thinking about bus drivers, lying sleepless
3 AM
wondering about drug tests,
if they can’t go to work
because they drank to forget
and they don’t want to lose their job
for unhealthy coping mechanisms
because you can drive yourself into an early grave
but you can’t take the citizens with you

all these aches i can’t explain
the emptiness that sits so heavy
weighted in my chest, sinking stomach:
the drop shudders through my spine,
rattles through my core, teeth
clenched like fists with a dull throb
that can’t be punched away

how to say it, how to speak
when words aren’t fond of being said
and a voice that whispers my thoughts
are worth neither sharing nor suppressing
not quite worthless, but not priceless.
i can’t tell you what i’m thinking

Death doesn’t catch my eye,
nor does she make my blood flow south
i no longer want to sleep with her, i just...
think. i think about her a lot.
still kinda pretty in a perilous sorta way,
kind that gives me wandering wonders
every time i’m wracked with anxiety
and images that make my bones shake

how do you
let go
of somebody
you never got to hold?

1.
assert yourself as someone strong, someone capable
make it seem like nothing hurts you
it doesn't matter if you slip up sometimes - you're only human
but it has to be rare.
if you feel like crying, convert it to anger
let the rage overwhelm you to the point where you're blind with it
let it become so overpowering that it blinds everybody else too
the blind won't see your sadness; the blind will
avert their eyes
in fear

2.
you don't feel things like other people do
your emotions are never strong, unless you're feeling angry
or depressed
but you keep those quiet, only ever spoken softly
to close friends,
these secrets hidden like taboos.
you don't care, you don't love
don't let them convince you otherwise
show them how much apathy you have inside you by letting go of hate and love altogether-
when they cut you open, let them find nothing but bland organs;
your only colour is red because you do bleed
you're still only human
but you don't bleed your soul like ink onto journal pages
that would mean you feel something - and you don't

3.
never smile in photos, never smile in your selfies
let them see you're "fine" even if your eyes are shaded with Midnight's charcoal pencils
and lined red with Two AM's pencil crayons;
the coffee in your hand isn't a sign of exhaustion - you're just bitter
no milk, no sugar
this helps you succeed with steps 1 and 2 as well
you're strong enough to stomach the caustic nature of black coffee,
you can't feel it burn your throat on the way down
and you don't flinch nor grimace when it lingers on your tongue.
you've already bitten back enough of the harsh thoughts that try to slip out like saliva,
impossible to miss, impossible to avoid;
your tongue is numb to the taste of salts and sours,
of words so violent
they land blows significant enough to sign death sentences

4.
let them know that you
are a bomb
ticking, teetering, trembling with the temptation to trigger terror
your hands stay curled into fists that you'll rarely throw, always ready
always willing to go
no one will ever say another bad thing about you, and if they do
it won't be to your face
no one you know is brave enough to look Death straight in the eye and taunt him
by now your defenses are so thick and sturdy that they'll call them bomb shells
covering what's burning away inside you, unforgiving, toxic
but it's your cool, collected carvings of ****** expressions
that'll leave them with the most shell-shock.
and they'll never find out that the only trigger in you
is a self-destruct button
because you've always hurt yourself more than you've ever hurt others.
you keep it that way, and they'll never know how much

you
actually
do
care.

at 5 AM i loved you again

loved the seductive sapphires of your eyes
a certain snare for fools like me,

loved the shape of your hands and
the spaces between your fingers
where mine used to be

i loved the flick of a swirl in your hair
and the thickness of it under my nails,

the husky depth of your ***** laugh
and the wonky smile it accompanied,
a crooked glint of glee

your warm body and the wiry hair of your legs,
firm abdominals and stubble barely there,
just enough to scratch my lips

at 5 AM i loved you again
but at six, i woke up

sunlight shining clarity on daylight’s disappointing truths:
none of the above counts for **** all
when it comes to exes like you

what god created in seven days
a seven word summary:
it’s all a lot of needless ******.

but you’ll say these evils are necessary.

my happiness looks like this:

three staffordshire bull terriers that keep stealing all the blankets on the bed,
and a fourth back at my mother’s home who cannot contain his excitement when i visit

grey winter morning light leaking in from behind the blinds—
i hate winter and i should be asleep,
but still my happiness includes this:

the hours i lie awake,
still insomnia ridden as i was when i used to write the nights away in sorrow,
but now

i watch videos of people who like the same pretty colours and the same pretty furniture as i do,
decorating their houses and building
useful things

i put a little more spare cash into my savings each week
and squirm impatiently for our first home together

ours. mine and his.

the main picture in my montage of happiness
is the man lying next to me, sound asleep
an arm cuddled around our oldest girl,
both of them snoring and snuffling in their slumber

sounds i loathed from other people
are sounds i cherish from him.
i kiss the tip of his nose,
each cheek,
the curve of his forehead,
the point of his chin
and settle one more on soft, lax lips

my words don’t feel so beautiful
because all life’s beauty, i find in him.
i don’t have poeticism to spare for writing
when all my love letters are spoken to him
and he embodies everything beautiful
from eyes to smile to skin
down to the soul within

one minute i feel like i'm fine
the next, i couldn't care less if i live or die
i wonder if this is what it's like
to exist without living

my eyes are tired and
your arms are closed
i look up at the ceiling and i'm alone
it's too cold in this home

my eyes won't close 'cause i can't sleep
your arms won't open 'cause you don't care about me

i stopped looking both ways before i cross the street
you started looking at the colours in the sky
those things i used to love became the sparkles in your eyes
my reasons for living faded like sunset into night

i want to die

the razor edge
of living sharp and free
is when the roses lose their petals,
the thorns are all i can see

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

too sickly an idea, to age beyond activity;
what allure can be founded in limitations?
this flirtation we have, as naïve kids, with growing up too fast
for the fear of missing out on all the fun of adulthood, of decision making
not understanding the freedom to be found in permitted passivity

before realising that brittle bones and looser skin,
and wrinkled eyes, and sunken cheeks,
the vanity within that corrodes self-esteem for every grey hair found,
is something we are far more comfortable seeing
in anybody that isn't ourselves

the best of men,
I know he is not.
the worst of men?
not that, either
somewhere in between
a little closer to
good
than bad
no matter how many times
he might
toe the line

you've met me.
you know me.
you've seen firsthand
how wrong
I can be.
not in sense,
not in academics,
nor even in instinct
but in morality.
you know that
he is just
a darker shade
of me.

I know that he
self-destructs and
everyone around him
is the collateral damage.
I don't think that you know this.
I know him
better than you do.
your world is
more black and white
than mine;
I see in shades of grey
and colours
a childhood of red and
purple, and
he did too.

what you see as
malice
I know to be
self-hatred.
I understand him
in a way that you cannot.
our hand grenades
are glued
to our palms;
it doesn't take much
to set them off.
do you know what it's like
to be a ticking time bomb?
I do, he does.

I don't excuse him.
please don't think me
blind,
I see perfectly well
when it comes to
matters of the
heart
and the mind.
but for now,
just for now,
when I'm with him
I am living.
he makes me feel alive.
so for now
just for now
I'd like to live one last time.

i like the idea of bathing in a sunset
on the hills of Park Hall, overlooking landscapes and cities

being so far away from civilization
that my own breath echoes in my ears.

i would lie there, still, in the grass,
cool and warm at the same time,
thinking about how the shade of orange sunlight
softens city edges and makes them glow.

everything is always gentler in the sunset,
calm and still
to the point where even capitalism seems tranquil

except for me―forever rough around the edges,
rougher still inside, with bitter blackness
twisting its way through my veins,
anger cooking up a storm inside of me,
ready to boil over and scald--

those sunbeams, let them bathe me;
they'll not change me.
everything around me will soak up the light
and look beautiful doing so,

and i would be a silhouette against the ethereal bright,
faceless and
alone.

my hands are always shaking
but never when i play my guitar,
fingers always trembling
unless they're tapping frets and bars

always have the shivers
'cept when my baby's on my knee.
i've always been unstable;
she's the only love that makes me steady

you break your own heart every day,
like drills shattering concrete, hoping
one day the moss and weeds
that grow in between
will somehow blossom into flowers

trust, mine own enemy mine
i trust you less than i love you
and i don't love you much

love, my distant friend
your fingertips ghost my skin
once every couple lifetimes

hate, another's waste of time
i haven't the capacity to give
someone i dislike so much thought

anger, you abusive lover
kiss my knuckles when you bruise them
warm me from the inside

anger, you deserve three stanzas
such a permanent fixture in my life
always there, by my side

anger, warm me from the inside
'til i overheat and explode
winter isn't here but there's cold in my bones

******* it, you left a heart at the end of your message and i felt my own lurch in my chest
i don't love you
i won't love you
but just for a second,
one precious, fleeting moment
you flirted with the fragility of my mind by showing me you cared
and, for a moment,
it felt like maybe i could;
maybe i could love you
but i don't

and i won't

it's been a crazy few years and sometimes i just can't ******* believe i've made it this far. after two almost-cut-throat endings and too many nights watching red swill down the plug hole, i'm surprised i'm still standing now. honestly, i used to be in love with the idea of life even when i wanted to end mine but now it's just another motion. well hey, at least i'm still moving. nobody standing still or lying frozen gets the chance to land somewhere new; if i'd have frozen, i wouldn't have met you.
  you that's changed my life in ways that make me simultaneously wish i'd never met you and wish i'd met you sooner. i never used to cry over people but i also never knew what love was supposed to feel like either. maybe i should hate you for tearing down such dedicated defenses or maybe i should love you for making me live, not just exist. maybe i should feel both ways at the same time; maybe i do.
  you asked me what my favourite part of my daily routine is and i told you about how i like to watch the city pass me by through the bus window on my way to college: a filler moment that's always wonderfully long and regretfully not long enough, earphones in, music loud. it's the quiet solitude of the moment that draws me in. i always rush in the mornings, and even free periods at college leave no room for peace. the simplicity of sitting quietly, alone amidst strangers that pay me as little attention as i pay them.
  i kind of want to sit in silence with you, enjoy that quiet solitude with you by my side. i'm always alone but loneliness can defeat even the unbeaten warrior. so let's be alone together. be my shield. protect me from that fatal blow; i don't want my gravestone to read "George Vs. Loneliness: K.O."
  sometimes you make me angrier than i ever thought i could be. i shake and shiver, my teeth attack each other. your love is such a pretty shade of purple when things are good―i want to drown canvases in it. but my anger is a violent red, and when you trigger me the colours switch: i'm seeing red when i look at you, my knuckles are purple-bruised.
  but when it's all over, somehow, you're still the one i want to lie with. and maybe i should get more help. maybe i should tell them how explosive i am, how i worry that one day you'll be too close when i go off and you'll look me in the eyes with my shrapnel in your chest and tell me "we're done". i think five years of therapy has only taught me one thing: i am incapable of being fixed. but it's alright. it's okay to be broken. you're the one that taught me that. and it seems like our broken pieces fit together well enough together to create art. messy, chaotic, but emotive and beautiful in its own right. paint me as a villain, if you wish. i'll still paint you my anti-hero.

i tried to love;
i think i succeeded

but not like you,
not like them.

my love comes in waves,
fleeting and crashing;

it surges, strong,
then breaks against the sand

and i'm left with nothing but an empty shore

i hunch my shoulders even though i'm trying to straighten my spine
i'm standing alone at this bus stop; the morning is darker and colder
than me, somehow. i clench my teeth against a bitter wind and
try not to think about the way i barely notice the chill cutting through me.
there's a death grip around my ribs - i struggle to inhale properly
but sometimes i find myself breathing just enough to make a small dent on the air

the combined weight of my phone in the left pocket of my skinny jeans
and my hand gripping my wallet in the right pocket
has my waistband slipping below my hips, jeans just-barely holding on,
and the precariousness of their position - half falling, half hanging -
has me thinking that they fit me better than they seem to.
i relate to them more than i've related to anybody in a long time.

the sun is only just rising at the edge of the eastern sky,
casting an eerie winter glow over this ice-bitten village.
i like these early mornings, my fellow villagers,
the few that are out and about as early as i am,
ambling sleepily to their sunrise starts
and even though i drank my morning coffee, i'm drunk on my lust for sleep.

i blink my bleary eyes and blatantly stare at the old couple
cautiously hobbling over slippery cobblestone,
walking sticks in their outer hands and inner palms clasped
together. the way they grip each other tightly tells me
they trust each other not to let the other fall;
the rings on their fingers tell me they fell for each other a long time ago
and i wonder how many times they pulled each other down over the years

as i catch sight of my bus approaching, slow behind a nervous driver
i'm left thinking about people, and college, and life
how everything seems simultaneously meaningful and meaningless,
all for something - yet, really, kind of all for nothing.
i could walk away and go home, settle into my bed and let sleep pull me under
away from my thoughts, naked and no longer bound by a binder,
comfortable in my skin the way i can never be in public

i don't. i step on the bus, and flash my bus pass at the driver
climb the stairs to sit in the front chairs by the windows
watch life pass by as the engine rumbles into motion.
i'm painfully aware of the way my ribs protest when i slouch in my seat
and my bed tempts me once more as i yawn into my weather-chapped hand.
i don't. college calls, friends await. perhaps it's all pointless
sometimes that's what my philosophy class teaches me
but i'd much rather live it out and see

minutes shy of eleven,
       the sharp blur of too many streetlights
   aiding the throb of caffeine

we lay in the road under a starless sky
            and flirted with death
    for the sake of adrenaline

        cold, wind burning my lungs
              long route back, avoiding trouble
         but my smiles were real


                                               and so were you

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

no matter
how hard
i try
i can't make my pain beautiful;
i can't make myself beautiful;
i can't make myself feel beautiful.

no matter
how hard
i try
i cannot convince myself that beauty
is a taste i enjoy on my tongue,
is a feeling i crave, that burning sensation
at the back of my throat,
on the back of my tongue

i cannot make an illness beautiful, for simply
it is not.
illnesses aren't beautiful, and they were never meant to be-
that's why people try to cure them.
in a world where beauty is the standard,
ugliness will not survive.
ironic, then, that illnesses are ugly
yet illnesses are becoming strategies
to achieving beauty

what an ugly concept.

concept: the more i *****, the skinnier i become
the more beautiful i am, right?
concept: the less i eat, the more i gain
concept: the thinspiration tag on tumblr has all of the
answers. so answer me this:
why am i so fragile? i feel my soul must be weaker
than the stick-thin bodies photographed for toxic aspirations;
surely they must snap like twigs whenever they fall...
i know the ease with which i break apart whenever i fall down

concept: i have friends and family that love me,
people who are attracted to me,
my friends' friends admire me, aspire to be like me
i should not be so insecure, so desperate to make myself skinnier,
more beautiful, more perfect.
bones are not the default of beauty.

bones are what survive beneath the ground when all else rots away;
these illnesses will have me rotting
before my bones can even finish growing.
there will be weeds and vines growing around my ribs, weaving
like a macabre masterpiece mounting the soil on which i've laid myself to rest
and my skeleton's skinless fingers, slender and spiraled into the ground,
will be the only thing about me that have ever had a grip.

lately i've been made up of broken sanity, loosely grasping
at the frayed edges of myself
as i come apart each night, again and again - my skeletal fingers
will grip this earth with a strength to rival my passion for nature
for while i will be dead, at least i will finally be
committed to something
i love.

what a shame that i'll never love who i am enough
to be committed to myself.

the birds are calling
i feel like crying
i used to love their
morning song
and still i do, and always will
but today my mind is
ill and tired,
the love inside me
is close to expired;
i'm drained and my eyes
are as sore as paper cuts.
these birds, they sing
soaring like i wish i could
oblivious to the irony they bring
that juxtaposition of
cheerful chirps
as a young man lies in bed
and wishes for...
something he won't name.

lately, the anxiety keeps settling in my teeth,
setting them on edge:
an unwelcome guest spitting scornful jest
to cause my brain to second guess
every thought i thought wasn't a mess,
exposing my mind -- a train wreck

i scruff my tongue against them
in the hopes of forcing the enamel clean
but this apprehension's made of harder stuff
that even molars couldn't crush;
the muscles of my jaw clench
their unhappiness, an endless throb
of raw numbness, itching to be expelled
through sound or sick or movement

excuses to flee, suddenly,
enunciated by the bitter desperation
to expel what words fail to express;
there's no sudden obligation,
no needs to address. i'm just trying
hard to outrun the foam of fruitless frets
fizzing into overflow, stomach acid upset

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 know what it must be like
to deal with me;
but I assure you
it's not as hard
as dealing with being me.

I simultaneously push people away,
keep them at a distance with falsities
designed to prevent incidents
like people actually getting to know the real me

and wish they knew enough to understand
why

why it is that I grew to become this.

forty, for three kinds of pain
swell into sixty, they suggested;
the idea of dependency and
docile, smiley dazes
too much, like a bruised sprain
tiptoeing on the edge
of a complete break

i don’t need to be happy all the time
i just need to be happy more

we made makeshift settlements in old, crumbling ruins
and we weren't homeless but we sure weren't home
so we sought out places as broken as we felt
with digital camera clicks and rough clearings of throat
(that hint of asbestos and ground-to-dust brickwork)
laying out soft blankets and forgetting they were too thin:
gravel digging into hunger-knobbled spines as we slipped under cosmic spells,
spying constellations in burnt out stars and speaking wax poetic
with slender fingers intertwined and your soft palm hissing softly as my callouses grated your skin

and when you told me you loved me, i really believed it
it was clear as the jewels that glittered on that midnight dressing gown the first half of the earth slipped on whenever the sun slid away to her lover's second side
obvious and inevitable and woman i loved you too
how impossible a thing it would be, to melt into each other's souls like wax on burning candles
without solidifying and finding a permanent fixture once the heat cooled off
through every wind and motion, all the weathers, where you'd go—there i'd be
but like candles, our wicks were time stamped and endangered
we faded out in a curl of dark smoke, and maybe that's when i turned to the nicotine

there's no honesty in honesty anymore, or at least that's how it feels
because you promised me a million things and i believed the words leaving your mouth were more to you than spitting gristle.
people like you are the reason i swore off meat; you always bite off more than you can chew then blame anyone except yourself when you choke
it took me fifteen years but i wised up to the poisons i was being force fed by people who said they wanted me healthy but really just wanted me to empty my pockets
i hope you made your fortune when you coined me false truths seasoned to look like everything i'd ever need to live,
because becoming self-sufficient was the kindest thing i ever did for myself, and now i'll never spend another penny trying to swallow self-hatred in the hopes of nourishing you with love

upon waking, i could feel glass in my lungs
small, sharp shards prickling the breaths from my chest and
stealing them away from me—
like some stolen innocence i remember once was mine;
but that was years ago, now
i've been ruined for a long time

i don't sleep very well, and i don't-
don't really wake up very well, either
particularly as we accelerate towards winter
and the only thing i can associate the cold and the dark with
is childhood and threat,
and my school teachers called it Seasonal Depression
but my therapist knows i'm always depressed
Depression is a long-time cuddle buddy;
she's kept me company through trauma.

my therapist tells me that
the cold and dark, they're incentive to flashbacks
too many nights, only single digits in age, forced
to sit in the frost-bitten shadows of an alcoholic's living room
with the AM hours throwing bloodied ***
and violence, through a TV screen
and i still remember the crippling ache of empathy,
watching that little robot boy's family abandon him:
lost in the woods, found only to be beaten.

i breathed through the glass in my lungs,
and never could quite let go of the memory,
nor the popping eyes and crashing cars
or the bleeding walls and possessed children;
wondered, briefly, if maybe some strength could one day possess me
and make my father see i was worth more
than a black-blue shadow in his home, and an accessory in his favourite bars

the scent of you still clings to my sheets
and feelings confuse me
my skype history is a long list of confessions but my biggest secrets are still buried within me
i feel sick
i wish i could purge on self-hatred
i'll dig out these secrets for the sake of this poem, or ramble, or whatever it is
core myself on sharp shards of broken hearts - i have plenty to choose from
more fuel to the fire, my ever-burning hatred for myself
when will it consume me?
i feel sick

confession no.1
i just ate all of the chocolate in the fridge so it wouldn't have to stare me in the face any longer
swallowed it down like its sweetness didn't make me feel bitter
and followed it with a bowl of cereal as a last hoorah for my oncoming diet

confession no.2
i'm **** at this poetry thing
or at least that's how i feel

i can't even be good at something i love
how could anyone expect me to be good at loving?

confession no.3
right now, i feel nothing but resentment and hatred for my mother
her snide comment about my commitment to my therapy made me want to break her neck

confession no.4
i'm incredibly blunt, which is probably why i **** at poetry
i also haven't gotten my anger issues in check
today, on the bus, i imagined shooting this racist woman's head repeatedly and i was angry that i couldn't make her bleed

confession no.5
it's raining outside and i don't feel any calmer
perhaps it's just too mild for me when i feel this stormy
biting back torrential tears like not crying will somehow make me a stronger hurricane
but
i'm still not good enough to blow anybody away

confession no.6
i feel sick in every sense of the word
i kind of want to die

i have
no qualms
with people who
love themselves

my pause after the
“i know”
that follows my compliment
is not distaste,

rather, i have spent
so long
hating myself that
i am used to self deprecation.

i have only just
come to grips
with learning to
love myself

self confidence in you
is beautiful
but also, for now,
startling

embarking upon a further
journey down the same path

almost four years,
but now: newer, exciting routes
new junctions to
cross the t’s, dot the i’s

but the letters remain
unfinished, unlooped—though
the knots are still tangled

why’d the past have to catch up
with someone else’s love?

spare the reminder
of a lovesick fool,
not quite so much lovesick
as desperate to prove.

tomorrow never comes;
the future is today
and it’s here and now and
yes, yes, things are gonna

change for the better
the best endeavour of life so far
begins without her in it

isn’t that proof enough?

we made it.

i am having the same old conversations
with the stars up in the sky;
supine, i ask them how much
of their beauty lingers within me
not much, i think.
silently, they stare back, blinking dazedly

i think i might just sleep now,
and let them blanket my dreams:
cold and dead and burning out, alas, like me
but still shining just enough
to soften the blow of nightmares

When the wounds whistled me
into weary sleep, I dreamt
I had a cozy little corner of the universe
all to myself. The tune of your lips
puckered against the sky; I watched
as you kissed supernovas into life.

See I bloom so easily, sometimes.
Just purples and blues, maybe green
and some yellow if the star bursts
just right. Often, I have to sleep off
the black holes that rip through me.
Fizzling, I shoot across and fall

Into blessed bliss of ignorance.
Asleep, I see you there. We got ourselves
a nice little place in the stars,
where knuckle dusters cease to exist—
so it’s just space dust, quite magical.
You could make billions
of anything out of this. Eternal. Ethereal.
People spend souls for escapism.

Could you refund mine, actually?
It’s kind of cold up here, now I’ve
stopped dreaming. I kind of
miss feeling the breath fill my lungs.
I sort of want to go home again.
You drifted from my orbit. I think
I miss you.

hands as big as my face
and a scream that was
louder than my cries

daddy's got a bottle of red,
it's okay
he just enjoys the finer things in life

daddy i don't know your new girlfriend
please hold my hand
daddy please

daddy, i think i like your girlfriend
more than i like you
she cleaned me up when i was sick

you yelled at me for
getting ***** on the carpet;
but i'm certain red stains are harder to clean

i wonder if i was good at cross country,
if i got so fast
because of the way my tiny legs carried me up the stairs

away from you
that afternoon with a magazine cutout in your bag
number to a *** line

never dialled, you said, not mine, you said
daddy please don't chase me,
i just did what your girlfriend said

my step-brother taught me to box today
i punched the bag really hard.
punching you in the stomach felt better.

you're passed out on the sofa and
i can't wake you up.
your girlfriend sends you to bed and

we stay up.
there's horror movies on the TV;
she's asleep with the controls and

i can't get away
from the blood on the screen
and the little robot boy's tears as the cars crash into him.

i saw women's *******
in bed with Dracula.
i saw you perving

on the lesbians in the flats,
and then i fidgeted anxiously
when you told me you'd bury me under the slabs

if i turned out gay.
i didn't know what that meant back then but
father, i'm so gay now

you bruised my shoulders when i disowned you.
said "goodbye" with enough volume
it sounded more like a "*******"

you didn't care.
did you ever care?
i used to try and curl up to your side

i stopped doing that after a while.
i was young but i was smart,
knew to walk away when you got that slur on your lips

i was young but i was smart:
you don't take your eyes
off a predator

i was young but i was smart,
handled the ***** you gave to me and
crushed that cat's skull

and had nightmares about it
for weeks and weeks;
but i had to put it out of its misery

daddy, why do you hate cats?
daddy, please don't shoot it
DADDY, NO!

daddy, i can't breathe
stop smoking around me please.
mummy doesn't like the smell of it on my clothes.

stop smoking crack with the neighbours,
your girlfriend's talking **** about you
with his wife

pocket money doesn't replace affection
i'm talking **** about you
with your girlfriend.

i found out that you never treated my siblings
the way you treated me.
what the **** is so wrong with me?

twelve years old, finally in high school
mum said i can stop seeing you
dad, i don't wanna see you anymore

twice a year, always in December
just those two visits gave me enough things to remember
why i stopped the weekend trips

your money doesn't cure my ptsd
nor does it stop the nightmares.
i took it anyway

call it compensation.
measly amount as it was.
i'll never see you again now i'm eighteen

but trust me when i say
i'd rather be broke
than have broken spirits and broken bones

so fixated on the idea of a father, just lately;
he's got a firm clasp on his own mouth
to stop himself from spilling,
wishing he could grip hard enough to
leave bruises
without thinking "look at me, becoming him"

pathetic, is what it is
shuts himself down with bitter thoughts and cruelty.
how ridiculous to look at mother's new boyfriend—
who she isn't even official with yet,
who she's only known for maybe four months—
and silently wish, more than wonder
"will i be calling you dad one day?"

his own dad, such a disappointment
that sometimes it gives him headaches,
trying to figure out who's more of a violent failure:
himself, or his father.
he has an ego the size of the moon
that compensates for his overwhelming insecurities
and hides his vulnerabilities;
but he can't escape his own self-loathing when there's
no one
to put on a show for

and since he grew up spending most of his days
alone and self-reliant

loneliness has been the best father he could ever ask for

He dreamed
in hues of
bruises.

i miss the days when you were sweet
and everything between us was soft and new;
we had the whole world at our feet.
now we're stuck in stalemate, no clue

what to do, where to be, who we are
i miss your gentle words and honeyed kisses
how you said my eyes were like stars
but you were the one granting all my wishes

and you were shooting, burning, fast and bright
perhaps we lost touch in this way:
you were only meant to be but a moment in the night
then the sun shines and it's time to face the day

living:

1.) the kindest thing i’ve ever done
for all the ones i love

2.) the best thing i’ve ever done
for myself

3.) the opportunity
to be alive and actually live;
to live and feel alive

did you lose even a single night of sleep, the days i was tucked safely back at home with my mother?
was i anything more than an after-thought once you stopped seeing me?
a problem to be dealt with only once you were faced with it once again
did you ever miss me? or if not me, then the freedom to lay hands without repercussions?

did you think yourself an artist, with hands designed to create?
did you think because you made me that i was yours to hate?

when you streaked my canvas black and blue, did your reflection hurt or couldn't you look?
i bet you could, i bet you never had a second thought, i know you never had the capacity to feel or say sorry

your water colours hurt less than your acrylics, let me tell you this
i could wash away your water-blues with time and little white capsules
your acrylics took so much longer to dry, their consistency so much greater
their texture so much thicker, and stickier, and prone to staining
if they touched their fingers to the palettes you tucked away inside my brain, they'd come away covered
with hurt and guilt and shame, all these doubts and questions
purple, red and black and grey

did you dip your brush into that innocent creature's blood? the one you had me chuck
straight into the wheelie bin like you could so easily discard the lives you took?
if i'm shaking as i write this down, it's only because i remember that day with a clarity that scorns
my Achilles' heel is shovels, pellet guns and alcohol
i hope one day your bullets ricochet and when you treat your wounds you drown instead

red wine's no good for healing, anyway
but then i've never tried it, so what would i know? i'm different from you in every blessed way

i just wanted you to know
that i just want you to breathe
i want to have the same effect as prozac,
make it easier for you to feel at ease
and if you haven't noticed
it's impossible for me to let you go
i gave up
i'm not fighting anymore

do you feel that?
the crescendo of emotion?
the crest of a wave
of inexplicable
something
that just drowns you?

do you feel it?
the weight of your own
existence?
this inexplicable urge
to lie down
and cry gently
for no reason at all?

do you feel
what i'm feeling?
an appreciation for life
whilst
hating being alive?
falling in love
with the universe
and out of love
with yourself?

do you feel that?
are you drowning in
existentialism?
does your chest
feel like it's
imploding?
are your lungs too big
for your rib cage?

do you feel it?
do you feel
what i'm feeling?
do you even feel
​​​​​​​at all?

the birds are whistling
twittering their tranquil
morning song,

it's 4 AM and i am imagining us
sitting on the forest floor of Trentham
with sunbeams bathing us
from between the trees

i feel at peace when i
hold a piece of you inside my mind;

nature's soundtrack lulls me
and my only wish
is that you'd be here
to listen with me.

darling, you're so beautiful
like the sunrise
creeping through the leaves

the light that brings an end to
the darkness, and
fights off the cold
with its gentle warmth,

and you give me life
the way water nourishes plants;
i feel like i can blossom when i'm with you

you're so incredible,
so genuinely unforgettable
just holding your hand

would mend broken pieces of my soul.
beautiful being
how'd you get so lost?

i'll give everything i've got
to lead you back home.
you're not alone.

yet another night where i'm crying tears that keep bleeding dry, feeling like i can't breathe properly
and all the worse because of it.
my chest tightens beyond measure to the point where i'm questioning how i even have a ribcage
shouldn't it be destroyed by now just like everything else about me?
i'm surprised my lungs can fit inside this constant vice
but then again i guess i've always been able to fit myself inside impossible spaces
i mean, after all, i did grow up in a dark and lonely closet chain-locked by cisnormativity,
my own feelings and expression restricted by society
"no, little girl, you're not a boy, it's just a phase, you sit down to use the toilet just like any other lady"

they never taught me about gender in school, nor mental illness, nor self-love
of all the lessons they taught me, the most important things i've learned have come from outside sources
see in a world that priorities numbers there's never been much room for individuality
even though, last time i checked, 'one' was the starting point for all positive values
but i guess i should thank them anyway, see at least now i'm smart enough to understand maths
and i always hated the subject in school but now it seems that all i do these days is think in percentages and measurements, constantly using addition
yet somehow never adding any confidence and always subtracting from my own self esteem

i got a B in my final exam and vowed never to look at another equation again but see
i may have passed my paper without revising but i've never been as good at using a calculator as i've come to be in the past year, and i excel in working out percentages
my eating disorder has been a better teacher than the adults with their university degrees
and the empty spaces left by a society that doesn't include self-respect in its specification got filled with insecurity
and self-loathing and depression and anxiety ...

(just reading this poem,
i can feel it
building up inside of me)

don't get me wrong, it's not like i let the views of close-minded people define me
but negativity sets an obnoxious example and the disease is buried into me
and i don't have much hope for finding a cure in a world that's been breeding my illnesses since i was born
my therapist is trying to help me but i'm just another lost boy
she's no miracle worker and the damage has already been done

if there's anything the government has taught me,
it's that there is no way to overpower corruption, you see
corruption
is more powerful than anything in this world and if you don't believe me, you just need to take a look at your surroundings
and you will see that you've been brainwashed just like the rest of society
i'm sorry to say that now you've woken up you'll only ever long to fall asleep again
but insomnia grows like a tumour in your brain and you will never have a peaceful night's sleep again
not until you learn to love yourself
and darling, i'm sorry, but that's the hardest skill to ever grasp

i'd know
i've been losing sleep for years and years

truth is,
i love you

and i ******* hate it

you will make it,
even if it's by the skin of
your teeth --
which will pearl
into a smile
that reaches your
endless eyes

sleep if you're exhausted
but you will rise;
energy cannot end, so
your soul
will be fine

arise, darling,
we're going to be fine

i had an epiphany;
you are ethereal,
an ephemeral epoch
within my existence.

i shook hands with my priest and he told me god would listen to me
after years of talking to myself, i gave up
if this is the result of a benevolent lord, i want no part in such cruelty
every day spent suffering in this godless existence is another flirtation with the devil's temptations;
he hands me independence and assurance that this universe has no explanations
and in exchange i lose the love i might've had for myself
for a god or for life or for anyone

it's not that i need a god to explain it or to comfort me
it's that they lied when they told me a ghost was worth devoting my life to