I’ve been scolded at before
while smoking in front of public places,
but today she
stared at me with a
cold look and bitterness,
were you sent
to school smelling like
the couch cushions and bedsheets
and your mothers hair?
was it the ash trays beside dinner plates
and squinted grins through dancing fog
watching television with your ears?
no silence came only burning lungs
and showers, breathing with your eyes?
I’m sorry, I tried blowing smoke
the other way.

cool. lightly scented. i sit alone in the reception of a spa. tranquil tones soothe the atmosphere. i lean against the wall, and wait. a fear of physical contact roots me to the spot; they will not touch me. impatiently. silently. i wait.

grey, cloud-tinted sunlight blankets the day. it was blistering heat earlier. i think of the way sweat pooled in the hollow of my chest as your tongue dipped over my collarbone. my back in damp grass. hoodies abandoned. who cares about a little mud when the things we do to each other go beyond *****? somebody might see was a quiet worry drowned out by rough breaths and guilty little whimpers.

now, i am thousands of miles away from you. six hours of time difference. phone vibrations. my unshakable conviction that you might leave me be if i ignore you, even as i miss your touch. sitting alone in a spa reception, too uncomfortable with the idea of hands on my skin. but i miss the pads of your fingertips digging into my sides. palms clamping my wrists either side of my head. pinned in place by ocean eyes that drown me.

we will leave for the secret garden soon. coffee will be placed between my palms. maybe hot. i'm feeling a chill in my bones that wants to be chased away. my mind's eyes conjures an image. memory. you sit across from me on four hours of sleep. your body vibrates on caffiene overload. you are like me sometimes. but my poison is bitter, coffee beans; your poison is an attack of fizzing sugar on your cardiovascular system.

maybe. maybe that's the answer. why you're sweet. why you escape confined spaces (read: relationships. you are like me sometimes.) like bubbles leaping from a can. maybe it's why i'm dark. with an aftertaste almost everybody is determined to chase away.

something tangy hangs on the air despite the spa's best attempts to provide aroma therapy. my mind pines for your natural scent. light washing powder. a little musky, like faint sweat. not the sweetest, but real and warm. i can find it. i reach for it, fingers finding warm skin. we press chest to chest and this hardly feels real. motorbikes and scooters rumble by. your voice is a ghost in my ear. too quiet to be present.

eyes open. receptionists wander. you are far away. my eyes glaze over anyway. sleepless nights and busy days. i slump into scenery: green grass, wrangled trees, a brick wall decorated with poison berries and stinging nettles, a blue sky with white clouds. your body above me.

you were the first of them all
to make me smile and laugh so much

you were like a sister to me,
and beautiful in so many ways

your voice was one i could listen to for hours
and your art awed me

i can't listen to Halsey
without thinking of you singing her songs—not a perfect voice,

but still brilliant, with something earthy to your tones
that had me feeling grounded.

well, on some level you turned out to be
just as bitter and spiteful as me

who knew? i didn't see our end coming
until you two ended and i was stuck in the middle

your anger made me angry;
your salt turned me into an ocean of disdain

i hadn't been quite as hateful over anybody
as i had been over you, for a very long time,

and it's been months, but now
i can finally think of you without any resentment

you're complicated, and perhaps a little broken,
but so am i

you're not as mature as you once seemed,
but, at times, neither am i

you're still talented, and you deserve good in your life
more than i do

so even though you'll never read this:
this is me, doing something i rarely ever do

this is me, wishing you well
and making peace with something shattered

instead of letting myself bleed over it.

they say a child can grow up conditioning themselves
to forget
all the trauma they've experienced;
they say they quite literally push it
to the back of their minds, as a way of coping,
a way to deal with the pain―without actually dealing with it.

it'll all come crashing back, eventually
everyone knows that a dam is a temporary structure,
that eventually the chemicals in the water
will erode the wood and
break it apart

it all comes rushing in
and escapes through blood-shot eyes,
drooling, sobbing coughs and panic-slick wheezes.

i never fully managed to forget my father
though i'm sure there are things i don't remember―
after all, that's an awful lot of hatred
and anger
for only several incidents, and a lifetime of an alcoholic's neglect...
isn't it?

but you―you i managed to block out completely
to the point where i knew the phrase "emotional abuse"
but couldn't quite be sure why i applied it to you;
it was just something i knew
instinctively

how foolish it was for me to break the dam myself,
out of some morbid, masochistic curiosity:
"what did she do? what did she do to me? why?"
and then i remembered

all the sleepless nights spent reading to you,
lulling your insomniac mind (though not as bad as mind)
and soothing the supposed nightmares you had:
nightmares that you, conveniently, only suffered
when i was asleep―and i was hardly ever sleeping

all the memories you blurred between me
and your last boyfriend; all the ways
you made me feel like ****, comparing me
to a **** bag that cheated on you
and then lured you in again with falsities and
repeated apologies. you fell for it every time,
and i had to wonder: why am i not good enough
compared to that?

the way you asked me to watch you in the bath,
whilst you drew on your skin and told me:
"this is what i do to avoid cutting myself"
and i thought:
"i'm still cutting"
but i sacrificed my own stability to ensure your safety

******* martyr, i was
how disgusting to allow myself to be manipulated by you,
even after the hours you left me guessing out of spite
whether or not you'd burned your skin with that lighter
just because i didn't want to spoil your mood with my own

the holiday i spent in my dream city was spoiled
and stained and joyless, as you ****** the soul out of me
by burning images into my mind:
you and him, sharing a bath, looking after his family's kids.
why the **** would you do that to me?
more importantly, why the ****
did i let you? and still love you?

so many more incidents, so many more
broken promises and sick lies;
the way you hid me from your family
and only trusted me not to cheat because i'm demisexual;
you made sure i'd never emotionally connect with anybody else
and find attraction in them,
lest i move on from you and find another

one that wouldn't abuse me
like you did

i thought of you as my perfect half
who knows?
perhaps you still are

but there have been angry storms
and bitter seas, and tears
as salty as the ocean, and

twice as ferocious, impassioned,
they crash against the sand
amidst desperate, roaring winds:

a cold and battering rush
of all those unspoken words finally
ripping their way out as a hurricane,

and the dark clouds block out the sun,
ruining happy days to aid us as we forget
what that bright, bright warmth felt like between us.

we run to opposite ends of the beach,
duck into shelter, home alone
and aching.

i know your tourists leave bad reviews
with every fleeting visit;
i know you pin me to the wall, a poster, reading:

"would not recommend;
the main course gave me
heartburn that lasted months"

but they forgot, as did you,
of all my weather-warnings,
and the times i told you:

"it's an acquired taste;
you can say no.
i really wish you'd say no."

maybe you still are my
perfect other half
but for this period i'm torn in two.

your whirlpools have cracked my ships,
****** my loving sailors
into sure and certain suffering;

summer is over.
the leaves will fall far more gracefully than us,
and we'll see,

if by winter
we can cocoon ourselves in blankets
and grow into something beautiful as we heal.

Everything is asleep
and in pain, in love
and dreaming
about another life
I say to myself,
it is time I take my own
lookout, unfaithful
sailors know they can't
see a thing but they keep
their place on the prow
out there in the darkness
where boats are colliding,
oh yes, they are blind
or awake feeling the dark
like light, like those levels
of cold and heat underwater,
you know what I mean,
when you are dreaming
or in danger, that place
where fish live and sleep,
sometimes I think I understand
everything,  but I know that
I am wrong, and incredible
as it seems, the shadow I see
when I'm hung, I want to think
of hideouts in the mountains
where a man can go to die there.