last summer
when it began
the air wafts of its smell again

and I can’t remember any other summers
before the one I’ve spent with you

only a day here and there -
in fact I don’t remember much
of any of these seasons

every extra hour
we rewrite
the way the winter chills down to my bones
the way the rain sounds when it falls
the way the short-sleeved shirts come out again


this might just be
the longest year I’ve ever had

and now I’ve been through
almost every season with you

still, our summer never ends


I like to tell the story
of how we both heard the same song
and tried to Shazam it -
mere happenings in parallel,
two years apart

and I don’t believe in fate
but I do believe in
the coy humour of coincidence

how our summer never ends
because we took the sun
and shared it between us

how the song Summer Girl
has nothing to do with
a girl wanting to be anyone’s anything

at least not to me

I do not go anywhere,
I do not collect anything -
I do so little of everything!

(but string together spider threads
to make up fluttering spider webs
of the temporal doom inside -
then, in these webs I reside.)

Here am I
settling in for the night -
lay myself down in bed,
to bathe in the clarity of moonlight

and I find the spring breeze
dancing shy on my face -
but I lay overwhelmed
in the trace of its embrace

for I needed this
gentle touch today;
having barely a hold
on the words I can’t say,

in these long weeks
of wrestling myself again -
and yet I find the night’s breeze
meeting me as a friend.

Then - along my spine,
the blanket agrees
with the lovingly
overwhelming spring breeze,

and suddenly so
does the brilliant moonlight -
and so do the pages
of the book on my bedside,

and they all move to agree with
my nothing inside.

And with that -
I drift into the night.

You fall asleep, phone in hand
the light of your game shines over you
in a slumber far-off and away

Tuck you in tonight
and in nights past
the way I wished to be

I am your blindside

I must turn away
or it will be the end of me

I must climb the stairs, go to bed,
I must face away from the door

No longer to lend from my voids;
consuming me inside to out

No lock will stop
what wanders these halls

For tomorrow, we will talk again
scathing speech still to cut
profoundly

still to pull myself apart
to attempt a reach once more.

They all look so **** healthy -
standing over me, staring at me,
speaking so loudly -
as though the illness is in my ears.

And I don’t appreciate being
stood over or stared at,
or having somebody raise their voice at me
yet barely hear a human word of what I say.

They just look so ******* healthy -
I think I’ve been abducted by aliens.
They want to search every part of my body
to find out what is wrong with me,

as if their perfectly supple skin
and their bagless eyes
and their stupidly crisp clothes
aren’t totally wrong to me.

deep talks
over Whatsapp

each turn of the year
you are brighter, darker

two pleasant surprises
in the form of brothers

mean streak
to pass on

whoever you meet
earns a mean streak

I see patterns
in everything
but you

like to tell me
that everything I do
is the first time

humble my hope

in the shadow of memories
you made on your own

Why is it so hard to write about you?

I guess
when I search myself
I can understand

Inside me is a door
that stays open for
mostly anyone who
willingly steps in

And you ransacked the place
and I have no insurance -

Poor as they come
in stable love

Locking down
and locking out

Sunday shut-in

thoughts like moths
in the basement

beating their wings
on the sores in my mouth

I am terrified of moths
I am the dark

I am all the plagued things
that I didn’t think I could be

I used to believe I was made of sunlight,
being born to a summer Sunday’s sunrise

but right now I lay in the dark
to the sounds of everyone else having dinner

thoughts like moths in the basement

I am a low-hanging light bulb,
I am slow-burning toward the inevitable

dust settling

writing on the shower door

I cannot wipe clean
till I can get out of my mind

soap bubbles to burst down the pipeline

clean is so tough
over and over

just to spoil tomorrow
to make clean once more

just how long for?

up in flames,
the racing thoughts
feed this fire;
so hungry
for fruition,
for extinction

put me out -
how can I put me out?

Now and then,
I have a day
of forgetting that I am.

I ride the ghost of this wave
‘fore it crashes to shore
to be built back to rock from the sand,

or at least to make castles,
with careful pressing of hands.

Until surf’s up again,
I must stay on the land.

Until this day returns,
I will do what I can.

I will do what I can,
I will do what I can.

I give to you
to no avail
just to see you forget your life
for a blink or two
for a cup of coffee
but never to change
anything at all

It will never be enough

I do not know what enough is
supposed to look like

“Go big or go home” I like to say -
and so, I have never really been home

If I could move mountains
I would hand-build your paradise
I would strip my bones to frame your view

You could leave all this behind

And the trouble is
that people say
I’m not obliged

Yet here the obligation lies
in my blood and bones
in the existence of my soul

When I am not trying
to move mountains for you
I am tearing myself to shreds inside

And when I think about
how you have felt
all this time,
suddenly
the good things
go

and I have to search
for birds again,
dancing in the clouds

I have to -

because you can’t look up
for birds anymore

Your eyes don’t brighten,
if they ever did -

I didn’t know you then -
I still don’t now

The boat unmoored -
My unpainted soul
The weather whittles my wooden bones

Drift into the distance,
Always moving there

The slowness of it happening
Sends me into
The image of an iceberg -

Sun beating down,
Beating me under.

dream and wake
days flicker back and forth

summer air hugs my nose in the morning
by night I am slippers, scarves and socks

every day is a Friday, a Wednesday, a Tuesday
every day is the watching of clocks

home again, dinner, then rushing to work
hear the phrases repeat in our talk

I buy next year’s calendar
time and again

from a place that always makes it the same
so I don’t have to pretend

that time is not meaningless -
because time never ends

because time does not slow for us;
time is not our friend

so say **** all the future and planning and done
I would lay in the dirt just to rot

find me happy to leave you the worldly ideas
I am hoping one day be forgot -

in these lasting dreams, and in wake
no feeling, no thought

He’s been stuck at 25
since I’ve been around 6 -
planning to go through life
top of class, breezing by

And I come down the stairs
just to tell them I’m alright

He waves off my little heart -
rinses and wrings it -
as he leaves behind
some things for she and I to do;

Writing me into history books.

i

Could I just take a peek inside?
What’s the colour of your blood? Could I take its temperature?
Could I examine you inside and out, head to toe, just take my time to figure it all out?

A human, healthy and vital in all physical regards. Radiating with what I could only call temporary immortality. I know I’ll never see it fade in my lifetime…

So won’t you stick around?



I don’t mean to be cruel, it’s just...

How I envy your physical freedom - your need for so little sleep, the way you bounce back after a night out, accidentally missed the bus so you just walk home. What I could do with that kind of power… my body feels so much older than you.



ii

Humiliated and betrayed by this heavy casing I carry, have carried and cared for, and defended from hands with no self control.

How could you do this to me? I thought I loved you well, I thought this transaction was forever. A permanent wrench in the system, what can I do but accept it all and push on?

The alternative...well, it’s not something I can accept.

I didn’t carry you all this way, all the way through childhood recklessness, years of kicks and stances on hardwood floors, basketball games, over oceans, and through forests of trees, all the way to shifts at the diner, at the cafe, or the book factory, and on bicycles through streets (almost ending it), through crowded cities and up countless flights of stairs, all the way, for this.

A physical self-gaslighter, fixing problems which aren’t even there. Talk about the placebo effect - a self-doubting, gaslighting mind, and a body with an attitude to match.

I’m sorry I doubted myself so much - criticised and never gave slack to my mind or my body - convinced there was always something I was doing wrong, never trusting the idea that my instincts could actually be right.

And this all leads me to ask… did I do this to myself?

Here I go again.

How do I put it lightly?
How could I, anything?

I see now why some words are printed after death.
Can I bring myself to wait?

In the shame of omission, a truth becomes futile -
Too late are the words which will never bring change,
which will never tell you how you changed me.

I’ve got sugar and oranges
on the grill -
What can I do to bring you home?
To me?
Candied ginger,
strawberries and havarti -
each year it’s something else,
I try something else
Won’t you just come home to me?
For me?
I don’t remember when you left,
I only know it’s been a long time
Faintly remembered -
memories maybe just a fever dream,
to patch this gape in my chest.
I’m old enough now not to need,
still I ask into the fog of this family,
What can I do to bring you home?
To me?

in the edges of my vision,
writhe the snakes of murky dreams
turn my head - vanish
shake me free of leaden sleep
follows me
down lanes and streets
dizzy at the prospect of the journey home;
heavy legs to bring back
and lay along the bed
with pragmatic tenderness
for I am ponderous as a stone
please wrap me warmly in
sunlight and clement winds
to send me off tomorrow
to do it all again

I can’t tell you where this all comes from,
because I already feel like a fraud.

These rivers lead back where
I can’t speak -
can’t speak up -
can’t say...

(that my fear
of being obliterated
is very real -
that sometimes I
would like to be the one
to decide)

And death is many things in us -
it is many things, many ways

And in many ways,
by slowing my spirit,
I have already died -
just to stay alongside
this slow corpse

Now I am seeing everything
for the first time,
for the first time,
for the first time

As though I have seen everything
for thousands of years,
for the first time.

skin and words - two such different things
both at once so immediate
hiding all that simmers underneath

holding on another week
the smell of jasmine in your sheets
four pillows, two minds, and the light from the street

each alone in our heads,
do tomorrow again
till we’re back here, lying together in bed.

words for you
resistant behind these ribs

anything for you
I’d do anything

I would
and I did
and it’s over now

and never again
would I

so, words for you
must be squeezed
from this under-ripe lemon heart

cleanses in small doses
words for you

sour, erosive
words for you

any number of
words for you

anything for you
I would do

and it’s over now
and never again

I would never again.

I can still see us there in the distance,
us in my eyes as though it were yesterday -
the icy wind and my clammy hands,
trying somehow to reach your heart -
or at least your hands.

You ask me for the only money I have left -
you know I don’t have anything but you.
You don’t see it, I buy the guitar for you
hoping this instrument will bring us together,
the way music usually would.

I thought I saw you,
in the corner of my eye,
or maybe it was the corner of my mind?

In passing moments,
as I flit along,
I feel a familiar tether -

Somewhere,
out in the vastness of this city…
the feeling of having you.



Having you…

Sometimes,
occasionally,
or were you ever?



I think of you in your apartment alone,
I think of the state of your room,

Somehow,
I feel that you are gone from the world,
and I am fearful of the feeling manifesting as truth

Yet through your local haunts I pass by,
quickly -

As quick as I can -

God forbid having to face you again.

our singular imaginations
share one shy dream;
to breathe again, and be again,
in the thrill of possibility

some of us timid, mouths tight,
holding the hope in our throats
some wild-eyed and fanfaring,
indulging the smoke

we all felt it coming;
the wind and the rain
bring visions, and lift resignations
away

Little rock in space,
you float and you yearn and you spend

Hitched your wagon to the wrong star,
burning out before your journey’s end

The embers catch you, wasting -
you’re not enough for yourself

But you’re not home yet
and it’s all you can do

to ration the last of you
to the seemingly endless length of life ahead

Maybe you will never see another soul again.

Today the world slows down to me
and I’m still dragging my feet.

in my eyes, an ever morning fog
since I were a child

I stopped breathing then
hitch in my throat when I must inhale

I hate to

and I see myself living
so far removed

arms, legs, mouth
going through the motions

reading myself the actions
rehearsing this play

all the world’s a stage

I walk myself slowly to the door of myself,

so I can let myself out,
so I can be with you, my friend.

Life is such a joke;
the least meaningful of things
become figurative inside.

My mother never did like me
to have people over, so

I chat to you in the front yard
of my heart,

I pretend to see warmth
in your marble eyes -

please, may I have the eyes
I glimpse between laughs?

I find it hard to face you,
my house front is a backdrop,

it should be more of something -
whatever ‘something’ is...

My silences - inadequacy,
my comments hog the stage,

I know up in my mind
you never see me that way -

this is just something I have to say.

I see the way you seethe sometimes -
would you ever hurt me?

There is nothing to see in a mirror like me -
I soothe as you seethe.

There is such a pleasant sweetness,
like melting honey and citrus juices,
in the balm of early summer’s midday.

Freshly cut lawns -
fragrant green, green, green -
and to sit on the back porch

in my socks, singlet, and jeans,
just scuffing my shoes
for the season

like countless others before me
in this timeless tradition.
I am alone - yet

none of this feels like
alone -
glimpse the shadows

of the people before me,
doing just this,
feeling just this

exact,
particular,
state of strange bliss.

I’m sorry that I
always feel like I’m stepping up a staircase
which is climbing ever higher, yet descending into earth,

sorry that I
think I can tell you how it hurts
to be blood and flesh and bone,

sorry that
the words never reach anybody,

sorry that I
like to pick apart the pain
and show you the results,

sorry that I
sway between “all of this matters”
and “nothing ever does”,

sorry that
the whole of me
does not feel whole,

sorry that I
really am sorry
for the whole of me,

sorry that I
keep saying sorry -

****, I’m sorry.