On our quilted island I cling to you
As the waves of change lap at our toes
Before inevitability sweeps you away,
Our soft skin no longer touching;
An ill-fitting jigsaw with a missing piece.

We’re broken. Our bodies leak
Warm liquid from passion and
Lack of self-control.
And your hurting hurts me
So I comfort my murderer,
Cradling an angel in my arms
Who will soon transcend
Our transitory existence.

Your smile kills me,
As the lead in my chest slowly
Poisons my soul. It’s no apparition,
But a slow-burner, a malignant
Tumour, biding its time while
You wrench me to pieces.

The clock ticks by. No man
Should wait for time.
I count your breaths
And press myself ever closer
To your retreating figure
And beautiful imbalanced
Mind.

The ocean eyes close
And angel curls fade
Until I sit alone, a trembling
Country mouse lusting after
A cat who for a time put away
His claws and played with his
Dinner before devouring it
Whole.

To be adventurous is the key:
Don’t let them know you’ve never seen this menu.
Stumbling syllables of Spanish
So young, so naïve:
A stranger to tapas.

Who wants to be the main dish?
Convention, what society dictates.
We are a product of the capitalist system
Built on property and inheritance,
Trapped in monogamy.

But I know power when I see it
And I have none. You have all.
Or so I think.
Or so you think.
Willingly used.
Or so I convinced myself.

Feminist? Ha.
Another line.
“You can see the stars here.”
And yet like a cat to cream
I lap it up.

I know what’s good for me
And I don’t like it.
Doomed to choose you.
A masochistic mindset
With no bearing in reality.
Bambi slipping on ice towards you.
My downfall. My Achilles heel.
My beautiful Machiavellian fox.

Birdsong is absent from my ears,
There is neither giddiness nor eternal sunshine.
He still leaves a mark: the remnants of a slow
Strangulation which renders me numb.

I volunteered to be blind. I became a sacrificial
Lamb so consumed with my slaughterer that
I could not see his axe. And when he slit my throat
I begged for his forgiveness.

But you. You are no God.
You lack the confidence
Of vast privilege and arrogance
That disarmed me so suddenly.

You come not as a cat and I as a
Mouse. You come as a person,
Real and gentle with a goofy smile
And uneven stubble.

You laugh with your eyes. Or rather your face.
You laugh so completely that I feel your
Very soul is shaking with uncontrollable
Joy. And it is me on which they rest.

I am a lamb no more.
I stand on balanced scales.
I am adored.
And my revelation: I deserve this.

Inches apart in our nylon skin,
The distance electric.
You shudder in the corner of my eye
From centimetres to millimetres
But yet we do not touch.
A learning curve,
A lesson in self control
With no self involved.

Summer seems intangible
As if autumn’s been here for years.
The season becomes me:
A brown husk of what I used to be,
Falling away from you
Drifting gently downwards
Whilst you stand tall and proud,
An arching trunk.

But inside you’re rotten.
I think I always knew.
I could slice into your chest
And black would ooze
Like the infected sap
Of a diseased willow
Bending under the strain
Of your bitterness.

Yet to the eye you’re pleasant.
And your voice still rings the same
As when it rang in my ear
Under laboured breaths
Of lusts and desires.

I check myself again
And count the distance between us
Which spans across miles and eras
While you’re seated by my side.
Planes of existence
Separate dimensions
But somewhere the twain shall meet.
And I know that.

Sometimes I want to run.
This closeness is too much distance
For me to bear.
The world is my playground
But I only want your swing
And the motion does not cease,
I do not have the will to stop it.

So I keep the same rhythm
And maintain the distance
Across the inches between
Our nylon skin.

I only noticed it today.
It snuck up on me,
Ice breath on my nape
Made me shudder in my fleece.
My ears were deaf
To the crunching neath my feet.
The scene outside my fish bowl
Now a Battenberg of brown and green:
Bricks and trees against emerald grass,
With a smattering of fallen leaves.

I’d been so engrossed:
An intentional whirlwind
Pushing past all in my path.
The chill is appropriate.
The air lacks all its summer warmth.
And it’s hard. It bites at my fingertips
Like you do. Did.
No tense fits.

Ten years old again,
In a tree ten feet high again,
In scuffed shorts with tangled hair,
And with the boys I longed to be.

Sanctimonious girls in dresses and frills,
Boredom and constraint personified,
Stare up in incredulity
As I heave myself over mossy branches.

“Girls don’t climb trees.”
I do. I roll in mud, play racing games,
Never brush my hair.
“You’d be pretty if only you tried.”

You’d feel alive if only you tried.
The wind on my bare arms,
Dirt beneath fingernails,
Scrapes on my shins
Red and out of place
Like smudged lipstick
On children’s faces.

I’m not you. I’m me.
Boxes serve to keep us in,
Deliver us neatly packaged
To a society which cannot cope
With fluidity,
Individuality,
Uncertainty.
Boo!

She says those two misguided words:
“Make over”.
Impossible. One cannot start afresh.
This is the result of every waking moment,
Of every word heard and spoken,
Each memory joyous and painful,
A piece of art nineteen years in the making.
Not to be destroyed in one act of disguise.

Yet curiosity is my mistress.
She leads me to boundaries
I never knew existed.
Up goliath trees,
Into foreign beds,
To the brink of reality
In mind-bending worlds
Of parallels.

Like a mannequin, devoid of identity
I give my image to you
And you place yours jarringly
Onto my reticent body.

The obliging cheers
At my transformation
Into an eloquent femininity
Feel hollow and worthless.
I have done nothing of merit.

I totter like a toddler
Uncomfortable in my own skin.
I’m on stage, an act,
A project. Not a person.

How bizarre it feels
To wear a stranger’s façade
Of dresses and frills,
When you know you belong
To a different world
Of dirt, and treetops,
And freedom.