How dare you cultivate
something with her that
we always dreamed of;

our aim now a parody played out
in your collective garden.

A family, super sweet with
sunshine smiles and Daisies and
birds singing at the dawning
rise of the sun as I wander

through rain clouds and embody
each sunset, anticipating the edge
of night and you

you and her and this pinnacle
that I dreamt up
create our future.

Only I never could have imagined
that it would be
one without me.

Anya sings words I would
rather she have not spoken
and decimates what little remained
between us all.

He looks to me and I
pointblank-sawnoffshotgun refuse
to meet sight of sapphire sky eyes
now too singing along
to her song.

My mother always said
you were two sides of the same paper
and you will both slice me the same.

But scissors always win;
laceration's chorus croons to all.

Origami smiles
so carefully cultivated as
I kindle our final swansong,
a celebration in flames -

simultaneous ignition of
friends to lovers
and that irrevocable rendering; razing
lovers to ash.

I feel like the white lion
stuck in a cage for the rest of my days
feet set to tread a path barred and dusty
from all of those who trod before it.

The only excitement, the jangles of
keys from the keeper who runs to
throw carcass of rabbit, turkeys
through my bars for me
to render sustenance, incomplete.

I fear the white lion
hear my lonely roar and wonder
at such talons, canines now stolen
and feet dismembered, claws ripped
from their shackles, top-of-the-food-chain
fear desecrated.

And a genetic time-bomb too
ticks under my skin and theirs
as I sit and I listen to the lies
your children now share.

My line also ends, a mere stutter
in the sand, as the tides flow steady
and the last lion lingers.

And I am, too, held high like a beacon,
a warning, a message spanning
centuries, look, children, look!
See the mistakes of your ancestors.

See how her coat shines so very bright
that it reflects all seven colours
of the light? See how lonely and low
the last of a manipulated, mistaken,
misconstrued species can go?

She was drawn from her mother
mixed with her father, no she doesn't need him
and the others, why yes, all left
are her kin!

How wonderful, how quaint, you
know only ten now remain?
None in the wild of course, where
their life cannot sustain,
better here locked under our
constraints where we have
so much wonder, so much recreation
and education to gain.

And true, from this bleak place
they can never migrate
but look at her, no where else to go
this man-made mistake.

Don’t worry about the pacing,
the maddened, gleaming eye
the freedom they miss
out there? They would die!
And they know no other way
than this.

I know she looks sad, but
that’s just your feelings projecting,
they’re just animals, my darling,
you’re innocent, shouting in consternation
save her in the name of conservation!

But we are all white lions
all now endangered, our steps
are no freer, our lives all
subject to external changes and we
cannot move but for the cage
they have constructed, their
lives are impacted but our
wonder is not deducted.

I feel like the white lion
this ambassador of our greatness
this one mistake, so very clever,
engineered to engage us, these lives that
were wrought solely to entertain us.

I feel it, their future entwined in mine
and in humans across the ages.

Meaning of life designed, its sibilant message
dangerous, a dumb animal wandering
a set path, disregarded, destructive, aimless.

Under your skin, I will rest, elevated
on ribbed, rigid cages of ribs containing
that one muscle confounding all;
here I will perch and observe

such a beautiful rhythm, concept of
constant contractions as my fingers will to
wrap around the chaos of capillaries, each
vacuous vein and every attesting artery

screaming as I squeeze, nails painted
ebony as rivulets exercise against my sins.
Your body is my rapture, yes every manoeuvre
fascinates these prying eyes, I will prise apart

the seams of your internal markers and search
secrets stashed in genetic poetry, discover
paltry physical proofs, truths of what went so
badly wrong that your mind drowned so readily

that you chose to diminish, turned off all navigation
headed steadfast, sure and glorious towards rocks
everybody warned you about; I must vivisect

this paradox, venture deep within the places you
refuse to look; inside your claustrophobic body
covert are the ***** secrets of sea sickness, of why
you chose to sink in love with me.

I think I must be dead and my body moulders, rests
imperfectly in a carved wooden tomb. Secreted

beneath the malted mud, a restless corpse twitches,
mind set on deceiving; images of alien fingertips
skimming supple skin.

Truly, I have never been more content, as my pieces
decay and dismember and chest rises with bloated gas

breathing such sure imitation against
bleached white weaving whale bones as

the machinations, these movements of worms
whisper, vibrating your words within each unseeing ear,
surely, yes, no heart beats now to hear them.

You love me, say my worthy companions, and oh
do I love you too, most magnificent apparition, sweet
spectacular spectre, conception of minds greatest trick.

I must slumber eternal.
I must lie beneath shaded trees where the birdsong and
shafted sunlight and sweet taste of dewed grass lends

life to decimated, deceased thought of what was once
concious, forcing disbelieving perception, fabricating
a phantom, forging the incredible wonder of you.

I think I must be dead, for I think I drew you up
inside my head.

I don't believe you.

I don't subscribe to your thoughts
and the words that trickle out
of your head, to fall ******
on the pavement and disappear
down the gutter when
the rain comes.

I hope the rain comes soon.

A raging, rampant monsoon
to flood me dry and clean away
the raw, red finger-prints your diction
imprinted, a blood-red necklace ringing my throat.

I don't care for your intonation.

You, heedless of the power
of speeches simple sounds that decimate
veins and rupture explosive, ebony vessels,
setting me adrift on Moses' sea.

But, despite all, I reply in kind.

And
careless words leave me;
cutting you open.

Your body is the ocean
rippling and unfathomable,
eyes a wavering, wandering, azure blue
set always to be drawn away
before rushing back; sending
salted spray slaps against my skin.

I wax and I wane
and you're set, sometimes, to do the same
as this your tempestuous tides do echo,
with your ebb and your flow, our highs and our lows
but when we're both at our greatest height
there's glory in our gravitation.

you shiver when you look into my eyes,
these beacons of sharp, darkening grey,
and sometimes, only sometimes, just
as the spring tide exults,
it seems like the oceans in love
with the fickle full-moon.

I am sandpaper
longing frictions heat.

To grow both fat and
weary, sloughing
away your skin.

See what is strength
suckered and sickly
is set
to diminish.

But paper handholds,
why so dusty?

You aim for ignorance,
blooded hands to tease
simply tremor.

Yes, each whisper
charms so sweetly,

sweetly rough
against your grain.

I've put on my face, that vacant smile
that fools each stranger dusting the streets
as I walk to your house and throw cherries
through your open window, all but one to miss
and fall back, rolling down to my feet.

Laughing, you let me in and we fall into your
room, my smile still ever so carefully cultivated.
One look from you and the corners of ready lips
turn down; you ask, 'are you ok?' and the salted

rivers I have held so long in check, those tides that
rage and roll and throw themselves at each ******
breaker, the swells that flow weaker and stronger
but always always always there, burst forth -

tracing white estuaries on soft skin
as I cannot help but breathe you in.

Encased in black granite
solid substance she can't find
as she holds the hand of her son
but he does not return this in kind.

Sweet Pieta, sent by her words
to dance with dank, docile depravity,
lies so still now -
and her eyes can't bare but shutter
against such sure lack of he.

It is so silent, this mourning,
not one vibration can be felt,
just that of solid substance lacking
encased in the cards that we dealt.

I'm stationary, sat silent in a taxi
on another plagiarised street
where the rain is the only other rhythm
compounding that heavy threat of my heart.

There's one frozen memory
of words that crept unwarranted to
the surface and floated idly there,
an oily mirror amongst the ****.

I said
I can't do this any more.

And wordless, you left me when
actually, I didn't think you could.

This taxi is empty and the rain is
only on my face and that bray
of my heart holds steady,
in spite of everything
else having
stopped.

A missing link
I don't even know what that means
keep your ****** coding
and yes, I burnt down those trees.

You need to, sometimes,
it gives the ground new time to grow,
recycle nutrients and now just breathe
without your suffocating seeds to sow.

So yes, it's terribly blackened
and maybe no-one will ever come back
but after everything that's happened
I'll happily settle for that.

I trip into your path, machinations
of bright smiles and a kindness drawn
only with pleasing you.

The first time we met I dreamt myself
into your bed, sly moves of a body
you did not want to resist.

Eagerly I hover on the edge of your
life, content to steal company whenever
it is permitted.

He is rapture defined, solid substance
with self-abrasive smiles; a keenness
that cuts when I stand too near.

I wonder if he has other girls to
whom he also extends invites,
to accompany him but for awhile.

I wonder if he likes it. And I wonder
of the dwindling kindled hope that
enrages my skin - and his?

She trips and falls into my path, overeager
with bright smiles and a kindness she tries
to conceal.

The first time we met she fell into
my bed on the pretence of stealing
music and laughter.

Persistent she hovers on the edge of my
life, ready to invade, for a time, whenever
invited.

She has soft skin and hands that are
engulfed by mine; a quiet voice that
falters when shouting.

I wonder if she has other men, who
too extend the right to stay only
for a while.

I wonder if she likes it. And I wonder
of the hesitation that drops
from my skin to hers.

You are burnt skin under boiling water;
the acid singing at the back of my throat.

You are the scent of river water rushing;
the precipice of temptation, to fall or to fly.

You are folded paper smiles, salty swallows;
the risky hand knowingly played and lost.

You are the thought I cannot make myself
voice aloud.

I am sold on this hope of you
the sky has become shady and
rivers torrent, raindrops become
addicts to the scent of your skin.

In your touch, streams of
molten estuaries feed this great
gaping belly of the beast, salty
eddies tempering all wont to be.

To drive head-first within unknown
waters, broken driftwood promises
must be cut free; am I to sink in
the ocean or to swim in your sea?

Fix your smiles like sutures against my skin
pull back black hair, paint prides picture vain
he reignites present, sings such impeccable sin
as fresh pressed flesh weeps for him again.

I dissolve single stitches, you breathe them within
clasp palms and you sit, surrendering thy strain
raise wary hands to mine; all mine now to win?
you release, reach constrictions, rue me insane.

Keep rise rampant memory, fire fevered forged grin
best silent significance, now such rendered resting,
your words tripped dismissed long dead echoing din
riled love risked rages yes for true absence of him.

You spoke longed words,
artefacts dusted with time
and careful caution.

We fall into sleep
in a haze of tangled limbs
and your lips kissing my neck.

With each of your breaths
I rise, feeling your heart shout -
finally.

It's the final chip
in a week of crumbling foundations, dark
days whip-lashed with uncertainty and
faltering ears hearing words most unwelcome,
set to heed all that I do and yet has still been done.

Forgive me, eyes, for leaking salt
onto wounds so raw with blackening
guilt, faulted dreams and hopeless
expectations.

Forgive me, skin, for softnesses
weakness in such times of trial and
for the temptation to wreak destruction
on the only true thing I hold left.

And forgive me, heart, for taking
steps that were destined
to lead no where but this.

It seems you stole the easier path, to hate me
as words cut back those strangling branches

but deceiving eyes need only small sense to see
that it was you who decimated all of our chances.

3 words that were the tornado,
obliterating all
into clean and tidy rubble.

Ordered, perfect, succinct
as your wicked fault-lines
imploded and I said

you were doing the right
thing, I just did not want
you to do it.

My eye of the storm, departed
crumpled
because I could not, though

I swear, calling bare, blood
burning, desperate, destitute nights
and each sharpened, salted day

as my witness, I tried.

But this body holds no words, this mind
carries no ease to destruction, incessant
heart beats out no explanation of why

why? why? why,

I cannot love you.

Yellow sunrises,
pieces of a past present
with such persistence.

Have I damaged
this plump, preening pride of yours?
I am not sorry.

I saw fire light, this night whilst
your fingers skimmed my jaw.

It's way past time but
your face is inches from mine
and my fingers dance freedom
on your skin; sleep is for  
the absence of him.

I saw star light, this night whilst
you dropped words like bombs.

I'm so tired today I can taste
the movements of molecules haste,
tripping in each moment bare
and slipping through sweet salted air.

I saw moon light, this night whilst
you oscillated each villain of me.

This is the very first winter
since he went and he kissed her,
that I have been free; able to see
each shade of light, this night.

There's a body in the trunk
I tell the policeman
and he steps back, hands up
in the face of an invisible gun.

I'm allergic to you
I tell the boy,
because acting crazy is
the only way to make him leave.

I love another
I say to the man,
creeping fingers insistent
against soft skin.

I ******* hate you
I shout at strangers,
wicked words are unwelcome
and their desperation chokes.

I've got chlamydia
I tell another
and he vanishes,
it's my very best trick.

I did not want this
I said to drunken man,
do not look at me, those starving eyes,
you've already consumed me whole.

There's a body in the trunk
I whisper to the policeman
but he does not see it as I see it,
the empty cavern that yawns wide.

He tells me lying is a sin,
sternly pulls down whatever's left
"be a good girl" he sings so sweetly
but does not condemn what was theft.

He cracked open my sternum
feasted eyes on muscular beats
punctured both set of heaving lungs
ruined the cleanest of my sheets.

Claimed alcohol confused corneas
that tiredness muffled defiant ears
that blood didn't register, that pain disappeared
that I did not say that word, that he did not hear.

He stoppered each tear which congealed
such angry belligerence, hey, we made a deal.
This was one mistake and one ruined so willingly,
those scratches were passion, why don't you see?

you should have been clearer, yes really, I was the flaw
you should have fought harder, barricaded that door,
douse yourself in fire and go clean up this mess
it's time like these I begin to love you even less.

He cracked open this sternum
smuggled in gifts unadorned,
and these days I wish I had murdered him
instead of the aftermath, unborn.

I do not care if
you do not love me,
for I have stored all the colours and
traced the secrets of your steps.

Your arm around my shoulder
is the first moment of the first sunrise
radiance caressing frozen webs of spider silk,
silver glory emanating golden dew.

I know no other way but
nor do I want for more, only to will
you stay; hang suspended on
backdrops of my blackest night.

So I do not care if
you do not love me;
I treasure that weakness enough
for the both of us.

That day of goodbye
I broke glass into little slithers
that now still swim beneath my skin,
such beautiful glass reflections
sending each of the seven colours away.

You were excited;
I couldn't look into
those finite eyes of yours as
your skin touched mine
for the last time.

The day I said that last goodbye
boiled the water from dry eyes
and now burnt blood vessels beat on
despite the fact that my heart has gone.

you are the echo in places after everyone's sound has gone.

you are the reluctant resonance in air between breaths.

you are the leaving that's overstayed its welcome.

you are the racket in deprivation of company.

you are the uproar after music has ceased.

you are the chord eternally reappearing.

you are reverberations of want, of lack.

you are sweet tinnitus in every hush.

you are every absent reoccurrence.

you are epitomes of entirety.

your gale still lingers.

but you do not.

you do not.

you do.

not.

I've added up those infringements
stumped them safe, sleeping on dewed grass,
notches burnt on pain of others past to
flare to light in the light of future true.

Goodnight sweet princes, please let
me abandon you soft in this dark
I want to move without your strictures
to seek valleys again crossed with blue.

Numbers lament from my touch but this
I know to be true, it is not my turn to
dance in the ditches, but I would set fire to
dawn to seek sweet signal of your hue.

It was all dark skies and twilight and
rare glimpses and wondrous sunlight
peeking behind lurking rain clouds and
I let you take my hand the night that

Jacob died and you led me to places I
would have avoided, glass sheared my feet
but you smiled so sweetly and it emptied
that void for a little while. And you said

such terrible things about falling so
I bricked up my mouth. But I wonder
after I departed, irrevocably wordless,
if you stole that void for your own.

Dash the darkness from the seat
this night is one to admit defeat,
I shall bring to you each echo new
and let us laugh to life's conceit.

Green tea equations and cigarettes and
a distinct lack of food and
dark night lovely lonely walks and
maybe tomorrow
she will wake in a life
where she can love all parts of herself.

Can you feel that?
What a wondrous sensation.
She takes cold hands and
questions and buries them
in that empty stomach that
sings loudest when she fails
at sleeping. This girl with worn patches
and an overwhelming sense of
irony; there's too much to her
but still she is not enough.

I met you at the station
you said wanted to go anywhere but here.

I said to look for the tracks that
are the most uninviting. You
took my arm. I wished for

something better and here it came,
disguised by dirt, dislocation and greying days.

Your ticket says no return but
mine is undefined, watchful, ready
to bolt or to linger. You say you love
the stations from afar.

There's not much of me
requested, but the splinters that you
do, I gift hopelessly. The

smallest glimpse of light approaching
filtered through dank, oppressive air
are superior, surely? than finite life
exhausted watching the dark.

By the night you amplify,
when you have enjoyed my fill and
left with little but fingerprints and
recollections, casting parallel shadows
on directions that await.

I give you almost everything
except for the words that
travel nowhere but my head.

You gave me the signal
a briefest flash of red
that stopped this in its tracks.

I could write that you
are each shade of the seven colours of
light and smiles that thunder, the envy of sunrises
the absence that defines the dark.

I could let my thoughts
play out upon my face, open to all sight,
every word gifted an ignition sparking
shamefully how willing I am to fall into
step with the rolling rumble of your feet.

I could say that
I love your hand in mine when I am sleeping
it's the only time you tremble that touch,
inconsistent I am the cold to your warm
and you are the eye of my every storm.

But in reality, breathing the same air alight
azure eyes drifting lazily down towards mine,
I will say only, that the sun hates you.

Abstained from dropping thoughts to vulnerable speech
of how it was merely jealous,
for no star could never shine so bright.

I wrote a poem for you when you were gone
It was everyone's darling; I found it feeble.

About how the leagues between diminished
when I stared up at the same stars that lit
the night where you walked. How the Earth
still revolves but we cannot feel it and we
look up, unknowing if anything looks back down.

You returned to me and I collected the pieces of your
heart, gained sight of salt leaking luscious from places
whose ignorance of existence naively I was blessed
heard words I would rather have remained unspoken.

Loathed speech fell like cumbersome bricks from
my tongue to yours, decisions took in absence
causing tectonic plates to clash and tremors be to
felt, further and wider than your eyes when I spoke.

I am sorry is a meaningless phrase. It changes
nothing and I try never to speak it, rather avoid
its crashes of consequence, freeze substance before
the impacted have little cause to celebrate
its colourless intonation.

I am sorry for saying I am sorry, but that which I am not
is for the needed swelling waves which set you far from my shore.

Was I pure igneous rock
and you sedimentary stone
both undeniably metamorphic,
look, everything's changed.

Hidden layers you obscured
deposited through thousands
of tiny imprints, consequences
of each a tiny blade still felt.

Geologists studied us but
no answers did they provide,
an unhappy cohesion of the
earth and none the better for it.

The pressure you put on my
atoms yielded surprising results,
intrusive company chipped
away at the outer layers.

But I longed for the fire and
you for other marble to which
my quartz could not compare,
friction reducing both to rubble.

You brought blood from a stone
and so I eroded you twice as fast
because it seems these two rocks
cannot make a love that can last.

I have decided this day not to give a
crap about the machinations of others
whose notions concern me just as much
as I care
about falling down stairs or
running into walls
or hurting myself
on purpose, which itself deviates
dramatically
day by day.

Your hands whispered their truth as
you crossed the ocean. Lying between
those you wrote and those you did not
they remain, stagnant and curled up against my heart.

I miss you, I say, and you write
I wish you were her.

Body shaking, stomach burning inside
to out, escape and leave me, for I mistreat
you terribly and I am not sorry. Each day is a

struggle, yes, but each morning a glimmer
of hope reflected in vanishing numbers tied to
sluggish skin. Your breath on my neck and

her arms around my shoulders, stretching the
concave of my chest and the hungry cut of my jaw,
twin collarbones thrusting out like the tip of a blade.

Dear Seb,
My infatuation with you did not impress.

Dear Josh,
We were 5000 feet above sea level, with a fear of heights.
Desperation fuelled the climb.

Dear Dave,
You were my first love.
You chew me up and refuse to spit me out.

Dear Dan,
I am sorry.

Dear Alex,
You should be sorry.
Black and purple did not suit my skin.

Dear Shea,
We tried too hard.
We lived in too many shadows.

Dear Dave,
I cannot get you out of my bones.
You squat beneath my ribcage.

Dear Craig,
You gave me disillusion with meaningful words.
I tried to love you.

Dear Joe,
You are breathtaking and the everything of everything.
And I do not know how to be enough.

Dear Keith,
Why did we do it?

Dear Theo,
I would have broken that softness in your eyes.

Dear Dave,
Your indelible imprint colours everything I do.

Dear Cameron,
You are my what's next.

Dear Joe,
You stroked my hand and my hair to wake me.
You are afraid of me.

Dear Dave,
I still remember every word.
Every one.

Dear Lucas,
In my head we had infinity.

Dear Matthew,
I was a vacuum in your life.
Together we were less than nothing.

Dear Joe,
You are the birds singing at dawn.
Why do you want me?

Dear Dave,
I still remember.

you were that second sunrise of this new beginning
you were the time I believed again that I could be winning

we would wake together and we did not sleep apart
and I contemplated whether I was giving you my heart
when you told me words professed never before spoken
and soft sentiment I tried to bury was once more awoken

but you also kept secrets and you recycled your words
and whispered them sweetly in the ears of other birds,
you played the puppeteer, how you loved those sticks
but I've met other magicians and I've seen all their tricks

you loved me (and the others) that you failed to contest
yes but oh, it was me that you loved best?

I am not sorry to have told you that that was uninspired
I've had our moment, true I enjoyed being desired
but this effigy of love you staunchly kept constructing
had flawed foundations your pleasure was deducting.

So this is the truest goodbye that I never did say
what do we live for but love? Yours went astray.

he looked to you
for once telling me the truth
I realise I knew.

you washed the salt out of my eyes
you stomped your feet, refused goodbyes
you burned my books when I tried to write
and set up traps to catch me in the night

I followed your steps up to the cliff
and tried to recall how it felt to live
before this cage of you that I elated
when this infinity could not be sated

So many steps seen from where I stood
so much bad diminished so much good
and those lies were always easier to tell
before that mention of where he fell

A push that was but kinetic emotion
who cried the tears, formed the ocean?
Your own were dried long before this last
and your steps have penned me in the past.

you said you could hold the sun in your fist
and call nightingales when you were ******
that all the deceptions made it easier to trust
and you could see the stars leaking dust

you pulled out sections of your hair
raked your scalp, saying life was fair
and sank your teeth into my arm
saying it wouldn't cause me any harm

you broke the dish and crowed it fate
sent words forth to muddy the slate
and when I cried and begged for less
you told me I was a reckless mess

you carved up pieces, embraced the floor
told me I should have dreamt of more
I dried my tears and latched the gate
your truth whispered, it's far too late

you were the artist, painting colours on skin
sang words of love, such sweet impeccable sin
and some days I can't find where they end and I begin
despite escaping I still cradle you within.

I spent a night with Mandy, our smiles
quaking lips and arms around strangers as
the darkness receded and the stars couldn't be
seen but they could be felt; sound itself visible
in the vibrations of glass and the heady movements
of living and your taste tripping upon my tongue.

Tonight Mandy has left me, smiles
borrowed now a debt to be paid as dusk
approaches. I miss you; my arms ache
to remember holding your body
years past as you came back down
from the music in the stars of the sky
and I was there to laugh and
dry tears and force the darkness to recede.

True I am not one for declarations or discussing emotions,
if I keep you around then that's enough of a notion
that yes, perhaps I will fall to love you, one day in the
future, not right now is true. I will never willingly
admit to being the fallen, more likely to distance
and cautiously move on then risk the words slipping
from my tongue to yours, as we kiss on dark corners
and leave late night bars. How many times has happiness
skipped me by? Living so opaquely and lying with my
eyes, as you take my lips but never do take my hands, I
could love you, dear J, but I'm too scared to stand.

This image you project is one I cannot pierce, I do not know
if you feel when I am in tears, whilst you do not know that
that yes they have fallen for you, our bodies make such awful love
that our minds are askew, tied to decimations old lovers cast,
for it seems two stones do not make a love that can last.

I keep watching other people living
and wondering how I can keep up with
each showcase, another step behind
and my legs are too short and eyes too
tired and I can't make my hair shine like
you do or be happy like he is or have
a dozen friends in undiscovered places
like she always has, nor have I ever done
anything that is actually anything on his scale and
to be content merely moving is apparently
never enough, I need to push forward, become
someone and do something that dulls
everyone else's shine
because apparently that is living and that is life
and it's only real when everyone else can see it.

Moments leave and
the memories that embrace us
are digested; engorged on good times
and the bad. Colouring places you’ve been
with their light and absence and we smile
or we cry, for these stills collected
leave indelible stains on each
moment lived thereafter. The
shadows of past colours sometimes
blaze brighter than each instance
here and now or lend their dimensions
to present moments, clouded and
sharp, that bring the light of each
colour to each moment of dark.

He dispossessed me one summer as we sat beneath skies
blazed blue with such wonder that it burnt my eyes
and I sat and I faltered as those days wore on, this beauty
that mocked me because my glory had gone.

I saw blankness instead of the stars of the night
for he left me, bereft me, took the colours from the light
I was angry, inconsolable, annihilated aspirations of
affinity, consciously avoiding living in contempt of infinity.

Those days were sandpaper shards beneath my clothes
and I worked hard to make sure that nobody knows
those depths that I sank to, the sleepless smoked nights,
where I sat and I wondered how to turn off that light.

Life is brittle glass, dazed and ***** stained clothing;
there's no meaning or secret or way to be knowing
where steps we have not taken will force us to move
and sometimes this darkness is our only truth.

But colours crept back despite eyes not meeting mine
and unwillingly I resolved to tear down this shrine
and I won't lie to you and tell you that each day is joy,
simply subtle expansions of life cherished without that boy.

Torrential rains still lash and terrible things still happen
and his name I still hear which causes infernal distraction
but steadily I am limping my feet away from his lack
finding fire in small things to kindle lapsed hope back.

For the wind and the rain bring green grass and seeds
and salted solitude brought serenity; refusals to concede
and there are new secrets to hold which force me to warm,
for hope, heart and happiness return after each storm.

Look up to the treetops and look around to your friends,
you stand tall, worthy amongst many great men
truth is but perception and so the truth I perceive
is there is hope for you, because there was hope for me.