your little snore-music against my heart
(i’m not really sleeping, you just can’t tell)
when your curtains strip before the bed
(i left them swinging that way,)
i’m running away in a car that won’t start
(drive off a cliff or drive straight into hell)
there’s a space between my legs you said, you said.
(the curtains won’t fall on your stage.)

and the hot powder night seems to sing of delusion
(it’s because you’re here that i’m spitting up smoke)
drugs and cigarette burns and throwing up bile
(and thinking that i must be mad,)
you roll your eyes thickly in familiar disillusion
(if i’m not beside you, how then will you cope?)
it doesn’t quite fit when you say you’re mine.
(god, am i just like my dad?)

so the suicidal stars will put themselves out
(did i ever tell you to get therapy?)
and i’ll end up putting something out, too,
(right now, it’s long overdue)
your little snore-music becomes more of a shout
(you’re not your own priority)
i’m exhausted. i’m crying. you’re you.
(i’m exhausted. i’m screaming. you’re you.)

so **** out the petrol from the car exhaust
(so leave me, my darling, i’m not good for your health)
and tell yourself love, just what did that cost?
(and tell yourself, still, i’ll find someone else.)

this place is my bedroom, but different.
it’s like everything has been shifted
an inch to the left, so practically, everything
is the same, but it’s unsettling. it’s off.
there’s a space where my coat
should hang from a rope
but it’s more like a prison cell
than an ending. it’s more like i have
to exist here, rather than wanting to.
i don’t actively want anything.

well, i want my coat. it’s your coat,
really, but you left it in my apartment
for two weeks and i think that makes it mine.
like how i stayed in your bed for three days
without eating or moving or showering
and you told me that it put me in your debt,
that i had to do something spectacular
like jump off a building or get clean
in order to belong to myself again.

perhaps if i wear enough coats, i’ll cover
the flesh that you exposed. maybe it’s easier
to say that you did this to me, that everything i
did was just a response. a backlash. a quick whip
into another lifetime to see if you were right,
i'm *****, i need to sit in the shower
until the water runs rose-clear.

remember when we sat on your sofa
eating popcorn? skirting between jobs;
you worked for that skeevy *** line
and i tried to sell my art. nobody wanted
your body or my sadness, so we took
them in and adopted them and gave them
to each other. i have all the fleshy parts
of your skin, and you have the burden
of knowing that you knew me.

i’ve got hollow bones like a little baby bird.
i tell myself that, when you pour yourself
into me. you’re liquid and i’m just a vessel,
a vase for some flowers. it would be easier
to love someone else, and i do, but i am still,
like the cool water’s liminal edge,
and i am primarily yours.

i’ve got rough skin from years of scrubbing
to make myself clean. our bathtub
has seen more of me our mirror has,
even more so the razor on the little ledge
that i use to shave my non-existent ****** hair
and pretend i’m someone else. like we’re
in a 50s movie about coming to not-quite
terms with disillusionment.

i’ve got eyes that stare too intently,
scared to blink away the ghost of you
that sits on the edge of the bed, all skin
and bone and more skin left over,
enough of it that i can grab onto and wrap
myself in. then i’ll set us both alight.

maybe i’m the one with hands that hurt,
i don't really know much of this anymore.
you are white-hot and violently intense,
the rock to which my hard place shore-crashes;
if you must be by my side, do it quickly
and painlessly, for i’ve had enough
of time and agony for a lifetime.

for two lifetimes, actually.
mine and yours.

when dogs bite people, they put them down.
it’s sad, isn’t it? that we punish the animalistic
in the animals and let it run wild in the predators.
you, in the forest, you, lying down next to me,
and i hold something in my hands but it’s cold,
now, like the corpse of a dead rabbit caught in a trap.
the foxes are salivating but i won’t hand this over.
a dog bit you the other day and you bit it back.
i hated you for that. the foxes are whining
and i yelp back, wounded, bitten.
you scream too because you like your voice
against the night. you’re an animal. you
open me up and play doctor and the moonlight
glints across your yellow teeth.
your fingernails paw across my chest
and they’re perfectly sharpened. you make
me wait for it. you made this world,
and now you’re bored.
i’m wondering whether you
got to tear into something so sweet
ever again.

i love you, but not in the way you want to be loved.
you want someone to say (hey it’s okay
that you get ****** up on coke and bite
the skin off my neck, darling) and i want to change
you. i want things because i’m designed to want:
like wolf-alice wanted to howl
and i want to scream to feel alive. instead,
i scream helplessly. (noise noise noise)
that’s what you say. that’s what you sound like.
you always sound like something,
you’re not quiet. you clamp your hand over my mouth
and i smile. i’m quiet. it’s okay
that you get ****** up on coke and bite
the skin off my neck, babe.

thank you for buying me that bottle of *****
that i left in my drawer and forgot about,
because we were going out that night for cocktails
and i like to dress up and pretend
that i’m the man. do they still say that?
you the man!
or is that another thing i missed out on?

thank you for reminding me, when it’s 2am
and i’m faded out, listening to mitski,
that i still have that bottle of *****
and there’s nothing to remember
so i may as well black out.

god, i must sound like such a lost cause,
but i suppose i am, i suppose i’m
a rescue dog sent back after christmas,
cycling through lost and found
like a jumper with holes in or a love
letter to someone called sally. (i’m not sally.)

god, i must seem like something to be taken
care of, or taken violently, just taken
so i’m not left behind. you know. you know?
do you know? i mean, i’m asking -
begging - you to do all these bad things
to me because i don’t know what i deserve.

thank you for making fun of my therapist
and for driving me to get ice cream
when you knew i had to be across town
in an hour. that ice cream tasted so good.
you got cookies and cream and i don’t remember
what mine was, but you licked it off my lips
and i thanked you because it was the first time
in a long time
that i’d been touched like that.

my god i need to hear voices somewhere else
than these little apartment walls (i keep
something inside) have you ever seen a film
on tv late at night (like a prison) where there’s
a room and the walls are closing in (locked)
but they always manage to get out (let me in) well
babe that’s me except i don’t get out i just get
s m a l l e r
would you rather i was enough for you or
enough for myself or
enough to fill a line with anything other than
a straight-up-on-the-rocks-panic-attack
with two straws and a little paper umbrella
and a tap tap tap on the bar waiting for the walls
to o p e n up again?