oh, terrible person;
oh, woe is me, terrible
'person' for terrible acts
that were never committed
in the first place.

oh, second place,
welcome me. welcome
me? welcome 'person'
for uncommitted deeds
and false memories?
is it welcome? is it
welcome?

oh, honey. oh, darling.
oh, sweet sweet sinner
from catholic school
in the back seat of a fighter jet.
oh, military propaganda
for a life un-lived. oh,
song. oh, drown it out.
oh, performance.

oh, performance.

oh, beautiful girl.
oh, girl to be taken.
oh, girl to be used.
oh, girl, get used to it,
you'll be dealing with this
longer than it was dealt to you.
oh, girl, you'll be hurt
longer than the hurters. oh,
sweetheart, i forgive you because you
were young. but you are me,
so i also hate you.

oh, little one.
won't you grow up?
won't you be a failure
earlier than i was?
won't you give up
like i never did?
won't you hitch a breath
on a short prayer,
wish you never were
wish they never were
wish those things...

oh, those things.
wish they never were?

see, you're younger than me.
oh, you're so much younger than me.
wish they were never done;

see, twenty-three year olds
don't have fairy godmothers.
they have propranolol and therapists
and dialectical behaviour therapy forms
forgotten to be filled in.
oh, forgotten.
oh, stone slabs with no meaning.
oh, stonehenge.
oh, mythology.

be an anthropologist, my love.
curl up your grief
and your trauma
and work it into a pretty clay sculpture.
oh, sweetie, make it beautiful
please
make it beautiful. make it
loved, or just make it.
let it be finished
and loved
and long-lasting
and then die.

oh, and then die.

listen to music.
sink into music.
be music,
be beautiful,
be consumed.

you are what was done to you.
after all,
oh, after all,
you are what was done to you.

you are what was done?

you are done.

there is a collection of beautiful things
on the street at three in the morning.
i know this because i am one of them;
tomorrow, i will be human again,
but tonight, i am divine. tonight,
i am the beer bottle rattling, unbroken,
sea-glass against the cobblestone.
i have been seen and been consumed,
which, at three in the morning
(in a collection of beautiful things on the street)
is the human experience. to live, divine—
or something like that.

so, meet me in the neon lights.
where am i? look into them as if the sun,
and find apollo. there i'll be.

i grieve the girl in the summer dress in late may,
i grieve the mourning doves,
i grieve the ice lolly stained teeth and the way the sun was hotter in 2005,
i grieve the dew on the grass that stuck to paddling pool legs.

i attended the funeral of a little girl
when i decided to no longer be one.
i attended the funeral of summer
sometime last november, a little
closed casket affair for something i had to freeze
in the morgue before i was ready to let go.

i mourn the tired christmases and birthdays
and the excitement of the night before.
i mourn clothes set out on bedroom floors
and perfectly-made outfits for school trips.
i mourn the entirety of primary school
and wonder if the rainbow fish works a corporate job now.

i lost my faith somewhere between the pews
of my holy communion, but i got a pretty
green set of rosary beads and a bouncy castle
and an episode of doctor who so terrifying
that i made my eldest sister sleep in my room.
i lost my other sister, with whom i talk to now on tired
christmases and birthdays, just after
she spent all afternoon completing game achievements
that my young hands and daylight-savings-attention-span
couldn’t achieve by themselves.

when i was younger, i was smaller
but the stars were closer.
when i was younger, i was barriered in suncream
and each swimming pool at a caravan resort
was the ocean in a friendly disguise.
when i was younger, i lived
a lunchables life with soft serve ice cream for dessert
every day, and it was far too beautiful
to be beautiful in anything but hindsight.

now, i check myself for wrinkles;
it’s the only time i can look in the mirror.
sometimes i see her, five or seventeen,
and i say “that’s my girl.”
i cannot let her know of the mourning that will come.
i cannot let her claim me as her future
but i will hold her soft, small palms
and pretend that i am doing the leading.

that night, i wore a polo shirt.
i thought hey, i'm going to a friend's
dorm, no need to dress up, right?
so i wore a polo shirt, a yellow and blue and pink
thing. i'd bought it from a charity shop
only weeks earlier, when i was still exploring
a new university town
and finding not-so-hidden gems;
and sure, it was three sizes too big
but it was comfortable, and made me feel safe.

turns out, you didn't care about polo shirts
or tank tops. you cared about what was underneath
and i was drunk enough to let you - or,
well, not really let you, but i didn't need to dress up
so i wore baggy clothes and a smile
so i had half a bottle of jack daniels
and i had a nineteen year old point to prove
and i had a pill that you gave me
and i had - sorry, have - a therapist's bill.

but this isn't about you. i don't write about you.
i make a point of not writing about you,
actually. which is to say that i write about you
in a way that doesn't let you hurt me anymore.
i write about what i was wearing
(did i deserve it? in my 1970s male t-shirt?)
or what i was drinking
(it was university)
or how i tried to throw myself into a river
in the aftermath
(but i didn't, because i got thirsty, and i didn't
want to die thirsty, so i went home).
no, i'm writing about the polo shirt i was wearing.

cotton, i think. polyester, probably.
the amazing technicolour haze of am i sober enough for this?
who knows how many iterations
of the same lancaster charity shop
it circled through, old men with families
and wives and kids -
it probably saw birthdays and christmases
and, safely tucked in the back of a closet,
shielded itself from the almost-crisis of cuban missiles.

and then, me. a nineteen year old
branching out into the world for the first time;
a lover of poetry, maker of music, naïve and beautiful.
then, it was just a polo shirt, and i wore it
as long as it was laundered, for a month or so,
until december. not that i stopped wearing it
because it was cold. it just reminded me of hands
and hands and hands and
****, how many hands can a man have?
how long will i have to feel them?

i didn't shower the day after, just slept.
a hangover, right? just a hangover.
and then, when the hot water in my dorm
daily ticked on, i washed every inch of myself
to get rid of you, and your foam banana shower gel
that your mother probably told you to buy.

so, what compensation do you owe me?
what price should i put on things?
you touch it, so you pay for it.
one charity shop shirt, three pounds please.

two men at the water.
you've all heard the puzzle, right?
you have three wolves and three sheep
and you need to cross a river.
(any river. let's call it—
oh, i don't know. the baptismal
jordan.)

okay, so it's a little different.
one sheep who doesn't follow the crowd
and one wolf in the skin of his dead brother.
it still works, doesn't it?
(especially if they're in love.
let's say they're in love,
just for the sake of it.
let's let them be in love.)

if the sheep leaves the wolf behind
it's only because he was chasing the sun.
let's not blame him for chasing
the sun. let's make a terrible joke
about another son, and a father,
and a fire/sacrifice.
(let's put the sheep on the altar
and see how we can bleed him
for the machinations of another.)

let's give the wolf some big sad eyes
and a failed career
and a bad relationship with his family.
let's give him a longing
for teeth and blood but let's make him
only long for his own.
(let's string him up and get him to dance
for us. let's point and look and laugh
at the stupid little apex predator
cowering at the world.)

where were we?
oh, right. baptism.
well, that's an easy one, isn't it?
call up the sun,
and burn it—
burn it? are you sure?
yes. he's sure. so we're sure,
aren't we?
(but isn't that a rebirth?
can you baptise a phoenix?)

(no. but isn't it world class
entertainment to watch the flames
turn to ash
right beside the water?)

sometimes, i look at dainty strong marble effigies
of the ****** mary holding her birth-bloodied son
and wonder if some loves aren't meant for everyone.

chastity-locked inside my heart, there's a woman
who wears long sundresses and lives in the little mac and cheese potluck moments;
she prays her rosary and feels the warm arms
of her traditional husband who loves her as a duty.

as for jesus, well, he's a cheap plastic figurine
she bought from ebay and stuck on the dashboard of her car;
the heat melted his feet in a crucifixion of 2020
but he still stands, wobbly and shaky and commercialised.
when she travels, she prays to him for safety.

(she doesn't travel a lot. she's happy to be stagnant and pray for still waters every morning.)

who cares about my heart, though?
who loves unconditionally and always,
and sees through the rips of cartilage and crushed aorta -
who will look and look and look
and see me? sorry, see me? sorry, see me out.

sometimes, i want to be a child again;
cradled in my mother's arms. sometimes,
i want to no longer put my dreams on hold.
sometimes, i want the world to look at me and say
"hey, pontius pilate, there's another one for martyrdom."

quite honestly, i don’t want you to remember this.
i don’t want you to finish reading and think man,
at least i’m not that pathetic,
you know? if i can make you feel better
about your own life, then great,
i’ll take it, but god, please don’t remember
me after you’re done.

i think that people exist when they’re thought about.
if it was that easy to blink out of existence,
i’d erase my name from every government database
and, i don’t know, go and live on an island
until i got eaten by sharks.

actually, let’s talk about that instead. sharks.
everyone’s scared of them since jaws
came out, but statistically they ****
one person every two years. that’s 0.5
people a year; half a person dying.
i’ve killed more people than that in stories.

but hollywood thought “hey, let’s make the big scary
shark into the villain”, and everyone said “okay”
and ate it up with big wild teeth
and now people don’t swim in shallow waters
because their shadows look like seals.

i wonder if someone made a movie about me.
‘the big scary sad life of never leaving your room’,
because people cross the street when i notice them
cross the street,
so it’s only a matter of time before i join
the barracks of some statistic, too.