after a night with you, people began to ask questions.
color blossomed on my skin in shades of purples and red,
interrupted with the occasional broken-blood-vessel lines
where you tried to sink your point into my skin,
bas relief engravings into my superficial self.
my lips are cracked and bleeding,
and my eyes are ringed in black.
whispers slip past me,
ghosts dancing along hallways about the stories my body told.
the only people who know what happened were the people in the room.
love and hate look a lot alike,
lust and violence practically synonymous.
it's all just semantics, after all.

sometimes happiness and
I are right
there beside you
and when you turn to
look,
            we get bored and
                              leave

if we run into each other
fast enough perhaps we’d
collide and fuse
like atoms in the sun.

our lips would melt into one
spark heatwaves
to warm planets, keep
them beating, beating, beating

on. our freckles would inherit
the force of their creator,
turn to sun spots and
spit fireworks for new-year

like dragons. a humble human dream,
we'd be stars, we'd be one.

I carved her face from a pumpkin,
spooned out the flesh to a red bowl
traced out the lines where I wanted
her eyes to be.

I retrieved her heart from a pip
unravelled from the lungs of a satsuma
it was sticky, oozed a milky wine
so I wrapped it in tin foil.

In her sockets I placed half-boiled eggs
sliced down the centre
the yolked irises dripped down
orange turgid cheekbones

When she woke up, the walls shuddered.

The difference between
love and hate
is about the same as
the difference between
hard and soft kisses.

"You kiss like the world is ending."

there, the air is thicker
it hangs full, like the ladies

all the sadness lived in the
capsules of trapped air in
woollen jumpers left behind

men with their toothless
smiles and shining skin
coax laughter from a steel drum

the market boasts a rainbow
of sarongs, papayas, star fruits
offered in jangling song

it was a medicine.
the coral blooms in the reef
are teeth in a dog's mouth,
guarding.