When people hold a fish by the tail, and they watch it gasp and flail
I wonder if they feel the same pain in the chest that I do
Or if they feel that something inhuman is just not of the same worth
If this was as inevitable as the night who lies himself across the face of the earth

I see the blue swirls of the sky, the warmth playing in the breeze
All the rusty yellow vans, the water’s sleeping shipwrecks
The incomprehensible love in my dad’s eyes, the shop’s blue and white stripes
A swing set on the grass back home, a little dolphin around my neck

I saw something very beautiful, but it was small and fleeting
Like a baby bird’s life
Tumultuous and multicoloured as it descended from the trees above
Feathers cascading like confetti, my small tornado of love

You have to get high enough to feel its quivering wings
Be indifferent to your thoughts so you can hear it try to sing
Hold out your hands as you watch it misstep upon the twigs
To catch something dying, you first must believe it can live

You should know I hold a net when I meander through night
To raise it against the wind, hoping to catch all the tiny fish
The ones you couldn’t imagine alive, the ones you let free from your mind
I feel their scales on my skin, the blow of their breathless kiss

I laid down beneath the sun and saw them dart between the trees
They painted me a picture of life with fins of mint and tangerine
Why don’t you paint me; just paint me- I’m a fish being lifted into the mist
Held by a hook in the heart, my body eternally adrift

Crawl from beneath your city of moss and leaves, pry your body from earth’s sticky grasp
Show yourself to me, then lead me to your little green scene of destiny and power
I know electricity secretly flares up there, like flowers in supersonic bloom
Exploding with a deadly radiation that I know can give life in the exact same way it can ****
The grenades that fate threw at my dreams from there, I felt the hot sizzle
Something irks me about it, as I think they came from your hands

That folded face of petals which closes in the freezing night is terrifying in its truth
For at the heart of its layers, in the very centre of its icy pollen, words steadily type themselves into existence
One by one, tiny black letters imprint into an all-knowing mass of golden grain
You should know that I suspect you are the one who planted the seed
Amid a song of soft rain, you ripped some of your soul out and laid it in the ground
Distributed your frightening knowledge of everything all over the soil of my life

A raging tornado runs through my garden with the entire evening in its grasp
It’s everything I’ve ever imagined- what I would give to lose my head in its vicious dance
Your face sinks in there, warped by its silver turbulence, but it is beautiful
Although, you cry, with no corners to escape in and no window of clarity to see me through
If I reach in, your spirit might leak onto my own and paint me the palest of blues
Twirl me around you with pure divinity heavy on our hearts, and let me die whole with you.

My arms can only reach so far around my own body
The illusion of comfort dies with the flame of my candle
I drink tea because it almost feels like someone is touching me
This warmth, this sadness, this porcelain handle

It hardly wraps around my finger, hardly bears the pressure of my hands
It doesn’t know of the blue, dripping caves of emotion in which I stand
Though, I wonder if its chipping fragments are tears of their own intent
Sit on my ***** window sill, sleep on the small table by my bed

Be my golden flower, smiling as spring skips back to my door
Wink rosy flecks back to the sun, even when your painted blossoms are worn
My pink jewel, every good heart turned neon in your burning coal
An impossibly ripe strawberry, bright in the big vineyard of my soul

The secret clenched tightly to my chest, worlds etched between the burns and scars
Even when my shaky conscience inevitably collapses your own skies and stars
The one beautiful thing in my eyes when I seem to have not much left
Despite your manufactured past, nothing could replace what you represent

Just like that, winter died. All of the pain it caused me. The tears it squeezed out of me, and the times it wrung me dry like its dish cloth.
The months it had me writhing in pain with its icy little knife lunged in my side.
Funny, I never saw the end coming. I never sensed the sun’s approach, nor did I hear its distant calls of my name over the sleeping hills.
I suppose it wasn’t until my skin began to peel one night that I realised how closely it held me.
How it kissed me without me knowing and wrote its fiery words all over my skin.
In the dark, I now feel the hotness on the rise. In the black, I see the blinding ball in the sky.
I almost understand winter’s reasoning, but not quite.
Violence is not one of my desires, but I thought about strangling the cold.
Putting a blanket over its face until its bitter wind stammered mid air and fell to the ground like an injured bird.
Until its silver clouds dissipated in their suffocation, like cigarette smoke.
So the ever-present puddles in the grass finally seeped beneath the soil.