we walk
under a canopy
of wasps drunk
on rotten apples

a second away from
a sting in the neck
that would put an end
to our feet tracing the

path to our destiny

I tattoo your name on my arm

as if I am scared that time may
erase it from my memory

as if flesh speaks louder
than a heart that beats

to the rhythm of fractured souls

your name -
I will bury in my skin forever

long after you have forgotten
how to form the sound of mine

My battle scars
are words

once whispered into
an idle ear

a poor piece of
history

left scattered at
the entrance of

love

I cannot promise you

forever

only this red wine soaked moment of

bliss

under a carpet of stars, sighing as our hearts

collide

infinite and unfathomable

a mystery for the universe to

unpick as we sit

waiting...

for the moon fold around us

safe and complete

a second of ecstasy

amidst the chaos the turning Earth

but I promise you

this

That moment when I said goodbye to you...
I didn’t know it would be for the last time

ordinary Thursday’s, shuddering
with their sudden significance

missing
missing
missing

a word I’ve heard so often now
it’s lost all meaning

and what can I do? There are no streets left
to search, no stone left to be unturned...

I suppose all I can do, is keep you close,
and love you, miss you, and wait...

because I do not believe in last goodbye’s

no,
you are just testing how long
I will wait for you

On the train tracks of love
we are one collision away
from disaster

our hearts torn metal
twisted and thrown
from their framework

we are passengers
out of control
merely praying that
we will survive

I am more than my fears, he says

but he does not know
what lurks the the recesses
of my mind,

the demons that no other
has dared to dance with,
the monsters that no other
has wanted to tame,

I am bone shivering
cold, midnight darkness
without stars,

open skies that overwhelm
without landmarks,
with no point of reference
between what was and what
might be,

how do I grow from this pile
of ashes,
that I spent years wishing
someone would scatter
across the sea

I am more than my fears, perhaps
it is a leap of faith

but I dare not jump
(arms outstretched)
into the unknown

I dare not
I dare not

I
dare
not

I moved here for
anonymity, a peck of
dust, they promised,
where to look too long
at anyone, is to look
too long at
yourself

I stay up waiting
for a sign

maybe it is in
the sun rise

or the moon’s fall
as the stars start to fade

and my love wanes
with waiting

I loved you
when my heart
was barely able
to beat

out any rhythm
the resembled
life

I loved you
running wild like
the moon sitting in
a black ink sky

I don’t like to make
a spectacle of
my passions

but I loved you
open to the world
honesty and truth
the cornerstones of us

our whispered secrets
at midnight, entwined
together as each found
a home in the other

and you betrayed them

loving another as
I loved you

There is a star
in the sky
I’ve named
after you

it blazes
in the midnight
carpet of deep
blues and purples

it burns
in my heart
when you’re not
with me

at night
I am never
alone

and we are
never apart

I do not blame you
for leaving me

my wild heart
that aches in ways
another injured
heart cannot hope
to mend

instead I will remember
the late night kisses
on my forehead
when your lips gently
grazed my pale skin

I will not forget the
loving whispers or
tender touches

I think of you fondly
as the sun goes down

it may set on the love we had
but, my darling, it does not set
on love

Of the million faces I have seen
I remember every line and crack
of yours,

ocean blue eyes,
those gentle waves
that swirl around
your ink black
pupils

I can paint from memory
the freckles on your cheeks,
a dot to dot map
that leads me home
when I am lost,

Of all the million faces I have seen
I would give up the rest of my life
to see yours, one more time

I am out
throwing breadcrumbs
to help me find
my way back
to you

you are out
with torches
burning down
the trees that line
the pathways

home

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

You asked me how many moons
were in the sky

and I said, only

one that pulls fine chords from
our hearts and spins

one that clenches like a fist
at the beating in our chests

one that's surface is covered
with every kiss we've ever had

only one, because there is
only us, alone in the universe

in it's vast, grey, enormity

our bodies woven so tightly together
wrapped around each planet

our love burning up every sun
into a supernova

we are alone
we are vast
and our love is
infinite

We stood on a deserted beach on a freezing January night,
staring at the waves as they ebbed and flowed,
they seemed so infinite,
as if they would never stop their gentle rhythm,

and we -
we…

the skin of our love was cracking violently apart,
as if we had been lying under the sun
with no protection, for years

(maybe we had)

there were no words to soothe the burns,
no actions to undo the damage

we had - split

back into two separate people,
instead of consuming one identity,
and maybe that was best,
because two hearts, two brains, four lungs…
in one entity…
you are sure to burst at the seams…

I am forever bound in this grief

soft skin and rose petals

scattered like the ashes of my dreams

across the bed of my nightmares

I close my eyes and taste the

salt kissed waves of your

ocean

the sea that drowned me when I was

helpless

and the arms that saved me

both realities existing together

as one

as your fingernails move down my spine

carving love letters and the blood

that we will offer

to Cupid,

in thanks for the richness of this moment

the textures that breathe eternity

in your hands

I am bound to this grief

of my carelessness

for you slipped so easily from my grasp

like sand through my fingers

just glass

glass to shred my bare feet on

as I walk towards

that beckoning ocean

I was not born to feel the
endless night

that comes, starless,
bringing to my room a broken moon

I was put on this Earth
to crush leaves beneath my feet
and revel in the changing seasons

to take each one into my mouth
like a ripe fruit

I am here to touch
the brilliant, bright sun

I was born to make Icarus proud

You see scars
instead of stories,
histories weaved and stitched
half healed, still tingling with shame,

fragile ribbons tied together by my teeth,
pulled tight against the darkest night,
when midnight was a threat, and sunrise
an aching promise that I might forget,

so, see scars if that’s all
you can see,
but I now honour the stories
within me

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

the soul goes on forever
but I am not sure mine is up up to the task

each day, a little part of it erodes away
like water eating into a sand cliff

and I am dropped down into the ocean
forced to swim or drown

and drowning has always seemed
so peaceful to me

my breath froze in my chest
as the tide pulled me down

my limbs stopped struggling

(I stopped struggling)

and I rested my head on the sea bed
in an eternal sleep

beautiful colourful creatures floating
around me for company

if my soul goes on forever, I hope it takes
into account these last moments

and not the years of pain and heartache
that came before

the times when I thought it was literally
being beaten and torn away from me

I hope my soul remembers my final peace
more than a lifetime of chaos

Like the moon and stars

we belong to the night

we do not quiver
when darkness falls

for our hearts and eyes

belong to the midnight sky

you make your own magic
or you make your own misery

there is no such thing as destiny

Can it not be enough
for your skin to tingle,

when it gets too close
to the open fire you are
curled in front of,

reading books that take
you to places that even
your dreams don't reach...

To exist in a moment of
contentment without waiting,
wanting, wishing for
the next one..

I carry the weight
of the things you did to me
- in my heart
it swells and pulses with pain
no matter how much
I beg it to pulse with passion

I can’t even find the strength
to hate you as much as I hate
- myself
I spend every minute
trying to unpick the stitches
and let the wounds bleed
into words

to find my voice in the darkness
but they stick in my throat
- like stones
and I remain
silent

I was a fool for thinking
I could keep you unharmed

as if I had the power to heal
wounds of the heart -

etched as deeply as
names on a grave

pretending I could erase sorrow
as if I were the tide upon the sand

I was too proud to admit to you
that to love me was no different
than loving any other girl

I come with my own hazard warning

nights where you’ll wake up in
a cold sweat,
lying next to the nightmare you just had

but if you’re ready
I will hold you hand, earnestly
and help you navigate the
messed up map of me

this ****** up map of love

I’m scared
to feel more
than your
love

so even when
it’s over

I cling to
the veins and arteries
of my broken
heart

like lifelines

hoping they will
save me from
drowning

I do not know what
makes you beautiful

maybe it’s that your arm
stretches around me
like a wave

and the thump of your heart
is as calming as the pulse
of the ocean

but why try to explain
the impossible
when you know it
will lose it’s magic

My past is not yours
to play with,

my insecurities not yours
to doubt,

my weaknesses not yours
to exploit,

my temptations not yours
to tantalise,

I have shattered the bars of
us,

switched the light on to your
indecency,

grown a rage in my soul that threatens
to overspil,

I have broken up the beams of light
that lingered between our hearts,

seeing only in the dark,
blinded yet clear,

the world which once turned around you,
now spins to the beat of my

(and
only
my)

heart

When two words meet
there is a crack
running like spilt red
wine from one end of
my room to the
other

there are voices
living in it
young girls that
scream and laugh
as they fly through
the air on swings

old men that creek
when they move
and breath heavily
as if the weight
of their decades
is a physical onus

before my train leaves
I stand in the middle
of the room and spread
my arms as if they
are wings

my fingers don't touch
the plaster, which is strange,
after spending so many nights
convinced that the
parameters are closing
in on my dreams

I was brought up
to believe in last
looks and I have
grown up to believe in
railway stations and
airports

looking back it seems
cruel to be told that
your address isn't fixed
that there is no point
in learning to live with
the cracks

I leave a pink post it
over the crack
'Theres no place
like home' and as
I leave to front door
unlocked, I wonder how
full the carriage will be

and if the stranger
next to me will carry
a portmanteau

this one's for September's sadness
splintered floors and splashes
of chemicals
that the doctor prescribed,
that you're not sure work
but are too scared to argue,
sweep your sadness into a clinical hug,
caress it like a dumb lover,
for it cannot speak aloud,
only yell inside your head
screaming banshees in the night,
thirty days, and thirty pills
and a bottle of *****,
September's sadness has an end
it cries out under blue lights
and sirens...

curled around the coldest nights -

with cigarettes and cheap whiskey
to offset the dreams that scream
until my ears bleed

my only regret is not gazing

longer

into the perilous ocean of your eyes,

if you dared let me in,

I could have been,
should have been,
would have been,

whole with you

The cliffs we are standing on
are so high we can’t see over
the edge

but we know the drop

it has lingered like smoke
in our dreams for weeks
has curled like a vine
around our hearts

we have fantasised about it

wrote three chord songs
with bad lyrics
about the plummet

now we stand beneath
a carpet of stars
jagged rock beneath our feet

is it still our fantasy to fly?

or are we just two people
whose love became so toxic
that death seemed like the only
way to cleanse, to detox,
to start a new chapter

when you are two inches from death
your life flashes before your eyes
and neither of us saw beauty
or brilliance

especially together
especially together
especially together

It was the lifeline
you offered,
that the idiot
in me cling to,
despite myself,

like a drowning
man clings
to a rope,

thrown out
in the hope
of saving
a life,

only the lips
of my heart
closed around
it like a mouth,

shoved it down
deep, like a shot
of whiskey downed
at midnight,

your alcohol
stained breathe
soft against my
neck,

but I am not
drowning, no,
I am treading
water, always,

I will be treading
water until another
comes along,

with harsh hands
and cruel words,

you see the ribs
around my heart
were built to shatter,

and you are too
kind to break
my bones

My broken heart is still
teaching me to love

from the little buds of
first meetings

to the blooms
of full blown passions

when our arteries
entwine, blood
mixed and wounded

hearts beating as one

Your love is enough
to shatter the cage
of my past

deep roots
that have set
like stone around
my bones

your kiss
transforming me
into a butterfly

and even if
I only live
for one day

your love is enough
to send me skipping
gratefull,  gracefully

to my grave

I spy
a split back
dress, blanched
skin, from where
I sit

That used to be me,
with your hair
in delicate knots and your
knees creeping out from
under your skirt

When did I stop
shaving my legs?

I let myself
go, drift away in the
same way that cats will
wonder away from
their home to
die

As memories claw
grasping and teasing
with black and white
photographs of a girl,
a butterfly that
reverted back
to a larva

My heart opened for you
like a blood red tulip,
it’s restless beats settled
at the sound of your voice,
the way you pronounced my name
as if in a language only known to us,
our fingers wrapped together like vines,
the dark green ties that bind us forever,

But tulips live a short life
their petals wither and die,
I can only hope that in the dust
of my dead flower heart,
there will be the ashes of you

there were words that never
passed our lips

but that our hearts would beat out
the rhythm of every single time

our fingers brushed together

at every single embrace and stolen kiss

for every morning spent sharing
our dreams over coffee

just because we didn’t say it
doesn’t mean we felt it any less

I pretended to be somebody else
it was easier that way
acting a part in a different play

I became addicted to the roar
of the audience
the standing ovations
for a character I merely inhabited

then I met you
and suddenly I became
real

the pores of my skin
uncovered
the awkwardness
of my personality
became a quirk
not a shame
to shy away from

and I started to live
a different act
the act of us

we walk with our past
forever beneath our feet

threatening to erupt like a volcano
or spring back into life, like a vine

it is the stepping stones
that guide us
and the gravity the grounds us

as we walk,
our past and our future, collide

we see the whole of the journey
from birth the death
confronted with every detail of our existence

and still, we walk

we walk

Come down,
from the dizzying heights
of passion

and tell me that
you love me in
the ordinary

the day to day dust
the rising of the sun
without the promise of a
breathtaking sunset

I love you
in the every day
my morning coffee
my midnight wine

please tell me that
you feel the same
because passion cannot
sustain my heart
forever

Here he'll be in
my memory
forever

hanging in the water
like a hook

anchored,

his heart hit the rocks

waves washed over his
limp body

a siren of despair
and desire

whose song will travel
nowhere, now

except the bottom of
the ocean

There was a time when I would run
into a burning building
to save you,

until I released that you were,
in fact, the arsonist,

setting light to whatever you touched,
(for the Hell of it)
and I was in that
(Hell)

my flesh burning as your fingers
pressed their prints on it

but you didn’t realise,
that you had turned me into evidence

and I would drag my body through
a thousand fires, and roll in the ashes,
of what’s left of my life

to help them catch you

as a chil of the universe
I should know better
than to let my heart be swallowed
by the black hole that is you

We were the graveyard girls
gorging on lost souls and bones

But our highest prize….

…we wanted to taste Death.

To bite into his flesh, and hallucinate his prey,
to let his blood trickle on our tongues, red as a brilliant, untouched ruby

We wanted to see if it would -
by some twist of supernatural law - make us immortal

(or infamous)

You watched me force my way through the ashes
and rebuild myself from the debris

you said that you'd always believed in me
and I felt it

said that you'd always waited for this
and I could taste it

but when our hand clasp,
I panic, imagining them turning into dust

when we kiss deeply
I wonder if I am consumed by fire, inside
something so imbedded, so fundamental to my new state of being
that I can't control it

I imagine my tongue turning to flames
inside your mouth

I am scared of combusting at the slightest trust

I feel hazardous

Yes, a Phoenix may rise
ready to live their life over,

and it may be beautiful

but there fire inside them, still
and people will get burnt

Why am I running away?

you voice is soft
in my ear
each morning

whispers of love
and forever
and ever

you have never
shouted or made
me feel scared

Why am I running away?

your touch is gentle
as you caress
my back

each finger
drawing out
a heart

on my back
calming me
as your own

and I accepted
their imprints
as if they were
the fingerprints
of God

Why am I running away?

your eyes are darker
than midnight
and just as
mysterious

I lose myself
in them, each
night

searching for
answers,
answers
like

Why am I running away?

time slows down
or speeds up

relative to how
fast you move

against
something
else

hurling into
the vast loneliness
of space

at the speed
of light

your heart
trapped in
aluminum

ages far
slower than
mine

gravity
bending
time

twisting
the narrative
of our love

so that one
of us grows
old

apart from the
other,

helplessly watching

a promised lifetime
blowing up

above the cheers
and screams

of a crowd