i know you deserve the universe
and i'm just a star,
burning bright but burning fast
burning out
a cold cluster collapsing in on itself,
a black hole;
i will **** you in,
bend and break your light
and swallow you whole
'til you're as lost in me as i am in you

i know you deserve the universe
and i'm just a star,
burning bright but burning fast
burning out
a could cluster collapsing in on itself:
i'm not enough.
pass me by, seek your galaxies
it will be enough for me
just to feel you in my orbit
at least once
before i implode.

I was so worried,
so ******* scared
because I opened myself up to you,
felt how it burned to take you in,
indulged in how good it was
to be naked, torn open and vulnerable—
at risk,
going ahead despite the little voice in my head
that told me the entire time
"this could ruin your life".
I was awestruck,
how at odds it was to find pleasure in terror.

Well I had contingency plans in place,
pills and alcohol and bruises
just in case you exploded inside me
and ripped me apart.
Even if you did, I knew you'd still be there
to fix the problems
just to cause them all over again,
bursting and mending, erupting and clearing up the mess
over and over and over;
maybe that's why I went ahead and did it.

By God, I've never felt so sick to my stomach
than I did when you looked me in the eyes
and I realised I couldn't stop,
couldn't run away like I usually would.
And yet I wasn't hurting,
wasn't splitting apart at the seams—****
wasn't that scary.
5 AM and standing over the sink,
staring into my own tired eyes
and observing the abuse left by insomnia's hands:
sunken shadows bruising sleepless eyelids.
I smiled because, darling,
never before has it felt so good to bleed.

i wish you'd cut it out, causing me all this misery
you found cutting my heart out pretty easy
it's like bending over backwards with a paralysed spine
i'm in agony every second we talk and you're doing fine

you were nothing to me for so long but now it's like i need you
and i hate you for making me feel so dependent on somebody but god i love you
and it's killing me, it's killing me to think about how easily you could leave me
interspersed between moments of numbness, i'm overwhelmingly angry

while you're curling your tongue around double ended swords sheathed in honey
my chest is throbbing with all the wounds i'm hiding under fake smiles and hoodies;
you make your silver tongue's stab wounds seem sweet
it's only after you've inflicted them upon me that i realise i'm no longer standing on two feet

down on my knees and you're bringing out the worst parts of me,
parts i never knew existed, parts i hate, parts that are so unbearably ugly
it's no wonder i can't sleep at night when i'm standing in the mirror, looking at what you've done to me
if internal suffering had visuals i'm sure my torso would be littered with scars, bloodied

but i'm still here, drinking in all your affection and willing myself to believe there's no such thing as alcohol poisoning
and for every laceration, there's a flutter in my heartbeat as your lips chase away the churning feeling
you're so seductive, i'm starting to understand my father's love affair with red wine
i never realised how intoxicating love could be until i wanted you to be mine

i haven't missed you at all
and it's been kinda peaceful,
being able to breathe.
must be what asthmatics feel
when they get that first puff of an inhaler
after a brutal attack—
that's what i imagine, at least

overwhelming relief, like
they just lifted 160lbs of weight off their chest
and expelled it like a breath on the breeze.
oh, it's still there: the problem
but the jitters are gone for now;
inhaling doesn't feel like being a whisper away from a panic attack

you've induced plenty of those.
you're no medical condition,
nobody's going to find your name on my hospital records;
but i bet if they cut me open
they'd see the scars on my lungs
from where my ribs couldn't expand enough
to fit the anxiety you exhaled into them

you're a disease in your own right
but like a lot of mental illnesses,
you've been easy to become familiar with
to the point where the absence of the discomfort you cause
makes me feel uncomfortable,
and it's been a welcome break
but now i'm wishing you'd come back to me

i'm not sure how i'm supposed to breathe without choking anymore
i don't know how to sit without shaking
you did this to me
now come back and fix it

hands raised to the sky as he runs,
young and wild, curious, carefree;
sunlight bleeds through his fingers
not enough,
he wants to touch the sun.
you mustn't get too close, Daedalus warns him
and then Apollo smiles;

it feels like soaring,
being on the receiving end of
something so bright.
full of youth, seduction is easy
i think your mouth would taste like summer
he surrenders
slave to a burning star
forgive me, father

when he flies,
the taste of freedom
is sweet and heavy on his tongue
but you're not really free
sunbeams envelope him
his skin is golden; Apollo's touch is fire
he's never felt so warm
loved

i could destroy you
he's always been reckless
you won't
throws himself into the flames with abandon
it burns; it's violent; it consumes him
this isn't love
defiant, he smiles even as he screams
it's love to me

Apollo watches as he plummets
falling, falling, collapsing, wings singed and broken
gods shouldn't feel this helpless
it was love to me too
the slap of skin,
the crunch of bones breaking in the waves.
nothing could convince him to keep looking
as Daedalus screams
and holds his fallen son

gods bleed ichor,
gold like Apollo's light;
Apollo has eyes like a clear blue sea,
that's what Icarus once told him;
now Icarus paints the ocean,
bleeds scarlet into Poseidon's waters
and the sun god watches.
how fitting that you'd taint the ocean like you tainted me
Apollo's eyes are red from crying

was it worth it?
in the afterlife, he wears scars
where he used to wear wings
i'd fall a thousand times over just to kiss your lips
immortal now, his soul is sun-stroked
they'll write odes to you,
the boy who flew too close to the sun
even in death, his spirit is bright with innocent joy
he laughs
it sounds like Cupid's lyre

let them, he beams. at least i flew.

Some nights
the moon throws its light
like an old man
who can't hold his liquor in
and spits blood in the morning

Someone ought to kick some sense
into me, if they did I'd hum
like the body of a fiddle

I propose we all strip down
and take a swim with my friends
the dragonflies, but no one will listen
to what I have to say when I throw my voice
like an empty bottle deep in the forest

When I think of all the dark
and swift things of my rivers,
I wonder why time the old boot -
legger hides his maps and goes
on traveling the low roads

Alone I can tell you there is so much
beside the point of the thorn of the rose
and why the moon is with me always
whenever i choose to go it alone

I drink from that blue jar of time
and breathe the breath of sweet infants

Believe you me the dead shepherd
we sent up the river in a faraway land
in a time so long ago still holds us
all by the holes in his hands

You can see the dark clouds up ahead,
my cloisters I am always walking through them
with you children of the lost dreams,
and with you fifty-something snow-headed men

We have just collided with our lost sons
on the high road of morning, we are rising
dust like the dirt on our children's graves
saying nothing to our brothers the stones.