Let me show you
All the words I cannot find.
Let me write them
On your neck in faded lipstick stains.
Close your eyes.
Listen to my shaking hands.
They have a code of their own,
One that only you can understand.
Listen to them rattle against your chest.
Feel the heat of my breath
Glide over your cheek.
Listen to what it’s telling you.
Feel my teeth tug at your bottom lip.
Let me get as close to you as I can
Without losing myself completely.
I can’t say this aloud.
Just listen to my body,
Decipher the language it speaks, wordlessly.
Somewhere in this mess,
The purest love I could ever muster.
A diamond
In all of our rough.

I grew up with the silly idea
That boys would write poetry
For the girl in the back of the coffeeshop.

It’s far from romantic
The countless times I’ve walked that road,
Entered that C- bakery,
And rested my elbows on a wobbly table.
Once, I twisted my ankle,
Caked my jeans in mud and embarrassment.
Another time, I fell in a puddle.
Nobody helped me up or dried me off.
Hundreds of dollars wasted on cheap coffee
That only kept me up long enough
To realise how low I was.

I wrote poems for boys in the coffeeshop,
Adam and all the rest.
They didn’t write any for me.

Last night,
I succumbed to the anaesthesia
Of the breaking dawn.
I dreamt of you beside me,
My fingertips caressing your shoulder blades,
Running up and down your spine,
Playing your vertebrae like an ivory-keyed piano.
I could nearly hear the sound of your breath,
Peaceful and steady,
The nightmares dissolved.
When I awoke
In my sleep-deprived stupor,
I smiled at you,
Though you did not rest beside me.

I never thought that I would have my heart broken by a city.
It wasn't just the men and the music;
It was the eternal hope and subsequent disappointment.

I didn't go there with dreams in a guitar case.
My hands have always been too small to wrap around the neck anyway.
I went for the experience, with a notebook to my name.

The most incredible voices echo through the streets
Like wind through bare New England oaks;
It's haunting, comforting, met with silence.

I leaned over the edge of a balcony and thought,
How many people have jumped?
Because the thing is: you don't make it in Music City.
You try and try and try and try and then you go home.

I met a man on a street corner, a shy, sweet little thing.
Two months later he was back in Dublin, playing in pubs.
A raspy, long-haired rock-and-roll singer howled into the night,
And he didn't sing again for months.
Not until his vocal cords recovered.
Five Scotsmen took the breath away from a hundred people;
They went on "hiatus" a few weeks ago.
But there was such hope in their voices, in their smiles.
And it broke my heart.

I long for Nashvillian streets beneath my feet once more.
I want to feel the desire and passion in the air,
Circulating like cigarette smoke outside the smallest venues.
I risk my sanity by inviting the hopeful and the hopeless into my heart.
At least I'll get a poem or two out of it,
And maybe they'll get a song.

I pretend that airports
Are the means to an end,
A new start,
A purgatory for lost souls
Searching for something
Greater than themselves.
Time is not real.
But then I step off the plane
And watch lovers enter
Strong arms at the gate,
See their lips meet,
Watch limbs tangle,
And I drag my suitcase
Along the linoleum,
The broken wheel clicking
With every step.
I look for you,
In every airport
In every city
At every gate
And you’re never there.
My suitcase might as well
Be completely empty.
I have no home
Anywhere in this world
Without you.

In place of calm, read stirring ocean,
Scylla and Charybdis,
between a rock and a hard place.

In place of comfort, read your body,
transient, missing, on a plane somewhere
in a car somewhere on a boat somewhere
without your phone somewhere
somewhere somewhere somewhere
that is not my apartment or my arms
but somewhere where you smile.
Somewhere where your eyes
finally focus.
In place of sleep, read blood between the floorboards
and moving boxes scattered,
read burst capillaries and a savings jar
full of Washingtons and no idea
what I’m saving for.
In place of stasis, read
one fast move or I’m gone.

I wrote you letters
And kept them hidden
Beneath my bed
Or in my jewellery box
Or in my shirt pockets.
Each time I found one,
I read it and then took a match to it.
It was my way
Of slowly falling out of love with you.
At least that’s what I told myself.

I've never been much of an artist,
but I will paint a portrait
of kisses on your chest,
if you let me.
Matisse has nothing on
the beauty the comes from
the collision of
my lips and your neck,
your lips and my neck.
We are paintbrush and canvas,
both.
The curvature of your lips
belongs in a museum.
I'm keeping it
for my private collection.
My awe cements me
to the bed.

The rose petals in my cocktail
Somehow found a way
To colour your romantic young lips;
I longed to match them with mine,
Bloom a field of thorned kisses between us.
Between the half pints, the martini, and the free shot,
The rest of your face is a blur
But I cannot forget the right side of those thin lips
Curving upward as you spoke,
As you listened to my stories
About a land far away,
With your blue eyes locked on mine.
I rambled and you smiled.
You couldn’t understand my love for the city,
But you were glad I chose Dublin that night.
You asked questions and I didn’t understand
The implications until
The morning when I was sober.
The more I drank the more I wanted you,
But they closed down the bar
And your friends disappeared
And my mouth grew dry as we spoke.
The last ones in,
I’d lost track of time and we were out on the street.
I waited for you to ask me along
But they took me by the arm
And I slept in the bathtub of my hotel room,
Never knowing more than your name,
Never remembering more than your charming drunken smile
And the heat of your breath on my neck,
Inches away,
But never touching.

He asked me why.
It wasn’t the kind of thing that had
An explanation, or needed one.
Still, he asked why.
It was intrinsic.
I had never thought it through before.

It has something that home doesn’t.
He asked what.
It has you. That’s important.
He asked why it mattered, why he mattered.
Everyone else is gone and you’re here with me.

He asked why it meant so much.
Home has no culture of its own.
We are a melting ***.
Our history has us playing a part.
Our countries share a common villain.
The difference is, we became ours.
You didn’t.

He asked why here, why now.
You view this place like I view my own.
You’ll never see it the way I do.
There is no conversation in bars,
Just fingers and tongues and fake names.

You look at me when I speak.

He asked if that was all.
No, of course not.

Those uilleann pipes make me cry.
I have no nation,
No reason for pride.
My songs and stories
Do not hold the same depth.
You tell me who you are
And it means something.

He touched my arm and the universe swallowed me whole.

Do you want to go home? he asked.
Absolutely not.
Do you want to leave? he asked.
*With you, absolutely.

There's **** on the floor of the Blue Line.
It's one in the afternoon,
Tuesday.

This is the poetry
I don't like writing.

About the Fight Club anarchism
without the sense of purpose.

I watch a man cry
over a woman's leftover Chipotle.

Eight feet away:
the passage of pills between palms.
I don't know the contents
any better than they do.

I keep my blind eye
and loose change.

I keep my middle class pride
safe for another day.

In an instant and without a word of warning,

A billion years’ worth of existential glue

Dissipated into the ether

As he took a final breath of our sickly air. 

We’ve been struggling ever since.

The misery caused by humanity’s follies 

Exhausted his everlasting grace

In just a few decades;

A blip on the radar of time. 

We have unhinged the universe now;

That is what we do. 


“You have brought this upon yourselves,” he laments.

Heterochromatic eyes glaze over with grief.

“Please,” we beg,

“Come back to us.”


Our fatal flaw:

Never knowing what we had

Until we killed it with our own hands.


A million civilisations in the cosmos

But we were the most desperate.

Even the savior of all

Cannot save us now. 


We loved him as we love our Mother;

Still we turned a blind eye to his sickness,

Still we let her wither away 

When she had nothing left to offer us.

We watch skyscrapers collapse,

Petrol fires blaze,

Holes being torn into skin

With the ease of a pencil through paper.

We plead for his forgiveness,

With a rotting feeling in our stomachs

Telling us he will never come.

The stars shine differently now,

Dimmed by the pollution of city lights,

Yet still we gather to watch for him.

Still we wait for him to fall to Earth again.

I witnessed your birth.
Oak barrel wombs,
unknown fathers.
They presented you with so much pride
that I felt guilty refusing a taste.
So smooth.
Too smooth.
Unnatural.
Fire should not destroy so calmly.

You witnessed my redemption.
Your name on his tongue
returned me to a Dublin distillery
but I did not fear you.
His offering was one of comfort.
You didn’t hurt as much
with his eyes on me,
my lipstick on the rim of his cup.
I was perfectly warm
in the dead of winter.
Fire should not destroy so calmly.

You will witness my unapologetic sins.
I swig straight from the bottle
to prepare for my numb lips against his;
our numb tongues ruining lives.
It won’t hurt anymore.
You gave me courage.
You showed me intimacy, unflinching,
with your solo cup facade.
You put my heart in his hands
and watched us test the waters,
gently.
You will be there
when we collide again.
Fire should not destroy so calmly.

Tonight,
There is no love here.
The honey ***,
Once overflowing,
Is full of flies.
I am paper-thin.
I will burn easily.
My teeth aren’t as white as they once were.
My eyes don’t sparkle.
I am blue and purple
And jagged.
I am cold to the touch.
My eyes sting
With cigarette smoke.
My tongue,
With its sandpaper softness,
Will not grace your skin tonight.
Let the black sheets of my bed
Shroud me from moonlight and
The warmth of your hands.
Maybe in the morning
It will be better.
Maybe in the morning
I’ll forget that once
I loved you.
Maybe I’m just a little bit sour.

I died a few times in the night.
Hungry lips are decades away.
My passport is locked up tight
in the safe in my closet.
I’ve been a poet for so many years now,
but this feeling will always be
ineffable.
All the nudists riding bikes past my window,
all the love songs, all the sad songs,
all the lens flares and strong ‘o’ sounds,
and Jameson, always Jameson;
my hands get shaky
and tap out
you—you—you
on the coffee table
and suddenly I’m spilling drinks on myself
and I need to go for a run
and I feel sick to my stomach
and none of this makes sense.
I see the maintenance man every morning
and he says,
“Just another day in paradise”
and I actually believe him.
It’s easier when you’re so far away
because I don’t have to worry about
having you and then not having you.
I am terrified of the valediction.

It’s difficult to stomach at first,
But once you start,
There’s no sense in stopping.
Eventually you’ll start every morning
With a cup of coffee,
And no matter what happens,
You’ll always remember just how I like it.

A few thousand miles
Is nothing at all
When you know I’m there,
Waiting.

You know that I will always
Answer the phone,
So I anticipate the vibration against my lap
Every time you’re drunk
And spilling out those rhotic words
And it takes me a moment to understand
Everything you say
So I fill the silences with quiet giggles
And you ask me why I’m laughing.

I’m laughing at you.
And I can see the goofy look on your face
Despite the rolling of the Atlantic
And the static it creates.
I blush just as much as I would
With your body next to mine.
I can hear you laughing, too.

Six months,
Just six months.
I hear your heart drop,
Heavy with an unknown sense of longing
For something you’ve never truly felt.
I wish it was sooner,
You say.
I wish it was now.

The curve of his mouth
Echoed the movement of yours,
With its subtleties noticed
Only in the light of day.

The edges blurred.
The caffeine in my veins
Turned alcoholic
And I’m tipsy now,
Tearing up letters
And trying to remember
The taste of your name on my tongue.

His dimples arose
And I saw your blue eyes
In his brown eyes,
Some strange transfiguration
Of my memory.

Fiddling with the napkin,
A worry stone to quell
The jittering in your stomach,
To suffer the silences.
You shouldn’t have let me walk away,
Down the cobblestones
And around the corner of the night.

Sober and shaking with regret
For ages and ages
And I spend the last of my money
On a one-way ticket,
Hoping you’ll be sitting
In the same cracked claret-coloured chair,
Waiting.

Maybe I’ll kiss your cheek this time.
I won’t be afraid of the lipstick stain,
Like before.

My cup runneth over with the most imperceptible despair.
A heart that weeps bitterly for itself,
For the futility and desperation of its existence:
To love, to love, to love,
For naught.

Churning and rattling within;
If only I could ***** up this feeling
To rid myself of it.
No, it grows steadily,
A sickness as deep as the Thames,
The banks of which he wanders
Aimlessly, searching the ripples
For life.

There is no way to drain love from oneself.
If I possessed the will, I would bleed myself dry.
There would be more relief there
Than in the insufferable nature of distance
And the anguish of flesh not kissed.

I dreamt that I found you by the apple trees in my backyard.
That **** crow, pecking at your flesh.
I woke up and I cried.
I think it was then that I realised my heart no longer belongs to me.

I miss you.
I say it now and I'll say it tomorrow.
I'll repeat it every single day of my life,
And even when you're here or I'm there,
I won't stop missing you.

I walked down the street last Wednesday
And tried to imagine how your hand would feel clasped in mine.
I couldn't.

I'm afraid to sleep because I'm afraid to dream of you.
There is no difference between a dream or a nightmare;
They both make me long for you just the same.

Oh, what have you done to me?

You’re social suicide ******* with a neat little bow.
You kiss and tell
In plain view of the world
And the men admire your tenacity.
You don’t pretend to care
So maybe that’s why
You draw me in so effortlessly
With your gangly fingers
And that cross hung limply
Around your neck
With no meaning at all.
I don’t expect more
Than you give;
You don’t give
More than you take.
The cycle repeats
With every moon,
Keeping me up at night
Howling
While I wait for you
And you don’t wait for me
And I never come.
Promises made to myself
That I never keep
Because the tides are rising and falling
But you are always there
In the middle of the sea,
Never changing,
Never growing,
Never feeling anything at all.

We drink coffee on a rooftop in Edinburgh.
We've been awake for so long
That sunrise has become sunset.
(Or is it the other way around?)
I long to press my lips against every inch of you,
Inked and bare,
Until nothing is left uncorrupted.
I will not come down
Before we have felt each other everywhere,
At last at peace with the skin we hate most.
My heart races for you,
Like some sort of manic tribal drum,
And you smile,
That sheepish little smile.
My capillaries coil around your finger like wires.
I am yours, purely yours.

Let the storms erupt,
Let the clouds turn to ash and dust,
Let the world collapse within itself.
We will raise the sky together,
Stars and fire and all,
In our caffeinated stupor and young vigor.
We're only getting older now.
We can be fools.
We should be fools.
We could jump from this rooftop
Or we could take the stairs.

You were cigarette smoke and breaking waves on the shores of distant lands. You were crooked teeth and chocolate breath. You were black coffee and shaggy hair. You were hazel eyes and arms I would have died in. You were soft cotton shirts and ***** work boots. You were Bukowski’s good side. You were pool tables and wool hats. You were black curtains. You were everything and more. You were the one that got away. You were.

Please forgive me, for my hands won’t stop shaking.
You and I:
Parallel lines holding on to the notion that maybe one day
We’ll intersect, in more ways than one.
My breath catches at the thought of your fingertips
Slipping and sloping down my spine.
I can’t fall asleep anymore without you on my mind,
Conjuring images of your
Phantom arms wrapped around my waist
And the autumn breeze of an open window washing over me.
They say that this cannot be love,
But god, I’m not so sure.

Your mother doesn’t know that I exist.
I thank her every morning for you,
Over my lukewarm cup of cheap coffee.
She is the only person who will ever love you more than I.
You look at me like I am made of flowers
Whose petals have colours you’ve never been able to comprehend.
I hope they make a little more sense now.

The first wrinkles on my face will be crow’s feet,
Like my mother’s,
Like my grandmother’s.
We’ve all fallen a little too hard
And smiled a little too much.
I’ll cherish them just the same.

They never taught us how to write poems without the fuel of heartache.
I’ll never learn, anyhow.

It sneaks up on me, some connection
Between my sleeping subconscious
And the universe itself.
I have this dream, this nightmare, this reality:

Her thin limbs entangled with his.
Her mousy hair shimmering in the morning sun;
(I’ve dyed the same colour from mine for years,
But on her, he finds it endearing.)
He kisses her.
It is not memorable,
But everyone remembers.
She is his little secret.
The poems become hers.
I find no liberation from my love for him;
He grants me no such release.
I keep holding on to the thought, the fantasy,
While she holds his body against hers,
Naked and fleshy and warm.
It is her name he whispers.

I wake up in a cold sweat,
And I feel like vomiting.

This isn't home,
but I will nestle in for the season
and pretend that I belong.
I will bury my face in the curve of his shoulder
and let him play with my fingers
through Nepalese gloves
and he won't even ask
what's going on in that
pretty little head of mine.
We speak of snow and poetry
and all of the girls in his bed
and he admires how straight my spine is
despite the cracks of voice.

I don't think about the distance anymore.
I swear, your name is on my tongue,
to everyone.
I make the effort to say nothing,
only to find I have nothing left to say.
After you,
nothing holds enough importance
to make a conversation of.
I can predict what he will text back
but you,
just when I think I know who you are,
a different man faces me.
I think they all know
that I'm growing tired of these guessing games.

I wish I had never met you.

You are Apollo, Zeus, and Hercules. You are midnight lullabies. You are drunken fists turned to open hands. You are the one constant presence in hotel rooms in Barcelona, Ibiza, Budapest, New York, everywhere. You are bloodied lips. You are gentle kisses. You are post-nightmare reassurance. You are a bullet to the head. You are toppled sandcastles on Massachusetts shores. You are white walls. You are the brightness of a phone screen in a dark room. You are a bruise that doesn’t go away. You are cold, rosy cheeks. You are morning coffee. You are yellowed pages of forgotten books. You are razor-burned jawlines. You are the crack of billiard *****. You are the hand on my knee beneath the table. You are the moon flooding through thin curtains. You are phantom limbs. You are a foreign name on a foreign tongue. You are the sunrise. You are a memory that doesn’t fade. You are every ******* poem I write.

I wish I had never met you.

Somewhere,
Written in the margins
Of the history of time
In this universe:
Us.

Your unsteady hand pouring milk.
My unsteady hand on your thigh.
Breath quivers
But it is full and deep.

Someday
Someone
Will write about this night.

A heart doesn't realise how much is missing
Until something makes it whole again.

Somewhere,
Written in the margins of the history of time
In this universe
And all others:
Love,
Whatever that may mean.

Three years disappear so quickly.
Just one thought can send my heart
Back to that day, back to that room
With the black curtains.
It races and I still don’t know why.
Your hands on my waist, my shoulders, my back.
Your lips so close but not close enough.
A cotton shirt reeking of cigarette smoke
And regret. (I’ve always hated smoking,
But I still wanted to breathe you in.)
There was something familiar
About the way you said my name.
I was a child, just a child,
And you were an animal
With a crooked grin and my love at your feet.
Three years,
And I still insist on making something
Out of nothing.

I had forgotten how good the fantasy feels.

I dream soundly without him
when the memory of his hands
puts these tired lungs at ease.
I play with 'hope' on my tongue.
It's beginning to taste sweet.

I will hold him in my arms soon.
We will warm our bellies
with whiskey again,
and I won't walk home alone
this time.

We've grown up in the snow,
with winter in our veins,
something visceral and uniform.
He knows what to do with
these freezing hands of mine.
I ****** my lip
with bite marks
at the thought.

I am leather-bound and blank;
he has so many ways
to fill me up.

It’s your silver tongue;
A night serpent
Between my sheets.
This isn’t right.

You make my world disappear
For a few hours of pleasure,
And I hate you for that.
I hate myself for that.

I have it all,
So why do I still need you?
Is this revenge?

I am weak,
I am so easily led
By your nimble fingertips.
My knees are bruised
And I hate you for that.
I hate myself for that.

I want to stop.
I never want to stop.
No strings attached,
That’s what we promised.

Don’t pretend that you love me.
Don’t pretend that you see beyond flesh.

Lie to me, please, but
Don’t go dragging my emotions into this.
Don’t you dare question my love
For those who aren’t you.
I hate you for that.
I hate myself for that.

I saw a new couple on the subway today.
Her arms were loosely draped around his neck,
Closer to him than his red paisley scarf.
Their legs fit together like puzzle pieces,
Lips locked in perfect unison.
Eyeglasses showing each other’s
Lovesick reflections;
He looked at her like she was Athena,
An infatuated smile never leaving his face.
They giggled quietly,
And for twenty minutes
They were no longer
Beneath grimy Boston streets.
It was Eden,
A utopia of butterflies
And freshly-brushed teeth.

But as I sat in my seat,
No lover of my own to kiss like that,
I wondered how long their honeymoon phase would last.
I watched her get off,
Watched them wiggle their fingers goodbye,
And watched his smile linger for a few minutes,
Then fade.

How long until her stop
Becomes his?
How long until their bodies separate
Into a gentle holding of hands?
How long until that too,
Like every predictable platform,
Becomes routine?
How long until they finally sit down?
How long until her stop
Becomes hers alone?

It would be so easy
To throw the towel in
And call it a life.

I can’t turn on the television
Because every “Breaking News” story
Makes me cry.
How can I go about my day
Listening to people complain about cold coffee
When a lover is dead
And nothing stays still for a moment?

How do we live like this?

It feels as though my body is collapsing into itself,
An eternal void of instability,
A black hole for wisps of passion.

How do I live like this?

I have known the love of strangers
Thousands of miles away
In bars and silent living rooms.
I have known quiet love,
Felt the fingertips of men sure in the simplicity
Of heterosexuality.
I have known quiet love,
But never the fingertips of women
Terrified of themselves because
They’ve been told they are wrong.

I don’t always have the courage to stand,
And we all know that it is easier to submit.
The true test of human endurance is the ability
To be beaten down time and time and time again
And always get back up.
I’m still standing,
With sore feet and a broken heart.
We are all still standing.
Except for the ones that aren’t.

I avoid the boys who worship Bukowski.

They're ones who see ***
As merely an act, a stage performance, a drug.
They use bitter words and drink bitter drinks
That they don't even enjoy.
They smoke cigarettes because they think they're James Dean.
They claim that they cannot escape their dead-end jobs and lives;
In reality, they don't want to. They relish in their misery.
After all, happy stories aren't worth writing about.
Nobody cares about your perfect life; they care about how you failed
Because it makes them feel better about their own despondency.

These boys live for the experience,
Their own Kerouac moments.
The writers obsessed with pain and suffering;
They don't even look for the beauty in beautiful things.
They're the ones who die by their own hands.
They close off their hearts to the love of women.
Women are objects. Women are things with holes
For speaking and for ***.

I am a woman with a heart and a mind and love to give,
And I shall be recognized as such.
In meeting a man the first question I ask is,
"Have you heard of Bukowski?"

I was beautiful once.
With hair the colour of red wine
And a smile to illuminate
The deepest caverns of his heart,
I was happy
And that made me beautiful.
My toes dug into seaside sand
Until I was numb beneath the setting sun.
He called me “baby”
And told me to look at the birds over there.
He told me I was beautiful
And I smiled.
Standing in front of a bush full of bees,
Or under a bridge,
Letting the rust gather beneath my fingernails,
I felt beautiful once.

Pulsating track lights.
Resonation.
Sunlight trickling down my neck as it set,
following the same pattern as your fingertips
that afternoon in your kitchen,
dripping like morning sweat.
When there was nothing left to say,
we filled the silences.

I adored your friends before I knew you,
yet my gaze drifted
to your shadow
as you stood behind a sheer black curtain;

no bigger than a toy soldier in my periphery
but I'd already memorised your shape.
I'd know you anywhere.

Sixteen thousand other people saw you,
but none like me.
She asked why I was blushing.

I had no explanation for the way my heart raced
as I remembered whose body I would sleep next to that night.
There you were,
in my sightline,
and yet I ached for you.

It's all a big cliché, isn't it?
Meteor showers, shooting stars, wishes.
Are you watching it too?
I've never been the perfect girl;
I've more flaws than I do gnawed fingernails.
But I could do so right by you.

I stood in the middle of an insect-riddled field,
Light pollution seeping into my panoramic view.
Infinitesimal stars and hopes and dreams around me
And yet all I wished for was you.

You said I meant the world to you

because I was the one person

who had never given up.

I was a name

you hadn’t yet added to that list.

You mistook that for love.

I will never give up on you;

that’s the truth.

I will never give up on the notion

that one of these days

you’ll find a way to be happy. 

But it will be with another girl

in another land, 
far from here. 

I pray you never set foot on the soil I’ve tread.


I will give up on us. 

I will give up on the fantasies.

I will never exist to you 

outside of your own self-interest 

and that’s okay.

But that doesn’t mean I have to live with it.

That doesn’t mean I have to stay.

I will never give up on you.

I will give up on you, with me.

I am aching
And skin
And bedsheets
And nothing else.

My hair is a disheveled sunset against a stark white pillow,
A flame that does not die down.
The intricacies of my fingertips
Have not been touched in ages.
Something inside me longs for the touch of another.

A melancholy Scotsman whispers lullabies
To the backdrop of an electric fire.
My heart knows not how to rest.
I want to feel him, I want to hear him,
I want to know that we're both alive.

A hand lay upon my shoulder today;
Tomorrow it shall be on a plane back to LA.
Please tell me what it's like to have someone who stays.

Take my hand in yours.

Show me Nocturne: Blue and Gold.
Comment on how the blue of the Thames fading to grey
Reminds you of my sad moods.
Slip in the fact that Whistler was born in the state where I grew up,
And died in the country that you call home.
Make it seem like fate, not coincidence.

Show me Newton.
Talk about Blake’s offense at deism.
Watch the mention of religion skitter past my ears
And right over my head.

Show me Norham Castle, Sunrise.
We’ll squint to make out shapes hidden by sun rays,
But it will only blur more.
We’ll take a few steps back and will see it clearly,
Before strangers obstruct our view.
I’ll comment on how the colours look like that of a child’s nursery.

Show me The Awakening Conscience.
I’ll ask you what you think is happening.
You’ll say that you don’t know.
I’ll point out the absence of a ring on her finger,
A mistress, she was.
She longs for something else.
Annie Miller’s beauty encapsulated in a single painting,
Her own life reflected for a moment.

Show me Beata Beatrix.
I’ll gasp with pleasure,
Recite bits of my favourite Rossetti poems for you to hear.
I’ll tell you the story of Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal,
And though you’ve heard it before,
You listen as though you haven’t.

Show me Ophelia.
Kiss my cheek as I gaze upon it, wide-eyed.
Tell me that I am as fair as Ophelia herself,
And I will smile while I marvel in Lizzie’s grace,
Better depicted by Millais
Than by her own husband.

As we leave
And pass the statue of Millais himself,
We shall embark on our own Shakespearean adventure.
To meet Ophelia’s fate,
Content and unaware of danger
Then drowned all at once,
I pray we refrain.

coughing up something.
heart, soul, lungs,
i don’t know.
nails bitten down too far.
it hurts to touch you,
it hurts to touch me.
every shape,
every curve,
every inch
feels wrong.
my own skin is a prison
for the ethereal being
i long to be.
i am stuck,
hating myself,
loving you.

He is biblical.
I’ve never had the taste for it,
but I will take his communion
and believe in something,
anything.

I’ve been splitting my knuckles on doorframes
just to know some peace.
Broken skin doesn’t hurt like it should.
Where are your healing lips tonight?
Kiss the poetry away from me;
bury it deep and out of sight.
It will find a way to ruin this.
I don’t ask for eternity.
I ask for one lifetime
knowing where your hands have been,
what they have built,
and who they have destroyed.

He is biblical;
I have always worshipped
someone else’s god.

I am open for you—
like cemetery gates at sunrise.
Both deities above and below
warn of dire consequences.
Still I am open for you.

Love, and love, and love.
You must admit there was love
in the speckled blue you left on my neck,
and the tight grip on my hip
beneath flannel sheets and morning eyes.

Not love like caged doves and thrown rice.
Not love like three-bedroom house in the suburbs.
Love like no space in your queen-sized bed.
Love like you showing me how to inhale smoke at 3am.
Love like teeth and tongues and thumbs and thighs.

I am open, fully.
Gaping, expanding, overwhelming.
I am racing heart.
I am goosebumps on your forearm.
I am fingertips gripping shoulderblades.
I am love, I am love, I am love.

You tell me
Not to fall in love.

You know that I can’t help
Imagining your sharp cheekbones,
The soft line of your jaw,
The curve of your neck,
The long streak of your abdomen;
All perfect resting places
For my lovesick lips.
I ask you to point out
The places that you have been unkind to
And I kiss them until you believe
That I love them,
And you love them too.

I don’t tell you not to cry
Because you are an ocean,
Fierce and strong,
And sometimes the world is a little too much.
I am a ship;
I have weathered your stormy seas
And I am still pushing on.
I’ve gotten my sea legs
And they’ll never go away again.
I’ve been lost at sea for so long now;
I don’t remember where home was before.
I don’t want to remember, either,
Because you are my home now.

Some days I fear that the poet in me
Has killed herself.
Today was not one of those days.

Today I opened my heart,
Who in return opened my eyes.
I drifted into the middle of a Massachusetts river,
The horizon separating marsh weeds from sky.
A child, pure as a pearl,
Sang lullabies from my lap and called out my name.
I kissed her salty cheek and my soul flew.
The wind blew my auburn hair and I was free.

A gentle paddle in an old kayak,
The only sounds being that of my oar.
Splash, whoosh, splash, whoosh.
I was at peace with the world,
And more importantly,
I was at peace with myself.

A camera could not capture the race of my heart
Nor the glimmer in my eyes.
Love and belonging and bliss lap against my shores.

2,960 miles between our legs
And you still claim
That you ache for me.
Your body throbs and moans
With no release,
Mine quakes with longing
For an evening or two.
I keep making these midnight mistakes
And you aren’t stopping me.
Your voice haunts my dreams
Almost as much as the curve of your hips;
There have been weeks of unacknowledged texts
But you follow me like a cat in heat.
You lie to me
And it doesn’t matter.
I’m not waiting for you to love me.
You think that’s what I need.
We’re hedonists, and that’s all.
Neither of us could bear the pain
Of falling in love,
So we won’t.
We’ll just be fingertips under the table
And cutting class
And Friday night bathroom stalls.

This intangible craving
  for something so unattainable
    is little more than a lovely fantasy
      but it'll do for now.
        It goes like this:
Your hair is a whirlwind about your skull
  As the Ayrshire wind batters us.
    Thick sweaters and reluctant smiles.
      Damp wool and lovesick laughter.
A thin sodium layer misted onto our skin,
  Granules of sediment beneath our nails
    And in the fibers of every stitch.
      Thin fingers, exploring uncharted land.
Lukewarm, stale coffee turned cold.
  Cold lips turned warm and wet.
    Secrets whispered, never retold.
      The rain falls down on Scotland's shores
        Again.

It frightens me that of the billions of people in this world,
You're the one who has complete control over me.
Words said in a moment of desperation,
Over in a second, without hesitation.
Oh God, what is happening to us?

We play hide-and-seek between the vines and the willows.
I can always find you, but part of you is missing.
Your mind slips away as you come closer.
I don't know who you are.
I've can't remember who I am.

We've changed more than I care to admit.
They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder,
But that's not all of the story.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
For something that never existed in the first place.

You should come with a warning label.
Caution: Will break your heart
And make you question everything.

The wickedness of fallible love
Is a lesson I will never learn.
I should’ve seen you coming.

It is so difficult to love someone new
When the last hands that held me
Were yours.
I didn’t know you cross your fingers
Before making promises.
I never did.
Not with you.  

There are no duck-and-cover practices;
Stop, drop, and roll doesn’t work
When your heart is on fire
And the smoke is suffocating.
Not everyone survives this day.

Leather jackets don't keep you warm.
Disappointment settles into my stomach with each passing minute.
He's forgotten about us.

Second floor railing.
Black Xs on both hands.
Knee between bars.
Brown paper bag at my feet.
A drunk Englishman with no shoes yelling about America and chickens.
He tells us not to go to Charlestown tomorrow;
He is going to rob a bank.
A folk punk band drinking from a flagon,
Screaming and singing lyrics I cannot understand,
But my body still moves with them.

Lights off. Silence.
A text.
Do you want to come to the floor?

She's short. She won't be able to see. It's too crowded now.

I have a spot for you. I'll come escort you.

A bearded man with glazed eyes appears.
He shakes my hand, says,
"Follow me. I have a surprise."

Away from the railing,
People laughing.
"They gave up a railing spot?"
Past the bar, down the stairs.
Working through the crowd.
It's loud. So loud.
Closer and closer.
Where are we going? Where is he bringing us?
Closer and closer.
Past the barricades.
A divider.
Two security guards.
"They're with me tonight," he says. They nod.

"You're kidding, right?" I ask.
"Go on," he smiles.
I hug this man I've just met,
He holds on a second longer.
"Get over there. Don't be shy."
I find myself pressed against the side of stage.
Our railing spot has filled in.
They see us; they're confused.
"I have to go do my job now," he says,
"I'll check on you later."

Each passing second is an eternity.
He turns on the lights.
They appear.
The man who once held my life in a chord.
He is there, before me.
I join the congregation,
Hundreds of words spilling from me in song,
Picked out of the deepest depths of my soul.
I have never felt so alive.

The bass player looks at me dozens of times
During each song.
He watches my lips.
He sees me singing.
I look away.
He looks away.
I look back.
He looks back.
I smile.
He smiles.
Not a word is uttered.

The drummer I hugged two years ago
Is hidden from my view.
But for a moment, we saw one another.
I don't think he recognised me.

Mid-song a hand rests upon my shoulder
And I find a bottle of water placed before me.
I turn to thank my anonymous donor,
And see only the back of his head
And the silhouette of a beard.
He came to check on us.

He pulls the microphone from the stand
And before I can comprehend it,
He is before me, inches away, if only for a moment.
I am crippled by my own love and all I can do
Is sing along with him.
Two hours pass by in a flash.

He turns on the house lights.
The crowd begins to disperse.
The Union Jack steps on cans and sticky puddles of alcohol.
I find my bearded god and hug him again.
He reeks of marijuana but he does his job well.
This night changed my life and he knows it.

We go and visit the drunken Englishman.
I hand him a few bills and he cracks a few jokes.
I walk away with a cd and a smile,
He tells us not to go to Charlestown tomorrow.

I carry my paper bag to the merch line.
A middle-aged, ***-bellied man greets me,
Compliments my hat, tries to speak to me further.
I thank him and turn my back.
My loneliness appears to be an invitation.
I quietly decline.

The line dwindles down until I finally hand her the bag.
"Frank told me to bring these to you."
She questions me, I explain what they are,
And her face lights up.
"Oh! Frank told me about this! That's so kind of you!" she gushes,
"I'll put them...I'll put them on the bus!"
I thank her profusely.
An exchange of words and bills
And we are ushered away into the crisp September air.

I watch a man fall asleep standing up on the sidewalk.

I fall asleep in my own bed, dreaming of flickering lights
And an Englishman.

I am not with you
And that kills me.
No,
Maybe not ‘kills’.

It has become more of a daily injection
Of loneliness and phantom fingers.

I have nothing but my sight and my keyboard
And it isn’t enough.
It will never be enough.

You’ve never seen me blush.
You’ve never felt the circles I trace unknowingly into flesh.
You’ve never heard my convulsing laugh.
You’ve never seen me bare-faced and crying.
You’ve never really seen me.
And I’ve never really seen you.

But I know the grooves of your heart like my own.
I’ve learned your schedule;
I always know when you will disappear
And when you’ll come back.
I loved your beautiful soul first.
I loved you second.

Some days, the pain is easy to bear.
Other days, I want to tear my heart
Straight from my chest,
****** and battered
But free.