i forget things half the time
and i forget that i’ve forgotten even more;
i think maybe part of my brain
decided, once, that i’m still young
and i have to make more room
for anything good. i’m dreaming
and that’s good, i don’t know why but,
well, there’s always a little split second
before i wake up where i’m not anything.
i’m not awake, or asleep, just lying
in the sweat of a thick winter duvet,
and i feel like half a person, half the time
but that moment before everything sets in
is a little pocket of happiness,
where i’m not me and those things were never done.

Havisham’s hands are ******
with the half-squeezed heart
blackened by falsity,
like thick red paint,
her crackling fingertips
keep moulding something invincible;
the permanence of lying.

Altars still stand
after the apocalypse,
registry books torn
to become cigarette papers;
the ash of everything
and a child,
painting the phoenix
onto the acid soil,
until the core coils into chainmail.

The echoes of the innocent
make pews into death row,
where the absence of a void
ruminates, glitching, triumphant;
wedding dresses at funerals
brush away the humid dew
of unmown grass,
as the softness of forgetfulness
crowns each grave eternal.

Havisham’s hands are made of soot,
the woman as the pyre,
long-since engulfed
in bitterness;
one lie creating a fragile universe.
Greek chorus repeating
minor rites
until the dead phoenix
dies again,
and only the smoke
of lie-infested letters
rises.

sorry. i know i’m supposed to start at the beginning
but i don’t really know when that was. sorry,
there’s something in your mouth. what was that fairy
tale about all the teeth? no, wait, that’s not the one;
there was… woods? maybe. i don’t remember. i
never had one of those big books of fairy tales
as a kid. i had a forest, though, and an imagination,
and something to run away from. and milk teeth. sorry,
i had milk teeth, how small your milk teeth are!
is that the beginning? if it is, let’s not start there let’s -
let’s start somewhere else. like the middle. the part
with alleyways and drug deals and i thought you were
the story i was searching for. turns out you’re something,
for sure, but if we start with that then we’ll start with feelings
and that’s what good poetry is about. and this isn’t good
poetry. this is an incomprehensible stream of anxiety
medication and being someone else so - so which part
am i supposed to play? i don’t have a red cape but the wolf
doesn’t have milk teeth. am i the one in the bed? does
that make me dead? i can’t finish this. maybe i should start at the
end.

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.

are we talking about trauma or are we talking about sleeping?
i can’t seem to do both, unless we’re talking about nightmares,
but we’re not talking about nightmares (and really, we’re
talking about nightmares). so sometimes, we cope.
sometimes, we lick the sweat off each others hands
and claim that everything disgusting is beautiful,
like blood and **** and ***** on the floor from too many pills
and a bathtub full of failed suicide attempts.
see, sometimes (sometimes meaning - obviously - always)
i have dreams about you overdosing
and i don’t know whether to call them nightmares or…
or or or or memories. you tell me you’re clean
and i know you took a shower for the first time this week.
you sent me a pinterest board with my name
but it was filled with photos of people who aren’t me.
i suppose that’s how you love, and i suppose
i’ll have to make do with what i’ve got, a double bed,
a lot of things that i should probably tell a therapist,
and an itch that needs no fingernails to scratch.

at nighttime, when the water
is more soft than warm,
and there’s (something) white
waves leaning up to kiss the rope
shoreline. at midnight (close enough),
when all the lovers have retired
to old-folks’ homes and single
beds. the stragglers, strangers (i)
who walk barefoot on the rocks
have cut their feet and gone home,
the stars seem to turn their back and i
(miss you) wait a little longer.

before dawn, before sunrise, the last
colours on earth are blues and blacks
airbrushed against a ***** palette
and they’re waiting for me to stop
waiting. the water is cool and feels
sort of how i imagine a hug would feel
so i linger in it, in the liminality,
until my ankles are in deep and it’s harder
to walk. but i walk.

i hope the stars are watching, now.
i hope they’re a little more comfortable
with suicide, since i am, having overcome
every happy thought i’ve ever had
and still this is what feels right,
being touched for the last time
right up to my neck and all those saltwater bruises.

i want to fill myself with it,
not just my lungs, but every cavity -
the space between my fingers, the gap
in my front teeth, right down
to the intimacy of my naked body
which will bloat before i am found.

but now, i am not found. now,
i am infinite and dying,
and in this one singular moment,
the nighttime sky reflects every colour
through the hazy film of the slick sea,
and my pockets hold no stones.

One:

This is
the white-night
burst
of seven billion
voices singing
requiem dies irae
as mountains fall -
desperately breaking
independently
from the shards.

This is
the collective collapse
of a season of stars -
of Van Goghs and Mozarts,
and all those dug up
graves; bodies
loose in the wind.

This is
lovers’ last request;
worldwide relief
underneath burning wood,
silk moon,
translucent veil.

This is
the eulogy
of the earth.

This;
unwritten.

——————————————————————————————

Two:

H­ere,
the silent universe.

Here,
intergalactic war
halted, planets
bowed with rings
draped in black.

Here,
mourning the loss
of a child
who had merely
taken one shaky
footstep
into the dark.

Here,
solemn species
contemplate
the finality of this;
somewhere
an old-earth radio
creaks its way
into playing
Electric Light Orchestra
and the older ones sigh
remembering the
burned out
blue sky.

Here,
entire constellations
flick themselves
out of place;
an infinitesimal
blip
marked down
in universal history -
and songs echo
in a vacuum
for a brief eternity;
the collective memory
that once
just once
the earth had existed.

You are man.

You are named as such.

Here is stone.

Build a pillar. Call it yours.

Hello, Cain. Have you heard of shared glory?
I don’t think you have; that’s okay,
neither have I, for I am the One,
and nothing can take that from me.

You wish to be this way?
I have told you;
here is perpetual stone,
you have all the tools necessary.

Necessary for what?
For legacy.
For eternity.
Baby, hold onto me.

Angel, that’s what you’ll be,
baby, darling, mine,
take the stone
like man who lies with man.

What? I have betrayed you?
You should know this.
My love is Abel,
my love is not yours to give.

Unless, of course,
you want to take it from me.
Yes, that’s it,
take the eternal stone.

This is the history you want to craft.
Violent, ******,
and completely, utterly,
yours.

You are man.

You are named as such.

Here is stone.

Build a legacy.

Hate it; call it yours.

I trust and believe
that the words of others
are truth and law;
we’ve always been standing
on unequal ground here -
forever on this titanic plane.

The crowd of everyone
and the universal singularity:
me.

You say whatever
and I say okay;
I say I’m drowning
and you say
you’re waiting for something
in the water,
to pop up and tip the scales.

When you knock on my flesh
I tear open a door
for you,
let you worm inside
and deposit your truths
under my skin;
let them grow like parasites
within me,
festering in septicaemia.

With my rotting body
like sea-soaked decks
at the bottom of the ocean,
I’m asking you to validate
the fact that I am becoming the decaying waters
and swallowing the boat,
because you made me
this way - and I?

I am somewhere in the picture, too.

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.)

we are insignificant lovers, darling,
isn’t that so wonderful? the way
you wear my shirt in bed won’t change
the world, but i have never felt so safe
than when you are drifting between awake
and asleep, incoherent and warm,
all arms and legs and dreams.
you are the mornings, and sunlight
leaks onto your face, the gold
that i can never spend, and when you
smile the day begins, if only for me.

there’s nowhere i’d rather be, no state
i would rather experience other than
the liminality of you. you ask for five
more minutes in bed and how can i deny
you? not when your voice is so soft
and sounds like something i could fall
asleep (or in love) to. i’ve been waiting
for my life to begin for so long
and now i am letting it. i am letting you
in and i am no longer scared to live.

you are the well-deserved afternoon naps,
the falling-into-bed-exhausted sleep.
our skin is soft and shower-wet,
and we let it dry against the cool bedroom air.
when you look at me, i wonder
how you see me, how you smile where i
would frown at my reflection. when it’s dark,
and we’ve watched the stars for long enough,
i’ll feel for your back under the duvet
and rest well.

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.

it's 8pm on a tuesday night and i'm drinking beer in the shower.
it's an art form, holding the thin neck like a perfect knot,
my fingers rough rope against the grit of the glass. i think of sea salt
and fishermen, and weaving upon weaving. my hands are not rough
in the way that fishermen's hands are rough. i bite the skin
around my nails and on the top of my fingers, and the water seeps
into the gaps and they bulge, like some percy shelley-esque bloated,
dead body.

it's just one beer, i tell myself, and i'm not drinking it to get drunk. no,
if i wanted to get drunk i'd have brought the bourbon or the wine
in here with me. i think my mouth just wants something to do other than beg. i kiss the lip and wonder how hard i would have to bite to see what shatters first; red blood on brown glass on rainwater-not-rainwater.

it's not just me in the house. i cried loudly before i slept last night, at five or six or whatever in the morning, and now the house has been christened with a ghost-echo that will die longer than it lived, far longer than my short, one year tenure in these rented student walls.
the others (who, might i say, are handling this whole mess of being alive with far more optimism and birthday cake than i am) are in the kitchen,
doing something with the tap. turning it off and on.
i don't think they mean for the shower to hum alongside,
my passivity the canvas for another action, and it's not like –
it's not like i mind. no, it's not like i mind.
the water is powerful, hot, then cool and slow, like rain instead of thunder, but my back is just my back.
which is to say, of course, that i'm not in here to get clean.
if i was in here to get clean, i wouldn't have brought that beer in with me.

but i digress:
i've been staring at the shampoo bottle for a while now
and my eyes have unfocused. of course. i might be the wrong way round
but i'm not stupid enough to wear my glasses in the shower.
the words are fuzzy but i can tell it's the special shampoo i bought
for when i bleached my hair in this same, small bathroom (when i tried to reclaim
a story that i'm never going to finish writing. about fishermen and people with teal hair and a hero who gets a hero's ending).
my hair is dark brown now, all over.
brown hair on brown glass on murky brown beer.
i'm supposed to think of a statement to leave you thinking about this,
about me,
but i haven't finished writing it yet.

putting an ending on something in progress feels too much like suicide.

I remember dying, Father.
I remember it like it was yesterday,
because it was,
when you told me to save them,
and I saved them,
and then they told me I was you,
and I’m confused.

I remember it well,
the pounding of nails into flesh,
tingling in my heart;
I love another,
who is not you,
but could be
given the right light,
and opportunity.

I remember the pain,
sinking across palms,
and I beg for you
not to create any more stigmata
for the fallen;
I thought you loved them.
They do not deserve this.

I remember believing in you,
unwavering faith,
and I remember having all of that
choked into my neck muscles,
spasming to gasp for air
like crucifixion, again,
and I remember you.

Father, I remember you.
Do not think for a Heavenly moment
that I can ever forget
the role you pushed me into.
I remember your burning angel-eyes
and I breathe silently at Passover
so that my presence is unknown.

I remember what I am supposed to do.
I am supposed to save them,
to save them,
isn’t that what you sent me here for?
Just another errand
on your long list of people to sacrifice,
but I am here to save them.
even if that means
using your blood for my resurrection.

They said it was only prisoners’ flesh
that lions want to eat,
and I’m remembering that, when you,
named as Mary,
bear down upon me and I gasp,
pleasure-filled and psalm-sick.

Who is Daniel?
And moreover - do we care?
You tell me to stop thinking so much,
and that’s alright,
I’ll stop thinking at all
if it pleases you.

It pleases me.

Your soft lips, arching,
pounding stones for those who have never sinned,
I beg you to embalm me this way forever,
and you laugh -
you tell me that nothing is permanent.

I am crying.

The den is filled with misty tomorrows,
and yesterdays that I will have to confess,
but I cannot bring myself
to bring testament to you,
and make real the blood from your Eve-flesh,
because if it is not real,
it is not mine.

Can I deal with that?

Oh, Daniel is knocking at my door, now.
I will let him in,
and this is goodbye
to the giant of my love
that cannot swell further in my heart
for fear of aneurysm
or breaking.

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.

my fingers stutter shattered sentences
when i'm like this. when i'm like this,
i'm shrink plastic and the world is an oven; or –
when i'm like this, i'm every unsatisfying
leaf that never crunched underfoot. i'm the spitting
shivering underdog who never made it out of the gate.
i'm pluto between the years 2006 and the end of the world.
when i'm like this, the world is like that,
meaning that the world is my childhood. the world
is the bloated feeling of a stomach full of lukewarm tap water.
the world is a surprise party wrapped up straitjacket-tight
and just a day too early.

when i'm like this, i'm always stepping on the cracks
in the pavement. the cracks, the world says, will open up
and swallow me into the belly of the beast.

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?

I’m feeling the air on the thick of my tongue,
and it’s summertime -
it’s summertime, now, and I think it’s a Sunday,
so I’m going to smoke that Cuban cigar
in the quiet, against the sunlight.

I’m going to wait until the sun comes down,
and then the light is all mine to drink in;
not one, but millions of stars share the glory.
I’m blinking it in, like this will be forever,
and there’s something in me that wonders
why I’ve waited so long to live.
Why I always let the light filter
through stained glass,
and why I believed them when they told me
that staring directly at the sun
would blind me in forgiveness.

Why does forgiveness have to hurt?

I’m wondering if I can ever forgive myself
by kissing switchblades
and licking the flames from votive candles,
or if there must be an easier way
to do all of this.
But if I cling too much to what happiness could be,
then I’ll never know how to forgive myself
for not having it sooner;
they want me to live a good life,
but I am steeped in sin
and waiting to burn.

This - this thing -
is far too much about what they want.
Far too much against
Cuban cigars and Sunday mornings
in bed, and grabbing hold of life
with fists and hair and saying
“take this, all of you,
and roll with it.”

I’m paving my own narrative,
looking at barefoot beachfront walks
like altars, and I know -
I ate the fruit, and now I know,
that a long line of commercialism
will fool you into thinking
that the light at the end of the tunnel
means something.

Clenching my lies within my fists
I stand prominent,
forcing the pressure of weightlessness
onto them until they crack;
opening up like wounds,
drenching the tips of my fingers
in venom and lava.

Their acid burn
seeps into the cuts in my skin
from times I have fought this before;
an unyielding inevitability
soaks the marrow of my bones
as I stand – defender and defenceless,
my fists still closed, un-bloomed.

Primed to punch, my stance is unyielding,
as if my body and throat are at war
between the truth and the other;
head lolling in despair
at who I have become
and what I am holding.

The way out is the way in
and I’m looping,
rolling down a hill in a memorial summer,
catching myself at the bottom
and finding it to be the ash-sky;
continually Catherine-wheeling
through remnants of other iterations
of this inevitability.
We always end up here.
We always end up
here.

Do we want to make it out of this alive?
Was that ever the plan? –
When we called each other beautiful,
and our friends laughed
because we were perfect for each other
but I wasn’t made for you.

Do you want me to live through this?
Even after all of this,
being read, being spoken,
I do not understand the role I seem to play.

Can you shed some light on my purpose?
Right now, it seems,
I’m only good to tell you stories
from another girl
who doesn’t hold a knife to her hair
in the drunken night-time.

Is there still something to cut off?
Look at me, asking you,
shouting up to the pedestal
I built, myself.
What would you like for breakfast?
What sacrifice would you like today?
Don’t say ‘nothing’;
it seems I am only good
to cook you blood-pudding
and pretend that I am talking
to someone singular.

Will you take another hit? –
Or is this one all mine?
It’s another Tuesday afternoon,
again, and we’re in the
limelight milk-light
and you’re somehow every girl
I’ve ever loved
but I don’t want to kiss you
because you, and she, and I
are not as real as the stories
I tell.

Take off your hands
like a shop window mannequin
and give them to me;
let me imagine that it’s you
sleeping on the other side of the bed.

Your hands
and mine.

Let me let you
feel the bridge of my nose
and run your hands over
the scar on my elbow,
the mole on my chin
to make it yours
even when I’m holding you holding me.

Tell me it’ll always be this easy;
this gentle;
this much led by the me
that’s leading you.
Let me use your hands
to call you
so I can use your *******
to tell you that I hate it
when you don’t answer.

Make your hands puppet master
and let me hold them;
as they contort me
into however I think they think
they want me to be.

And then let them
fall into bed with me
as I sleep,
holding your cold hand
in a double bed;
painfully aware
of the blistering, dry
burn of always being
alone.