4.30am and she is trying to speak to god like she believes he exists.
Bleeds like she is trying to speak to the stars,
when all she wants is to get further lost in herself,
I wish this girl was mine but she's not.
I can see his hands now on the back of her neck, contrasting skin
illuminating
the angle at which she holds her head
like she's dancing,
she's not.
He's not even there.
I have never been jealous like this before
but I can see it in the way she looks at me
that he is not exactly what she wants
like I was.
Maybe I should give her a name:
tree trunks trembling towards the ground like they're trying to get back home;
flowers thriving on the dirt made from your mother's bones;
the song I still sing to myself every time I am terrified of the lights turned out;
my names are too long. I have too many words written about her.
I couldn't even tell you about a reflection in her eyes without writing a ******* poem about it.
I just want her to dance,
to dance with me like I am a ghost and she is the last person left on this earth,
like a storm wrapping itself entirely around a streetlight,
like cracked eggs leaking what could have been into the dust,
her telling me I came on too strong,
too soon
too fast.
I just didn't want to lie to her.
She absorbed all my blood sugar,
left me shaking and sour,
"just let me sleep all night",
I will pretend I'm simply exhausted,
let me try and act like this didn't happen,
let me attempt to act normal around you,
let's pretend you didn't ***** all those lies on me
after you kicked me to the ground.
At least I was honest.
I don't think about you like I used to,
but when the rain is tapping my window like it wants to come inside and make a friend,
it is only masking the glaring silences you forgot to take with you
when you left me that night.
At least I was honest.
But I never told her that she was my church,
my last crumpled cigarette stuffed into my backpack whispering:
"they'll never find you here,"
praying to you that we would be something more,
like midnight movies,
4am ballrooms,
ringing ears after a concert,
ringing
like I heard you,
ringing through telephone lines after you left me,
you only ever called after you forgot it was my birthday.
You only cared when it was convenient,
when we were away from prying eyes,
when he was nowhere to be found,
do not try and deny it,
I am not stupid you know.
I am not blessed with numbers,
I do not know anything about the meaning of life,
or the behaviour of protons,
but I can mix colours and take a good photo
and
sometimes I write,
I still don't know what a poet is though.
I can only see that she moves like these words write themselves,
and she speaks like music bleeding through a closed window,
I swear I am still cracked.
The day that I left she never even said goodbye,
though I still have tattoos left from the tips of her fingers on those heavy handed nights,
I swear,
they didn't even sting.

If I could find a way to capture
the exact essence of you,
believe me I would.
And if I could find a way to modify the base pair sequences
which code my DNA
so that I would be
the person you wanted,
believe me I would.
But I cannot portray you,
because I do not know exactly what you are
or who you are,
or why you are.
And I cannot be the person
you wish that I would be,
because you will not let me inside the bullet proof shell
of your head.
So I will let it be enough, watching you
strut around streets pretending that these things
are really all you want,
when you are, in reality, almost dreaming of beaches and cliffs
and people
who I have never met
and who I will never be,
and I suppose
I will just have to pretend to be okay with that.

I was shy, my crooked-teeth, glowing front didn't fool anybody.
I was the type of awkward that made people run.
You were a typewriter: an electric storm sewing letters together,
ornate, pretending your weaving was something
that could ever be taught.
You wrote about all my wrongs.
Asked me to meet your mother.
Told me my drinks were too sweet, you were surprised I had ever
been drunk I wrote something cliche,
like how no sugar could ever match up to your coffee stained tongue,
to me you were so sweet.
I never liked poetry that rhymed.
I wanted to be someone without talking to other people,
hoped everyone would read me like a trans-Atlantic love letter,
understand every back street tragedy,
I am still learning that nobody
could ever memorise me like a paragraph. I am a closed museum.
I am breathing.
Once, I was a bundle, placed on my mother's chest.
She told me when I was born I didn't even cry,
just looked at the world like I'd been here before,
already figured her out. Carefree breathing.
She said she'd never seen anything so small
but so alive.
Sometimes I wonder if I've grown down.
I cry too much.
When I was eight my mother told me it was because I have sensitive skin..
I think about why we don't remember birth,
there are more traumatic things that happen than becoming alive.
My mother carried me nine months,
I wish I knew her reaction when she realised she was having a baby alone,
when I was six weeks old she flew us 8981 miles from my birthplace of Perth
to her childhood, a suburban, three bedroom house.
She bought a return ticket. Eighteen years on she still carries that
yellowed british airways paper around with her in her purse.
They left her job open for years.
I stopped asking if she missed the heat.
I stopped asking about half of my heritage,
I say the most convincing thing when people ask now,
I don't think I mind.
I haven't cried for months.
I grew up where the city begun to fall in love with the countryside
there was nature pulling itself out of the concrete,
like ignoring love hurts could make it any more feasible.
There was a girl, she never used to knock on my unlocked fire door,
just walked straight in every time, like she was a wildfire,
made me feel triumphant inside,
I wonder even now if that is how plant shoots feel when they break through the earth
praying upwards to the sun,
like she isn't a pin-*****,
do you think the sun knows how relevant she is,
just like some of us can't grasp how irrelevant we all are?
Have you ever thought about how many things are in existence that we can't see?
The distances can only be measured in time,
time is just a concept. We are more than numbers.
But nothing was built for us.
I wonder
if when my mother held her recycled baby against her reusable chest
if she realised that
either of us could have ever come to this.

I watch tv with the sound turned off just so I don't have to hear anything that reminds me of you anymore.
Chest down, I'm trapped against the ceiling and I'm flirting with the impossibility that limbs so heavy could take me this high.
Neither of us know what day it is, one of those afternoons before December that never really rises and I am keeping the lights on just so I can promise myself that you're not really here.
You see, I get the usual 'I can't breathe without you around', but I can't float, even with you standing over me.
I lead-lined my lungs with both our insecurities, tied my tongue so that I can only make my eyes speak. I can't cope with mourning the lost words that hang in the air everywhere other people have been and I choke on you every time I speak.
And my bones break like insecure scaffolding every time I stand,
they tell me I weighed myself down with all these useless metaphors,
that they never had all four feet on the ground.
You pushed me off balance. My joints could never hold out long enough to hold the both of us up. My bones are like the wood that didn't get enough water:
I break under your touch. I crack when you speak.
You're still telling me you're leaving.

I wrote you eight poems. They tasted like ground-up cinnamon.
The lights came, I told them I had nothing else to write.
When they laughed, my bones split with them.
There were brambles at the bottom of our garden, they held their heat like the arms they scratched.
They grew back every time like they were reminding us that nothing else could exist in the chemicals.
The chemicals said no.
My skin told me I didn't want to be there. My hands ached.
I held my breath for the length of the factory. I held my breath every first time you touched me.
When we turned the corner in the dark your indicator flashing against the wall made me feel like flying. I still feel that when I don't think about it.
There is a hole near the top corner of the front door. I leave the back window unlocked. Maybe you will find a way in. Maybe you are still trying.
I held my breath for you.

there was a fire burning in us

we put it out with alcohol and cigarettes

we put it out with late nights

and *** fights

we put it out with our bodies making love under starlight

oh and how that fire burned

while we yearned

for forbidden things our parents never tell.

there was a fire burning in us, and we walked through hell.

there was a fire burning,

in our eyes you saw it glimmering

ya we threw up,

but we grew up,

and now the fire’s only simmering.

The sun is rising and
I can't sleep because
A broken person is
How you left me
And, empty now
I sit alone
Longing for the days
When I called you
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