An afternoon after rain
In faint musty humidity
Under a champagne-candied sky
That spring was terribly sweet
Sweet and slightly suffocating
The day I chose to love

Light! Ah, light. At last.
The dull grey vanadium
Even burns full blast!
No need to breathe,
Just take the heat
And soon you'll never
Know defeat!
Victory! Victory, at last;
A great pile of ashes-
That is all that will last.
On this meagre battlefield
For all that will not yield.

And softly, he exhaled,
Tattooed chest falling
Like the tide
In rhythmic succession,
My mind  
Wondering whether or not I loved him
Right then.
Cigarette smoke drifting in circles
Tantalising around his lips
As if glass could shatter
If I reached out
From the screen,
Fingertips grazing the surface
of someone so close, so clear,
Somewhere far, far away.

These days she has her eyes half-closed
As if she could only bear to see half the world
And these days she says
She would rather feel pain over this numb
As she slices herself open
In search of a better layer of skin
Like a moulting spider, upturned, and hanging from a branch.

i think maybe i'll write
on soju and beer
and blow cigarette smoke on the page
the words that appear
make me think that i fear
a lifetime in my head

should I travel far enough into space
there would be a time in autumn after 8,
where I'd sneak out of bed as a child,
drunk on sleep and counting sheep
in warm pyjamas and bare feet
I'd often long for those times
when the world changed after night
and the carbonation of fuzzy TV screens
became a portal to my own magical world
of dragons and fairies and other flying creatures

two years ago
my dad lost his tooth
to a bowl of fried rice
he said he likes it now
the gap in his smile
a void always left unfilled

My guy, trust me when I say
“I don’t wanna die,” because I don’t
-but, if you thought I did, then
Maybe you’re the kind of someone that
Watches raindrops race each other
To death. Would it be so hard to turn
Your eyes into reservoirs;
Exchange those glances for words because
I don’t know how much longer
I can hold out. I don’t wanna die
But I’m so ******* lonely
That I just might have to cease
To exist
Because no-one knows I do
And honestly neither do I.

How easy it is to run away, to
Overlook three empty cups with two-half
Full. How simple it is to erase an
Entire timeline with a silent tap.
You with your obsidian spoon, too clean
A black, gouge out the splinters that linger
Behind your eyelids. Melt them down with the
Old grandfather clocks - an evanescence
You know will feed you immediate joy.

I believed we were made of gold
Shone in artificial light
And amongst the amber glow of dawn
:ignites our fingertips
Burning boldly as a Phoenix
Assorted in passion; euphoric
I watch as streams of shining viscous liquid lustre
Soak-seep-so surely within our tissue
Permeates past our brazen bone
Discovering paragons in animosity
Observing some shapeless forms
In an epiphany we don’t understand

I count them
On each golden finger
As they turn to stone