It’s hard to believe that a heatwave
has such a chill in the air,
the wind that carries a whisper
of your memory,
distorted now and distant

have I forgotten you on purpose?
is forgetting easier than remembering
how much I loved you
how much I miss you

Is denial my friend?
Washing away your name
as if it were the sea and I had
drawn it in the sand

the heat makes the flowers
wilt before their time
and I cannot bare to see it
to see you in a rose petal,
brown and withered

deny, forget, erase

but I cannot forget
the flaws and imperfections in you
that taught me how to be human

because I am flawed now,
scrambling in the dark
like a child lost in a maze

there is nothing I can do
to honour you enough
to thank you enough

forgetting is a pretty poor way
of repaying you
but I have to survive
I have to survive

because I am breaking
otherwise

I miss you, but it’s not enough
to say that. I ache for you. For all
the memories we will never make.
For knowing I will never hug you again.
Hear you laugh or let you see me cry.
It burns like a fire lit in the
pit of my stomach.
This ache that no pill can take away.
The never memories rippling across
my skin, like waves I am fighting
desperately not to be engulfed by.
Fighting them is useless, though.
You just have to let them
wash you in salt water
and hope it
cleanses you

somehow

this is my deliverance,
away from the torture, away from the pain
that you inflicted on my body and mind

not a day passes when I don’t think
of the way you grabbed me from normality,
from safety, from peace

a day when I don’t remember
the agony of you forcing yourself
into my body, my heart, my soul

but this is goodbye, farewell to the days
of the constant nightmares,
the fear, the shame

I am my own salvation,
digging deep inside to find
the courage to heal

to let the soothing balm of love
rub over my skin again

you are nothing and I am going to
rise from the ashes to be something

magnificent

This is the first year
when the tulips grow without you,
and as they bloom my heart bursts

with a kind of melancholy I have learnt to nurse
during bitter cold mornings and ink blank nights
my eyes searching for you at breakfast, your coffee mug still intact

unlike your body, unlike my heart

but the tulips bloom and so too
does something new

peace,
peace settles in my soul

my head stops spinning with
what if and might have been

and those tulips,
those gorgeous silk like
purple, orange, yellow and red tulips

save me

I have weathered storms that shook
my heart against my rib cage

Battled lightning bolts
that gave my brain electric shocks

and yet -

I cannot withstand this goodbye
that tastes like battery acid in my throat
everytime i try and say your name

I cannot find the strength to let you go,
even though you are

- gone

your face echoes, wild as the wind in my memories

all I have is love
this love that was not enough to save you
so how can this love save me

from crumbling with grief

The things you’ve taken from me
cannot be counted,
cannot be listed,
cannot be measured

like the passage of time since that day
where I have stagnated,
the taste of my own blood

still rich upon my tongue
and other tastes that are not mine,
now belonging to me

a memory torn to pieces
yet burning with white hot precision

I have buried myself in blankets,
drink, drugs and denial

but I cannot change the truth
the bloodied, fleah torn fact
that you were once

inside me

The stars were just lights in the sky
until you became one of them,
burning memory in the midnight sky

memories that I took to bed
and hid beneath my pillow
because they too

burnt my fingertips every time
I dared touch one,

how can one shine
so beautifully bold outside,
and inside be so deeply buried beneath
layers of regret, shame and grief?