fire, ashes mixed with blood that swirls around your body
plaguing organs that moan and echo
burst through the church roof of your moth
whining like a cello
wander aimlessly around the hotel lobby
the quickness of the flame from a gas cooker
with the sound like a quick puff into a balloon
and with all the playfulness of the girl that took her
flames engulf and lick at the bottom of the saucepan
the irony of rows of white lily's in a graveyard
dew drops from the moistness of the air dance on the petals
still fresh, not quite wilting yet
whilst the stones morn
the wetness of your lips glow orange while the sun sets
waves biting at the groynes that stand to attention
also silently crying, leaning to one side
facing the sky as if pleading for mercy
reflection
a white feather on the ground reminds you someone's there
the hair on the back of your neck stands tall
while fingers quake
at the thought of being alone

Is she still your reflection?
Because I look in the mirror and only see decay
I see her dancing in your eyes
I know her figure is projected onto your eyelids while you sleep
An hourglass full of grains of 'yesterdays'
That you shatter just to fall asleep
Changing behind screens as to not expose your secrets
By tomorrow I will be nothing but an outline in the sand
Left by children too young to know better or understand
Too naïve to have seen the storm clouds rolling their way
I might have been looking for a needle in a stack of hay
And like a magpie you found it and hid it in your back pocket
Taking my hand, distracting it from what it yearned for
Using the other to pull my heart out
Only now am I starting to mind the bleeding
I frantically smear my insides on to my chest
In the hope that I have a chance of saving myself
You can try your hardest to forget me
But I wont let you do so
Easily
I'll plague you when I finally fall in love again
I'll haunt you when you stay round her house, my friend
Your soup will taste like my mouth
And I swear it will defeat you like poison
Your skin eaten away like cotton by a moth
You'll find me hidden in graveyards
A twisted reminder of what we once had
I am not quite driftwood yet but when I am
I hope to float your way

I exposed all of myself to you.
You undressed me,
Took down all my barriers
And stole my heart.
While she slowly retook yours.
I fell deeper into your arms,
You slowly lowering me to the ground.
Now just another item in the 'Lost and Found'.
While my pillow still smells of you,
The lining of my stomach is still sick
with the thought of you.
Of you both.
You had me as a fool.
Stupidly in love with the crazy idea
That it was all for me.
Like a game of 'Kiss Chase'
You were perusing me, I, playing along.
You caught me,
Kissed me
Then left me.
Another player in the game.
Her legs just a little faster than mine.
Me now out of the game,
I sit back and watch you
Try and win her heart once more.

You handed me a forget-me-not
And i held it between my fingers
like a cigarette

I looked at you, wide eyes
As you turned your back;
hands in hair

The wind carried my cries;
My thoughts sailing the sea
As I emptied my brain to the shore

You had me addicted

I had been inhaling you
Letting you swirl through my lungs
Burning the back of my throat

You had settled in my body
Like thick, black tar
And there's no way to flush you out

How could i forget you?

"I like to keep dead flowers by my bed" she said
"as a reminder that all beautiful things come to an end"
And as she looked up at me with watery eyes
I understood, by that, what she meant

I fell in love with you in the purchase of a postage stamp
I put your face and body and mind on paper
The way your hair curls
The way you jump with excitement and flap your arms
like a kid would on Christmas morning
How you were always there to turn to
Although I couldn't turn to you because you were never there
And by there I mean here, with me, where you should've been
I fell in love with the train tickets to you
The little orange squares like golden tickets
Granting me access to see you
To touch you
To share the foam of my coffee and laugh with you
at the man dancing at the hot dog stand
And when you finally stepped through my doorway
I swear it was Christmas and my birthday all at once
Planting my head on your chest
We bloomed and grew to heights I never knew was possible
And while little flowers blossomed at the ends of my fingertips
they grew on the tip of your tongue as you uttered those words
Those words to whom I have told but one; you
If I could find a word to describe the feeling of reading
the last several pages of a book you know has become your favourite
I would tell it to you
The hours that we whiled away and the ones that took up
the most of our day to get to each others arms before they took another’s
all meant something
And while the last bitter-sweet pages of our story have been read
Know that there's a girl who still writes you
You dance on the pages of her notebook
And while the postage stamps stay un-licked
She sends these poems to you
For in her mind you will always stay

Is there a word for a moment in time where we feel absolute bliss?
It happens every so often – these rare nuggets of gold
We have to sift through dark, cloudy puddles to find them
And we stumble upon these rare treasures; they clink on the pan

We dangled our legs off the dock
Eating our sandwiches we picked up on the way;
talk lessened between each bite we took
But the wind was just right and the sun on it's way down
There was an even distribution of clouds amongst the sky

A stone landed in the water. Clink. Bliss.
I looked at you. Your curls pushed back, your eyes focused
on the other side of the bank

I jumped right in the deep end and came out gasping for air
Resting on the poolside; my suit clinging to the rise and fall of my stomach
Impatiently I wait for my normal breathing pattern to return
But my lungs are simply refusing to co-operate
I feel like if I sit on the side of the pool for too long I will forget how to swim
Unsure if whether to just dive right in again and kick my legs as fast as my heart races
I drum my fingers on the cold, ceramic surface and wiggle my toes in the water
Staying even after pool closing time
I might drink another glass of wine just to warm my insides
Pretending like I don't know how long it's been
6 weeks yesterday – 6 weeks and a day, today
My mind fuzzy like static off a TV screen
Wanting, not, to spend my life on mute
But my screams only escape my mouth as whispers
Or as songs that once used to belong to us
The songs that filled the intervals of your play

They'll say “there's plenty other fish in the sea”
But he was a shark
And I was a guppy
He had swallowed me whole
and spat me back out
Now I am floating around
Lifelessly
And the 'sea' that I swim?
It's a load of old crap
I'm too far away from the shore
and the ocean's way too large to explore
Especially now I'm on my own
With only the company of my tears
Instead, I will be engulfed by ******* comfort
from my worrying peers
Whilst I dangle my legs numbly off of the pier
Bottle in hand and him on my mind
with pain tingling up from my spine
They'll say “move on” and “give it time”
but time seems to not be on my side
for it moves too painfully slow
I only feel good when I'm not awake
When I'm in public I fear I might break
I can't look people in the eye
It's not because I'm shy
But because I am scared they will see what is swimming inside
Those waves in my stomach
that make me feel queasy
always find their way to the surface, ever so easy

I asked him “what am I to you?”
and he replied “you are the breeze to my sail
helping me to outrun the ship on my tail”
And when he looked down at his feet
he said “now what about me?”
And I uttered “you are indeed the ship I am pushing,
but away from whom? From the person you love.
The one who first made you swoon”
His cheeks were filled with a deep crimson
as I whispered “Look, I am just a distraction”
I've no air in my lungs left to sail your boat
and I'm afraid this means you'll no longer float.
And that ship on your tail, will catch up with you
And I cannot stress enough that there's only room for two
in that small boat of yours
with the holes in the floors
left by me, battered by the sea.
But I can see, you did indeed love me
But there's never enough space in the heart
for more than one partner
And for you to see better days
this breeze must eventually fade away
So you are right to head away
to the place where the sun shines all day
And I hope you can reach land
And feel warm on the sand
And all I wish is for you to shed a tear
when you receive a postcard saying
“Wish you were here”

When you leaned right in
and kissed me on the forehead
though I have a fringe

The torrential rain
flooding the station, your hand
tighter round my hair

Trying to be fun
and romantic; lifting me
up “I'm not that strong”

Rain through the circle
of trees, buckling at my
knees; you in my coat

I've stopped waiting
I've stopped pacing
my bedroom floor
I've stopped tracing
the places that you were in before
I've stopped my mind racing
though I find it escaping
to things that 'were'
Now to start collecting the faces
that I once wore