an offering of green

cream avocado meat

from lemon rind hands

which sour and wrinkle my fingers when i try to hold them.

“welcome home. 

I love you.
have we met?”

the lick of the puppy tongue

on my skin like this:

I’m only warm when I’m treated warmly --
the fizzy boil of hot adrenaline

up and down my spine
like 
it’s desperately never felt the heat before,

is not a kind of warmth.

hungry fingers here on my vertebrae
finding out where the loose links are
- is not an adventure.
it smells of cold food, or stale fire,
the way something smells when it isn’t quite right

isn’t quite for consumption --
-- 
but almost

a gold-leaf paper bowl – no –

a lime flavoured bubblegum.
here: ******* a bubble, wince,

and I’ll pop it for you.

your eyes ache and squeeze when you eat sour sweets

because they’re almost something delicious,

but depriving, just

inside this cake there is sour cherry jam:

you hold out your sandpaper fist
and I don’t know whether it means
“this is the shape of a heart”

or if dinner just went cold

the walls of hospitals hear more prayers than the walls of churches
and it is this that tells me that prayer is not about god
but prayer is about sadness

and sadness is a sin

sadness is a sin
because i saw it in the face of my sister
6 levels on the coma scale, powdered nose, and pipes in her wrists she answered when asked about her drug habits
“when i was twelve my dad left home
and since then i felt i never really had a parent”
and how they replied that perhaps her baby daughter was going to be taken away within the week;
2 weeks old
and without a father.

sadness is a sin
because i heard it from the mouth of the cop who took my sixteen year old boy away
a knife buried 4 inches into in his thigh
from emotional abuse and torment, he was
asked to portray resentment for the public display
and his mother, the culprit and also the victim of psychological discontent
was given a sympathetic nod and he
was given a bandage
which of course relieved every ounce of pain in them both
as she drove him back home in silence, both bleary eyed in the desperate quiet
to where the knives were

sadness is a sin
because i touched it in my mother
as my fingers traced the scar on her forearm where she’d been
smashed through a glass door by a man who wanted her soul
and didn’t know how to get to it,
who was taught the best way into something you can’t open
is to destroy it whole.
i heard it in the way she couldn’t pronounce “****”
and in the way she couldn’t pronounce his name
and the way that she recalled the lawyer’s response as
“how short was your skirt?”
not “how sharp are your weapons?”

sadness is a sin
and i know this because when i entered the doctors asking for a mental health check
for my post-traumatic stress
they told me i was in for a skin inspection, on my thighs, where i’d taken out
dissociative pain and the unease of watching a woman i love tear herself apart in front of me
from a crippling addiction.
and like her, the tension much like an elastic band causes me to spring back together with blood on my hands
and i explain
“it is my own blood, i am not starting a war, i just want to be happy”
but the doctor sees a **** and he is repulsed
and like an eye he won’t look at it until i make it prettier for him
and then he leaves me behind in the room
like many others in the past
to put my clothes back on;
as if it were nothing to close a door.

sadness is a sin
because people are afraid of that which they cannot understand
or fix
and so the prayers on the walls of hospital wards
aren’t asking for god at all
they’re asking for temporary forgiveness for a sin they didn’t mean to commit
one of ignorance
and indulgence
and for the fleeting amount of time wasted in between when someone is
living
and when someone is dying.
it is rejected, vilified, untended to because you can’t touch it, you can’t point at it and say
“i want this gone”
so, prodding at material signs of weakness and calling it the problem we’ve covered up the fact that
much more work needs to be done
though we’re running out of tools, and worse, we don’t know what tool we needed to start with
we’re panicked to the point where
darkness is reduced to a lack of light.
because an addict is not on a high
and **** is not provoked
one is not without home from desire of discomfort
and the razor is not the enemy;
but the darkness is.
the hole.
and you’re filling it, too,
you’ve just been too busy weeping by the side of death beds
and living bodies, eating too many pastries and watching too much television
humming quietly to yourself to fill the silence
and too busy preying
to Gods you’ve never seen
to realise it
yet

smaller than anything, no talk or touch
on the inside you’re growing a rose bush, a thorn in your side
i know this, because i helped grow it there.
it is dying now. you forgot to look after it, its drying up in your gut
hardly red at all
black and tarred and all *******.
i lean in and i ask it sadly  “do you need some help?”
but it does not reply, and you are sleeping though
you do not reply anyway.
your skin tells me that you are warm, alive, but by the way you’re breathing
on my shoulder, and the nicotine stains in-between your fingers loose across your cheek
tell me that you have never felt the warm at all.
and then maybe i pull you closer
to keep you from freezing over like the iceberg
bodies fit like jigsaws when they are in love but ours do not fit at all and the bits in between where my skin lacks your’s make me want to arch and die in-between the white.
and in my frail effort, in your limpness, pale, it occurs to me that
you are the white, the iceberg
half-asleep with you my eyes are closed but even when they weren’t
i couldn’t see you anyway
you are bigger than anything i’d imagined.

i haven’t felt anything in 7 weeks and 1 day and if i woke you up i think i might cry.

the cold killed the rosebush and where my palms try desperately to hug your stomach
im crying, saying
*i cannot bring the sunshine back to you
i cannot bring the sunshine back to you

somehow the yellow of the streetlamp
doesn't make you look so sad today

i check nearby in a shop window whether my make up is running:
accidental crying, again, or maybe the rain like pathetic fallacy wanted me to look weak, over emotive, and pathetic, like i usually do

but the street lamp drowns it out and blinds us both anyway
so i guess it wouldn't matter, but i don't look so sad today

what made the sunshine stream from my face again, that blinded you from seeing me properly
that stopped me from seeing you biting your tongue.
maybe the colour of the street lamp is tinted slightly warmer than it should be, and so i am disillusioned.

or maybe it wasn't the streetlamp's fault at all when we looked sad and now when we don't
maybe it was our own

i definitely told you at the right time

cold new lips i kissed you at the right time

two years on and i kissed the same place so many times

i lost count of how happy it made me.

i swallowed your tears in so many different lights

a waltzer of a moment, i heard **** jagger

i heard the melody of mens voices, i heard every key and every shift

dazzled and dizzy in light and dark and in mud and rain and

smudgy warmth

i heard a buzz so loud it turned into vision

and everything was a spinning top

i heard everything i’d ever heard and seen everything i’d ever seen

and i held your hand like i was about to get pulled away any second

in the avalanche

i saw your beautiful important face so many times

shouting at the sea, in the palm of my hand, in grass

in pillow, on the back of everybody i ever meet

in love i licked all the salt away every time

i couldn’t tell whether it was the rain or the sea spray or tears

and i thought about this every time we kissed

and i thought about how it didn’t matter to me at all

we lived in an electric moment that fizzled ultraviolet for half a second

and i painted that second

so i could prove to everybody i met

that it happened

that this is kind of how it looked

to be on the tip of a hurricane looking down at the chaos

and being happy just for the excuse

to hold hands

when they tell me that I am a star
and when they tell me that I’m bigger on the inside, that I remind them of the universe
my eyes are planets and my skin is stardust
I’m a home
I’m the adventure
I’m spine to the book
I’m the book itself
I am made of something else entirely, but I am never human.

bright green ocean eyes, I look back at you, when you look at me
desperately, are there galaxies on my tongue, when we kiss?
beneath the sand paper shell on my lips, too much coffee, too many drunken cigarettes. is it that which keeps the cosmic dust under my eyes like dark rings
orbiting nothing?
resting where I’m bruised from a lack of sleep and an overdose of citalopram?
is there a solar system sitting in the space behind the back of my knee
when I’m lying face down in the bath, empty and hardly warm at all,
staying up until 4 am screaming whilst I reorganise myself, the universe of chaos that I am
dusting the stars of the sorrows they burden as you point up to exclaim how beautiful they are.

I have been given too much responsibility here
the stars light the night sky, but see
who’s filling the space in between? tiny and distant, too small to properly distinguish, I must be drowning in the blackness
but in the morning when I am gone I can no longer see, my use is diminished and you cannot see me, anymore
this is when I close my eyes and I see the darkness I’m supposed to avoid, the darkness you ignore, and I try to whisper to the other stars
“be the night”
but they are tired, too.
they are awake at 4 am weeping into the emptiness and their mother, far away, hums quietly like a motorway
but her voice, calm, she says to us “be the abyss,
be that which engulfs,
make them uncomfortable with how big you are, how loud, how infinite.
fill the spaces they told you not to fill, the spaces which one cannot ignore.”
and then there is a light. but not a starlight.

I am not extraterrestial
I am the space in between your words
I am not the keys by the door
or the opening of eyelids
I am the wind that carries the balloon and the static in-between fingertips
I am neither stars nor hurricanes, I do not sit amongst satellites
but I am the stillness that carries them, and the storm, and i let it ride.
I am not bad, but I sure as hell am not good, and
I am not made of stars.
I am the darkness.
and when you have been gazing up at me, you have misjudged in which place to look
because you see a tiny part of what I am, and then you tell me that I am beautiful.

I am sickly and real like the foolishness of life and I don’t scratch at the surface of the jar like I was a caged butterfly
but I smash the jar to pieces from above so my palms are as rough as yours
I am dangerous and boring in equal measure and you overcomplicate me so you have something to look at
because I am not a science, I am not your prose, I am not an equation and I certainly
am not for you to work out at all
and, my love, neither are the stars.
for you still cannot dictate to a universe no matter how many times you insist it startles you
because eventually it will **** you and as you have told me before 
nothing which is beautiful does that which is ugly.

I am made of skin and bone and blood I will one day rot away, but for now I am warm
and that is fair, and my skin is thick, and my hair is soft
and I am kind.
but I am also ******, my thoughts often black, my hands red, I bruise blue.
I am callous and violent and though I am dangerous I do not hold my sword to fight you in battle. I hold the sword for myself. 

and that much is true of the stars and I
that we burn bright. colossal, dangerous, lovely, lonely.
and you cannot tell a star how to shine
and you cannot tell me how to sit, softly
so merely we, the stars and I, are friends.
I am not it, it not me, and
I am not a metaphor, I am not a poem, I am not the universe at all
I am a woman.
and that is plenty enough.

you, my clumsy dear
my wide eyed blanket
my sleepy fox
my sandy shore
i love you

love you like cold wet macadamia hair
i love you like a boot itch
love you like the cucumber antidote
like licking you off my fingers and then sticking them down my throat
i love you like a caged and malting tiger
like i’m using this muzzle
to eat or kiss or both at once
love you like you love the blues
and how I just learned to sing

damien rice makes me think about you
damien rice sang my depression to sleep

today he told me
"you don’t love him at all anymore"
and i agreed

shiny boy
it’s never my turn
to be with you.
sometimes it is
and when it is
the seconds are so full i get sick
you’re my own homemade chocolate cake
and i purge you by sticking my fingers down my throat and throwing you up
all over the soft
get it out properly this time
come on you can do it, without whispering
get you out of me. take your hands
and put them down my throat
and then get out of me
get the hell out of me
i’ll 
be clean
lose a stone
lay naked
you’re 
either poisonous to me
or you make me sick to my core
whichever one it is
i can’t stand to be around you, anymore

i haven’t seen my doctor in a long time
i don’t know if i need to but in just in case
for old times sake
i still take my medicine
i still take my medicine

when i outstretch my arms to you
from this finger, right out                                      




                   ­                                             here







                   to this finger
                      right out







here






and i say
“this is how much i love you”
i mean to say
“look at all this space i’m taking up —
this is the only space i’ll ever be able to take up, in fact.
just look at it. this 1.7 meter radius which
perceives — envelops — all this life
inside of it.
big warm house
me with my arms stretched out, saying:
from here — to here —
big warm house with all this fire in it.
big warm house with all this light in it,
big door open wide to let more in.
everything i ever touch
everything i make
everything i read, love, devour
each peach plum and pear
each kiss
forehead ones
big strawberry picnic ones
little dog snout ones
ones i do without lips at all:
looking at you
in your cool
orange shade magic
making me fizzy, for example.
little red cheek from crying, from kissing, from blushing
little duck swimming in
soda water.
all of that
all of this
fits within this 1.7 meter hug
and with it
from this finger
to this finger
i mean to say

“hello, please come in,
welcome home”

i wanted the last thing I ever said to you to be
"nothing lasts forever
I think that is the worst shame"

but it wasn’t
instead it was “I’ll see you in a few weeks”

which now, in my sad dress
and in my 10th cup of coffee
I suppose said everything I was going to
with more eloquence and conviction
than words could ever manage

I saw the in-between of monday and tuesday
and it frowned at me for trespassing.
I was in the ocean though I did not swim, I caught the tide on my lips
and I waited there for it to one day drag you in again with the pebbles.
except
you never came to visit the sea again, I know because I waited
and at 2pm, in protest and in sadness
I drowned a boy, to prove I was powerful, too.
I put myself in the clouds
but you did not look up
and so I made it rain.
and then I watched as your hair got wet
and suddenly I was very sad
that the only way I could touch you was from so far away
and you did not want me there.
and then I put myself in your garden, and I tried to grow
but I was strange, I was pale, and I was dark and so I turned into nettles
and I hurt you every time we touched.
so I saw the meadows you stayed in when you were a child and I copied them to give you a sense of comfort
a mother’s fore-head kiss
I let my nettles die and I was a daisy nearby and I danced to get your attention, to prove to you
that daisies could grow where nettles did too.
but you did not pick me
I was a tiny flower and my colours were not bright enough
I was not a meadow; I was not a mother; I was only a metaphor
in a book you didn’t want to read.
and so I admired the things you did want:
sugar in your coffee
white bread and sleep. and
the shoulder which carried a flick of your hair.
made me angry like the curve of your spine; I could not own it like I had owned the ocean
and I had owned the sky
and I had owned nature
and it tortured me to know that with everything I had become it was not enough to put my hand on your stomach
and to tell you I love you.
the sky could not talk, I could not move as a daisy, I hurt relentlessly
and one day when I watched your eyelids as you were sleeping
it occurred to me that it was often the case that beauty was not to be touched, or to be owned
and so I left.
and quietly, calmly
without saying a word,
without owning anything
I loved you in silence.
still do.

when i tell you how i have come to hate you
i mean it with the same conviction now
as ever i did when we kissed under blankets and stars
and never pressure

if she leaves you the day before your birthday
or on New Years Eve

start each tomorrow like this:
someone who was left, yes,
but someone
who starts the new year anyway

there are two ways to grow older:
to let time take you
and to
take
time