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

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

in the depths
of your heart
I found a
home

in the crook
of your neck
I found a
root

in which
to grow
from

like a bud
I remained
tight

until your
touch
awakened
me

If fire burns
and destroys
everything
in it’s path

then why
do I want
to touch
the stars

so badly

can self destruction
really be so
beautiful

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

His fingers were too long,
patched with nicotine stains
and traces of my DNA

I gave him that small
part if myself, a tiny scrap
of evidence he could keep

He knew that I'd send
no-one looking for it

I knew he'd want to
remember me

He knew I'd have
no choice

He left bits of himself
in my hair

drandruff flecks

On the hip of my jeans
there are snowflakes

Droplets of ice
that have frozen
and expanded over
time

They've spread like
the thread of a silkworm

Tying me to the night
we met

She’s the kind of girl
who will play a sad song
when things are going well

when she is finally happy and settled in her skin

because she needs to remember
the sting of tears falling down her cheeks,
and the bitter blows to her heart

just in case

(just in case)

he’s another act in a tragedy
that even Shakespeare would never
have been able to conceive

On the train tracks of love
we are one collision away
from disaster

our hearts torn metal
twisted and thrown
from their framework

we are passengers
out of control
merely praying that
we will survive

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?

Is there such a thing
as a human heart
that hasn’t loved
and lost?

because if so,
I am willing to
undergo

a transplant

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

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 ask to be planted
into the earth
like an ancient
tree,

so that I may
shed my leaves
in the fall
and grow
new skin
every Spring

I envy the
Oak, Birch and
Ash, ancient
trunks that do
not stain with
the agony
that lingers
in the air

palpable

the rain
is full of
it and yet
they do not
wither and
decay

root me
in the dirt
so that I may
too, feel
pain

and survive it

Grief
is a knalled winter tree
barren, as its leaves have long since fell
to mix into the Earth
to make new life for the Spring
it is a painful process,
animalistic and wild
sometimes you do not know
if the tree will stand
tall for another year
but you will
you will carry life again
and it will be green
and lush

call me anything you like

to justify your lies

words are your weapon

but darling,

the truth is mine

You said you would die for me,
but dying is easy

I’ve done it every day for years,

stumbling into mornings that move
like treacle,

the night before spent staring blankly
at my computer screen,
or the ceiling,
or the clock,

anything but behind my own eyes,
to the insides of my mind,

dying isn’t being shot in the chest,
or some huge catastrophic event that deafens the world for a moment,

it is small acts of apathy ,
that leave you dizzy and sick,

a kiss that is not returned,
a cold shoulder in the middle
of the night,

so die for me, please,
because I’m tired of killing myself,

trying to love you

My heart opened for you
like a blood red tulip,
it’s restless beats settled
at the sound of your voice,
the way you pronounced my name
as if in a language only known to us,
our fingers wrapped together like vines,
the dark green ties that bind us forever,

But tulips live a short life
their petals wither and die,
I can only hope that in the dust
of my dead flower heart,
there will be the ashes of you

The tulips grew
under a patch of shade,
half warmed by the sun
yet still, protected

flowers used to mean
stuffed noses and watery
eyes. I never looked at
one through a clear lens

we would sit out in
the garden, the gentle
buzzing of heat, electricity
in the air. The oncoming
storm

now, roses are red
beasts that bite like
a vampire, drawing
blood into the stifled,
stagnant earth

I wait for frosts
that freeze,
turning green grass
to the white blades
of winter

the unforgiving morning
chill, robins perched on
iron railings that snap
like a steel rod,
submerged in
liquid nitrogen

I am callous and
cruel. I do not look
at the world in
wonder. I am
distant and dull

but I can't help but think
of the tulips, how they
are half hidden in
darkness, yet still

grow

This is the first year
when the tulips grow without you,
and as they bloom my heart bursts

with a kind of melancholy I have learnt to nurse
during bitter cold mornings and ink blank nights
my eyes searching for you at breakfast, your coffee mug still intact

unlike your body, unlike my heart

but the tulips bloom and so too
does something new

peace,
peace settles in my soul

my head stops spinning with
what if and might have been

and those tulips,
those gorgeous silk like
purple, orange, yellow and red tulips

save me

Even the stars
shake when I
speak your name,
a woman bursting
her heart,
red and raw,
arteries like arms
wrapping around
a wound, a bloom
of tulips
in my chest,
a cavity of
dirt, a wisp of
seaweed stretching
a lonely hand
into the ocean,
begging a wave
to answer

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 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 am both

hurting
and healing

two truths
nesting in
the palm
of my hand

like the moon
takes light
from the sun

or the sea
gives sand
to the shore

neither is one
without the
other

I have been searching for a reason;

was it my hair,
my face,
my waist,

as he grabbed me by the wrist
and pulled me towards
his pulsing body

was it my hips,
my ****,
my lips,

as he stood before me
one hand, ******* my shoulder
a ***** mattress beneath me
covered in the seeds of my
shame, my hate, my blame

forever changed, one half of
my head is a Hell no one else
will ever know, ever see,
ever understand

**** is an ugly word
yet, too simple to express
what is taken, stolen,
lost, in that one act

four letters that sit together,
like every other word
in the ******* dictionary

yet they are strangled with
barbed wire, each vowel
choking, each consonant
begging to be heard,
to be seen, to be
believed

I have to believe
that I can grow
from a rotten
root

or else drown
in a pool
of my
tears

and fears

When I was small,
I ran sticks across railings
or else pointed them at strangers, threatening to shoot

I feigned innocence, as if the folds of my lemon dress wrapped themselves tight around me. Unfolding for no one.

Yet, that's not the truth. His cupped hands offering me sweet water, a drink from the cup of purgatory.

I opened for him. Cotton collapsing to the floor. Legs still and steady, breathe sticky with secrets.

He kissed me, a Judas kiss. As if I'd soon be hanging from a tree. A neck snapped, rope burnt and smoking.

I count the scars on his chest as my own crushes, the weight of a whiskey soul, singing me to sleep.

I transcend, a goddess of air, an angel with ***** blonde hair. As his mouth takes mine, acid tongue.

A school bell rings in the distance, cutting time into chunks, religiously.

And I wonder what it's like, to place meaning in these segments of hours. To count down days or name them.

The cold bites me. I shiver in a black coat and bite my blue lips.

Yet the sun would burn me if I let it. I must stick to the dark, bury my roots in the dirt and grow

(up)

I learnt that night
that no amount
of love could
unbruise my
heart

he held me
as if I
were crystal
but I shattered
anyway

a kaleidoscope
of colours
twisting the
knife that

I plunged
into his
chest when
I said

I'm sorry
rolling away
from his
touch

another romance
blackened by
a memory

that lurks
like a creeper
in the bushes

it was
unexpected

we loved
unexpectedly

cigarette stained fingers grab at golden hair

she offers herself to God, in martyrdom

eating the bones of Christ
(bruised flesh as a summer dress is torn)

drinking the blood of Him
(cracked hips, buckling)

she swallows, white salt, burnt throat

imagining herself, developing in a dark room

red

and swollen

he lays her out, pinning her lemon dress out to dry

hot Summer sun soaked skin

and cotton

torn

crucified, ***** nails (his) forced through her hands

blood (hers) running down soft thighs

he puts out his cigarette in her hair

before hacking himself a souvenir and handing her

to God

(unflinching)

I sat with you
whilst you chatted endlessly
about the beginnings of the universe
at midnight, over cold beers

and I found it so funny
that you never realised
that my universe
began with you

The universe is vast and gray and infinite,
how do I take my place
in it?

how do I stand,
with my heart beating out
the rhythm of my life,
singing my past in
a simplicity so un -
becoming of it

I want to shout into the void -
I have come, I am woman,
flesh and bone, scars and stories,
I have known a taste of your
treachery and still
I stand before you

I  am Godless,
I shattered brick and mortar
metal and bars,
to be free of the weight
of heaven on my heart

oh universe, I am standing here,
at your open mouth,
a mouse in front of a lion

please acknowledge me

as a chil of the universe
I should know better
than to let my heart be swallowed
by the black hole that is you

I remember the first time
that you told me
that the universe
was infinite

I didn’t sleep,
thinking of all the
millions of galaxies,
bursting with life

stars and suns burning
thousands and thousands
of light years away

and the sudden realisation
of the insignificance of us

we are the unlikely creatures -

the ones that move in moonlight,
under a carpet of unforgiving stars

our hearts don’t go unnoticed,
as much as we would like our motives to be

souls scattered across midnight skies,
as everything unfurls

and we are left with nothing
but the atoms of love

to be an un -
pinned butterfly

in a world of
constraints

and chains

is to be more
than free

it is to be
miraculous

I have shattered love
with clumsy hands

always grasping
for affection
at the cost
of myself

I want to love
fearlessly

but my heart
is timid
from the cracks
it bears

kissing strangers
in the dark
and hoping
it will heal
itself

but it never does

and I live
under the burden
of unrequited love

Your hands
are a cage
that tame
a restless
heart

his
unseen
hands
unlock bars
and unleash
a wild thing

I am a
bird in
flight
now

set free

the skies
are mine
to taste

the oceans
mine to
drink

I am man -
less

and blossoming

without
constraints
of love

I don’t care if the sky falls

I don’t care if the oceans rise

I don’t care if the fires blaze

I have woven you into
the tapestry of my heart

and nothing can unstitch that

I became
untethered -
a wild wanderer
treading sand barefoot,
eager and constant
a butterfly unpinned,
unhinged -
storms rolling across
my skin like water
only divine intervention
could tame me,
and I stood fearless
in the face of
God

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

moonlight gleams like pearls across
your chest, stars dancing, imprinting dots
upon your naked flesh

and I could not stand the sight of it,
so I stepped out, barefoot into the night

and I don't know where I'm going
but I'll just keep on walking
until the darkness is behind me

The man beside me talks in his native tongue,
I hear the accent, broken and beaten out of him yet still,
strong
he is talking of crossings and kindness, a welcome mat on the door of another
country
his coffee skin is spooned like sugar, people either take or leave
it
and the sound of waves crashing over a rubber boat
and the cries of children as icy water hits their not yet weather worn faces
pregnant women rummaging in bins for bread and the skin and bones of men,
beaten, broken, seeking comfort from an unkind face
a border, protected and a land that needs purging, a plague of fear and the man, beside me
who I cannot understand except in his heartbeat and in mine, synchronised organs that know nothing of race, fear and hate that breeds and blossoms like cherry trees. Peeling back skin and language, I hold his hand, as the ashes of the world fall on us all.

The shoreline gleams around us, winking beneath the sun. I think about how it meets the sky and the reflection of something beautiful on something wild.

What does the ocean say about us?

I thought the light in your eyes
was for good, so I never tried
to light it

Fear is strange. As a concept it motivates you, a driving force, as an emotion is paralyses you. The fear of being unable to move in itself makes your muscles work. Flexing. Clenching. The need to run. Escape. But you can't. You can't move. There's a war going on between mind and muscle, and in this conflict I am the only casualty.

I've always been running, never bothering to throw breadcrumbs behind, but I never knew what I was running from.

One morning, she grabbed me in her sleep, as if I was the only solid thing in the room, maybe in the world...

I never asked what she was dreaming about. I didn't reach out to her. Fear.

The day she slammed the car door behind her as she got out. It was embarrassing how annoyed I was. How absolutely, blindly ******* I was about it. I feel so bad about it now, looking back I feel bad about a lot of the **** we did, or I did, the pointless cruelty of it.

As I lie on the grass I feel the bladed reaching beneath my shirt. Itching. Every single blade of grass is blocking every single pore of my skin, as if insects are nesting. The air curves around my limbs, as if to accommodate for hers.

She must have felt it and a part of her must have felt more alive because of it. Isn't that such a cliche? Feeling more alive because you're dying. If you can see all of time folding in front of you, hear your past crash into the back of you... Would you break or put your foot down?

Her dress was that kind of orange colour that makes you feel slight sick if you stare at it for too long. It was funny the way the blood stains formed in circles. Perfect. Circles. Like a penny... It was still neat apart from a small tear at the hip...

She must have felt the ripple of the air across her skin as she stood there. It must have been like a blanket. Soft and cushiony. She could have wrapped herself in it. Protected herself.

Maybe she really did feel protected, by the air, from the fall. Maybe that's all anyone wants to feel. I don't think so, I stood there...

It was so black. Hard and hatefully black. I couldn't look down for long. It made me feel too small for the world. Everything grew around me, the pit spread out like a sheet beneath me, the air rippling, my skin itching.

It swallowed her. How could she stand there and not be altered by it? How could she walk away as the same person? Who would she be?

I move around the flat like a blind man. I don't know where the edges of anything are anymore. I don't know where the edges of my body start. The rooms are huge, so huge that even the silence echoes.

I feel inexplicably and overwhelmingly bored. People tell me how sorry they are but I've heard it all ready. People send cards with nice things written in them but I've read them all before. Every smell is the same. The perfume that lingers on her scarf is the same. I'll never be surprised again by the smell of something new. I will never smell anything except the last whispers of her.

All food tastes the same. All girls look the same. I stay the same. I look in the mirror and I can't believe how I still look like me. I can't understand why my heart is still covered by skin and bone and muscle when it's been ripped.... Ripped... Ripped out...

They told me that the platform was crowded, as they pushed styrofoam cups of **** brown water into my hands. 'Good' I say...

I've said the wrong thing again. You would think it would be people saying the wrong thing to me but it isn't. My mouth doesn't work in relation to my brain anymore. There's a delay, a time difference...

As I stand there, my heart eats itself, my lungs clench, my muscles twitch and the urge to take one more tiny step takes over my veins like a virus.

The speakers are broken but the woman's determined, in case it was an accident, in case she didn't know,

'High speed trains through this station.'

my mouth moves
yet I am
wordless

I will **** you if I have to

to bury any evidence that I
once loved you

and God, I think it would be easy

to take a knife into your heart,
and twist it

as you twisted one into mine

I was fooled by your lies,
gentle tricks of the tongue
that came so easily to you

how I hate to be associated
with your wicked words

and to see the mouth
that uttered them, alive

Lord knows it would be easy

to drive a stake into your heart
and **** the vampire that ****** me dry

Your love ran through my veins

until they became

varicose

and now I am twisted out of

shape

and the natural art of bleeding is

all consuming

pain

As he stands there,
arms stretched out towards me
like a ripple reaching out
to meet the rest of the
ocean

I realise that I am the ocean,

when we met, eyes dazed over
from beer, fingers casually flicking
ash from our cigarettes onto the
pavement

we were two hearts wild
with loneliness, latching onto
each other like velcro,

and now I dare not pull us apart
and feel the friction, hear the ear
screeching sound of separating
two things designed to stick
together

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

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)

piece by piece
I built bricks
out of ashes,
cemented them
with hunger
so that they would
never be satisfied
standing still

my feet, like the roots of mighty oak trees
were planted firmly in the ground,
impatient with seeing the same view
I long to break free

but I can’t,
I can only grow tall
so that I might see a different one

I am a volcano,

a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass
threatening to consume all in my path
with hot lava and gas
erupting at the slightest, single touch

so be ******* careful
if you dare touch me