I'm so sure
there is a world out there
for me, in which
you are not the sole light source,
or the green leafy gaps
in the trees. Where

the composted earth-
warm and crumbled
under my feet- is not
you. A place
where you do not live
in the foam
on the ocean waves
or in the hollow of the conch
shells.

It's a 4AM start
on the sofa, still drunk
and heading to bed.
And you're there,
in the hallway.
So I rub my eyes and know
you'll be gone when
I take down
my hands.

I press my fingers into the sockets
and say
"I miss you"
I can smell you as if you're there
keep my eyes closed for two more
minutes, breathing.
Then I let go
and go to bed.

I buried you deep
on the ocean floor.
Pushed you off on a raft
all ablaze like a firework.
All flaming glory, afloat
on the blue and green water.
A reflected sparkle in my own eye.

I buried you deep
and then left.
I ran
like a rabbit toward bigger things -
left you behind with part of myself
but lied and told them I had it all with me.

I buried you deep in the bed.
Dredged up books from the pit of my belly.
I was told that it's easy to forget a young fool
but the light hits the leaves and they grow and make food,
and the green chlorophyll is all you.

This house is so empty and clean
and the college is lonely and new.
I sit on the pavement
night after night, thinking of bluebells,
beaches and the people I knew.
You could have come with me
but I buried you deep in my old, messy room.

Music knots my stomach,
makes my heart ache. Every
lie the boy told reimagined
in the dull pain spilling through me.

I'm drinking away the pain,
but the pain is - there is no pain.
Everything's relatively reasonable,
and calm. I need someone
just to tell me they hate me.

Love is a disease and it sticks to me.
I want to scream in the street -
to feel so angry I could get sick.
Hit someone because I love them
so much it hurts in my bones
and my teeth.

But it's empty. The days are empty.

Takeaway Chinese,
best friend's leaving me alone
for good. What's new, kid?

Oh god.

There's far more gin than tonic
in this
and far more him than sense.
I'm just a mess
crying on the bedroom
floor.

I'm just drunk. With
one euro fifty reading glasses,
spewing out nonsense
to my friends and they
don't even care.

I'm so ******* lonely.
I'm the perfect venn diagram intersection
of the sets named "self-loathing blondes"
and
"narcissists"
and I have no real problems
so I'll just call it art.

**** it.
I'll drink some gin and read The Bell Jar.

How do you think
I got in to this anyway?

I can't talk, so I can't work.
The higher register of my voice
is just a squeak. A dramatic dog call.
A whistle on the inhale.

I thought it was tobacco,
but my friends caught the heavy head
and burning skin. So I'll go back
to inhaling slow suicide soon.

Do you think it's ****? The yellow
teeth and hands. The putrid smell.
Signing over your geriatric lungs
to a devil that lets you breathe for a moment.

The chef whistles tunelessly, infuriating
and constant. An asthmatic making music.
I think the rumours are making me ill.
None of it's true and nobody cares.

Today is grey.
It's raining in August and nobody is here.
I'd bake a cake but I can't make cake,
I'd take a drink but that would be silly.

She sniffed
two lines
off her student card,
with her name and dates
then
two lines down
it said medicine, with a smiling face
and a big college emblem.

Two weeks later
she sits
in a bathroom in a new flat
staring at a pissy stick
two pink lines
stare back at her.

The day moves quick,
she rings me, she cries,
I console, she screams-
How? When she did everything
right
the morning after and
he hasn't even texted her.

We call a conference,
best friends pull change
from bank accounts,
communion savings,
credit unions. We all
pile in. Get the girl to England.
Get her to a hospital.
Get her a degree,
we're all in it now.