and everything that's less is more
when we're wrapped up in a way that has always made more
sense than all the dollars you think you need to spend on me
but I just want you to see that when breathing is heavy and I can feel your heartbeat
better than my own is when I know that it'll be okay and even if we aren't meant for more than a little piece
of forever now has never been better
and I just hope you like me in
my socks

i.
some days are more
worth living than
others; today is not
one of those days

ii.
your words stay pinned
on my mirror, and i
don't know if i am
keeping them there to
torture myself
or to remind myself
that i should stay
alive

iii.
i used to be okay,
and i don't know how
i ever was that way
or how to get back

iv.
you used to draw maps me
on my arms; nobody knew where
they went except for
you

v.
i want go where
you do, but i don't know
how to find you

my biggest fear is that i will
stop wanting to become more
than the person i already am

(i will not settle for just getting by
any longer; i want to be
magnificent)

don’t be afraid. crows will screech
and lions will roar but stand,
you’re the statue of liberty.

i never understood why you could smoke at 18
but drink at 21 when
smoking won’t let you graduate college.

call your mom every day, she sits alone
in the house that once swallowed you,
waiting to be taken too.

be your own best friend, no one else
will think that the sun shines out of your ***
more than you will.

lastly, love harder than you’ve ever loved—
let yourself fall and when you’re bleeding on the concrete,
get up and do it all over again.

I have not injected myself, felt the pulse
of illegal things under the bonnet of my skin
or swallowed a pill and let the room swirl
in colours from the mid-sixties.

I have not guzzled ugly orange drinks
until my liver aches to talk
and I erupt pints and shots
against ***-coated cubicle walls.

I have not had the awkward first
with one of my teeth knocking on hers
or a line of saliva in my stubble
that I perhaps should have trimmed.

Instead I drink tea with two sugars
and whizz through each channel
rather than absorbing stories for class
as best I can like a square of kitchen roll.

Instead I see streams of people from 20-whatever
take pictures with berries and apples
to remind themselves who they are
and remind me they still breathe.

And instead I write what I don't know
for if not every word burns black then dies
and so I continue to fight the other me
who will not turn, walk back the way I just came.

What colour are Mondays?
Red? Well mine are.
The same colour
you’d imagine a headache to be,
tomatoes, morello cherries
or like a nosebleed.

Does that mean Tuesdays are blue?
That mouthwash shade,
brain-freeze after a Slushie.
Wednesdays? Perhaps purpley-pink
as burning potassium,
Parma Violets under your tongue.

Thoughts on Thursdays?  Fake-tanned,
tangerine skin, the ugliest orange
for the ugliest day.
But Fridays are a healthier green,
think telephone-pole celery,
cucumber truncheons and kiwis.

Saturdays then? Funeral black
speckled with brown sugar
though Sundays are white.
Hurts-your-eyes-like-snow white,
almost transparent, for they come
and dash by with no tone in-between.