The spot where I split open
my heart like a vein
is marked with

white pebbles as smooth
as bones

in the centre
there is a pool of
ice water

I like to pludge
into

submerge myself
and fold into
the wrinkles

that appear in
crows feet

on every inch
of my skin

the shell of
my body

shaking

the bird inside
my chest

dying

as my organs
freeze

Old age hit me
like a fist

I was planting roses
carelessly, never anxiously
avoiding their thorns

my teeth were my own,
I could bite into a hard, green
apple easily

there was no consequence,
no fear of an explosion of
false enamel

vegetables grow into
something beautiful over time
if you treat them right.

unlike the shell of a woman
bleached, oversaturated,
badly composed, framed

by misery.

A seventeen year old girl
bending into the hands of
a childlike man

unaware of the flames
she was igniting,
her body slamming
into the kitchen floor

you will cry in the morning,
weep for the innocence
you lost, the shock of
surviving your own
******

unwantedly.

I was thirty before
I tried to disappear
back into the oblivion
of filthy London streets

thirty pills, one for
each year, a litre
of ***** and a
badly written
death note

I survived. Just long
enough to paint a
picture of adulthood

a husband, a wife
a son, a daughter
I was everything
and nothing all
at once

old age hit me
like a fist

a rattle of dust
in an urn
and a hundred of
the flowers I have
always hated

they cry, thinking I am lost,
I smile, knowing that I
was never found

I remember the first time we met;
you were a lightning bolt that
stricked a fire in my heart

they were dark days,
I was resting on the shoulders of
hopelessness, dancing with a two
left footed devil

it took me less than a heartbeat
to trust you, to test the water,
the wild white waves of my madness

nuzzled into my neck, as if
God himself had designed for
our spines to lock

man of the stars, wandering
the skies to find me, a held out
hand pushing though the galaxies
that tie us to reality, to longing

roaming far from my chest. An
empty cage where fishbones
rattle,

I pray for rain, for thunder,
for the slightest sign of you.
I am not soft and warm,

I am calamity, child of the
night, woman of the Earth
holding an entire universe
between my teeth

and waiting, wild eyed and hungry
for your electric

kiss

I think of that green eyed
jealousy eating your heart.
The bitter pill that slides down your throat into your stomach acids. It rattles like dried peas
in a metal tube. Your fingers fret strands of my hair and I wince in agony. I am desperate to be held by another. To mix in with the marrow of their bones. But you are emerald and full of poisons. Spreading a plague of pitiness. I hold your hand in mine, still, but I pray for broken bones. Fractures. Splinters. Nails ripped clean off and blood. Thick, warm blood.

I'm writing this
on the back of
a bank statement

it's from our joint account
and, circumstances without,
I smile slightly at the thought
that I was ever close enough to
someone to share names on
an envelope

the money doesn't matter,
we are none without our vices,
little human weaknesses
that creep through and climb
the tallest if walls

I drew out note every morning
from the ATM on the corner,
to buy cigarettes and chocolate

often, I'd ingest them together
like a double dose of Aspirin,
a double shot of whiskey

slightly reckless but
essentially harmless

The smoke would coat
my throat, the sugar
settling like a layer
of film

I know, it sounds disgusting
so, shall we talk about you?

I'm almost disappointed
by the banality of it all
fake names, hotel rooms
and guilty ***

I'd known about those pitfalls
since childhood but I still
married you thinking you were
different, original

If you had to leave I wanted
a storm. That you would
fling a fist towards the sky
and declared your hatred of me
your boredom, your lack of love
for me

and I'd spill my own guts,
violently, coughing up my
own bile for you

but no

I'm running out of space
now, and I'm scrawling ink
over our branch name
and sort code. The paper
constricting, closing,
pressing me for an
ending

In the end we are just
two people hanging off
the edge of a cliff,
the edge where your body
meets mine, burnt now,
charred black, like bread
you forgot you were baking,
in the oven of our hearts,
we sit, hand in hand, daring
to hope that our lives are
like a Phoenix, waiting
to rise from ashes,
these are the ashes that
they place in jars and watch
for decades, dusted
back to their stone
root, in these pastel
coloured pots we are
held, hands clasped,
trapped in the moment
before we fell into
the sea

I close my eyes and imagine
filling the ocean between us
with stones

stepping, one by one, over the water

as a child, I would skim pebbles with my left hand

disadvantaged and weak

I am now as I was back then
unable to reach the better half

of me

He said I would never forget
the taste of his name
on my lips,

the soft sound of his breath
against my irregular heart
beat

he told me, the first thing
about love was to find the
right cadence of their name
in your mouth,

it was more important than
the brush of fingertips on
naked skin,

hungrier than
the touch of lips on lips,

needier than a thousand goodnights.

My tongue fitted the shape of it,
somehow, and I know a name
by any other rose would taste
bitter, like unsweetened lemonade

and our goodbyes would be the same, passionless, less urgent,
asserting that I would never
forget the taste of my first
love's name on my lips

petals close when you are near

stars shudder at your finger tips

the moon shakes in it’s silver skin

and I -

blossom,

despite myself and my heart’s warnings

against your cruel caresses

I sigh, into your curves

and bury my head in the sands of oblivion

I remember braiding hair
at the mouth of the river,
golden strings weaving
between my fingers

legs stretched roughly
across long grass, the
itch of it spreading
under our cotton
dresses

I imagine, the waves
washing over my face
as I swim down consuming
the deep black drop
of nothingness,

as I cover my ears
to the roars
of planes,

turn my guts away
from the motion
of a boat

I listen,
to the beat of
your heart as I thread

strand over strand

and pull

Beauty is a concept
we have rarely
observed

but tonight
in your arms
I feel more
beautiful

than the supernova
that lights up
the universe

In the hospital I am drinking coffee
from a plastic cup, it’s edges have melted
into my hand, we are one, the coffee and my hand

There is no time except the movement of two
hands, in reverse, the movement of one hand
chasing down the other, in reverse

There are plastic seats that scratch through
the cheap cotton covering my legs,
they are thin, worn leggings, covering my legs

The doctors pass in secret, we are not supposed to see
to see the doctors pass, in secret they move like
ghosts we are not supposed to see

My grandmother is not yet a ghost
she has flesh still, incandescent and bright, it is on fire,
it glows pale incandescent and bright

they walk towards us, the doctors, these ghosts
and we see them, these ghosts, these doctors
we are not supposed to see

we go to her, my grandmother
incandescent and bright
she is glowing in her hospital bed

already an angel, an angel without wings
the wings that she has are burnt to her back
she won’t be flying anywhere

she is sinking, sinking into her bed
incandescent and bright she blends into
the white sheets
seamlessly

we watch her, sinking seamlessly into the white sheets
we watch her burnt wings crumple beneath the
six stone weight of her

when she stops breathing, we all breath
in and out, we smell the charred bones
that death left, with each breath
we take in what’s left

we leave the hospital bed, the itchy chairs
the ghostly doctors we leave behind
our coffee cups, cut free from our hands

we breathe in each step, our skin
burning for fresh air,
we walk step by step

and the light from the street is so
bright, so incandescent
and bright

At dark

a murmur in the hungry wind
asking for the moon to shield
us from the unforgiving night

a blank canvas dotted with fire,
flames the will engulf
and eat us whole

we are made from the dust of
the universe, constellations,
transfixed

I knock on the ribs that hide
your heart,

can you hear me?

I think of you in that poppy field
your red lips bleeding secrets,
emerald stalks, blending scarlet scars into flesh. My cold shoulder
when I turned my face away

it seems like a trick of the light, now. When I reach my fingers across our bed, tangle a lock of your hair around my bitten fingernails

we pretend to forget the little things, like if we take sugar in our coffee or who's turn it is to take out the trash

we promise to hold onto the best parts, as if we are dolls that can be dismantled and remade by the hands of a child

but it's the laughs that disappear first, like the poppies whose petals we blew away so carelessly,

thinking there was a whole field when really there was just

us

I am nothing but embers
in the fire pit of
your heart

a Godless girl, kissing
with tongues, skin
burning at

the touch of a
weather beaten man

I fell for you, headfirst
into the abyss of desire

warmth rising from my
toes, through to my finger -
tips

inhaling the scent of you
by the lungful

my capacity is called
on, and I am a Phoenix

stunted, hatched too
soon, eternally shell -
less

Darker –
a shadow that starts
at midnight, growing into
the early hours
like a creeper, crawling
walls and windows,
longing to touch
flesh

Emptier –
the words that pass
between us like
vacuums, hollow and
echoing, they are the
fossils of
love

Simpler -
we have stopped fighting
the current, bending our
bones to make
sculptures, we exist in
the quiet places
between body and
soul

The look in your eyes
hooks me,

taking me back to the days
of my grandfathers, dark
whiskey in hip-flasks kept close
to their chests, eating tinned fruit
and singing to warm themselves up
on cold nights

I remember the sound of their voices,
thick and throaty, as if forty
cigarettes a day had eaten
into their chords

I wear their blazers sometimes,
Over a red dress, imagining myself
before they thought of me

wondering if they felt the rain fall
on their face as blood washed the
souls of their shoes

I know that your green eyes
are searching my face for signs and
similarities, the past threatening to
seep through the open pores
of my skin

I am corrupted

I heard you liked to
save, that you called yourself
a saviour

so I pulled my knees
tight to my chest, rocked myself
to sleep

grew my hair long and dyed it
gold

found an oak tree to tie my silk
scarf around the strongest branch

my neck poised, like a cat
ready to pounce

and waited

now, they're out with torches burning
voices calling my name

in the soft leaves of the forests
they look for footprints

and I

foolish and desperate
cling to you, like an icicle

(fitting for our frozen hearts)

and I have been lost

or stolen

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, 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
rotted mouth envelopes
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

a woman,
no longer whole
yet still
alive

The tendrils of your heart
wrap around me like barbed
wire,

puncturing the pale skin
that shields my bones like
a sheet,

some half hearted ghost
that knows the secrets of
near death.

I have been there before,
tangled in tubes, belly full
of Aspirin, blood thinning

in a hospital bed. Shackled
by secrets, a blunt knife
beneath a filthy pillow.

I have looked into the eyes of God
and found them to be merely
mirrors of

my sin

Words that once twisted
on my tongue like dancers
now stick, like sugar, to my lips
sweet honey locks that trap
the fire that eats me from
the inside - a body,
a cage, that echoes
birdless in the night
as I sit smoking out
the nightmares that wait,
like patent lovers, for me
to join them

The black spot on
my heart that has
spread through my
body like a plague

The great river of
ice, confessing to
the coldness of
my soul

I swim, battling
the tide of my
innermost thoughts

A wanderer who
hates the loneliness
of the road

The palm of my hand,
empty

I was prey to him,
fighting against his bare
teeth, white and diamond -
like

I was less than a jewel,
less than a girl bending
under the quiver of
his sharp nailed fingers

the arch of his back
stretching out
above me

I am frozen solid,
an iced over lake
somewhere between
two mountains

I do not thaw at his
touch, I am winter -
set, swallowing salt

that rises to the top of
an ocean, a blue mass
spreading

covering the Earth,
and me, wet with
regret

shaking below his
chest, consumed
by his cigarette
stenched kiss

his thunderous hands,
holding me to
ransom

we can’t always
be better than
everybody else

but we can
always be better
than ourselves

Smiling.

It’s easy enough,
a simple twitch at
the corners of my
mouth

but my mouth still tastes
of you, your rough hands
holding me still

we folded in on ourselves,
a house of cards threatened
by the slam of a fist

on a table, where we
shot daggers at each
other's souls

you knew the right words to say
and my defences were low,
no glass case to protect
my body from

their sting

but my organs rest inside
my ribcage, my lungs are save
from the fire of your tongue

and my heart beats against
their bars, pulsing, pulsing,
pulsing away from

you

Your eleventh girl that day,
caught out of the corner of your eye,
a fully stocked bar, a familiar face,
you came in here on the hunt
for the innocent fox

(drink up, shut your eyes
breathe, don't forget to
dream)

a rolled joint, turn the radio up,
shut the windows, lock the door,
you're doing nothing wrong, after all

(lie down, count to ten
you're free to leave, in your mind
imagine so many things, anything
but what's really happening)

cover your tracks, throw out the blood
soaked sheets. tell yourself she asked
for it, tell yourself it's just *****
laundry, just the taint of
another girl

(run, through the pain,
it'll stop stinging soon,
just keep moving, move
get away, get away, let the air
wash off his scent)

purple... green... a two inch scar,
please stop asking me to describe him,
swallow hard, he's not inside you now,
you're free to breathe, it's over,

but in my mind

the pictures still play,
like a movie scene,
a scratch on a track,

he's the other side of this screen,
I can taste him, salt and sweat,
they see what I saw at first
a decent man, not an animal
who devours women as if
they're meat

tell them I'm crazy
tell them I was drunk
get some sick satisfaction
out of lying through your
barely concealed wolf grin

you're free to prowl again

God fearing -
we kneel before altars,
sipping red wine,
a representation of
human blood when
we are already
bleeding

to death -
there is nothing
but the illustrated,
yellow pages of
a chained bible
that fails to reach

us -
dancing naked
in the storm;
a storm child
born under thunder,
black clouds that

swallow -
us whole yet,
you are made of
the darkness,
swimming in it's
mirky waters like a

mermaid -
I take Heaven
into my mouth
when we kiss,
hungry for a taste
of that forbidden fruit
that will take us both to

Hell

Our names are burnt
into the stars
like secrets
waiting to explode

We are born without teeth
yet, instinctively bite
peach lips forming circles
around fingers,

I remember the first bite,
he was pale and wore dusty
jeans. He came into my
bedroom, offering wine
he had laced with crushed
pills, unknowing that
to me his skin was laced
with ecstasy

the numbers mount up
in the same way they
fade, days disappearing
when a calendar turns,

memories are meant to
etch themselves into
our bones, but I  realised
that it was blood, blood
that preserved our former
selves, each drop a day,
each mouthful a moment,

they think I bite out of
spite, out of fury and
rage

but I am merely a collector
of moments that do not
belong to me, a predator
of the passage of time

I am gluttonous, I admit
but feeding on men that
prey on women does not
seem like greed,

I remember....
the night I was bitten.
He was tall and tattooed,
I liked his shoes,

***** flowing like water,
clear, crystal water
purifying (I thought)
until it hit my brain
paralysing all thought
and then...

Hell moved inside me,
a self-gratifying demon,
inked with a dragon,
as gunless as I
was Godless

I bite these men now,
these haters of women,
who **** and drink and dare
to slip a finger in,

I am reflection -
less and yet I know
what a mirror would show
about me,

the exit left of the battered
woman, who dared to change
her set, her scenery, her script

no, I am not ashamed of the
blood I take, but I am not
an animal who kills
for sport, for fun, for food

I am vengeful, I am every woman
sick of settling for less,
I am that woman you pitied
then despised,

I am that ******* a cold
bedroom floor, reborn

with fangs

I'll be brave this time,
as I remember

you. Memories folded
into my mind like

love letters stashed
under a bed.

I am a coward, though
and I am unashamed to

cry. Unabashedly run
my own fingers through

my hair. As if recreating
a moment can bring it back

to life. Second hand kisses
that linger, like sugar on my

lips. I did not ask for
forever. No, nor plan for

it. I just wanted one last fix
of you, as your *****

chases my dragons away

This was the nuts and bolts
of her,

stripped down

tasting metal with her iron tongue

licking, licking the corners of cogs

this is the age of

steel

welding, glass-less

sparks flying into her eyes

and she is

aluminium

light as air and mouldable

I work the shape

of her

with my fingers

mere brass and copper, yet

in the moonlight she is

silver

You trace the lines
of my tattoos, gently,
and ask, softly,
for their stories

so I open my skin to you,
letting you see the layers
that I've buried beneath
black ink

You may think I invited you in,
with my kind words
and a cheeky grin

that I accepted your drinks
and bought you ones in return

but when the alcohol wore off,
and I found myself in your house

how did I get here!?
and why can’t I leave?!

I must stay, as you press my back
into the sofa,
and I can’t breathe
unless I

swallow

when I run to the door
and fumble with the lock

as you stand behind me
and laugh, suddenly grab

me and drag me
into your bedroom

force me down on the bed,
cover my mouth as I scream

was it the grin?
asking for it!
did the grin deserve it?

my kind words were not an invitation
for you to destroy me like this

I imagine them ringing in your ears, justifying your actions

but my grin has faded
and if it ever was inviting
it’s vanished, now

How quiet it is here
now that the yellowness of
our youth has withered

I do not complain,
for I see your kind, soft eyes
smile at me across the room

I hear your heavy breath
as you inch your way
closer

the wheeze that whirls
from lung to air,
on a breeze of long -
suffering longing

I hold out my wrinkled hand
to touch your paper thin skin,
trying hard not to bruise
or break

and you take it, silver flashing
between your fingers as you
stab, stab, stab

my chest

as the pills reach your stomach
and you wrap tight around me
holding, holding, holding

onto my heart

Pain dies quicker than love, they say

as I held your hand as your
heart stopped

and took your last breath
into my mouth

my pierced lips clamped over yours,
red meeting blue, blending into purple

colours mixed by artless hands
a shadow on a grainy photograph

the last image of our love
prised from my fist

pain dies quicker than love, they say
and I loved you too much

to care

I have heard stories
of gas lights and
cobble streets

their glare glowing,
amber dreams,
holding tight,
screaming

as we slip into a
stupor, rattling
windows

the hunted and the
haunted, stumbling
across these *****
stones

shoes creek, old
and broken,
and no one.
No one.

No one

hopes for the rays
of an orange sun,
the smell of
Spring rain

or victory

We used to climb through
the broken fence and
visit the ancient
Ash tree that
stood, splendid
and solidatary

we would wrap our arms
around it, our fingers
far from touching

in our minds we would
disect the trunk and
count the rings, ageless
it was, beyond
number

we would sit
beneath it’s branches,
that reached out like
arms, hands desperate
to be held

it’s leaves would fall
in autumn, we would kick
their red and orange
offerings, disrespectful
as to where they
had come from

I still go to to it,
sometimes, I still
listen for it’s song

but it is dead
and quiet

without her

Our fingers searched

Like foxes rummaging through

Bags of trash

A cigarette packet

An empty Jack

bottle

I think we kissed in the dark

Before tonight

There is something

other than a man

about him

eyes bright, 
lips
locked
 tight

his fingers

are not that

much longer

than mine

they too
 know
chemicals

the touch of glass

between your bare

skin and acid

I tap words
through the sheets

with my finger-

tips

dot dot dot

dot dot

dot

and through the

haze of sleep
he smiles

his mouth titling

towards mine

we don’t call it

kissing

it is the pleasent purple

colour of neutral

litmus paper

it is our data
spreading

from the corners

of our mouths
into my
 cheeks

my body betrays me
and colours them
red

but it is more
than a flush
of a fantasy
made present

to be able
to touch

this man who hides
(and lies)

to know
this light touch
of a man in
a mask

which he allows 

only me to
see 
through

I smoked twenty-seven cigarettes
in an hour, once

but the black spots on my lungs,
that the doctor says
will **** me

the breathless wheeze
when I try to talk

the
shudder
of
air
escaping

as my veins collapse
into the cavernous
shell of my b o d y

all
come
from
you

I wanted seven seconds
of silence, the stillness
of unturned pages and
leaves that are yet to
be crunched, underfoot

we ate with plastic knifes
and forks, food blending
into to the taste of it

no time exists here

at seventeen, we were
running, full of *****
we'd bought and wine
that we'd stolen from
cheap supermarkets

now we're here

where the days chase
us down like hungry
wolves and the air is
too heavy to smoke
through

we smoked a lot

and dragged the ash
from our dog ends
across your parents
new patio

into the shapes of
our names

I wanted you to call
for me in the morning
and sneak into my room
at night

I wanted us to be lovers,
the way that bare hands
feel under fesh sheets
and the taste of your
sweat on my lips

I wanted our bodies
to burst

to know fire and
tame it

your car hit something
solid as you fiddled,
one handed, between
the ribs of me

my wasp heart
tapping at the sides
of it's jar

I tasted blood for the
first time

beating against you

As we fight to
claw the earth off
the bones we're
digging, I see you in
a new light (as if I've
only just noticed you've
been standing at my
side) and my
heart sinks, knowing
that your face, in
that light, will be
the way I
remember you

At five, we dragged
sticks along railings
and walls

holding hands
carelessly, obliviously,
without knowing we
were linking our
hearts forever

then we were ten,
twenty, forty...

the years doubled
then doubled
again

we're eighty

milk white hands
like chalk

ice palm meeting
ice palm

yet still
we smile,
faces cracked
and

careless

sorting through stained jeans and shirts

I remember her

pink gingham dress and gnawed knees

from the floor she scrubbed

removing traces of brown blood
where she bled for

him

(for God)

swallowing sins and secrets,

the ****** Mary merely

a memory

to her.

I select a pair with ripped shins,

hand over my dollar

anticipating the anarchy of bare skin and ribs

(once fleshy)

protruding like

a ***** before

(Christ)

and I am not

that girl

in the thrift store

pressed palms

praying, praying, praying

for the taste of a

saviour

the pull of the
moon

the light of the
sun

the beat of a
heart

the becoming of
one

I trace the lines on
your back

as if they are a
map

to lead me to a
hidden land

the reach of an
arm away

how long are you going
to stay with me?

forever.

forever.

forever.

This is where it starts;
my head resting on a cold floor
carpeted, but rough

the noise of a full kitchen
seeping in through the door
like the orange light from streetlamps
hitting a wet pavement

I can’t hear your voice
until it’s in my
ear

***** soaking your
tongue so that the
words sound thick
and heavy

slurred in a way
that makes my
brain flinch

now those words
are being force-fed
from your mouth
into mine

choking, lungs
filling up with
liquid letters

coughing, kicking
frantically

I’m drowning and
you know it

so I let my legs
straighten and
flatten

close my eyes
and try to feel the
scratching of the fabric
beneath my hair

and in a second
I realised
that it was not love
I craved

but a deep
understanding
of my soul

for someone
to take the time
to navigate my wounded
heart

dare I say?
take steps to repair it

no. It is not love I want
but salvation in the arms
of an Earthly God