Crack an egg on the floor.
Is it a mess or
a waste of an egg
or just a thing that happens sometimes,
collateral damage for life.
You can't make omelettes
without making a mess but
how many messes do I have to make first?
I'm not necessarily
trying my options but observing
others and picking my days based
on paper offers. I'm too nervous
to crack an egg,
but I'll tell anyone they're a euro for six
you can afford one more egg,
I don't think I can just yet.

You’re drunkenly screaming,
hands against the skin where
my kidneys would be. Telling
same-old-stories, you’re angry with me.
Fingers flexed on a cigarette, smoking through
yellow teeth into my hair, sipping
a yellow drink in a clear plastic cup.
Your accent is familiar, doesn’t
belong here. Sounds like what
home used to be.

You’re telling me I may be profoundly
sad, but I’ve come to understand
that even if you love someone
they may not stick around.
I’m fine, in an unbreakable mind frame.
Happy. That’s not up for discussion.
You’re begging me
to not wind up dead.
Just shut up. Drink your double whiskey.
I’ll cry when it suits me.

My best years are over,
how bittersweet, this home run.
Dark chocolate I
would never have ate 'til now.
I'm no child, but still
belly-achingly young. Still pregnant
with hopes and dreams, still
curled up
in a wine-soaked ball. Just happy now,
not teary-eyed, lamenting.

The best days of my life
were mostly awful. Some were sunny,
some were sweet. I was
torn
between reckless abandon
and believing I couldn't feel worse.
My arms and legs
slowly self-dissected. My mind
slowly unravelled. Boys "broke"
my heart to smithereens. I took
my first
drink.

I loved my third or fourth drink,
puked up my fifth or sixth,
I drank
away irrelevant sorrows. Now
I watch my sister do the same.
She's sixteen in
one
month. I want to tell her
this is the last day
of the best years of my life.

I have crossed the rope bridge,
climbed the mountain.
I'm one step, one roll over
in the bed
from the top, the end,
the fourth base. Adulthood
welcomes me quietly. I am
triumphant. I am
the youngest
I have ever been.

Little peach, you are
too sweet to be real.
Too good to be true,
too unbelievable. Your juices
taste like melted Calippo,
you must have been factory made.
Built by men in white coats
in a white lab from orange E numbers.
The softest skin, so ripe for picking,
there must be a stone
in you somewhere.

Little peach. I will not
eat any more of you. I think
you might make me ill.
I think you were genetically modified
to make me fall in love with you.
Who taught you to taste
like caramel? How many girls
have ate you down to the core
only to *****
when you were all gone?

There's only so much flesh to go around,
if I don't do my time
you might rot in the bowl.
And what if you're wholesome?
Garden grown beside pea plants.
Sunshine citrus, full
of thirst quenching nectar.
A sweet little peach for me to eat,
I'd never go hungry again.

The heart twinge is all too familiar,
too comforting
and too reminiscent of past failures.
Best to stamp on the budding flower
lest we learn to draw
poison
from the seeds

Or forget the lessons life already taught us,
most untimely and most impractical.
I fell ill
at the feet of an idiot
and wouldn't repeat it—
no matter if the next man
is kinder than the last.

Even if his eyes were azure blue,
or should he like mine for their icy greyness.
Those are just tricks, and I have learnt.
I am a smart girl with
time on my side.

It's 7AM in Taipei, I haven't slept yet.
Jetlagged and jaded.
I travelled a long way to see her
strung up on a blood transfusion.
Whimpering like a poor rabbit,
the nurse reminding her
that fresh blood curdles in four hours.

I was motivated a few days ago,
but those feelings come and go.
She'll drain her osteomy bag,
I'll hold the jar but
I'm not really worth anything,
I'm not strong or smart, and look
at her wasting away to nothing.
I should be doing something.

I'm distracting myself by smoking,
dipping in and out through the hazy rings
drifting lazily above my head.
Dreaming of *****. I've never tried it,
but I bet that poppies smell sweeter
in January when it's grey.
I'm thinking of a blue eyed boy.

Maybe he thinks of me, here in Taipei,
where it's ten degrees warmer
and 7AM. It's midnight to him.
There's so much in the world to see
maybe he'd hold the insides in me.
And maybe pain cuts through my discipline,
but I do have plans, honestly.

The doctors told her: “Leukaemia”.
More cancer? So I munched up Molly
and chain-smoked Benson
in the night club outdoor area.

The lights were stunning,.
We marched a half mile in heels
over frosted ground with knocking knees,
looking for people to please.

New Year’s Eve.
A house filled up to the brim
with big, fat eyes and dancing lovers
in a horrid estate in Sligo town.

2016 rang in, triumphantly.
I was surrounded by beautiful people
drowning in loud music
slept at 8am and dreamt of her.