There once was a man
Whose livelihood was rubber.
He worked long and hard; and wore a tan,
He was a plantation tapper.

One night he packed,
In haste after a long day of toil.
Quickly had his belongings all sacked
Under light from a lantern that reeked of kerosene oil.

He was ready, flame from the lantern he did ****.
Overhead, the midnight moon brightly shone.
Bound his sack to the rack above the rear wheel,
Mounted his bicycle and soon he was gone.

The dirt trail leading back,
Undulating with gravel all strewn.
Almost treacherous this forgotten track
He only relied on light from the moon.

The air was cool just like any other,
But something was different about this night.
Squinting ahead he spotted a figure.
Flagging him down was a lady in white...

I wrote you a book,
did you keep it?
Did you look?
When I stole your glances,
out your cracked window
two stories up?
Did you eyes follow me down your steps
when I slammed the gate?
When I spit on your lawn,
with my heart in my hands
that you tried to give back,
but it was already too late?

I wrote you a book,
four volumes long,
but all with same plot,
and the same stupid songs.

There's a chapter in there,
somewhere towards the back
it's covered in blood
and it's written in black.

Somewhere on a mountain,
high above the sea
there's a woman in red
and she's smiling at me,
she says
"Stop running in circles,
because you can't stop looking back,
chin the **** up
and plan your attack"

There's a stain in the stairwell
where blood leaked from your hands,
in December at midnight
under layers of sand
there's dust that shouldn't
have choked that young man.

When I checked your watch,
grabbed your wrist in an alley
and threw out the time,
into the trash can beside me

and picked up my words,
and left you there in street
with blood on your hands
and no shoes on your feet

I wrote you a book,
I wrote it for years,
I wrote it at night,
so that you wouldn't hear,
when my pen scribbled *****
and nightmares appeared

There's a cork in the bottle,
I put the glass down,
I emptied the bath tub,
and painted my frown
and looked up at your window
as I slammed your front gate,
no tears in my eyes
but I watched you the same
as a man who could murdered me,
and make me believe I was to blame.

I wrote you a book,
I never wanted to write,
did you read it all,
did you tear out pages,
and pin them on wall?
Did you throw it outside,
when rain started to fall?
Or did you skim it over,
for a second or two
then put it back down
thinking this can't be for you.

When my memory smokes in your mind,
like some rekindled flame,
I hope you remember
my face and my name
but not all the sins
my book burned on your brain.

once a boy called me for three hours just to talk about my favourite
movie. i never said i
loved him. like everything
else, winter murdered whatever we
had and the next
summer was very
foreign. once a boy loved
me and never told
me. the last night he walked away from my
porch i pictured him as a cloud of
tears, as a white
flag. once i loved a
boy and when i told him, he said ‘i
know.’ my best friend tells me i’m good at making
fists. i try to find
god in vintage wallpaper and downtown
bars, sitting so
long that my ears flood with the signal
notes of a lonely man’s
saxophone. here, you can smell cemeteries and
playgrounds on the same
street. here,
boys never love you
back. once, i broke a rock in my bare
hand. once, a boy i hardly ever
talked to told me that i was a good
poet in the way i explained
things and asked me please not to become a
dead one. i didn’t know what i
meant when i told him i’d
try. once i loved a boy so full of
anger that his god begged him for
mercy. i think i almost
loved a boy once.

I run my hand along the traces of him.
I feel the blood rush through my skin.

I grip my shoulder where your head once rested.
I tear at my soul just to feel connected.

I feel the rage I should have felt eleven months ago,
I feel the desire I ought to forgo.

You were the best of all the others,
Their traces remain, but they weren't even lovers.

And neither were we, almost but not quite,
But you were the closest I have been to the shame free light.

I want to be clean of the stain he left,
I want to be clean of the desire I regret.

But as I look at this mark that you left on me,
I am not so sure I want to be free.

people tell me i’m
lucky because at least i lost
him knowing that he
loved me, at least it wasn’t as painful as a
breakup. if this isn’t
pain then please tell me words for this swallowing
wound in the middle of my
chest, explain how i can’t find my own
hands even in broad
daylight and every time i think i
see him around our
house i know to take it as a
sign that i need to call my shrink back up, tell her
about the ghost at the core of my
life.

i can still feel his
hands in mine, long pianist man
fingers and encompassing
palms, wide open like a
map soaked in
blood.

he was so long
gone by the time that they
found him, his own fragile
mother couldn’t identify the
body, i was the only
one who knew how my hands were supposed to fit his
hips, the only good part of him
left.

my doctor tells me that i’ve passed the threshold for
grief, this isn’t healthy, she
tells me. how am i expected to know the meaning of that
word when the only thing i can
explain is the incessant ringing in my
ear, the sound of the
bullet that went farther than i ever
dared.

we were supposed to get
married, he just didn’t have the
money, but he gave me everything else off his very own
back. at night i stay up repeating the names of the
children we were going to
have, all three of
them. now they seem like more of an
insult to the holy
trinity.

god, how did you feel when satan
fell? i demand you on your
knees, begging me to
believe in you again. do you know how it feels to be in love with a
ghost?

it didn’t take much to get him mad. one wrong word and he’d erupt like a volcano, destroying everything in his path. how could you ever think it was okay to let your children know by heart the sound their mother makes when she’s pushed down the stairs? one night the mirror at the bottom cracked, a shard lodging itself into the centre of her forehead. this is a sign, i would’ve said if i was old enough to understand. take a reflection back on why you still think you need him. i haven’t talked to him in four years but it doesn’t make much of a difference, the seed of our last name still sprouts in my heart like an arsenic root. i wonder what he’s doing now, i’ve spent the time trying to fit into the holes in the walls that the beer bottles left. i don’t know anything about him except the colour of his anger and how he could never open up without the turn of a corkscrew. if his point was to teach his children never to touch alcohol, he got the point across. one night in our house was enough to understand that. he’d throw full bottles at the walls, saying he had a tough day, but the stains on our carpet still say he never loved us. maybe, i told them, the day he drove away for good, if we had the potential to **** him he might’ve loved us just as much.

i am her
predictor of the future
meticulous as a clock,
and as complicated too.
alone with my thoughts
you can faintly hear ticking
as i process what's to come.

affected by the past,
evidence and data shows
my next possible steps.
creator of a five year plan
to leave this town for fog,
ocean,
and small bookstores.
my skin is dry as i waste time
planning on how to save it.

i've researched career options,
tuition, moving, housing costs
for the best way to leave
the best way to live
in unfamiliar streets with unfamiliar faces
and have enough to pay for my coffee


you are him
predictor of the present
carer for the now, the what is
uplifted and bold
and impulsive as hell

i worry for your health
and for your broken seat belt
you worry for mine
and how my heart hurts

but my future couldn't keep you down,
and what we had slipped through my fingers like water
and for two people who could never really be
we tried so ******* hard.