We get drunk, there's coke,
there's yokes,
there's drugs in abundance,
emotions pour out through
the broken dam, exploded
temporarily by big eyes,
slurred words, and a general,
overwhelming sense of well-being.

Euphoria brings euphoria,
I lie in your arms "just be with me."
You agree, it's easy,
almost beautiful.
We talk about how we've hurt eachother,
your brother, your ex, your roommate
we blame these people for our losses,
for our inability to just love eachother.

But then
sobriety
crippling and loud, the day is crisp,
lights are bright and suddenly
I am on an operating table.
You are brandishing an instrument —
a scalpel? Or a needle.
Are you stitching or cutting?
Your hand poised above my heart
we stare at eachother in silence.

You turn, your white coat swirls,
you leave.
But wait? Where are you going?
Is this love? Is it love? Is it?

Two hours sleep
in seventy-two hours,
dizzed up in an empty pub
alcopops and cigarettes.
It's back,
is it back? Or just ****.
It's the fog,
on my chest, panicky
and lonely sounding
a fog horn
lost amongst everything

no one cares, no one gives a ****
or is that just the drugs?

A year later, but,
sometimes, in the night, he's there,
whoever he was,
his clammy hands, groping.
Sometimes it comes
when I am alone and scared,
sometimes it's
me, in a bed with my best friend
with my back turned
and I'm scared for no reason.

But you know,
it wasn't even the real thing.
It was my fault,
I was so drunk, I couldn't push him off me,
he didn't even really get me,
and I passed out straight away after
so was it really that bad?

But it was
it's still a night terror.

Michael pulled me out of the slump.
I didn't want him or love him,
but I trust him,
he showed me how to feel again,
but I couldn't cuddle him.
Couldn't touch his skin,
or face away from him.

The creepy crawlies run over me
and the bad dreams pick away
at my conscience.

I tried to tell them,
they wouldn't listen.

I need the nights
with you, and mornings with unclean teeth
making my sister bring my shoes to the beach
because I only have heels.
7am, and you,
shouting down the phone to your ex
"do you think less of me?"
but how could I ever.
48 hour days, I got dressed for the club
but just met you after work.
Driving through the night
as you traced out your life on my knee
and refused to stop kissing me.
You showed me how you diffed rings
after dark,
to blow smoke rings
we made love in three
of your cars
and never in bed, just drove roads
you worked nights
an end of summer miracle that couldn't last.

How can I explain a love that's lost
when it's so present,
yet gone,
when you're here, breathing,
speaking, it's you,
just buying food, visiting your cousins
and sticking up for me.
So happy to see you,
yet the dull pain swims
in my heart and hands,
the dark soup that spills through my veins
tinting everything
and yet
the moment you leave it's the darkest day.

You know I don't like it *****
I keep my freak for the streets.
You know it's just
pull the duvet over my head
so it's just you and me
hidden in this little space.

It's the voice you make
when you want to stay on the phone.
Softened, gentle
oh-so-lovely
the look you give me in the half light
misty, half closed eyes,
turned up corners of your mouth.

How can I love you this much
and yet
not at all?
In this comfortable way
like a best friend
or a husband.

It's not exciting at all
and definitely not rewarding
but I care far too little about myself to stop it
and love you too much to change it.

Home is powdered white.
Snow and lines of *******
a little flurry
a blizzard of children, the needy,
the restless.
It's a kind of mania, a hiraeth,
a grá for a place once loved
but washed from the hands forever.

The South China Sea swallows me,
and I wonder if I can taste Atlantic.
The salt breeze, does it carry you in it?
Does it carry a thousand nights
in the frigid cold
hungry and drunken and trying
to get home?

It's not home,
it doesn't smell of home,
and on seeing gold the copper seems
tarnished red as blood
and yet the gold just doesn't settle right.

The sea here is turquoise
at home is green and at home home
is indigo. A hundred times indigo,
blue as the sky and the eyes of my mother.

When they say it with a foreign accent
it sounds so far away.
Killala my hometown,
the sinner's bay.