this poem, honey, is all you’ll get –
not out of cruelty,
but fear.
every time i opened the door,
you’d flinch,
step back,
and leave me
with unsaid words,
and cruel bitterness.

in between downward dogs,
my phone buzzes —
again.
and again.

for fifteen whole minutes,
i leave you unread.

you’re drunk, smitten,
with someone i know,
someone you spotted
at a gig.

you send a live-feed
of your spiralling heart,
ask what to say,
if the moment does come.

i tell you to try.
say hi for me.
talk about music,
the crowd, the energy,
the way the incandescence,
blurry but kind,
makes them look soft
in that lavender light.

and you do.
of course you do.
you take a leap of faith,
while i sit here
in silence,
finding a hundred ways
to rehearse what my heart would
but my mouth will never say.

i was still there,
choking on my bitterness,
twenty minutes
after our session ended.

i felt awful. anxious.
he had a client outside,
waiting —
maybe also collapsing
under their own weight
they couldn't carry.

“look at the clock,”
i said. “let’s wrap this up.”
guilt eating away at me.

so he stood up,
reached for it,
and reset the time.

like it meant nothing.
like he knew healing
cannot be rushed,
because the minutes
are ticking.

she calls me by my name,
and i answer without words—
only an offering:
a silent prayer,
bare skin,
a breath held,
a promise kept sacred,
to worship her.

she calls,
and i answer with stillness.
like dusk slipping
into the night—
utterly, completely—
pulling me apart
under the tears
of moonlight.

she calls
even as i soak
in her waves,
as they kiss my collarbone,
make heaven blush
when i fall to my knees,
laced around her soul.

her intention to claim me
was there from the start.
written in her whispers
******* my thoughts.
she never asked
what broke me.
only reached with rippled hands
to take my weight,
press it into the riverbed
like something malevolent,
already forgiven.

i can't seem to wash you off my skin.
yours accidentally touched mine.
as shadows fall onto the eclipse,
my heart turns into a landmine.

exhausted it lays, beating faster,
whenever you're on my mind.
breaths, drawn in sharper,
i can't seem to shut you out.

it's ridiculous, i say to myself,
the power you have on me.
thoughts of you send splinters
throughout every inch of my body.

your presence itself feels like a sin.
you're all i think about.
my wishes, never leaving my lips,
could cause the stars to burn out.

it all weighs heavy on my chest,
like ruins no one came to save.
so i leave it there—forgotten, rotting—
just wishful thinking
digging its own grave.

these days, my soul feels heavy,
bursting with a secret still untold.
bearing it, it scorches steady,
but you broke our dream i’d hold.

your cruelty lived in me, raging.
i long craved what you’d denied.
it took an age to stop the blaming —
i, too, had darkness inside.

and yet, to this day, i’d circle back,
turn the bitter wheel of time,
re-play our teenage soundtrack
with a sip or two of wine.

knowing everything, i’d hit rewind,
see where our road leads to,
appreciate you, with a mature mind,
and undo all of your wounds.

maybe we’d stay ‘in the zone’,
maybe we’d claim the world —
wander every corner of our home,
or england’s cold and grim shores.

we wouldn’t be so far away,
pretending, frigid strangers.
i’d know all of life’s mistakes,
all your whispered prayers.

defiant thing, the past.
it offers less than what it stole.
my heart still pulls toward
a time when yours was whole.

i’d know you’re not tormented by
neither the past, nor the present.
i’d know you healed with time,
and wish our sorrow never happened.

but if one day, you still look back,
know, my heart is pure.
as you turn back, breathe for me —
then don’t look back at all.

asking myself to stop
loving him
is like asking someone
to stop breathing.

love shouldn’t land
like a ton of bricks.

no matter how hard
i try to focus
on someone else –
anyone –
i keep reaching
back for him.

my walls
aren’t strong enough
to withhold the blow
and defend me
against this.

i'm drinking a lot.
forgot why i started.
one excuse, it seems like
became a hundred.

it hushes the demons
for a moment or two,
but the silence feels borrowed,
and it never comes through.

i'm smoking a lot.
unsure of the whys.
trying to gather
the parts i call mine.

they used to help,
but keep dragging me down,
just like we do each other,
deep underground.

he said
i wasn’t feminine.
he said it twice,
hoping the echo
would re‑write
my code
of not being lady‑like.

he came to the conclusion
we should stop.
i talked like a mate.
and didn’t fit
his narrow idea
of a woman.

and i told him,
i won’t fold myself
to fit his frame.
no one
gets to offer lessons

on
how
we
should
be
shaped.

he keeps pushing me.
telling me
to take a chance.
have an interview
with his ops,
who would love me,
by the way.

and since i’m leaving,
why not now,
especially,
that him and the company
are definitely my thing.

it’s my decision, he said.

i hate that he’s right.
i hate it so much.
and i hate him
for asking me
what’s the hold-up.

what a joke.

the hold-up.

it’s you.
i’m wasting my energy
thinking about this.

it’s you, holding me back.
it’s the thought of us
being at the same place,
in the same room
for longer
than ten seconds,
holding me back.

it’s my heart,
my mind at last,
every living cell
in my body
holding me back,
fighting fantasies,
thoughts
that carelessly run
through my head
as i play out what happens.
it’s my instinct of fear
holding me back.

i don’t want
near your fire again.
hand myself over
on a silver platter,
and say,
‘do whatever you can.
my very core is
in your hands’.

you should know better
than ask
what’s holding me back.
i’m fighting my feelings
with everything i have.

go, and get yourself burned
like i did,
when you have the chance.