We walked along
the flowered streets
and felt the gentle sunlight
dripping on our shoulders.
I think I smiled
for two days straight
and every laugh
was like the uncorking of champagne.
The buildings on either side of us were egg shell white
and just as delicate,
their slender bodies and effortless sophistication
somehow humble and full of history.
Every turn was met with unending beauty,
so much so that it made your eyes hurt
and your chest ache.
Winding streets slanted us in the right direction
and the smell of fresh bread, crepes
and something without a name
made our stomachs feel warm and full
and rumble too.
The dirtiest newsagents was a palace
and the grimiest bar the same,
the topsy turvy,
tipsy language in the air adding instant elegance
to the ***** walls,
the filth on the table tops somehow romantic.
We left the city
and it whispered goodbye,
through the car horns honking
and the dogs barking,
a melody most sublime.
We left the city
but it never left us.

This just isn't fair.
Not right.
I would rather have stayed alone, untouched, locked away,
than this.
Last night I thought a change had come.
I finally felt the heavens open and a beam of light settle on my face, as warming as the sun,
as warming as your hands on me.
But now it's cold.
My body that had gotten into a routine of no emotion, no feeling,
felt alive.
Electricity ran down my veins into my fingertips, my stomach filled with stars and
my lips
burnt.
I've been left scorched.
A burns victim with acid thrown in their face.
I've been scooped out like a pumpkin and left hollow.
I've been resuscitated and the plug pulled again.
Whatever sadness I felt before was
nothing
like this.

I was happy being unhappy.

I wish I could have stayed with you,
and felt how it is to be touched again.

She's left scorch marks on your fingertips
and circles round your eyes.
Hell to touch
but heaven to spend all night *******.
You see starlight in her hair
and rainbows in her smile.
She's with you
even when she isn't
and you miss her
even when she is.
I smile
to see you smiling
and I love her
for loving you.
I'd like to rub away your circles
with my thumbs
and **** away
your scorch marks.
I'd like you to see starlight in my hair
and rainbows in my smile,
have you clench your fist when I'm not there
and you need someone to hold.
But for now,
hold on to her tight.
For now,
love and be loved.
I know I'm not her.
I have thorns stuck in my hair
and barbed wire in my smile.
But when I think of you,
I can't help but smile anyway.

Sometimes,
usually when I've had a drink,
(or two),
I try to remember what it feels like to be kissed,
the hot, wet, desperate pressing of lips.
This is what it must be like for somebody with Alzheimer's disease.
Pretty much impossible.
I creak open my own crumbling, forgotten lips, lined with cobwebs, filled with bats.
I think of Miss Havisham.
"Can I get another?"

These ears are full to the brim,
overflowing,
with words of hatred,
complaints,
moans,
heartache.

I'm scared they're going to get into my blood stream
and poison my heart.
Why do I have to be the good listener?
Why do I have nothing to say?

So,
even though you pushed me,
even though you charmed me,
with your words,
your smile,
it's my fault
and I'm apologising,
for doing what you told me to.
But I'm not sorry at all.

Afternoons around the lake feeding the ducks,
throwing crusts from the bottom of a bag
that smells like home.
Scraping down a white wash hill
on a scarlet sledge,
fingers freezing in the spray.
Walking home from school with a lucky bag,
a smile
and a warm hand on my shoulder.
Watching football
with a belly for a bed,
shouting out whenever you did.
Clipping holly best I could
through a fist full of mitten,
from the special bush that we called ours.
Laughing at the funny men
arguing on the telly,
the ones with the bowler hat and the silly face.
Coming home crying
with a splinter in my foot,
saved by a steady hand, a kind word and a needle.
Finishing almost last
in the school fun run,
but still feeling like a winner hearing you cheer my name.
Being able to say
that you're my dad.

What did her mouth taste like?
Did she taste like me?
Was her breath sugary and hot,
her sighs cotton candy and sweet tea,
or did the guilt turn them sour
her spit bitter and spoilt?
Or had her tongue dragged you in
and swallowed you whole
allowing any of trace of me to be forgotten,
the guilt but an irritating side effect
of one ******* magical poison?

What did her lips feel like?
Did they feel like mine?
Were they firm,
but soft,
sedated,
but awake,
exciting and strange,
but completely home,
moving in shapes you didn't know how to fit inside,
talking in tongues you couldn't quite understand?
I bet you tried.
I bet you thought she was calling you all the things nobody had ever called you before -
but can't you remember all the times I called you perfect?
Usually when you were half asleep or I was half drunk,
me watching your face soften from mountain to sea with each passing breath,
you telling me to shush because it was only the drink talking.
But you were wrong;
I meant it.
Every dumb sappy thing I ever said,
I meant it.

Where did your hands go?
Did they slide inside her tshirt
and wrap around her waist,
holding on so tightly that your skin seemed to melt into hers,
like they used to do to me?
I still have the burn marks to prove it,
thick,
hot welts on my hips,
ugly and the most beautiful purple flowers I've ever seen.
Or were your hands wary and unsure of themselves,
shaken by such sudden starlight,
hanging awkwardly around your sides,
reaching out
and falling back
again
and again
and again?

Maybe if I'd have pressed my mouth against yours that bit harder,
slid my tongue along yours that little bit quicker,
eaten sugar lumps before we kissed,
you'd still be here.
Kiss me again
and I'm not letting go.
Kiss me again
and I'll choke you with honey.
Kiss me again,
kiss me again,
kiss me again.

I am so
full
of empty.
It pushes against my cracked rib cage,
constricts my lungs so that breathing hurts,
chokes my throat like the swallowing back of tears.
I want to **** the marrow out of life,
live out the cliches sang about in songs,
the ones written about in the dog eared paperbacks on my book shelf.
How can a heart be broken,
if there is nobody to break it?

If a picture speaks a thousand words,
then I've just written a novel.
I hope it has a happy ending.

Age is no big deal,
but eight years contains a lot -
well love, so do I.

You are the funniest person I have ever met.
Perhaps that's why when you're gone
everything around me feels colder
and more unbearable
than it has before.

You have made me happier than I have ever known.
So I'm not sure why recently
I've been waking up with a lump in my throat
and a heaviness in my limbs that causes me to crawl,
bent over,
broken.

I am so unbelievably scared.
Scared that you're going to turn round and tell me this was a mistake.
Scared that you're going to realise
that I'm not who you thought you wanted.

I don't know what else you could do
to make me feel any safer.
But I feel so vulnerable,
so incredibly close
to the edge of the cliff side
that I can hardly catch my breath
and I can feel the hands on my back
ready to push.

Is it too much to want for you to message me first?
Is it too much to want to feel your hand on my back?
Is it too much to hope you'll reach for me on a morning?
Am I stupid for being terrified that you lie awake at night
wishing I was her?
I wait for the day that you *** and say her name
instead of mine.

I thought we were sat on the same step,
even.
But now I feel myself looking up to you,
reaching out
and you don't even look down.

It's hard to tell
if it's really you,
speaking to me so venomously,
words coming from some pitch black place
buried deep inside.
Your eyes stare
as if they're desperate to close;
the lids sagging,
the pupils unseeing.
You flinch at my touch
and I'm scared to get too close.
I can't remember the last time you smiled.
Sighs sit heavy in the air
and land every now and again,
falling with such force that they
bruise skin
and break bones.
I very much want to shove you down under the duvet,
wrap you in the sheets,
away from the falling sky,
but I'm frightened to touch
and my arms don't seem able to hold enough of you;
and if you're under the bed clothes
then the sighs have nowhere to go,
so the space between the matress and the sheet hardens and turns to stone,
trapping you inside.
Maybe that's what you want -
but I'm selfish and I'd take any amount of cuts and bruises
over that.
So we sit,
side by side,
on top of the blanket,
and you can't seem to find the motivation to speak,
so I say enough words for the both of us
and I hate myself for every little thing that I say,
because it all means absolutely nothing
and you stopped listening a long time ago.
One night whilst we slept
you walked too far
and went away
and I'm not sure when you're coming back.
I'm sorry if I'm the reason you had to leave -
I should have seen your back starting to turn,
heard the footsteps within the silences.
I'd have grabbed your hand and never let go.
But I need you to know,
I'll be here waiting when you come back.
I'll listen with pure joy as your jaw swings open
and the weeks worth of unsaid words come pouring out,
lie in total bliss as your fingers remember how to sit between mine,
soak up the hard pump in my chest as your tongue finds the words "love", "I" and "you" and let's them spill into the breeze to linger a while
before they float straight through my smile
and into my throat.
I miss you
but I'll never get tired
and leave you lost.
I'm here,
and I know you will be soon, too.

I wish the world was
blind,
so that somebody could finally
see me.

They say
that food and water
are essential to survive
but I've drank all I can
and I've eaten till I'm full
and still
I feel like
a daisy
in winter

It feels as if a spinning top has been turned
and I'm stuck to it,
one side me a month ago
and who I am now on the other.
I was so happy.
I didn't realise before that such happiness existed,
or that I'd ever feel it.
But I did
and you let me
and I smiled so hard from morning till night that people were asking me if I was okay.
Okay??
I'd gotten all the way to then without ever really being okay,
but now I was
exactly right.
You woke parts of me up that I didn't even know were asleep,
helped me see things that before I'd ignored -
you made me feel like something worth wanting.
The mirror held me differently
so that I barely recognised my own reflection.
Did she always walk with her shoulders so far back,
stand with her head held so high up??
The second time I met you
I felt something physically change within me.
A sudden jolt somewhere behind my belly button,
the dislodging of stars and hot insides.
I wondered if you'd noticed,
if I'd changed on the outside too,
but you were too busy
tracing the tree trunk ring lines on my fingertips with your lips,
to notice.
Then I'm spinning
and spinning
and spinning,
and I'm grabbing hair
and tshirts that smell like you and home
and fingers that fit perfectly in mine
and stained with paint duvets that keep us safe
and door handles that lead to places I've never been before
and flowers and rain and mountains and oceans and forest
and I've landed somewhere hard and all too familiar
with the wind knocked right out of me,
like a boat being spat out of a storm.
Everything's dark.
Everything's cold.
Everything's exactly how it was before -
except,
now,
I know.
I know what could be
and who we could be
and who I could be
but now I'm stooped so low that I can't even see myself in the mirror,
people are asking me if I'm okay and my mouth is too sore to answer,
I can feel something just behind my belly button
but it hurts
and makes stomach acid swim up my throat.
I spit it out on pavement
and wonder if it burns.
I hate you so ******* much for doing this that it scares me.
You took me at my worst,
rolled me in your hands like clay till I was somebody new,
and then crushed it between your palms
so now I'm so broken it hurts to breathe
and bits of ***,
plate and vase,
rattle in my lungs
till I cough blood.
And just a month ago,
before you span the top,
I loved you so much it scared me
but now I don't know the difference.

I loved you too hard
and I loved you too quick.
Well,
if you want,
I can love you soft
and I can love you slow,
if that makes things better,
but I can't,
I'm sorry my dear,
not love you at all.

Most of the time,
your name stirs lethargically around my head,
muffled and not quite discernible
under the everyday sea of thought that laps
repetitively
against my skull.
But now and again
the tide turns
and you lurch out of it,
the single syllable crashing along with the tumultuous waves
against bone and flesh,
drowning tomorrow's shopping list
and that phone call I promised I'd make.
For a second,
I'm knocked out,
reeling,
struggling to contain the ocean -
you arrive so unexpectedly
and leave so messily,
frothing and spraying against the shore until all that's left
is a couple of red raw letters
and a memory or two.
I shake my head to get rid of the water
but everything still feels
cold
and
damp.
I miss the sun warmed lakes that used to reside in me
and the certainty they brought.
No turning tide
and no waves to knock me flying,
just a vast silky stillness that I could,
first,
dip a toe in to,
and then dissolve in,
fully submerged.
And I could scream your name until my lungs bled,
and hear the single ******* syllable echoed back at me,
again
and
again
each one different for each time I actually said it
(whispers under bed sheets, long moans that lasted long after you'd left)
and still not get sick of the short bluntness
of the four frank letters -
an unapologetic start and end
with a whisper in the middle.
But if I decided to put my lips to better use,
and let my blood stream soak you up instead,
all was quiet.
No slam of wave,
no spluttering sea -
and that silence,
full and happy,
said more than words ever could.

I feel
strange
like sunlight is trying to escape
through every crack in my body.
I don't know if this is happiness
but it sure isn't
sad.

The same thing
every day,
every,
day.

Tomorrow
the same thing,
every day,
every,
day.

Today
is yesterday,
tomorrow
and the same.

I turn on the news
Scroll all day on my phone
The first words on my tongue
Are how can this be so

I walk down the street
And see those without homes
I ask once again
How can this be so

I hear people talk
Of our great country so bold
But still the words on my tongue
Are how can be this so

The people with power
Spit on those down below
I cry out the words
How can this be so

Those around me are bleeding
While their pockets grow
I beg them to tell me
How can this be so

The whole world is on fire
And still we work to the bone
I get tired of asking
How can this be so

They would fall from their perch
If we all threw a stone
The system is broken
That I do know

Stone nightmares hang like bats off the edge of the
rain pocked buildings that line the street.
They were part of a hospital once, students in crisp,
white coats learnt the mysteries of life within their walls.
Echoes reverberate through the now empty skeletons,
of the scratching of pens,
coughs,
wails,
silence,
countless lives beginning and ending.
They're due to be torn down; bulldozers edge closer by the day,
cranes swing overhead,
drills shatter concrete.
Still, the gargoyles do their best.
I find comfort in their gnashing jaws and bottomless sockets -
amongst the structures popping out the ground like
worms during a storm,
they remain as a reminder of the past: an imprint, double exposure.
The old, shoulder to shoulder with the new,
a present memory.
Each day, as I draw the blind, I look to see what else has gone;
time marches on,
unrelenting,
mercilessly,
but the past, too, sinks in its claws -
a gargoyle on my shoulder.
What a glorious horror to call a friend.

Have you ever torn at your own flesh
in an attempt to be lighter?
Clawing at chunks of skin and life
to force a shape that isn't consecrated with shame
like the body that you're used to.
Have you ever looked at yourself in a mirror
and stared so long
with eyes squint
that you almost look like the girls in the magazines
on TV
described in novels
strutting down the runway
only to open up and see the same old you
soft
full
whole
and wish you could disappear
into the floor
forever?
Have you ever had a loved one say the very worst thing
you've always suspected?
The magic words that snap your heart in two
and confirm every doubt you've ever had
every bad thought about yourself
you've spent your whole life trying to swallow
into the stomach that has always been treated so cruelly.
Have you ever used every birthday wish
every dandelion blown in the wind
every 11:11
to pray
beg
plead
for a different person to live inside of?
I weep for my poor body
so bullied and bruised
and I swear to never wish
for another
ever
again.