I hear his footsteps
Feel his breath on my neck
Hear him whisper in my ear
He is beauty and magic
and glitter.
But this is just fiction,
this is just hopeful longing,
this is me
not knowing what
I did wrong,
or how to fix it.

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 sit at a wooden table
with four chairs
(One only has three legs)
the trickle of rain seeping
through the broken window
grows into the cascade of
a waterfall, in my mind

food is being shared out
plump strawberries that smell
like summer, and fresh bread
that makes me cry
with the thought of the effort
that went into making it

I sit waiting for the conversation
to start
the conversation I have waited
years to start
I’m not even scared anymore
I have my tribe
If they disown me
I can cope, practically

My partner squeezes my hand
she’s been here before
The morning chatter is coming
to an end
I don’t have long
I just have to say it
To be honest, it amazes me
that they can’t ******* SEE it
But ****, it’s over
They all walk out around me
Leaving us sitting there
hands clasped together
Maybe together is all we have

This is where
our idle walking
ends

the crunch of
winter leaves
beneath our boots

stops

we reach a kissing
gate that tells us
we're in

memory

when our thoughts
met with kindness

soft whispers
in the soil

hearts planted
so deeply that
even the storms
do not shake them

one of our hands
reaching for the
other, to touch,
to bruise

scratching, crawling
out from the Earth
like a dead
thing

utterly mad
but strangely
beautiful

I don’t believe in God
but you’re testing my (lack of) faith,
I look in to your eyes and see deep
blue oceans. Wild waves of freedom
and adventure.

how can such eyes not be the
result of Creation?

I hear your pulse echo in
my ear. The thumping beat of
everything that could ever be…

Divinity indeed, but if I were to
believe  - I would have to accept
that He could cruelly stop your
heartbeat, and take you from me
in a second

take away the rhythm
my feet follow
to find their way home

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

You are oxygen,
giving life to
a fire,
to a girl
who will reduce you
to
ashes

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 taste the black plum of your heart

I get drunk off the juice of your

lifeblood

lips stained purple as we kiss

sweet and warm and deep

as wild and wicked and the seas

I fear I am now sailing

there is no going back, now

the skin of you is in my teeth

and there is nothing but chaos ahead

yet I will ride it, my darling

I will clutch your hand like no one has before

and steer this ship to land

lost souls,
they called us

but we weren’t

we were just navigating the
impossible

walking with splintered spines
on quicksand

but our hearts had found themselves
thrown together in the chaos

we used each other’s eyes
for mirrors

as reflections of our
souls

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

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

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...

our nights are sprang sharing cigarettes

and drinking cheap, neat *****,
straight out the bottle

until the stars start to swirl
in mesmerising patterns

that keep us transfixed till the sun rises
and the new day beckons with endless possibilities

for lovers who have lost their footing
in this world

sea sick from its spin

desperate to belong to more than
each other

desperate to be part of something
bigger

than our swelled hearts, bursting with promises
of forever, and ever, and ever

you make your own magic
or you make your own misery

there is no such thing as destiny

With my hand on the telephone
I wait anxiously to hear your
voice again, a voice that
licks my ears like honey,
memories come back
vividly, flooding me with
longing, I used to be
better than this,
better than waiting
like a child for
Christmas, up at the
crack of dawn, awake
all night listening
for sleigh bells,
but you have made me
wild, one of a hundred
sad women living with
their eyes and heart,
sleepwalking, left with nothing
but a longing for a voice
on the telephone
to tell me I'm beautiful
and "please wait
for me" and I know
I would wait endlessly
for you, desperately,
as if you were a cup
of water at the end
of a a hot summer's day,
I am weak and wounded
foolishly hoping you will
heal me. Is this how I die?
waiting with my hand
on the telephone

just remember
what you’re seeing
what you’re feeling
what you’re hearing

it is the beat of love

and I, my steps
quick and frantic
hold all the I see
I feel
I hear

in the palm of my hand
like a bird
temporarily caged
about to be set

free

Heartless, they call me,
a silver dagger plunged
and twisted
into a red hot
*****,
knives severing arteries
and veins until I
unravel like dropped
wool,
my blood cells fighting
the infection of close contact
with a society
that would not stand
for me,
heartless isn't born,
it grows in the space
between love and hate,
blooms out of the dark soil
the seeds of shame and blame,
thrives when it's locked away
in a (rib) cage, behind bars
like a circus freak,
sometimes, I long to feel
but then I hear of heartbreak,
heartsickness, and I am glad that mine
does not beat...

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

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 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

Your breath is like honey,
a warm trickle on the back
of my neck, your kisses
sweet and deep as the
ocean

I have a craving for
sugar now, an insatiable
sweet tooth, mouth open
wide and ready to
devour

one more touch and
I am transformed into
something more than
just a woman

dressed in rags
and begging for one
more mysterious
meeting of lips

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

I am like fire,
burning through the
memory of you

every moment will
be ashes, the ashes
soon dust

you will not destroy me,
for I hold the flame that
burns as bright as star -
light, that annihilates
trauma and pain

do you think for a second,
that I will think of you? When
I am picking stardust out
of my hair

do you think you will matter
to me? When my memory
of you, is merely smoke
in the air

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 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

and in that moment
I saw infinity
reflected in the eye
of a mermaid
who had swam
to shore
to sing your name

seaweed haired girl
you carry the ocean
in the pocket of
your heart

and in mine
sweet and ripe
as strawberries
I carry
salt kissed kisses
the centre of
our love

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

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

we were lovers
leaving no footprints in the sand
like ghosts
we walked the earth
lighter than air
and higher than heaven

love was the only
gravity we needed

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

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

I have put my faith
in men of your kind
all my life

deluded into thinking
my sanctuary lay in
being cradled by your arms

only to have my heart
ripped open, as a child
might tear off the petals
of a rose

as thoughtlessly
and gleefully

as I lay scattered across the floor,
bleeding a substance that is not blood,
but the very nectar of my soul

I make a vow to never again be
so recklessly in need of love
that I ignore my gut instinct

to run

and keep running

until I find sanctuary within myself,
until I become in tune with the beat of
my own heart, content with it's gentle rhythm,
to know that this is who I am, this is my purpose,
and this is who I need to stand for,

because when I am
at peace with myself
maybe I will see through
the likes of you

A hook
an eye for an eye
hanging helpless
at the end of
your line

When I close my eyes
I see the beach where we once sat,
drinking wine and sharing cigarettes,
we watched the waves crash over
the sand, imagining that one day,
we would own a cottage on the coast,
we were could listen to
the ocean each night,
as we snuggled warm under blankets,
now we are cold and distant,
and no amount of dreaming
will bring the fire back into
our hearts, we are over
and it hurts to remember
those careless, wasted days,
where we could have done
so much instead of just
waiting

You bleed the black ink that flows
from my
pen

but if I am to write a love song
I shall sing to you as you fall asleep

or a shattered heart letter that
I shall burn and never send

I
Don’t
Know
Anymore

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

They'd been living together for two years now but he still had difficultly placing a name on their relationship. It was always complicated, born of a reckless impulse to do something dangerous and a more simple indulgence of curiosity. He couldn't help it, from the first glimpse across that cold lab, to that wink as he left the room, Sherlock fascinated the Hell out of him. He found himself focusing on the tiniest of things, the tone of his voice, the way the vowels and consonants clashed together, the way that the sullen silences and manic experiments blended into the fabric of the life that they lead.

People called them friends or flatmates, occasionally people would speculate if they were really lovers. The truth was that they were all as bewildered to the true extent of their relationship as he was.

Certainly, there was an elemant of truth in all of the assumptions. Technically, they were all of those things. In the quiet, 3AM born musings however, these words always felt inadequete, meaningless, compared to the feeling he got when he stared down at Sherlock, breathing softly and blissfully ignorant to the internal struggle of emotions, labels and expectations that he felt every night, woken up by some nagging doubt that clawed away at the fabric of his mind as he shared a bed with the man whose existance in his life was beyond explanation.

These are the moments that matter

the spark of friction
when our hands squeeze
together

the tender press of your lips
against mine

the gentle breath on my neck
that is a love song, whispered

these are the moments I’ll remember
when you’re gone

when you are calling me all the names
under the sun

fighting like a flock of birds over breadcrumbs

pacing like a  hungry lion with a deer between its teeth,
blood running down it’s mouth
contorted in an insane grin

I will not remember that

I will remember this

I wake with a start at 4am
the weight of my past in my heart

I long to destroy -
cause destruction and chaos
to echo what they did to me

but I never do

I just sit behind another cigarette
watching the smoke twirl
and travel towards to sky

and I am jealous

for I wish to be as light and free
and spontaneous

as a smoke ring

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

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)

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

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

I love you like the planet that is nameless,
yet to be discovered in an ocean of stars,
I could pace an empty beach, howling at the moon
to answer me and it would echo back my cries

I love you like the tree that is branchless,
arms that can never reach out and touch you,
leaves that can never fall at your feet like love
letters, carrying the song of my soul

I love you like the river that is cut off before
it reaches the sea, never finding it's home,
or it's place in the vastness of the Earth

I love you like a wild thing, an injured heart
desperate to be healed

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

Your hands hold
more than the weight
of the world

more even than the
weight of my heart

every love song ever
written hums between
your fingers

their chords, honey drenched
braids that wrap and tie around
your wrists

shackling you to every note
of passion, every outpouring of
devotion that has ever
been sung

that is more than my heart
can hold

but your hands…
your hands are strong enough to hold
the promised tune of forever

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

I walk
this Earth
like a ghost
hand in hand
with shadows
and spectres
the yellow seas
eaten by industry
are the solution
to my thirst
the apples of
Thalidomide trees
the only answer
to my hollowed
belly hunger
I dare not stray
from the
undercity
of drug
stors and
disease
It is my home, now
as much as
anywhere is
I fester like
a great root,
planted, anchored, growing
from the dirt
of misery

I hear voices -
that is to say a voice
that is not by own,
but a strangers

(no longer a stranger, now,
a friend, an enemy, a curse)

he licks my brain
with his wet tongue
whispering morbid
fantasies of death
and destruction

he is a wolf
to which I am
his meat - he plays
with me - toys with
me

drags me across
the floor, my blood
trailing behind,

I wake up to his
howls, peaking through
my window at the moon,

(I know moonlight well, these days)

I don't sleep that much,
his voice eating away
at my flesh, my bones
left brittles and shaking
in their shell,

I do as he commands,
eat the red fruit, don't step
on the cracks. Don't trust them!
THEY ARE SPIES!!!

he takes me whole into
his mouth, twisting me
around his tongue like
half forgotten words,

savouring his demands
for blood, that I have obliged
with the flick of a knife,

then, at last, devours me