feelings are in flux,
the constant motion
of a wheel turning
in my mind

I do not know
when I wake
what number
the hand on
this endless clock
will be pointing to

I feel like a ghost
walking the Earth,
as if I woke up
one day and left
my body behind me

am I really alive?
was I ever really alive?

we kissed on rain soaked
street corners

as each droplet looked
like a crystal on the
concrete

and on your wet lips
I tasted the word

forever

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

knifes slashing designer shirts
their ribbons scattered across the lawn
so that everyone can see your callous
heart. Your reckless romance with a girl
who you don’t own a house with.

I smash mirrors. They say you will always see a man in the mirror, flickering between the candles. I thought that man was you.

I play her messages on the answerphone as loud as they will go. I want people to hear and know how cruel you have been.

I used to be better than this.

but love makes you weak and petty, when it is taken away.

I’d paint my face
with the smiles
I stole from
playgrounds
if you looked
closely, you would
see my knees
bruised and bloodied
from falling off the
swings, swinging
into the air like
a fearless bird
but I have no
wings
and fall
like hail
from the sky
onto the
asphalt

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

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.

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

like my midnight dreams
I sleep under the moon
and know the names of each star

when I am awake
the sun burns my skin
and the blue skies drown me

I know I belong to the night

Shame twists like a serpent
in my stomach

absorbing every bit of nourishment
I try to give my body

I am left weak -
and desperate

for air

to breathe without weight on my lungs
to taste air that isn’t poisoned

but the serpent grows,
restricting every breath

until I am clinging onto life
with my fingernails
seconds away from

slipping

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

Rising from the dead lilies
of your forgiveness

blood on my knees and mud in my hair

the eery calm of plucked daffodils

yellow stains on my fingers
that I can’t remember where they came from

except the shower of petals at my feet
giving away my crime

I do not forgive you

I want to destroy your peony soul
with acid rain

I am bitter like the month of February

biting frost
chilling wind
freezing rain

I am all extremes
and you can eat the dirt of your sorry

I am a child of the Earth,
sun soaked, soil clinging
to my bleeding fingernails,

breathing out the fires of desperation
and temptation,
breathing in the flame of purification
and damnation,

I am Earth child,
covered in mud and blood,
singing with the weeds,
dancing between the lilac lilies

Show me your heart

and I will show you my world

that pulsing *****

those bulging veins and arteries

each one a map that lead me back

home

sitting with my hand clasped in yours

empty beer bottles at our feet

and the sweet taste of belonging

on our tongues

I thought about the body I have hated all my life

I asked it “what will it take?”

Less food
More food
More puke
More pills
More miles
Less stones

It never answers, so I was surprised to hear a whisper this time...

“It will take kindness, acceptance, love...

You have to love me, darling. You have to let go.”

I have always been uneasy
with the phrase
“Until it happens to you”

for me, it diminishes
the sacred bond of empathy

a shared understanding
even without a shared experience

it implies that people
cannot hold your hand
in the darkest moments
of your soul
and feel your pain completely
even if they haven’t lived it

it’s true,
until it happens to you,
you won’t know that darkness,
that trauma,
that pain

you won’t see
the face of your abuser
every time you
close your eyes at night

you won’t remember
every time you
smell that smell,
hear that song,
that name,
visit that place,


but sometimes
that doesn’t matter,
if the right person
makes you feel safe enough
to be yourself again

some women weep over
the men that have wronged them

but I -
I am fire

burning hearts until they are nothing but
ash -

like memories, a million microscopic bits of
dust -

I do not weep, for I am flames
warming love that has cooled

a Phoenix -
rising from love that has turned bitter

I do not weep for wrongdoings
for none have done me wrong

only given me the chance to be born again

sometimes

the only thing that matters

is that your heart

beats against my ear

and sometimes

the only thing that helps

me thrive

are the seeds of love

you plated in my soul

growing from the roots

of passion

climbing around your body

like Actinidia

entwined until we become

one flesh

one blood

one bone

I was -
shackled

a body
trapped in
the bars
of a fist

but I have -
broken

the cage of
God

an angel
flying, wings
unclipped

soaring
soaring
soaring

sun marked
and faithless

he knew
he was
no match

for my free
spirited heart

that there was
no cage that
could keep
me

loveless
and bound
in fear

I am free
and guided
only by the
birdsong

that whispers me
home

Once again
the sound of magpies
hunting fill my head with
images of daylight

and picnics we took
under ash trees
on top of itchy
blankets

I know you only read
those books for me

to make me feel
safe in having something
to say when the conversations
turned to salaries and
mortgages

or maybe that's
unkind. Maybe you
just wanted to understand
me better

when the four ninety-nine
red wine reaches me
I taking about the poems
I'm writing

grape glazed eyes
stare, squinting through
the sun, trying not to
smile. They move on

when we are alone
again we still pretend
I lie about the friends
I met for coffee and
you tell me I look
beautiful

I wonder if you know
the way we sleep

I hope not

and you've never asked
why I crawl out of the
sheets when sleep has
taken you

I sleep on the floor
and slip back beside you
just before you
wake

we never mention doctors or pills
and you know not to hug me
too tight

I make tea for both of us
even though we don't drink
it. It's hard to shake
off the words our mothers said
about a cup curing
anything

when the birds are
still I open the window
and think of flying
to have a body light enough
to break free of
the mind

I take my first
lungful if air
but you reach out
and hold me
where my wings
should be

(they're broken now)

and I realise I'm not the
only one who pretends
to be asleep

you wrap me up
like old glass
in soft blankets

slip another book
off my bedside table
into your bag

and don't cry
until you've
shut the door

Your goodbye
is an ocean

over bones,
the waves wash
leaving
salt stars

the more I drink,
the more my thirst
increases

growing, like
coral, away from
the seabed

Like so many that fall here
I am hollow

The tendons of my neck
the open grave of sunken
skin and bone

Telling to story that language can't

It was like a spell,
a wild moment of black magic,
arithmetic bliss

hunger the only antidote
to the poison I swallowed

a childhood stolen
and replaced with a
decade cracking ciphers

years fell against me
like electrocuted trees

people hear the crash
and turn to look
at first, but soon
navigate their way
around the wooden
corpse

my twig-ed fingers
creeping out from
underneath, black earth
and ***** nails, a dead
thing crawling to reach
a last lungful of
dusty air

I imagined we’d grow gray together
and take winter sun holidays
somewhere we could warm our bones

cut out coupons from newspapers
stacking up in a jam jar
next to the fruit bowl

you’d rent guidebooks out of the library
and I’d take evening classes
so that I could understand
black tied waiters

you’d find it cute and impressive
and you would hold my hand tightly
during take off

the plan was that we’d walk around
foreign supermarkets and guess
the contents of the cans

they’d be faded beach towels
and the sticky scent of tanning lotion

our antiquated skin would burn easily
if we didn't smother it

but I’m not sure it matters
anymore, fretting over factors

we already have tumors
growing like doubts in our chests

we have nurtured them,
tended to their hungers and thirst
until we have none of
our own

Come and listen to the sound
of my skin,
you will hear the regret
that lingers on it

from the brushes of his fingers
through the fine hairs on my arm,
that embarrassed me,
but he thought were delicately beautiful

you will hear the sighs
he buried in my neck,
after being up with my nightmares
for the third night in a row

he said he didn’t mind,
but those sighs... those sighs...

you will hear the sting of his goodbye
that hit me like a tidal wave,
straight in the stomach,

it stung... it stung like a fierce bee
who had nothing left to lose
by leaving its sting
in the skin of its lover,

hear my skin, hear that sting
it buzzes, hums, vibrates...
my skin is alive with venom

don’t listen for too long,
it spreads

Crimson light -

spin me sideways and
around the bends
that are the journey
of life

this path that I must walk
compass buried deep in my veins

lead me from love that is conditional
and into the centre of a heart that melts
in the morning

above all, shower me in moon dust
so that I may feel I’ve walked the craters
that are the surface of my soul

praise me
for I am a woman of wonderment
ever walking, never stopping

breath in
breath out

destination irrelevant to the holes in my shoes
that are the battle scars it took for me

to reach it

whispering ghosts keep me up at night

begging for me to join their chorus

not knowing that I am meant to be

solid flesh and bone

for wolves to devour

in their manic blood thirst

hunger for fresh meat

I am meant to die

at the hands of wild things

as I have lived

myself

Like the desert,
your heart lives in a state of extremes

my fingers burn as I touch it, in daylight
and freeze, at night

I cannot live in its contrasting shades of heat
unstable and frantic

I have tried to tame the polarities of love

but was left broken hearted

myself

I love that first
tantalising taste of coffee
in the morning,
deep and dark as the ocean,
and sweet as honey,

I love that first cigarette,
it’s warming amber glow
and glittering embers,

I love the silence at 4am,
the still quiet with only
the stars and the moon
for company,

I have to remember that I still love,
when my heart is so often full of hate

There is no honour left in love,

a simple twist of the heart
that hurts like a *****

a kick in the teeth
whose lips were just kissed

the digging of nails into a back
that has turned and walked out the door

there is no honour left in love

only cold goodbyes and empty promises
words that have no meaning
actions that have no place
moments that are out of time

if it was a game, why did I lose
without knowing the rules?

bleeding ink from my fingers
I try to paint a picture with words
clumsy and heavy
the letters swim
and change
I smoke ten cigarettes
in an hour
desperate to tease some kind
of creativity from my mind
but the ink runs dry,
and all that is left
is a black handprint on the page,
the result of pressing down too hard,
trying to put my pain to paper

sweet whispers of nothingness

in the midnight blue chasm of my heart

I reach out for you -

fingers contorted with rage and wonder

gasping for that final touch

that you have denied me

you try
with a flint
and matches
to set a fire
in his heart

but the ice
that lives there
melts it as soon
as it touches it

and she knows
she will have to
either live in the cold
loveless and cruel
or be a moth to a flame
forever

Ophelia was lucky,

I bet the lake was idyllically pretty,
peaceful, secluded,

I bet she was surrounded by flowers,
weaving themselves into her wet, tangled hair,

I bet she was dreaming as she drowned,

there would have been no one
forcing down a door

no sirens and blue flashing lights
racing her back to life

Ophelia was lucky,

fifty aspirin doesn’t have quite
the same ring to it

as a Shakespearean suicide

Forget
what you think
we are

strip us down
to the bare
bones

and see what
lives beneath
the thoughtless

“I love you’s“

the kisses planted on cheeks,
unthinkingly

would we survive?
with our bones and arteries, on show,
with a pale heart pulsing out its own beat
and not the one we’ve forced upon it

is our core strong enough to withstand this test
of raw becoming

or will we fold like a house of cards
for we have no soul to show

you breathed life into the death filled chasm
of my bones

matching moons with each kiss

buried by bitter bruises
the stain of forever on our skin

awkwardly caught between youth and age

luckless lovers

running from the demons we shared
with the stars

I linger here
on the edge
of the sea

like a mermaid
waiting for
a man

to trap

with the great
cavity of my
mouth

teeth yellowed
by age and
cigarettes

I linger
like a ghost

the taste of
death is a
salt

that preserves
my body
on the outside

whist the inside
has vanished
into the ocean

like a wave

You liked
    to run your fingers
            through my hair,
                twisting each strand into a smile

You liked
    to trace your fingers
            over my scars,
                fluttering, tapping out the rhythm of your thirst

You liked
    to run your fingers
            down my back,
                marking each bone with a kiss

Claiming the territory
                            
you know own

another cold, long night
counting down the hours until
daylight

keeping one eye on the hands
of the clock, at all times
as they chase down
time

in case they catch on
to my ever growing presence in their lives
and decide to
chase me, hunt me, pin me down

is it every insomniacs nightmare?
(If they ever slept long enough
to have one...)

that time is somehow out
to get them

playing tricks with minutes
turning hours into voids

I only hope that I shall sleep, one night
dream in peace
and no longer be haunted by
the hour hand

My world tilts towards you, always
In the cracks between our two realities
In the corner of the mirror, that reflects back my True Self
You are not whole, right now, still moulding into the shape of the boy I love
Yet, this mailable, weak, shifting form
In which you’ve shown yourself to me tonight,
is enough to make me weep

I am here,
sort of, I guess
physically I
exist

I have bones
and pink
cheeks

but it doesn't feel
like living

just existing

breathing with
these muscles
that sit so close
to the one that's
dying

and I thought
you would call me
tonight

but the phone
didn't ring

even when
I wasn't looking
at it

I didn't think it was
possible to hurt like
this

I didn't believe
that men could
stamp on
your heart

feel it spread
beneath their feet

and not
care

You tried to clip my wings,
pin me through the spine
like a prize butterfly

but I learnt how to fly
and say goodbye

to you

Autumn came
and swept away the debris
that was clinging to my heart

making space for the roots of winter
that will test its resolve

in bitter frosts and pines

but ultimately -
the space is made for Spring blooms

daffodils and peonies

that will hold its hand and teach it
how to love again

I live in a world
where feathers are
signs from a
home that you
nest in
out of the corner
of your eye
-
and
smoke rings
must be caught
and cherished
-
the other place
where honeysuckle
fills the air in a
euphoric burst
of belonging
-
the place where
the edges are
soft and sounds
do not grate
-
I would live here
forever, but I
must return,
and leave Him
-
always, always
trapped between,
anchored in
two worlds

I need you tonight
like every night since we met,
I close my eyes and travel
across oceans and dimensions,
in search of what?
not love.
it was never love,
just an aching need
for the connection
of two broken souls,
the meeting of a shared sadness,
I move like a ghost
between the buildings of the city,
calling out your name
into the midnight sky,
no one answers.
if we never meet again
I’ll survive,
but a part of my heart
will die forever.

our breath hangs in the air
as we walk midnight streets
a full moon beaming down
on our shadows

in the blink of an eye
you'll be gone from me
so I cling to your hand
as if my life depends on it

we have found our place
feet standing on pavements
built to carry the weight
of thousands

and in our hearts we carry
the weight of a thousand
kisses, a thousand fingertip brushes,
a thousand unbearable goodbyes

I wrote you a love letter
across the ocean

but the waves washed it away
as if it was flotsam

words that I thought
held the truth of my heart

had no substance at all

sit

as I drink red wine
from a dusted bottle

stay

as I trace our initials in the sand
with a gnarled brach of an oak tree

taste

the oysters they harvested
in this cool, winter month

(it is November,
so it is safe to eat them...)  

and take me

from the white tipped waves,
down to the black oblivion
of the ocean floor

your Egyptian sheets,
a sail for a ship
that never got to see
a new sunrise

I watched the squares
on my red checked dress
every play time
as he sat next to me
on the freshly cut grass

the smell of it, eating up
my senses, consuming me

I counted the dates
on the calendar
above the teachers head
every time we were made
to sit together

how one number can roll
onto the next without
ceremony, without being
noticed

I wasn't noticed
only bty him

at nine, you don't understand
what a boys hand down your pants means

you don't understand why it makes
you feel sick,

why it makes you cry yourself to sleep
at night,

you tolerate it, so sure that
this is the way the world works

I was taught to fear men, before I understood fear,
before I understood men

the seeds that were planted in me, rotten, no fruit
would ever grow, no flowers bloom

I would remain tight, in the bud
for a long time

maybe forever

I am waiting for the right kind of rain

poets long to be held
in the embrace of words

caressed by consonants  
held in the void with vowels

to have letters wrap around their fingers
like fingers

their sadness lies in knowing
that each poem has an ending

and that most are no more
than a drop in the ocean

of history

our names are written

in the stars, too bright for eyes to see

a pattern of hands clasped,
fingers entwined

the constellation of love

blinding to those below

whose first thought is to hate