after the storm,
the sky grows clearer

and

the ocean waves roll over
to a new beginning

You pour boiling water over
my words and try to wash them away

but, my love, I can’t be erased

I’m in your blood, your bones, your skin

your hair will smell of me

I am a permanent marker
stamped on your heart

claiming you with an
acid burn

(my words were merely pilot fish)

I walk into headlights

it’s safer that way

I have known it... not

and so I play

by the rules of a game
of archaic fears and victim blaming

I walk into headlights

I walk

I hope

I pray

a car will come my way

(straight in my way)

and I am not blamed

(anymore)

The beast within me is hungry
and thirsty for my joy

he feeds off my sadness,
it multiplies inside him

and spreads into my bloodstream

until even the water I drink
is tainted with bitter tears

sadness
sadness
multiplying

there is nothing I can eat or drink
that does not feed the beast

I have tried to drown it
and poison it

but still it survive
indestructible

the beast is feeding off me
until I am skin and bones

and I see no choice but to
learn to love this beast

and make peace with
this ravenous part of me

the seasons change
the Earth turns
the moon to sun
the stars - undone

the clock ticks
memories dissolve

yet you and I
stand still
upon the sand

as the ocean
moves and
our hearts

revolve

around the single
point of
love

movement, motion, minutes

love is all

I wake up to your face each morning,

your hair creating red flames across a cotton white pillow,
your eyes, deep blue, luring me to stare into the depths
of the ocean, to be serenaded by mermaids,
your lips taste of coffee and cigarettes
as I plant a good morning kiss onto them,

this is a sight I want to see before I breathe
my very last breath,

I take it in, each detail
and fingerprint it on my memory,

you are more beautiful in this raw moment
than you could ever be

any other way

my heart is pounding out
the beat of the last time I saw you

your face feels like nothing more
than a delusion

so happy in my fantasy that I
even imagined myself a new

reality, that I believed would
be the case in a hundred years

you and I
standing side by side

it is nothing more than a crumbling
daydream in the endless cavity of
my mind

we are a stitch

in the fabric

of the universe

held together

by dreams

a breath in the

vast lungs

of time

devoured

overwhelmed

consumed

poisoned

by the air

of our own

insignificance

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 took your hair
and brushed it into a long plait

thick, strawberry blonde curls
tamed, for a moment

until gravity made them fall
back into my hand, again

I asked you to paint thick black lines
under your eyes

framing a brilliant, deep ocean
of youth

I was painfully aware that my own
were natural

framing a tired, green lake
of misery

I did this

hoping that you wouldn’t realise
I was trying to turn back the clock

by turning you into a shadow of a girl
I met when I was seventeen

and thought I loved,
thought I loved,

until my heart got crushed...

In your arms

feelings I never dared

dream

your hands

the roots of the Earth

that I plant the seeds

of my lips alongside

and water with kisses

and watch them entwine

and grow

into the blossom of Spring

I have the power of a God

so what chance do you think
you stand?

when you cheat and lie...

I could break you

slice you in two

the way you’ve sliced my heart

(in two)

but I still love you

so I shall give it all up

just to wake up to your
sleeping face

for one more morning

one more greeting of a fake

“I love you”

you’re in my blood, like black ink

rewriting the next pages of my book

before I’ve closed the last chapter,

you’re in my bones, like calcium

laying the foundations for a lifetime

when I’ve only just begun

The wilderness is wild
and dangerous

but so is my heart

When words are not enough, I cry

and in crying hope to unleash
some of the burden that nails me,
like Jesus to the cross

and set free my spirit,
divine and infinite

into the world where ghosts walk
and haunt my sleep,
but I hold hands with them, also

and we walk blindly into the moon
moon child, bright and brilliant
white light coursing through my veins

I cry, but tears are not weakness
and still I stand strong

I carry the unfixable
in the cavity of my chest
where my own life used to
beat

if I stop  talking about him
he will die all over again

if I do not
say his name
it will be as if
it never existed

so I carry
his memory, his lifeblood
sacrificing my own

and talk
and say
and pray

that history
will not erase him
from the pages
of the countless
who are also being

carried

as a crystal memory

a stitch, to unpick
patching up my heart
arteries combusting
explosions of red hot anger

a scream, to echo
in the dusty chambers of the void

a hand to hold
knowing that everything that has a beginning,
has an end

yet still, we love

fiercely
ferociously
frantically

hoping there will be a star with our name on it
when the world implodes

I will find you
in the darkest corner of
my heart,

wrap you in red wine
silk, amongst my secrets
and guilt,

I have crawled on broken grass
to get here. I will not stop until
each molecule of you is absorbed
into my flesh,

I will drink your sweat as if it
were an elixir for eternal life,

for I am eternal
in your arms

When I was young
I believed that love
was this magical force
that would save me

and now I’ve spent
my entire adult life
trying to save love

we leave a trail of sugar

with our fingers

on everything we touch

contaminating the surface

of the Earth

with sweetness

as our own teeth

rot

let us watch the infinite night sky

and pick which constellation
we are going to set our love against

the stars sing our names

and the moon reminds us
that every phase is part of
a whole picture

growing, healing, moving

with the ocean

and in the beating of waves
we find clarity

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

fierce fingers

trace a line from my spine
to my heart

where you sit
like a stranger

unknown to my kiss

and those fingers weave
a web of lies

to tempt you to forget me
without forgetting

or else cast a spell
to make you fall in love

without falling in love
(with me)

we kissed, like young lovers do
on bridges, in the pouring rain
finding beauty in each teardrop,

making promises we believed
with our whole hearts
we would keep,

now the relentless turning calendar
has rendered us old,

our hands wrinkled
but still clutched tightly
together,

knowing that promises mean nothing

(and everything)

like the ebbing of the tides,
you have rolled away

(from me)

but I know you will creep
back up the beach of my bones,
again

and into my heart

(where you belong)

*** is not a destination
there is so much more
to see

love is not our destiny
there is so much more
to be

we are a candle in the dark
too dull to light up our path
but warm enough to set a
fire in our hearts

I see my past spread out like a map;

each arrow leading me back to a home
that has turned to ashes

back to my body, which disgusts me
each bone, each hair, each inch of skin

I want to tear the ******* route apart,
in the hopes that I may plot a new one

one where I may be free
from the histories that stick

like gum, to the soles of my shoes,
with each step I take

freedom is a fraught war
that I am too tired to win

and once again, I find my feet
leading me back to the ash house,
back to the broken bones
of loathing

I miss you, but it’s not enough
to say that. I ache for you. For all
the memories we will never make.
For knowing I will never hug you again.
Hear you laugh or let you see me cry.
It burns like a fire lit in the
pit of my stomach.
This ache that no pill can take away.
The never memories rippling across
my skin, like waves I am fighting
desperately not to be engulfed by.
Fighting them is useless, though.
You just have to let them
wash you in salt water
and hope it
cleanses you

somehow

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)

your edges
fold around me
soft -
I sigh into your flesh
I fit -
like a glove
each dimple -
a journey I want to map -
leaving my fingerprints
I, a thief -
your skin
my plunder -
a victimless crime
for your arms -
wrapped around me as I
robbed you -
blind

your holy wine soaked lips

find mine at 2am as the stars

sigh above us

a prelude to the cold November sun

that will come

chilling our bones until they

fracture beyond

fusing back together

again

The moonlight pours down on us
like silver nectar

encasing us in a glowing
white hum of magic and mystery

the stars shine like precious gems
each one worth more
than their Earthly wealth

we are the silent lovers,
the keepers of night

and all its secrets buried
in our lips

shared only between ourselves
in a midnight kiss

What is necessary for the heart

cannot always be translated by the mind

we live in the space between what is

what we wish wasn’t

and what we long will be

I think
that rain
if Mother Nature
weeping
looking down
at her creation
with regret
watching your
reckless fingers
break another
ingénue
heart

my skin singes
with the love you
left

a bitter burning
that will leave me
forever branded

I hope I can be the one to let go
if love decides to let go of me

not cling to broken threads

like a desperate dancer
trying to correct their misstep

I hope I am graceful enough
to let the last embers of love
slip through my fingers, like ash

knowing that things can rise
out of ashes

like phoenixes

or flame haired
women of fire

venom got into my bloodstream
the first time you smiled at me,
it runs through my veins,
shaking my spine,
breaking my bones down into dust,
my arteries are clogged with
longing for you

the smell of your cigarettes
lingers on my clothes

I have tried to overpower it
with expensive perfume

(that I could not really afford)

but always, it is there in the fibres
of my jeans

stubbornly refusing to be
erased

Oh, unnecessary beauty
that twists like the waves
of a deep blue ocean,
rushing to shore
to cover a stretch of sand
with it's white foam,
only for the coast to bend
like the elbow of a lover
encasing the sleeping head
of his sweetheart,
indecent, unnecessary beauty.
It is in the fall of rain
on a hot summer's day
arrogantly waiting for the rainbow

there are differences between
the sea at sunset and
sunrise

one waves away the
sorrow of my
body

and the other weeps
a fateful goodbye

Yours is the voice I hear
just before I fall asleep

seductive whispers
that wrap around my ear
like silk

yours is the hand I reach for
in the dead of night

when the stars abandon me
and the moon grows pales

yours are the lessons I’ve learnt
about life and love

and I try to love you

I try

but those whispers
don’t reach my soul

that hand
doesn’t reach my heart

and those lessons shake
with the echoes of pain

I try
but I am burnt

and no balm exists
to cool my wounds

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

He said;

“It’s not like you have
a serious mental illness.”

and after I told him to “*******!”

I wondered if he was right

after all,

I’ve only tried to **** myself

(twice)

maybe three time’s the charm

I’ve only been bed bound
by a crippling darkness

that eats light with a ravenous hunger

I have only felt my heart
explode in my chest

with the utter certainty
that I was dying

I have only conversed
with spirits and demons

(the fun ones are the ones
that love you back!)

maybe he’s right

maybe I’m sane

or maybe...

You may stitch my lips together

rip the voice box from my throat

stick white hot pins in my heart

and plant bitter roots in my feet

but you will never silence me

now that I’ve found my voice

tentative, at first, but it grew like a vine

to twist around your spine

I will scream from the rooftops

the injustices you laid on me

create hope with a needle and thread

I am blackened, blue and bruised

but these words carry a thousand knives

to find you

we’d sit smoking
on your grandmother’s porch

drinking cheap whiskey
and counting the stars in the sky

you’d play your guitar
until your fingers bled

trying to convince me
that love was real

but I never believed

not even when each star
had a name

and each string hummed
beneath your fingers

like magic

years later,
I thought of those nights

and how different
my life could have been

if I’d just took a chance
on love

You will triumph over the
battlefield of your brain

even when it’s clawing
white hot fingernails
behind your eyes

even when a scar seems
a million times more familiar
than a smile

(you will be okay, my darling)

you
will
be
okay

words are growing silent, now

whispers of a long forgotten
“I love you”
now echoing in the chambers
of winter

an icy kiss to say goodbye
and then...

silence

so loud and deafening it drowns
every other sound into the frozen
depths of the

ocean

my fingerprints unlock a world

of magic and mystery

when they brush lightly against your spine,

the curve is stunning, ancient architecture

that could take away my breath,

a sacred temple of wisdom lives at its base,

each vertebrae aches with longing

and lust,

but I only feel these things with my fingers,

my heart isn’t in it

It's that time of year again,

The air is warm,
breathing delicate
wisps of breeze
across my skin

I was cold
inside my heart,
shrank and barely
beating

My head is my own
theatre, frames flashed
and frozen, projecting
every still

I try to put the ghosts
to rest, bury them like
bones in a garden

But they wake up,
like vampires,
when the sun sets

Words catch in
my throat, lungs
take in their fill
of air, but there's
not enough oxygen

To feed my brain.