Our fingers searched

Like foxes rummaging through

Bags of trash

A cigarette packet

An empty Jack

bottle

I think we kissed in the dark

Before tonight

I never wanted to read
the letters you left
me

black ink bleeding
across the page
like the letters on
tattoo'ed skin

that touched water too soon

I imagine the pen-
nib scratching, stinging
like a thousand, angry
bees

you're smoking cigarettes
they don't make anymore
and your yellowed fingers
remind me of caterpillars
that never made it
to butterflies

swollen with new life
and coloured ugly from
the effort of trying
to transform into
it,

and failing

You are a liar
not a poet, he said,
and your feelings
are as meaningful
as an invitation
made in September,
that new year bliss
that covers you in
new notebooks,
fresh pencils and
friends. If you could
only love a person
as much

if you could only
love me

At some point,
I think everyone
dreams of fire

to burn bridges
down, tumbling
rubble, metal
melting back into
lava

you could start again,
then, It would be
easy enough

I’m not saying
that I like to
watch the skins
of structures peel

but who doesn't
look at a burning
building and feel
something more
than fear

something more
than loss

something more like
hope

and excitement

a racing heart
that soars above
the sirens

and sends
voices, through
pulses, into your
ear

you could run into
that, you know

you could pull
someone out

save something

you could make it
beautiful

He's everywhere
again

the blood that sticks
my lips together

when I wake

the dogs that bark
behind  white washed
gates

the cold grab of
the village drunk

the heat that's taken
from me in rare moments
of sleep

the dark rings under
my eyes that I wear
like rosary

so the devil
I picture holding
hands with you

becoming you

can't see my insides

organs, scattered

rotting

the red, anxious rash
that covers me

the knots and filth in
my hair

He is everywhere

I'm writing this
on the back of
a bank statement

it's from our joint account
and, circumstances without,
I smile slightly at the thought
that I was ever close enough to
someone to share names on
an envelope

the money doesn't matter,
we are none without our vices,
little human weaknesses
that creep through and climb
the tallest if walls

I drew out note every morning
from the ATM on the corner,
to buy cigarettes and chocolate

often, I'd ingest them together
like a double dose of Aspirin,
a double shot of whiskey

slightly reckless but
essentially harmless

The smoke would coat
my throat, the sugar
settling like a layer
of film

I know, it sounds disgusting
so, shall we talk about you?

I'm almost disappointed
by the banality of it all
fake names, hotel rooms
and guilty ***

I'd known about those pitfalls
since childhood but I still
married you thinking you were
different, original

If you had to leave I wanted
a storm. That you would
fling a fist towards the sky
and declared your hatred of me
your boredom, your lack of love
for me

and I'd spill my own guts,
violently, coughing up my
own bile for you

but no

I'm running out of space
now, and I'm scrawling ink
over our branch name
and sort code. The paper
constricting, closing,
pressing me for an
ending

I wrapped myself,
tight. Wired myself
to the fabric of time

became invisible.

I never knew why
the Earth started to spin
away from me

so I blended myself
into the background
and waited

patiently

for it to stop

My senses remember it
better than my
memory

and maybe it's the memory
of you that's lead me back
to this place. Where my skin
shakes like small coils of wire
shot with electricity

but it's a nervous,
nerve reflex and not proof
that I'm alive

my limbs hanging like
the branches of a
tree

a cool breeze
shuddering the
roots

I always felt new with
winter. Ice beneath
my feet. Itchy woollen
jumpers and the smell
of cinnamon

but you stole my seasons
the way you stole my
heart and now a cold
breeze sends me into
darkness

***** footprints on
dead ground. Black
coats and boots

and the smell of your
body, missing, and
the sound of my neck,
caressed by a white scarf,

breaking

I am sharpening my teeth,
preparing for the taste of
your flesh,

I am hesitant to take the first
bite, but I have a hunger that
nothing else will satisfy,

(revenge, revenge)

I am a creature of hate, now,
I am what you made me,
what you moulded me
into with your

bare hands. Toss back
the sheet and lay down
your gun,

show them what you
really are, open up
the scars you've forged
into my skin,

branded into my thighs,
white hot and stinging.
You say it's what I asked
for, with my ***
soaked lips,

but you knew how
the story would end
before you had even
seen me

knew the weight of your hand
smothering a scream

you came to me armed
and I was defenceless
but I am no longer
gunless

my bullets will hit your
heart, and I will forget
your smell, I will
shake of your
stale breathe

I'm not here to forgive you

(This story is mine)

At five, we dragged
sticks along railings
and walls

holding hands
carelessly, obliviously,
without knowing we
were linking our
hearts forever

then we were ten,
twenty, forty...

the years doubled
then doubled
again

we're eighty

milk white hands
like chalk

ice palm meeting
ice palm

yet still
we smile,
faces cracked
and

careless

I miss sharing bathtubs
with you, the way our
fingers linked together
to form webs of skin
that stopped our hearts
slipping, like stones
beneath the surface

I heard that drowning
was the worst way
to go. The way that
skin wrinkles away
from the bone in
shades of blues
and grays

The subtle difference
between immersion
and submersion,

the line between trying
to restart a heart or
leaving a chest cavity
to fill with waves

life's oceans are
endless in their
meetings with
death

and some hearts
are meant to
cross the sea

I have been here
a hundred times,
where the walls shake
and shrink around
us. oceans. woods.
and skies spinning
out of reach. out
of control but
destiny has it's
own map and
words that
weep like ink
black. bleeding.
where do the
trees end? the
leaves that rip
beneath my
feet. and I am
the air. the soil.
the orange red
flame that dances
from branch to
branch. spreading.
smoking. choking.
devouring.

Words, put together
on strings, made to look
like pearls

instead they're drops
of blood, bits of ourselves
that tell, like fingerprints
that show up under
certain light

we let it seep
through the curtains,
as we wait for each
other to wake

our nails
clawing, digging, sinking
into each others flesh

lightly
tracing the red
stutters that
appear

we forget about
the taste of
iron, the smell
of it rising through
our bodies as

they spread

A winter romance,
of frozen fingers wrapped
around hot cocoa with extra
Sugar in cups with Disney
characters and chips along
the rim. Monday mornings
were for promises. we’d
drink less wine and you’d
smoke out in the garden,
where the frost lies on
the grass in a blanket
of ice and
I
Can
Feel
It
feel the chill of that
biting air in the way you
crawl inside me
as if I am hollow
without you
and the way you turn
you head afterwards
(it's the way
we sleep now)

Like ancient Greeks
crafting words onto patched
papyrus, we are the split
at the bottom of a
kalamos with enough
ink to sign our names

We were born of
water reeds. Our salt-wrapped
hearts still float amongst
the long leaves

in the river where we drowned

Your smell lingers
on my skin,
caught in the scars
you forged,

a purple bed -
spread, to match
my legs

contoured to your
pleasure

my screams silenced
by your hands, that
start to wander
down,

between my legs,

a radio blasting meaningless
pop songs, that will become

a horros, hollow
soundtrack, every time
I'm caught off guard

blood - so much
blood, searing agony,

as you force your way
into me,

I am ice, frozen
solid and cold

I do not want
to thaw

to carry the scars
outside this
room

to take this nightmare
into daylight

I run, as soon as
I can,

I fumble at the
lock,

picking it apart
as you picked
me

apart,

I'm not going
to carry these
scars

I am not going
into battle

we are not
at war

no, I will
surrender

and leave our
story in this
room

I discovered then
that love was not
the clenching of a
heart, or the pattern
of a pulse in
double time

but the
emptiness of
the seat opposite
you at breakfast

and the bitter taste
of coffees laced with
goodbyes

I thought the light in your eyes
was for good, so I never tried
to light it

It's teeth, it's
teeth wear down,
eroded with the
acid of time and
memory

she told be this
but

the memories, the
memories bite still
sometimes and the
distance

the distance between
who I am and who I
used to be
is growing

growing like an
unweeded garden
and the weeds

the weeds, too
bite and the
bites are

as hard, as
consuming as
fire and
ice

I remember the ivy
that grew in the side
of our first house

year by year, we
watched it shake off
its dead leaves and
tremble, naked through
the winter

in the Spring,
we'd take tea underneath
it, sharing the sugar spoon
like we shared sheets
and secrets

we watched it beat
again, like a heart
restarting, rising after
the fall

the wrought iron
chairs are rusted brown
now, and no-one sits
upon them

we're dead
but breathing,
blood pulsing on

and on

hearts beating backwards

and sugar spoons left
out for the
ants

Every Autumn,
my grandmother would
sweep away the leaves
from in front of
her house

she believed my grandfather
was always watching, still
sitting in his wicker chair
chipped white paint
peeling away from the
wood

in the kitchen,
the smell of bread
rose, licking the
ceiling with its
sweet tongue

she still bakes,
hoping the dough
will stretch as far
as his fingers

through swept leaves
and breadcrumbs,

down to the very core
of the Earth

the very core
of her

I am -
a woman of
science and skill

I am -
a collector
of facts and
absolutes

He is -
the anomaly

a cruel contamination

he says I
count and in
my mind I
imagine

not with my
head but my
heart

the rules of
fantasy are still
mine to learn

how far does it go?

does it
have edges?

I feel the edges
of his body blending
into the shape
of me

the taste of tobacco
of tea on his lips
that are now
my lips

I am -
a woman of
passion and
warmth

I am a woman
curled into the
crook of a man

It’s a fallacy, ‘to be or not to be’
actors strutting and pouting across
a stage, their black shoes burning
holes into the painted wood,

Their words lacking conviction
each action, merely an action,
but it’s what they have to work with
that holds the key, he secret ecstasy,
The escape route from Hell

Knowing that, given the choice,
‘to be’ is not where the scales will
settle. We are wanderers clutching
at straws of adventures, but we will
pick the short one, eventually

Where then do we go? When there is
no ladder made of gold to climb.
no pearly gates nor a wizardly,
kindly face

‘The play’s the thing’
wherein we catch
the conscious of
ourselves

I love you for the dark corners
where the dust settles

the way you bend your arm
tho cocoon my head when it
is heavy

they say that love is complex,
that it is an architecture that we
build with our bare hands, fingers
in the dirt

and I don't know if I believe that,
because it seems so simple to me,
that we have built our story on a
foundation of angles

I saw her
in a crack
of light

a shard
of broken
mirror

I am the
flames of Hell
burning

up, combusting
into ash

only footprints
of where she
stood

only echoes
of where she
laughed

only half
a person

a shell
without
a soul

I imagine myself
as an architect
crafting buildings
out of broken
bits of rocks
pencil lines
on paper
shaping into
something
beautiful

it must have
been beautiful
in the beginning
when our mind
had no pictures
to compare
to the ones
our eyes could
take

I imagine the
start of the
universe
dark matter
and energy
and how it
would feel
to absorb
any light
that hits

to hide where
even Galleo’s
gaze can't
reach

He came to me,
bloodied and broken
and for once I saw
the beating heart
beneath the shell
the touch of his
cheek beneath
the bone
the quiver of his
hand upon my
shirt and the
look in his
eyes as I
unwrapped

It occurred to me,
suddenly (as I
watched his face
in sleeping sunlight)
that he was a thing
of soft flesh and
warm blood
and not of  
cold deductions
and brutalities

There is something

other than a man

about him

eyes bright, 
lips
locked
 tight

his fingers

are not that

much longer

than mine

they too
 know
chemicals

the touch of glass

between your bare

skin and acid

I tap words
through the sheets

with my finger-

tips

dot dot dot

dot dot

dot

and through the

haze of sleep
he smiles

his mouth titling

towards mine

we don’t call it

kissing

it is the pleasent purple

colour of neutral

litmus paper

it is our data
spreading

from the corners

of our mouths
into my
 cheeks

my body betrays me
and colours them
red

but it is more
than a flush
of a fantasy
made present

to be able
to touch

this man who hides
(and lies)

to know
this light touch
of a man in
a mask

which he allows 

only me to
see 
through

I've murdered half of
the people who stood
between us to clear
the view

I've been inside
your mind and carved
out love notes

they are on the
bodies you read

on the lives
you try to
reconcile

but there is
no chance
of that now

promises lie, dead,
with the motionless
grave fillers  

in a moment
I am holding your
hand in autumn,
watching winter
born

ice and snow
to purify
the way I feel
tonight

I left my finger –
prints on your face
a kiss that lingers
and dies as you
turn cruel

I smell your
aftershave in
their hair as it
rubs off me
onto them

as you
rub off me
onto them

we won't be
meeting like this
again

we won't be
sharing spit
and blooded
bed sheets

and though you
say your heart
is frozen, I promise

it will thaw

By profession,
I am good at
waiting

I am used to
the cruelty
of human upon
human

wounds of wars
and words

delicate deceits that
brush lips with skin
and skin with finger -
prints

like him, I look at bodies
and see stories
I see bruises and scars
that conceal secrets

I can read crimes
as clearly as if
they were written
in blood across
the scene

this game should be
beneath us

he is cruel
and offers a
chance, smaller
than anything
I’ve seen on a
microscope slide

but still, breathing
existing, taunting

leaving me breathless
and broken

it squeezes my
heart as if the
blood inside is
a poison that
needs extracting

my once logical
mind quivers
under his kiss

and empties

he is the ****
that grows beneath a flower
until it is too wild
to ****

A hospital roof
top – the world swelling
like a broken limb
beneath him

breathing

the air tastes
of car fumes,
***** – people
with their feet
covered in
the dust of
life

for a moment
my heart imagines
he is going to
jump

jump
away from the plan

I trust myself
enough not to
trust him

a gun -
shot wound
to the heart

breathe - just
******* breathe

he won't lie
still, and the
red pool reaches
nearer

reaching like a
hand towards
me

at my feet

I stare at it
and remember
laughing

we didn't laugh often

I'm not like
that

but we would succumb
occasionally

I remember the feel
of his hair - the
way the roots
felt as I brushed
from them with
my fingers

my fingers remember
the touch of his
coat

the scratchy,
uncomfortable
fabric

why did he wear
the ******* thing?

the scarlet stain
has reached my toes
now

I fight the urge
to place my hand
in his

I need to focus
He needs to -

focus

please, just listen
to my voice

put your heartbeat
into it

into me

control

control

control

he is becoming
heart -
less

why has he
chosen me
to save him?

twice now

he says I matter
the most but it's
*******

he doesn't want me
he wants my
skills

to find a body
and fake
it

to wait years
no - two years
in silence so heavy
I feel like my lungs
have collapsed

and now to pull him
through - back through
the cavity in his chest

to force the blood
back into his breaking
body

whilst my hands
shake with fear

night terrors

and the shape of
his face as I
drag him

(back to life)

by the roots of
his hair

After the rain fell
I fell sunshine trickle through my body

it’s yellow mouth swallowing me
whole

I became -

reckless

with secrets, with the hearts that
beat inside an other

I was released from the suffering
of a slow death my drowning

and I didn’t care who
felt the blunt
of it

I wake up to an
itch - ripples on
the surface of
my skin come
in waves,
beating against
the shell
of me

in the night
you are
no kinder

slipping between
the sheets like
a limb, a veil

I scratch, my
bitten nails

my body,
the coarse
strip, my finger
the match

striking

the

flame

Spending cold winter days indoors,
I boil milk on a stove
to warm my stomachs
my hands clutched tight
around a hot mug

a restless urge to wander
and I find myself in the
snow covered garden

where I eat berrie,s recklessly
with little care as if
they are poisonous

self destruction is
inherent in me,
I go of on a whim
sometimes, a wild
wind of despair

I do not want to be
this cold, but there are
no flames hot enough
to thaw out the ice

that runs like
a spike through
my heart

I take tea in the afternoon
as I wait to hear his foot -
falls approaching

I am on
edge until they
kiss my ears in their
heavy booted sound

I add sugar cubes
distractedly, as my
mouth adjusts to
the taste of him

a heaviness on my
lips, upon my neck,
the scratch of a scarf
that looks softer

I imagine the scratch
of a vampire fang to be
worse, and breathe in and
out my prayers that at
least he is by my side
before nightfall

he is a thing of
paleness and impatience,
I am a woman who works
the dead into shapes
that speak

we both seek answers
but know they will not
be found in the arms of
each other

yet still,
our hearts beat
as one

Before they coma,
silence was a virtue
we never indulged in

we would talk
until our throats
bled, our tonsils
burning as if
speaking words were
as warming as
eating raw chilli

we'd tuned our vocal
chords finely, semi -
tones were for
mornings as much as
black coffees

our bodies were
strings and ***
was just another
chord

a tangle of
limbs wrapped in
copper wire

after the car hit
you, we stopped.

the silence that took you
was big enough
for two

I wanted seven seconds
of silence, the stillness
of unturned pages and
leaves that are yet to
be crunched, underfoot

we ate with plastic knifes
and forks, food blending
into to the taste of it

no time exists here

at seventeen, we were
running, full of *****
we'd bought and wine
that we'd stolen from
cheap supermarkets

now we're here

where the days chase
us down like hungry
wolves and the air is
too heavy to smoke
through

we smoked a lot

and dragged the ash
from our dog ends
across your parents
new patio

into the shapes of
our names

I wanted you to call
for me in the morning
and sneak into my room
at night

I wanted us to be lovers,
the way that bare hands
feel under fesh sheets
and the taste of your
sweat on my lips

I wanted our bodies
to burst

to know fire and
tame it

your car hit something
solid as you fiddled,
one handed, between
the ribs of me

my wasp heart
tapping at the sides
of it's jar

I tasted blood for the
first time

beating against you

You unhook me like
a fish, still shaking
and terrified of being
eaten

as you let me go
I feel the weight
of you

against me

my face turned
seeking not to
see you

I am the flesh
and bones of
you

the carcass that
lies motionless and
rotting

outside in

I have lingered on
the edges of this
lake, like a flower

or the decapitated head
of a child's doll,
no longer interested
in playing

I have known
ravenous hunger
that bread does not satisfy
and thirst that water
does not quench

there is only you
waiting with your mouth
opening like a spring flower
about to blossom

the yellow stem of you
pushing dirt back into
the ground where your
brown roots have taken
hold and tied their knots

so that you may always
be tethered, like ropes wrapped
around the wrists of a black
slave child

you seek escape but it
is not within my power
to grant such a thing

there is only me
mouth dry, belly empty
and raw

I became
untethered -
a wild wanderer
treading sand barefoot,
eager and constant
a butterfly unpinned,
unhinged -
storms rolling across
my skin like water
only divine intervention
could tame me,
and I stood fearless
in the face of
God

We pick at
the stitches of
time, as if they
will come lose
in our fingers
if we just pull
hard enough,
but there is
strength in
wounded souls
that shatters
glass as if it
is made of
sugar paper

Gracious
they called me
as I raised
my silver
clutching
hand
and toasted
your life
grimacing with
yellow stained teeth
ashes rise and
down she
goes

Scar tissue is
ageless
but my skin
has seen a
thousand
sunsets
when sleep
eludes me
and the monsters
that fester
underneath
the silver slithers
of time
burst free

They say that to heal
you must pray to
God

but I am a lesser
form, a shattered
skeleton of a
girl

and all I know
is pain

the taste of the edges
of the wound

where the blood starts
to turn brown from the

air that I can never

breathe

You were out wandering the
hills and valleys of my
heart

and I said you couldn’t stay, no
you had to go, I can’t bare to
see the pity in your eyes

we were driving through the woods as if God had chosen us,
with no fear in our souls for they

were already sold to the devil
in his handsome navy suit,
not a pitchfork tail in sight

and I learnt what they meant
about disguise, that night

I said leave me now, please
five miles away from home
I said, I can walk it, there are
no holes in my shoes

but you clung to me like a
long forgotten whisper, and
I knew I had no choice but

to love you

The moment when the rocks
turn to sand beneath your feet,
is the moment when you hear
that bird song, captured in the air
between it’s beak and your ear,
so only you can hear it

only you who can turn
sand back into glass,
to build a window in
your house where
you can only see the tress,
their branches unleashed and
threatening

but you have heard the birds sing,
and sound is the last sense

to go