A school bag against a wall,
paint peeling at the edges, grass growing
upwards, clinging to life
between the cracks of the pavement.

A hand on the school bag
clenched around the handle,
fingers pressed together,
curled, and the nails press into the heel of the palm.
They leave dark little crescents.

A boy;
he curls tighter against the wall,
a shadow throws itself over the bruise on his chin.

The boy pulls his school bag towards him,
rests his bruise on it. His fingers grasp
at the worn weave of it.
Eyes close, wrinkle shut.
Obscure all other senses,
so hearing is the sharpest.

Not yet, not yet. No footsteps yet.

Breath shudders, suppressed
from flaring nostrils.
Barely escapes from his lungs,
that are squished against all his other organs,
in that winding space of a box
compressing all of his organs.

No footsteps, no footsteps yet.

Breathe, breathe.

Footsteps.

Laughter, slinking around the corner,
ahead of the approaching group.
It plunges into the taught space of his ears.
Echoes there.
Thumps against his skull.
Footsteps.

A school bag, pressed tight against a boy,
who wraps his person around it,
begs it to be a shield.

A hand, curling into a fist.
Footsteps.

A boy,
and three others.
Three grin,
one does not.
He can't see their teeth, his eyes are stuck tight.

"Look at this pathetic ****."
A slap of sole on pavement.
A boy stepping forward,
body harsh.

A flinch.

A laugh.

"******* hell, I can't even be bothered."

Footsteps.

A high, quiet sob.

Fingers on a schoolbag, loosen.

Hey,
I don't know your address.
I hope you never read this.
My therapist says that this is the way to get it all out of my head.
I was under the impression
that writing to someone
ended in burning the evidence.
That it was a kind of healing ritual.
Cleansed by the flames.
But no,
electronic almost-correspondence
appears to be the answer.
Here goes:


I got drunk today.
It seemed like the thing to do.

There was a couch,
it was grey.
Yeah, that one. The red wine stain
is still on the underside
of the cushion cover.

I prefer white.

I sat on the couch.
That's what they're for, couches,
so not much of a surprise, I guess.
But I don't know what to say,
I'm filling the void with
obvious facts.

I didn't even use a wine glass.
I filled a pink mug
full to the top.
Had to sip off the rim of it
so it didn't overflow as I carried it into the sitting room.
With the bottle of wine,
of course.

And I drank.

So I'm drunk now.
I keep laughing.
Of course, I'm not a happy drunk,
but everything is
wrong
anyway.
There's no one around to
tell me to shut up,
for one thing.

Not that I would mind
if there was.
It would fill the silence.

A silence punctuated with
pathetic little
giggles,
as I mentioned before.

I'm not sure what I'm laughing at.
Could be the man outside yelling at his car,
the alarm has been on for an hour now.
Maybe it's the fact
that you took the kettle with you,
and I haven't bought a new one.

I make tea in the microwave now.
Ridiculous.

I don't like you.
Not at all. I don't like the way
that you can't seem to
say anything of importance
and I don't like the way
that your absence
is like

it's like

being stabbed, but that's not enough I feel like I don't have the right to claim that kind of physical pain, I don't feel like I have the right to cry or even walk out my own front door for some reason, and for some reason I was not good enough for you even though neither of us tried our best because we thought we were enough but we weren't and I don't have the words to describe what you are to me, or what you were to me, only that grocery-store sushi used to be that pathetic thing you bought at past-eleven-pm-sometime and now I hate it so much that it's the only thing I can eat and I

I don't need you.

I don't. It's impossible for me to need you,
in the scientific, explainable
rational sense.

But explain it for me,
please.

I want to know your mother's maiden name and
The feel of my palms on your skin
And the taste of you
And know what your breaths against the back of my neck are.
I want your hand in my hand and to know the length that you prefer your fingernails at
I want
I want
I want.
I want to know what your eyelids feel like against your eyeballs and
How the blood in your heart works, feel it through your skin
I want to know every person you have ever touched
And their faces,
And the way your skin feels on their skin,
That friend of a friend that you shook hands with ten years ago in a Tuesday morning in September an it was cold out, so you were wearing fingerless gloves, and they'd forgotten their gloves on a bus three days ago and so their hands were bare and your fingertips just brushed their wrist -
I want that.
I want you in the morning, at the kitchen table, sleep-missed an bleary-eyed
And I want to know what you eat for breakfast and if you love bacon
Or if you're not that bothered
And I want to know
Who you were with last New Years
And the New Years before that
And every present you've ever received for Christmas
And every person you've kissed.
I want you to know my thoughts
And I want to know yours
And I want you.

Like swallowing a pill dry -

That was the collision of our two lives.
You fought your way down my throat
And numbed the areas of pain;
I couldn't feel it,

But you were in my system.
You could char me from the inside out
And I wouldn't know until the marks showed on my skin.

There is a man on a street corner
who is crying.
Stop.
Look back.
Repeat.

There is a man on a street corner
who is crying.
His fingers are craggy,
rough-knuckled,
bent and trembling.
They brush harshly at the tears.

Stop.
Look back.
Repeat.

A man passes.
The man on the street corner
who is crying.
Then a woman.
And then another man, a little boy in tow.
The boy plods along,
each step clumsily deliberate,
in his overalls.

Stop.
Look back.
Repeat.

"Daddy,"
the little boy says,
"why is that old man crying?"

"I don't know,"
the father says.
And they walk on.

"Hello," she said.
It was dark
and the concrete below our feet
was a plateau of acerbic teeth
snapping at us,
compelling us to stay in the ring of light
cast by a streetlamp.
Fear of the unknown keeping us right where we were
together.
Lesser of two evils.

I miss you now.
I didn't then.
In the orange tint of the streetlamp
in the cold.
It was impossible to miss you
so stuck in our ways
our daily comings and goings
our morning
"do-you-want-coffee?"
ritual, two mugs already down
before the question is finished being asked.
I couldn't see.
I couldn't - wouldn't -
look ahead. Into the dark.

Teeth gnashed as we waited for the words to stop.
I looked up at the sky,
somehow seeking comfort in the stars but
now I'm not sure if they were there.
One lone helicopter
piloted, I'm sure, buy someone.
But not a star,
not what I needed.
And I was invisible to them.

Not to you though.
And your words shuddered through my skin
to lodge, like a vicious choking noise
in my bones.
And I miss you now.
But I didn't then.
And when you left,
I couldn't follow,
for fear of the dark.
For fear of the unknown.

Almost-dry, sticky-wet mess of tears
in tracks that catch the light
over your cheek.

or
struggles for breath as
your mind caves in on itself
and boxes in your lungs.

or
a mind so rushed and roughed
and torn at the edges
that is shudders along at a speed too fast for even fingertips to brush


you're a mess, aren't you
a mess you're a mess god you're a mess
you're a mess (breathe) you're a mess

(you're a mess)

You see people
in great works of literature
comparing love
to fire.

We are the smoke,
that rises above the flame
in a plume that ravages a perfect sky
with clouds of ash,
and the scent of burning.

We disintegrate,
spreading into the atmosphere.
So many particles of us scatter,
that no one knows
where we start and where we begin.
We are one,
and we span across the sky,
so fused in our many parts that
we can never be separate entities again.

For the slimmest second,
encased in a thunder's
smack
against the rough skyline.
I could breathe.

That's the truth.
Honest-to-god,
hand-on-the-bible
Truth.


Rain.
Rain shimmering in silk strands
from the roof.
All that water
somehow keeping us insulated.

"You can't go home in this," I said.

You nodded.
A car's rearview lights
slid your face into focus.
Lit by a tinned kind of moonlight.
A shake-before-pouring
brand of brilliance.

You looked out the window.
"Mad *******," you said.
But your eyes said
maybe you could follow him
onto the road.

"Yeah, one hell of a storm."

Pursed lips.
A reluctant, just formed
twitch of a smile.


You asked if I didn't mind sharing the bed.

God, I wish that I could debate my answer for more
than a millionth of a second.


And when I woke up,
you, on the other side of the bed
fingers warm,
loose,
curled around my thumb.

That was it.
That one tiny point of contact,
it lit up the sky.

And I swear,
I could breathe.

You are lonely.
So am I.
Let's fill the space between our lips
with words for someone else.
Let's **** until our blood turns blue
from so many gasps for breath.

I'd never seen you cry before.
Odd, now -
odd that there was a time when
I didn't know how you looked
without reddened eyes.
Reddened lips,
parted.

We are left with this.
With, "I love you,"
with, "Yes, please, harder."

With, "God, perfect."
Echoing in the cold space
left by the window being thrown open.
You quit smoking -
(lie)
You just like your time alone -
(lie)
You like it with the lights off  -
(lie)

Padding around the flat,
at two in the morning.
So we can cry by ourself for a change.