you're in my chest
and you're running down my cheeks
the pain and the pleasure all feels the same

snowflakes land in your hair
your eyes smile
you look so pretty when your lips turn blue

car lights dance in your eyes
dont make me cry
i can't stand how much i need you

If God is real, then why do you still cry?
The breath in my lungs follows when you go
I gaze as hollows creep into your eyes

Your promises to me were cold and dry
Your laugh, so sweet, it (almost) saved my soul
If God is real, then why do you still cry?

I’ll pray for you, I’m blessed to call you mine
I know I'll cry, but it won't hurt at all
I gaze as hollows creep into your eyes

I see your face in each cloud in the sky
I'll lie down on the grass till I turn cold
If God is real, then why do you still cry?

The parts of me you fear, I'll watch them die
Your rough hands on my cheek are all I know
If God is real, then why do you still cry?
I gaze as hollows creep into your eyes

I told you once I was a poet
You asked me to paint you with my words

Words aren't enough for me to tell you how I feel
and besides
I only put my pen to the paper when my heart aches so terribly, I cannot speak them aloud

Here I seek refuge
Here I find peace

I could only write you a poem if my soul perished at your disposal
I could only write you a poem if you could make my tears stain the page

Some days I am so happy I don't even want to speak

What makes you think I can be an artist if I am not starved?

I could tell you that every time you kiss me I feel every string in my heart tighten and collapse
I could tell you that you make me feel like I am re-born
over and over again
and yet, I know that a piece of my soul has belonged to you since men could breathe

But I don't want to do that

You make me so happy that I couldn't diminish what you mean to me into a finite number of lines

If I am being truthful
Maybe I'm simply not a good enough poet to bring justice to describing the way you make me feel

Don't let the pages of my notebook turn wet as I romanticize how terribly you've hurt me

You're the first man who has ever made me feel so alive that the only thing I can do is live

So let's just live

My February Boy
I saw you on your 18th birthday
Do you remember?
I was on my way to go dancing and you were dressed like a man
A real one, with big hands and long legs and one button left undone

You lit a cigarette and asked me if I wanted a drag
I thanked you and we exchanged happy birthdays
I found myself wishing I’d seen you again that night, stilettos on the cobblestone
Arms linked with my September Girl
“How was his birthday?” I wondered.
“Why do I care?”

Because I hate obnoxious men
Still, I hate them stoic and silent and evil
With dark hair and sinister eyes
Soulless and never gentle
I’ll wait for you forever, my February Boy
Because I don’t want anybody else

Well, you’re a man now and you have been for some time
I’m about to turn 21 and so are you
I’ve waited every birthday since my 18th to find you again at the end of the night
To walk you home and to ignore it when you spit on my name
To kiss you again at a century old railroad station, at the top of the staircase
To watch you run alongside the departing train

You told me I saved the city
You told me of how you yearn for the Australian suburbs
while you grew into the man you were back then in the Northern rain

“Look, over there. That’s the Pacific. That’s my home”.

I shouldn’t be afraid of the sun
Still, i’m delighted when it’s so cold I can see my own breath
On Tuesday it was so windy it bit my cheeks
I smiled so big, then looked over my shoulder
But I belong in the snow

I need new material
But everything is so very boring to me
I am NOT unhinged
I just want one cinematic kiss
My head in the hands of a cinematic person

I’m so very sad in such a gorgeous way
I’m so sad that I’ll take a shower and put on my hot girl makeup
I’ll pout and scowl and look deliciously sulky
I’m so hot
I’m so cool
Is this a boring poem?
It was written by a boring person

You’re still a man
Not just a man, but it’s what you are
There’s nothing to be done
I remember being 18, in ways which are often unfond
I recall a fierce and sincere conviction,
One of truth and tenderness
And pathetic devotion,
Not because the man in front of me was truthful, nor tender
Not because he made me feel alive in any way that was earnest
Certainly not because it was love
I was 18
I was only a girl. I am only a girl

I made promises in the mirror
Promises of contentedness. Promises of a time when I’d forget how to yearn
I understand, intimately, the fragility of my own words
I repent in the way that I often forget
That everything that makes me who I am, exists in everybody that I love
Their guarantees are delicate. Their words, unsafe
Over and over again, I break my own heart

Would you punish me for knowing that I adore you?
I do. Adore you, I mean
It’s in everything you say that I am certain you could never be so soulless
Now, and only now, I feel alive in a way which doesn’t feel dishonest
Never ignited by a cruelty which I once confounded with intensity
But by a vulnerability which I now know exists  

There’s nothing about you that I resent
I wonder at times if there’s anything about you that I deserve
I feel the heaviness in your heart, and I forget that
you’re still a man
That’s what you are
Still, I look at you and you remind me of every conviction for which I ache
Every conviction I thought was decayed with delusion
The truth in your eyes, the tenderness in your laugh
It’s in every part of you that you awaken memories of a gentle love that I never had

my old bedroom window
past the trees, where i laid on dead grass and had my first kiss
we'd sit on my desk with a pillow from my bed
my makeup done, i'd smoke a cigarette

i'd ride my bike on cobblestone
when we'd take the bus, and he'd walk me home
i'd see my own reflection as i ride by a shop window
its late at night

still 17, sweet beauty queen
if i recall, i was just as mean
i'd wear fishnet tights,
give him a kiss on the cheek,
end scene.

now i'm only half a person
now i'm only half alive
now if i can bear to adore myself, i'm a fool for staying inside
if it doesn't get cold in november
if a sunny day breaks my heart
i could go back to that party?
how things were
how things are

i stare at the skyline
i stare at my hands
i stare at a city i don't understand
a place i can't trust, but its familiar too?
a place that i hate, because it belongs to you

i ride my bike on a soulless road
get homesick for places i'd never call home
i see the same reflection as i ride by
the same sad girl with the same sad eyes

I miss being 18
Maybe I miss the muted skyline I could see from my bedroom window, past the trees, past the field where I laid down on dead grass and had my first kiss

I miss riding my bike on cobblestone
I’d hold on to the handle bars as my wheels skipped over the cracks
and come home with bruises and a sore back and a drenched scalp
Still, I’d keep my balance
I’d look to my right and see a pretty girl in the reflection
With long blonde hair and an arched back

I used to breathe fire in November
I used to bring a bottle of rosé to a rich girl's house party
I'd kiss your "friend" on the cheek, and linger
and in the morning, I'd lie with/to a man I tried so hard to love because I knew he adored me
But God
I adored me

Now I'm only a half of a person
I look out of my new bedroom window, and see a city I still don't understand
I see a soulless road named after a place I couldn't trust, a place that belonged to you
Oh no, a sunny day has broken my heart…

Could I go back to that party?
The kind where I’d arrive and know where to stand
You know, where I’d fill a red cup with something domestic
and look edible
Not the kind where the walls are foreign, and so is my accent

Hmmm…
If I can't be distracted by a silhouette in club ivy
If I can't take an empty ferry back to Manly beach, and watch the sun rise over Bennelong Point
When the city extra sign runs out of power, and I unlearn how to live
When all I know how to be
is addicted to my memories
Oh man
Now I really hate you

i do everything i can to remember you.

when i listen to silence i think about yours
how you rarely said a word and
somebody like me could never understand

when i stood beneath the sydney harbor bridge and watched the sky explode into every color
i thought about you exactly one year earlier
i pictured you smiling at the southern stars
and i smiled to myself
smug
knowing i was the only girl to whom you'd told that story

the only girl you may have loved

when i'd hear skeggs on the radio during summer in gerroa
when i lifted my surf board over my head on seven mile beach
when i met another boy
also tall. also dark. also handsome.

i realized that i'd been searching for the best pieces of you in every new chapter of my life

i put on an old sundress i know you loved. i thought about the way you would look at me when i'd wear it.

i think about all of the things you would do to me if you saw me in my new sundress.

i let my mind wander to every undignified place as i struggle to focus on now.

on Right Now.

i do everything i can to remember you
so i don't hate myself for not knowing how to forget.

summer's in another boy's eyes in Byron Bay
i can't tell what's then, and what's today

if i went back home, it’d mean nothing at all
i could say it’s the place, but i know that it’s not a skyline that breaks my beating heart
is this who i've been? or who i've become?

i’ll lie here on the grass til i turn cold
your laugh’s so sweet!
it (almost) saved my soul
but i still hear a voice in each cloud in the sky
"i'm alive, i'm alive, i'm alive"

if i left this town, nothing would change
another city gets dark, i’ll still be awake
if you called out my name,
would it keep me sane
if nothings the same?

I cast a guiltless jinx
Because I hate obnoxious men
Now every time you blink
I hope you feel satan!

I light a blameless candle
(Your God can’t hear you now)
and a sinister doctrine
tumbles from my mouth

I hope, sincerely, you adore
your brand new Christian girl
I mean it. She’s so sweet,
She picks flowers and has curls

But every time that you inhale
Each time you close your eyes
Black ink will glide, unkind
As I pray on your demise

I sang this in the graveyard
And woke a garden snake
Could you resist her venom?
Do you resent my ache?

The chip on my shoulder is made of milk chocolate
Its sweet and its creamy
When I sit in the sun too long,
it melts and drips down my shoulders
making the crooks of my elbows stick together
What a mess!

Oh, who cares?
Let’s jump in the lake
I’ll paddle in circles around you
I’ll turn you red before the sun can,
because I know what’s in my heart exists in yours
and you make me so very bashful

If you want to float,
then float, gorgeous!
Your shoulders are burnt
and you’re off your rocker
If the water seeps onto the plastic,
and it cools you down,
then that makes one of us.

I hope you love how it feels
Did it roll over your neck quickly enough to jolt you?
For a moment,
could you anticipate anything more than lake water rolling down your spine?

God forbid you capsize,
But we’re wearing our bikinis!
Thread your dainty arm through mine,
And I’ll pull you back to shore
You look like a dream in the sunshine
But, my God!
Even your shadow is pretty

If I turn you from good, strong soil, into a muddy river
I’ve given you every part of me just to fill your roots
When there’s nothing left of what was once the Atlantic
That seeped on shore to soak Pacific fruits  
I’d still want to climb you, Chestnut Tree
So I won’t cut you down,
Because I can’t set you free
And though I yearn for the Atlantic
I still find I’ll have to know where to exist in every part of the sea
Your bark must be moistened
limber, and alive
Nothing may swim
So the squirrels can survive
But i can’t give you all of me, Chestnut Tree
I can’t give you all of me

Sometimes you feel like the first day of my life
I look at your face,
And sometimes I can’t hear what you’re saying because I’m too busy watching you say it
I’m so used to being cradled,
So used to hands the size of my face brushing wet hair off my cheeks

I want to go dancing with my best friend
I want to speak, not so I can be perceived, but so that somebody I want to know me, hears me
I want to sit with the loves of my life,
With the love of my life,
And watch them seek friendship with the people who matter most to me because I matter to them
I watch you be brave and charming and clever and gentle
You’re so pretty, and you’re as sweet as the fresh strawberries that you’ve set as my backdrop
Please
let me want you

Can I tilt my head forwards?
If my jaw resists the pull of my fingers,
So I pull harder,
What I want doesn’t matter,
Because I know what I need.

But it’s so painful, Porcelain Doll
It’s so painful to have so much love for a boy with no safe place to put it
And it’s so painful to sit across from someone who tells me they see me,
To believe them completely,
And know that there’s somebody who already knows me so well,
That they said they couldn’t love me anymore because they love me too much
So still,
I try my best to pry open the eyes of someone who has made me feel like an invisible woman

I want a triple layered devils food cake
With buttercream roses, and my name piped in cursive icing
And I want to eat it, too.
But how very dare I leave you to do all the dishes
To light the candles, and gesture to everyone in the room that it’s time to hush
To watch you walk through the door, singing of your wishes for me to have the happiest birthday
Just so I can close my eyes and wish for somebody that I used to know?

For so many years
I’ve been so in love with a person that all I want to do is cry and cry
I really love you, little Doll
I love you so much I could cry even harder
I love feeling alive with I’m with you,
And safe when we’re apart,
And still knowing that I’m not just in love with a feeling.
I love the moments when we’re brave at the same time,
And when I wake up just moments before you and can’t help myself from pulling your soft, sleepy body closer to mine
I love when we’re in a dark and muggy club, and you spin around quickly just to look me in my eyes
When I pull your perfect face close to mine,
And press my forehead to yours just to laugh maniacally when nothing is particularly funny,
I know that the joy of that moment makes me feel so earnestly happy and alive because it’s with you

My brave Sagittarius
You’re a centaur with an honest to God foundation
A figure so sturdy and mystical that it only exists because someone knew how to dream it up
I’m just a little fish!
What good is a fish who can only swim up to shore, and gaze at the centaur as they close one eye,
Puff put their strong chest,
And have the courage to let the arrow release from their grip because they don’t care if it hits the target,
They just have to let it go.

I love you, my beautiful strong centaur
And I’m sorry that I’ve got useless gills,
And that the water around me always feels too heavy
And too cold
How I wish I could fast forward one hundred millions years
When I’ve grown legs that can carry me to where I belong
I’d stand up straight, and I’d sprint
I’d sprint so hard that I’d hit you when I land because I didn’t give myself enough time to stop