or is it I that is deceived?

The stars hang sleeping in a salted sky
as faulted feet tread paths worn smooth
all is stilled and all is awry
and the whispers of the wind
have nothing to prove.

The blackness is crushed velvet,
to be caressed with his touch
as distance travelled is at once
precise and all too much

for the stars are awake now
as I lie happy in this taxing grip;
he loves me imperfectly
and we are the sinking ship.

It is tomorrow as I stray solitary
and walk myself awake, standing
on the grass that grows the greenest
on this here higher side
where the moon sleeps on the shadows
above your mud-cloaked body.

This silver orb, so tempestuous,
upon it still can always be relied
whilst here feet find, to be at its fullest elevation,
grass glowing silver and stones a sibilant, sacrificial grey;
as the gravity of that oval brightness
diminishes all other light.

My bare feet ***** down the flora
that grows hopeful from your skin
and up I turn, looking for comfort
in a bare and barren sky
where even the brightest stars,
those thousand sharpened shards
of brittle glass glimmering,
fade too into blackness

as here, cloaked in this shining dark,
I am reminded
that the full fury of the sun rests so still now,
held blind beneath my weary feet.

I don't know if what I am doing classes as living, classes as

enough; for I am all too aware of time passing; standing

attested, arrested by people purely expanding as all I do,

when held against dream's nostalgic playing field and

childhood's uncertain scope of vision; silver concrete

wonder at the world being round, that this life

now tastes uninspired, anaemic;

excessive only in its own

insignificance,

truly.

You miss me.

But still you throw your words
and I get caught up in a hailstorm of paper
shallow but deep cuts
as we fall or fly towards disillusion.

I see you
standing straight on high; heavy with
all the threat of the curve of the earth
and I

must not blink.

And in the darkness miss
your wondrous eruption inevitable
falling, flying

into something more than here,
something more than now,
something more than we.