Your hands must be soft as nectarine skins
in summer.
Old skin torn away by hardship
to reveal new beginnings,
and when I feel your fingers against my own
I know it’ll be the start of something
much more wonderful
than when we were alone.

You used to not wear lipstick just so that you could kiss me,
and it hit my chest like bricks when I noticed
you were wearing it
today.

You sit across from me on the 3pm Friday train, taking us from the throbbing heart of Nottingham
to the serenity of York.
I listen to the same song over and over again for the whole journey.
We exchange multiple glances
and multiple smiles.
I imagine what it must be like for your girlfriend to be wrapped up in your arms.
Part of me wishes I was her.
You just look like power -
the kind of power that could complete me
and tear me apart
all at once.

I always thought
we’d move in together.
Cram all our stuff,
our thoughts,
our hearts
into one small flat;
not quite in London but close enough.
I guess some things don’t work out,
though.
Now instead of this space being filled
with your presence
it is full of me missing you;
nostalgia seeps between the cracks
in the paint,
in the walls,
in the last crumbling pieces of our relationship.
When I go outside
in the unforgiving wind tomorrow
the last specks of us will
leave my clothes
like a spirit leaving a dead body.
Still in the world
but not existing where it used to.
Not where it hurts
like salt in an open wound.

“How do you feel?”

She sits across from me with an unintentional smug look
plastered across the canvas of her face.

“Fine.” I say bluntly.
“Fine” meaning ‘I can’t stop picturing his face
and how his hands feel on my waist
and how it’s so much better when he’s with me and not her’.
“Fine” meaning ‘why did he have to ruin it?
Why didn’t he just pretend he loved me back?’
“Fine” meaning ‘I could catch the bus to his home right now;
stand on the doorstep and demand
he glue and stitch back together my broken heart.’
“Fine” meaning ‘I don’t want to talk to you about it.”
“Fine” meaning ‘I’m going to go home now,
lie on the roof of my house and try to get the sound
of his muffled-through-his-chest heartbeat
and the sound of my own crying
out of my head’.

My depression is a glass of flat lemonade –
hard to swallow
but I can’t stop coming back to its sweetness.
I have learnt to stop
wallowing in it, though -
deep down there is a part of me
unwilling, yet it knows
to give up trying to get rid
and I’ve learnt to accept,
because despite what I’m told,
that I should not let my depression be so bold
in telling me what to do,
existing like this is almost bearable
because it exists like outer space –
there is so much of it
yet it communicates its complexity in silence.
I am yet to receive a response from the void,
but feeling this crushing nothingness at 2pm
in an aisle of a supermarket
makes me realise it’s not gone yet.
I don’t know if it’ll ever leave.

It feels so heavy right now –
like your bones are cracking
under the weight of your head.
You swore you could get through this –
clutching notebook in shaky hands
saying
“the words will get me through.”

You thought this was going to be easy
but continuing each day,
lifting the fork to mouth,
watching your life
fly south for the winter,
is harder than you ever thought it could be.
But let me tell you that one day you’ll be ok –
sometime soon you will not be able to wait to start your day
and I know how hard it is right now.
I know depression is crushing you into a fine dust,
but I can tell you now that one day
you will feel good again.
One day
flowers will bloom in your head
instead of wilt. Just
please
don’t give up.
The shift is coming soon.

Sometimes I go into the city at night
alone.
Let the pavement trace the way without breaks,
get lost under the blue lights.
I go to the places we used to
and sometimes get a little drunk –
I don’t want to remember
but I have gravitated to these places
so maybe I should just honour
my cravings for you –
the sickly-sweet syrup
of your spit,
the saffron, sticky honey of your eyes.
We used to
do the same
together
as I am now doing alone –
let the concrete slabs
pave the way
without breaks;
going nowhere
and everywhere
all at once.