I see two paths,
two lives for myself -
with him I am cast into
an ocean of untamed feeling,
lost to reason,
and floating off into an unseeable future.
With the other, I am held fast,
held close by his love
and burrowed deep into the earth;
an old tree that twists faithfully
growing strong and aging gently
across the planes of a lifetime.
How am I to love -
who am I to be, to choose,
to sink into.
I feel the pull of his tumultuous waves
and the roots that simultaneously
bind me to the earthly warmth
of another kind of man.

I lay my hands over the rot
concealed within my belly
and imagine instead
I am ripe with a husband's love,
feeling for the beating warmth
of a life beginning inside
my desolate womb.
I await constantly
the trial of my womanly worth;
this man may be my judge.

©Isobel G.     15.02.2022

The way your acoustic fingers
drum over my skin;
I'm slick with your rhythm.
My heart beats a steady chord
in harmony with your sway,
our hips like reeds moving
swiftly with the wind
to the penultimate crescendo.

It's so easy to romanticize,
slipping on that cloak
of self-loathing;
Reminiscing on those failed dalliance days.
You make me think of what might be
If I could have been someone else,
making me lonely for a rewind
back to before my trajectory slid.

I'm just one of those
tortured people
who leaves their mind on
like a light.

How many people have I known;
taking them into me,
speaking that universal, ancient language
of intimate bodies.
All the beds I've slept in,
all the hands that have felt me move
as I dance the age old dance.

There's no fire to be started
with paper matches,
but the real thing
sets the whole house alight.
It all goes up in smoke;
burning up your books
and shattering your windows,
so that your safe space
is no more.

I have to make myself empty;
starve myself away.
I have to exist less,
I can't stand my existence.
I'm taking up too much space.

I cut myself to fit,
small enough for your shadow.
Make myself scarce before
you can give me the slip.
So there's less of me
to give
and less of me to take.

How small should I make myself
so that I'm not too much.

I want to take apart my skin
when the sun is too bright
and the world is too full
of people who will never know me.

I want to open the rivers
inside my wrists and empty them;
to pour myself away
the way I pour whisky
into my empty stomach,
and my hypothermic limbs
into stranger's beds.

I live my life on an island,
and my world is small.
I stand for hours on my shore,
waiting for the plates of the earth
to shift beneath me;
to carry me across the oceans
to continents that I will never reach
on my own.

I loved you in the timeless hours
of a dark city.
In the morning, who you were
had been replaced;
the people that we were together
no longer there.
All the memories erased, so you
could love somebody new.

But the shadow of you still lingers
incompletely;
wandering through my slideshow memories
like the glimpse of your eyes fleeting
round the carousel.
A flash under the cinema lights,
over before it began.

Now I'm on someone else's mind
but I'm still under you
in mine.

Black Chrysler.

White Ferrari.

Loaded barrel.

Dark corner.

Back seat.

Trigger, trigger.

Streetlight.

Unmade bed.

Bathroom floor.

Bang, bang.

Good girls sew their mouths shut.
We stitch our eyes closed
and turn down the volume
of our breathing.

Dressed up in stereotypes
with our limbs twisted
for a taste of something
of substance.

No trespass of emotion;
no warmth to expose us
to cold beds and cold hands.

Good girls sew their minds shut
and do as they're told.

I'm in love with the curl
of your upturned lips;
hanging on the rich, smokey timbre
of your breathy words.
I'm tracing all the lines of your fingerprints
with my eyes
as I sink into the imprint
of your kisses on my skin.

Your velvet kisses melt in my mouth
and the taste of your skin
enthralls my senses.
I'm heady on your fumes,
making my orbit around
the steadiness of your breaths.

I can't hold you tight enough;
grappling your body
as we intertwine.
I want to crush myself against you
so close that our atoms coalesce.

When I meet your eyes
Wagner's thundering drums
fill my ears in a burst;
the symphonic waves
wash over my whole body
as I trace your skin
and the strings soften
into a delicate prelude,
simmering in my chest
as I breathe you in.
It's almost unbearable,
but the building sensation
of the sweeping harmonies
is intoxicating, all-consuming,
just as the feeling of you against
my skin and the warmth of you
on my tongue; the vision of you
from above, utterly devours my senses.

I want to savor you like fine wine.
When I pull you close
it feels like I'm fireside,
and your embraces taste
like soft caramels dissolving on my tongue.

I feel my whole body soften
like wax when you hold me.
Your kisses set my skin on fire
and your eyes defibrillate my heart.

Your kisses drip like honey
down into my chest cavity.
My heart was missing
so you planted a seed;
showered it with your pure oxygen
to wrap vines around my lungs,
to match your arms around my chest
that hold me when the nights
are cold, but no longer lonely.

I'm memorising the subtleties
of your voice, the curve of your smile,
the warmth of you on my skin;
trying to put into words
the way everything fades around you
when I look into your eyes.

I look into other men's eyes
and see your flecked blue irises.
Every few faces has your smile
or the creases from around your lips.
Every strong, freckled shoulder
is your reincarnated skin.

I can't keep your fragments
from haunting me.

My back's against the wall
as I run razors over my legs
on the bathroom floor.
I'm thinking of you,
of your skin in the sunlight
and the way it would pierce
your dark eyes.

Close your eyes
and feel the weight;
like a winter coat
dragging you under water.

Close your eyes
and exhale.

In the stillness of moonlight,
punctuated by your steady exhale
and the brief swell of your chest,
I sunk into your warmth.
Encased in your arms,
I felt myself slipping into a feeling
that I had almost forgotten.
Like a child with her ear
pressed to the whorl of a seashell,
I lost myself in the drumming beneath your ribs.

You're still on my skin;
I can feel your imprint
on my flesh like a bruise.
I only hope your scent
doesn't leave a stain.

I feel time move around us
as I lie waiting in the dark room;
anticipating the moment
when the dust settles on your pillows
and you descend upon me.

I feel your teeth sink in
and your venom send shivers
racing over my skin.

You slip around my neck
and your hands
are a boa's constricting caress.

I'm on fire beneath you;
writhing, as you exhale fumes
straight into my burning lungs.

I want to be the kind of
******* your mind
when you sing in the shower
and your voice goes soft
thinking about my skin.

When you close your eyes,
your mind hazy with desire;
I want to be the one
on the tip of your tongue.

I live my life from one encounter to the next;
the way a ****** lives for his next pay check.
I need my fix and every moment in between is nothing,
every moment is empty until I'm beneath you.

It's a hollow love
but you give me something to hold on to,
and in the moments that you're mine
I'm not so alone.

I'm trembling, terrified;
that you'll look down sweetly
into my dark eyes
and hit a dead end.

Love is unattainable; this is no exaggeration.

It is simply the way of my generation to dismiss all sentimental feelings in the name of reputation, but for some poor, idealistic fools still enchanted by the forgotten practice of romantic gesture.

Sometimes I don't recognise
my own frayed edges; that pale
painted-faced girl slung on the
mirror's edge, the shadow I have become.

My blood runs cold
on the floor.

The icy sting shocks me into consciousness,
and the water weighs heavy on my lashes.
I blink away the soft blurred white
and the sink is bleached and
clinical as the water rushes
over it's slick, porcelain skin.
The coolness traces the blood-rush red
of my crippled fingers, and slowly, I crumble.

It's like stumbling through a fog:
I'm reaching desperately for anything,
but you can't hold on
when all you have is broken dreams
that collapse between your fingers.

The only time I feel human
is when my clothes are lying
on your floor.

Everybody wants to fall in love.

I just want to fall in love with you.

I cannot endure
this loveless
existence.

Nothing else can consume me
so completely, so terribly,
as our excruciating, infinite love.

Nobody wants to be with a girl
who sits up late at night in her room
dissecting disposable razors with her fingernails
just so she can feel.

I think of you and all of the memories
wash over me. Our intricate language of kisses,
our intimate habits, consume my thoughts.
I see the never-ending blue of your eyes
as they stare into mine, and my heart aches
with longing. I live every day in hope
of one more kiss, one last embrace.
Every breath is a wish for you
to be mine again, my only love.

Why do we destroy ourselves?

Why do we live?




Why do I love you.

I am trapped.
I am paralysed
by my own vile thoughts.

You hate me?
I hate myself.

I am in a room full of things.
Empty, lifeless things.

Which of these things is not like the others?

I'm not like anything.

I am overwhelmed
by this monotonous hell.

I broke one of my dad's razors.
I couldn't stand it anymore,
so I picked it apart with
my scissors and pulled away
the deformed plastic frame.
I stole the glimmering blade
and bent it like paper
between my fingers.
I was intoxicated by the
sight of it. I pressed it
tentatively against my skin,
like the feather light touch
of a lover, and caressed my
veins with it's edge.


I can't stop.

How do we survive this life?
*We don't, we all expire.

I'm clawing at your
skin; digging trenches
between your ribs.
We are destroying
each other. I am
gasping for air.

I turn my blind eyes up
to the sky and beg that
I might fade away.

I close my eyes every day
and hope for a gentle demise;
to rise above the clouds and
let my consciousness dissolve
into eternal nothingness.

I don't love you
just so you'll love me back.