With my eyes
I forge canyons,
deep rivers and wild
landscapes, mountains
that kiss the sky and
land locked lakes

I move, limb by
limb, away from the
sadness that haunts
me, with my feet
I map out my future,
with my fingers
I bury the past

I imagine
you finding me
amongst the rocks
I lay against their edges
as if I am a mermaid
with golden hair
instead a mortal girl
trapped, in a believable
body

when you reach me,
your spread me
like a plague
and the stones
beneath me
shall shake

afterwards, we are face
to face, staring into
the eyes of each
other, and in that
reflection we become
enemies

you leave me, wordless

my eyes now,
like a camera,
containing images
that never develop
into landscapes
of love

Too soon, she became a human,
climbing perilously

(unwinged)

to kiss the sky,
to see waves roll over oceans

(she would tame a tiger with
her mortal fingers)

inside, she knew that it would take
magic, not love

to save her

I have tried to tame the universe,
as it's fabric teared into violent
mornings, racing towards ******
afternoons,

messages left in smudged
fingerprints across sheets
of time,

licking the sky gray

at night
the gray whispers
of smoke that
weave like ghosts
from the end of
your cigarette
reach my window
and freeze on
the glass like
a handprint
that presses gently
through
my dreams

Where the land splits between us
the sea wears your name like a bell,
ringing, ringing out to me, I come
grabbed at the navel, by the sound of
your syllables, you are here now,
you are everywhere, the heat in the
sun, the prickle of air against
my neck, we share a cigarette
you don’t smoke, do you?
you will smoke like a forest fire
burning out slowly, across acres
of scorched land, you grab me
by the ankles, like a hand from underneath
the bed, that nightmare that we all share,
that monster we’re too old to believe in
we believe in it now

When Pandora slammed the lid shut
you smiled, smelling freedom

Flesh, flesh and
bone

the grave digger
clawing away at
the dirt

a shovel first
then hands

years of nail
biting offers the
earth a home

under his skin,
I am not one
to sift

patiently waiting
for old coins
or gold

the broken skull
of a cat, a chipped
molar

that belonged to
a father, forgotten
in the yellowed papers

of time. Skin,
skin and bone
I died a year ago

hollow, rattling in
the fist of my
mother

white sheets that
wrapped my
limbs

are pulled tight,
a half ghost
human shaped

my mouth is wide
with the Earth,
taken in and

****** like a plum,
skin and flesh
swallowed

whole. There is
only bruised
fruit on the

funeral table. As
the grave digger
claws out my

hole. My first
fixed home,
a house of

soil and acidic
tears. Minerals
and salt

mixing like the
marrows of
lovers

buried in the
ground. I will
never leave

rotting, skeleton
shaking, the deep
breath before the

plunge. A war
lost, my final
hour and I am

home

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

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

I want to pour my soul into
your mouth, until you gag

it is my shame that stops me,
I am ashamed of my own longing

the still pink part of my heart
that beats for you

my water- logged lungs,
the legs that have trended water
for so long, kicked from under me

and I do not know the difference,
between riding out the waves,
or drowning

anymore

I saw in you
all the phases of
the moon

felt each constellation
mapped by your
fingertips on
my spine

you were cosmic
and our love
was a meteor shower
above a sleeping Earth

a quiet threat
that only the stars
had the wisdom to see

I am sure -
certain
that you buried
your head into
the hot sand
and now I am
kissing glass
each night -
running my fingers
through a million
splinters of hair
burned black at
the root -
dead as
the dandelions
you plucked -
when I fold
my hands into
the cotton of
my pillow -
when I scream
with pleasure
or call your
name -
I am only
an ocean,
an island short
of ship -
wrecked

I have heard of people
tasting stars

and I wonder how their mouths
never filled with ash

I have cradled dying stars and
rocked them

as if they came from
my body

dipping my toe into the
waters of the universe

I am a child of flames
no cooler than the

sun

but I cannot taste myself
without surrending to

becoming that ash

I let you fold
into the creases
of my skin

like a balm
that softens
down to the
sixth layer

my fingers run
smooth upon
it

there are no Braille
letters to read

secrets from

I remember the way
I used to itch
before you

the passionless redness
of angry cells, desperate
yet unable to burst

now, your fingerprints
burn bright

upon me

and each freckle I
previously hated

is another reminder
of your

touch

Like food,
dreams are rationed

children slip through holes
in buzzing fences

like bees

the light touches
of a fly

unconcerned by chemical spills

and broken hazard
signs

My lungs spread themselves
like sand, filled with hot air,
pulsing and pink, fluttering
like butterfly wings

the white ripples of wind
beat down on me,
the sun, yellow hot, and
smiling

my heart is too huge
for this earth, a clenched
fist, red and beating

against the waves that
crash against my skin
like the sky

I try to rise

and find

that I cannot

Like Hercules
we were set tests
of character

building fires
that could warm
ice bitten fingers
that had plunged
through layers of
flesh, gutting out
a heart

hunting wild animals
with nothing but
hope and hunger
&

walking into the
ocean, taking on
one wave at a
time, one breath
of salty air at
a time

knowing the if we
fail, we will be
outcasts

of love

Exit wounds,
the holes in my hands
that bleed, trickling down

Stigmata,
an offering to God
a rallying call
to arms

I am Adam
biting the apple
the flesh of that fruit
the closest thing
to Hell

(and I am heading, heading there)

they ask me if I meant it
as if meaning means something
more than it does, when words can exist without it

here are the facts of me
(I say)

I have never broken a bone
I don't eat red meat and
I counted out each pill

it would be less ugly
to find me this way
than slit and gaping
in the bath

I was careful (too careful)
the first time

still, you learn by living
from not

dying. Death, I name my
hands

hands that throttled the throats
of a thousand men, the ones
I destroyed with my hips

(that was before)

I knew the taste of thirty Aspirin

this time
this time
this time

I'll survive if they kick me hard enough
if they call my name loud enough
if the doctor writes furiously enough

I am not enough.

Once again
the sound of magpies
hunting fills 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 that I look
beautiful

I wonder if you know
the way we sleep

I hope not

and that you'll never ask
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
everything

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 of 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

I imagine a hook
entering my
side

an eye

senses warring
blood and
muscle

nerve endings
frayed

it was a simple
touch,

the hand of a
man

broad and
bearded

rough skinned,

you could imagine
his fingerprints

worn down by
years of
scrubbing

bricks,

building houses
for children to
grow up in

raging walls
instead of
wars,

each goodnight
kiss fiercer
than the
last

the side of
my face

fitting perfectly
into his
thigh

I imagine a hook
gutting me

like a fish
bones pulled

mercilessly apart

spat out of
mouths

stuck
in people's
throats

I imagine a hook
piercing me

blood leaking
out of

a pinprick

ears, eyes
and nose

quietly, very
quietly

it puddles at
my feet

before I pass
out

I imagine a hook
holding me

by the neck

an example,
a terrible
warning

drained and
empty

I imagine a hook
imagining me

I long
to be folded
in paragraphs
and wrapped tight
in sentences

words that are both
a balm and a blaze

for a vowel to be the spark
that sets of a fire
that reduces everything to ashes

(past, present, future…)

is all I dare hope for

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)

The girl that wept beside you
still cries out into the darkness

steel tears that cling to her cheeks

as if shedding them will somehow lessen the weight of her heart

beating now. against a barrier of bones

grieving, howling beneath
a full moon

for what she had with you

I watch a pebble make ripples in the water, before it sinks, and it’s painful to know
that at times, I have also wanted to drown

surrounded by the rippling conscious of my life
my past exploding and corroding

I do not want to drown every day,
some days I see the beauty of the lake
its shimmering blue surface, the rugged rocks wrapping around its body

but some days…

some days the past is like a knife of flames plunged into my heart,
and only the deepest depths of water
will extinguish it

Words hatched like baby bird
from yellow eggs

and in the confusion
of new birth

he could whisper through
the chaos

knowing that his mouth
would never be found

to be the catalyst
of earthquakes

that shattered the Earth
to it's core

Your breath is weak
on the back of my neck
as we pretend to sleep,

my heart is heavy,
sinking, as I know
I shall be leaving
soon,

as the moonlight
fades and the tiny
specks of starlight
disappear,

we are two broken
hearts that could
not heal each other

we were always tethering
on the edge of love,
lust melting like honey
on warm bread,

don't you feel it
darling? the dull ache
of loneliness that hums
between us like
electricity,

there was a spark, once
as I looked into your eyes
and felt like I was home,

but now we are ghosts,
hollow, without substance,
empty spaces where there
should be

everything
we've ever said,
ever done,
ever tasted,

the memory of
your lips,
your mouth,
the shape
of ecstasy

and now, my love
the come down

harsh, a stripped fluorescent
light, skeletons shaking,
bonds and bones rattling,
the fossils of a
prehistoric romance

buried in the earth,
forgotten, left to be
discovered one day,

but not today.

Low tide -
oysters scattered across
the sand that cacoons
our feet

black hot -
we are nothing more
than a forty a day
bad habit

dying -
smoke filled lungs
desperate to swollow

air -
when all there is,
is dust

we we taught as children how to dress, to walk, to smile

we were trained to be products, to be put out there for mass consumption

for men to pick, the pick of the bunch, they are after

a pretty smile, golden hair

in this fairytale, I am a rejected doll, tossed off a converbelt

I long to be made pretty,
dresses and curls

but men do not want a thing
to fix, they are not courting
challenges

I have searched, travelled oceans,
watched pink blossom fall from
a tree, sensing a way out

I pick my stitches out,
expose my seams, my cotton
heart

fall to the floor, in bits,
ready to be sown and made

new again

Old enough to know better but young enough not to care,

I hold onto you like water clings to rose petals

a heavy due

in the morning, we take coffee with cigarettes

we exhale, eyes watering

two smoke rings blending then disappearing into the

ether

a missed opportunity, passes

we are joined at the hip, hip bones grinding against each

other

and in these shattered bones we build

a fire, a house

a home

I am told to grow a
backbone -

thicken my skin.

I forget about the burns
on my wrists,

branded by childhood fears
that never fade.

But you took my hands
into yours, stared into my eyes

at the witching hour. 4am is
when the ropes start to

bind. Black dust that fills my
lungs, like tar,

my rib cage shakes when
you circle my heart with

your finger. I was warned not
to give in too easily,

that head over feet, that heat
fizzled out and left you cold.

I do not need to be strong,
when I am held in

your arms, soft and
safe wrapped in the blanket of

your kiss

You see me
and think
I am alive,
hair, bones
and teeth
heart swelling,
shrinking, pulsing
blood

but kiss me
and you will
taste death,
lingering like
icing sugar
on my blistered
blue lips

In the depths of the ocean
we have walked in to

I fill my hands with sea water
and hold them out to you

a salt drink, bringing forth salt tears

and in that, a thirst that I
could not ease

a force of nature I could not
contain

we abstain, from kissing with eyes closed

we have memorised the valleys of our flesh, translated

them into Braille beneath our fingertips

to be read in the dark and it is
dark now

your back arched like a cat, sensing danger

strangers, up to their necks, treading water

and wondering if it would really be so bad

to drown

I trace
running rivers
with my feet,
around corners
and pockets
of rocks

I am
seeking you,
like a child
will endlessly
wait, watching
clouds turn into
faces that
they recognise

under the sun,
my body burns
without you,
against barren
wastelands and
scorched earth,
I pound, foot
fall, after foot
fall, racing rivers
to reach you
first

This is the aftermath
of my heavy living
the reflection of
a streetlamp
in a ***** puddle

the ringing sound
of keys being threaded
through fingers
awaiting attack

strangers find me,
under the orange haze
of light, as if my body
is a broken truck
waiting to be
recovered

one of them tells me
to never trust a man
who walks in step with
his shadow

they say that ***
has a smell and
they’re right

the air itself
is choking on
exhaust films, on
the curling, reaching
smoke of a cigarette

my skirt (my skin),
is torn

some of the older ones
take trophies, tearing bits
of fabric away from
my body

as you would separate
a phone number from a
scrap of paper

I can afford new clothes,
of course, and the powder
that hits my mind and settles
it, the way that sand
thrown over snow
softens it

the racing thoughts,
the tides of red and gold
and yellow memories wash
over me

stinging my wounds
with their salt

no-one remembers pain
that can't break the skin

and on those nights where I
satisfy a lions need for meat

neither can I

we sighed
so deeply
that the moon
shook
and the stars
rattled
and the night
trembled
to know our names

our tears stained the ocean
but they were really pearls

to be cherished
in an antique box

our sighs and tears
moving skies and seas

breathing fresh life into
the universe

Your mouth is wild;

teeth like jagged rocks,
cliffs that I must climb
to crawl inside

of you

the sea is senseless,
salt scattering
dreams

in segments

we must master
the waves if
we are

to swim

our survival dependent
on something deviant
an echo of

the past

we are all surfing
our secrets, serving
the part of us

that hides

your tongue as
temptation, Cyanine
spiked kisses

and I

in sync with
the ocean,
sailing blind

A kiss is just a kiss
they say,

but your bones shudder
against mine

as your tongue guts out
the trenches of my mouth

counting the cavities of my
sugar wrecked teeth

I want to believe them
(I think)

as I wear your shirts, long and hanging by my hungry thighs

love notes carved into my flesh

scars that stretch, like rubber

and the bitter aftertaste of
love

leaves me shaking into your
skin

the edges where I end and you
begin

We are picking through the
roots of flowers we have left
to die. Imagining there is
something we can salvage
from the chemical soaked
soil. But we are no experts,
and we cannot tell the
difference between a **** and
a stem. We are blind, hungry
children. Rummaging
through the grains of moon -
rocks that fell to Earth. As
they say that stars can only
shine in darkness, and that
planets steal the oxygen
from human lungs, but -
I am sure we will be able to
breathe somewhere. That
we will find a sparse,
unpopulated land with clear
air that heals, that spreads
through our bodies and sings
that we are home

Our sins, our secrets
those creatures that
fester beneath the
covers of our
bed

are visible from space.

If having sin made me
more desirable to you,
I would leap into
every wooden
box

and tell my deepest, darkest
secrets. To be laid out in
front God. Naked and
vulnerable, withering like
a rat trapped in a cat's
mouth

But I know that it
wouldn't be enough
to make you plant
your roots at my
feet

I am full of sin,
I am bloated with secrets,
my rib cage snapping,
sharp shards of bone
penetrating my heart

I bleed open, I bleed out,
and as I'm dying I wonder why
I was no match for the sins
that grew in you

I cried for you
a flash of silver
between my teeth
lips, scarlet and drip-
ing

at seventeen I knew
the weight of you,
each hair on your arms
as you pressed my back
into the stained carpet

the Japanese tattoo
that struck me,
tracing the thick, black lines
with my eyes

a quick glimpse of my
grandfather, mixing bread
with milk and whiskey

flowers that grew, evergreen
in the garden where
he'd chase me

laughter ringing through the air,
cheesecloth blue dresses
and black, buckled shoes

you eat me, heart first
then each sense in turn.

I welcome the loss of
them all.

The touch of your
nails in my thighs. The
taste of blood as your
rotten mouth consumes
my own. The sound
of flesh beating flesh.
The sight of sweat beads
resting on your brow. The
smell of ***** seeping
through skin.

In a moment
I am no longer
a girl

but a woman eating
the words off my clothes,
smarting, sinister ****

a ***** kitchen floor
is waiting. The cool relief
of the tiles on my
burning skin

and a reflection of a woman,
no longer whole, yet still
alive

Stars open between
the trees in which
I’m hiding,
the river catching
their light,

ghostly reflections
of the men
I have known
wink at me from
their watery depths

I play a game,
imagining a
narrow boat
that a family
inhabit,

a small child
running its length,
folding their bed
into kitchen
space

inside, I am
panicked,
knowing that I
cannot swim and
that the forest
is closing
in

My heart is a grey sky
storm clouds forming in
the corners, in the blink of
an eye

I can touch tree tops
with rain drops, watering
green leaves when I am
a naked branch

I sit, solid body,
side by side with Heaven,
a black and white God

I consume stars,
their fire burning in the
pit of my stomach,

a warmth that has
replaced the heat
of your hand

in mine

I would hold back
the sea with my
bare hands

If you asked

Your mouth opening as it takes in
the bitter sweetness of an orange's
flesh

peel littering the worktops that
your grandmother spent hours
scrubbing down

scrubbing until the very eye of
the oak starred back at her

we don't have time for such
arduous chores, we don't look
at wood in the same way

we do not respect it, until
the sky spits out a spark

and the trees that held the
oranges, burn down

what are we now?

My knees weaken when I see you

half smiling lips and wine soaked breath

I am still faithful

a shadow, shadow that walks

without body

without a solid shape

I turned to God once, ideally,
my mouth forming prayers I'd saved

for you

muttering malice into the nothingness

etching memories the way they etch gravestones

a black crayon and blank paper,
pressing hard and hoping

that the colours will somehow
bloom into meaning

Godless, knees shaking

a single handshake and I am
crucified

Essentially, I want
to love what has
never been loved
before

to hold what has
never been hurt
against my heart

to fight death
with my bare
hands

and conquer it

I trace your name in smoke
as my cigarette burns down to
my fingers

I flick ash furiously away from me
because I will not find you
in embers

I miss the way you made my coffee
in the morning
The way you told me it was bad for me
yet you’d still pour

that thick black liquid, into my chipped mug
that I refused to throw away

I hope you find me, here
I am sitting under the stars we named
after each other

I will not move
until I feel your hand slice into mine
and the stars flicker

signalling a new chapter

At what point
did it start?
they ask.

An endless rhetoric,
slyly demanding
unremembered
histories

I don't know.
a simple answer

feelings  do not
come into your
heart with
warning

they bang on
your rib cage,
a dull echo
shuddering through
your body

I am not
a moment
captured  in
a photograph

stained sepia,
a sliced negative

It did not
start with
the click
of a clock

stopping the
hour hand
at twelve

it consumed me,
slowly. The sea
does not devour
the sand with a
single wave

it is the
onslaught of
sadness creeping
into your blood

a parasite,
a lowering of
cells

it is
criminal,
and I am it's
victim

as you try
to execute
my misery
with pills

(electric shocks)

crisp white sheets,
pulled so tight
they feel like bandages.

Wrapping around my limbs
until I am paralysed
with emptiness

one bed, one desk,
one chair

a tick sheet of
sorrow that I am
now pinned
to

like a butterfly,
living for only
one day

but pressed and
preserved

indefinitely

It is the fiery breathe of the sun
that blows bees off course in
their search for honey
nectar; what I wouldn't give
for a mouthful. Sickly
sweet, wrapping it's way
around my fingers,
licking off the golden
sugar as if I am a child
licking a cake bowl
I am fearless of their sting
the bitter sweetness that
demands their death
I am that bee, that sting,
deciding where to place
my pain, weighing up if it
is worth my life

I loved you before
we kissed

before I saw the way that
moonlight sat on your
soft features

I wanted you before
you held me in your arms

before our legs entwined
making a sculpture that
would stand the test
of time

I think I loved you
before I ever learnt
to love myself

you were the first person
to show me kindness
and I took my fix of it
just like any drug

I think I loved you
before we were even born