The saying does go
‘better the devil you know’
he said.

And sure to god
a fire was lit within me.
Sometimes you'd miss familiar monsters.

Sometimes you'd be suspicious
of the finer things,
of the promises often promised,

made now. But for why?
What changed, when I paid
nothing for it.

I'd almost miss
the curled up ball,
the loneliness in the dark night.

That's all I knew back then.
This feeling of content --
it feels fake, nerves I never used

Your standard suburban background,
row after row of identical
pebble-dashed houses.
Names made up by the council.
Applewood. River Valley. Manor.

Control-V town, with cheap rent,
public housing, the occasional
café desperate to gentrify
and the same shopping centre
as everywhere else in Europe.

You argue like a gang member –
everyone here does. Except
when you’re at home
and back in your immigrant tongue.
The white noise is honey to me.

Watching planes fly from the airport –
magic in this urban wasteland.
You buy me chips with extra vinegar.
Love pours out from my throat,
slick and rainbowed like an oil spill.

Repeated routine paints
the flurry of butterflies greyer
by the day they settle
further and so much quieter, you might
mistake them for trapped air.

My hand on your chest,
eyes on your big brown eyes,
and your eyes on the squeaking bed.
Look at me, I’m afraid of the waxing,
waning of this supposedly unconditional love.

Is this just the practice run, slow
build up until real life takes hold?
Maybe it's just the dull winter
pouring dishwater on our embers,
or your parents in the next bedroom.

Will you get tired
of collecting me at the airport, and forget
to overlook my untethered views.
It’s not exciting is it, really? The M1 Belfast
to Dublin bus every Friday at 2 o’clock.

Bless you, child.
The lines of your palm
a yellow legal pad
I want to write down my life on

to sign myself over to you
in the one moment. The next—
L'appel du vide.
I am not a girl supposed to be tied down.

Yet you coax me with your frankness.
It frightens me, your realness
I would like to blow you like a puff of smoke
and watch you drift into fog

with your commitment.
With your leases and your plans
and your baby names and your mortgage
and your job

and the way you admit you may
not love me in a year or ten.
Well I may not love you in a day
or two

I say, praying I seem nonchalant.
Your adoration wraps me up,
seems we were made to be
yet you’ve heard how the proverbs go

I do not like the thought of growing old.
My perpetual sadness will always
tighten its grip on the rope, you know
the brightest flame is always fastest cold.

I was never a believer
but your breath in my ear
is a sacred prayer I'll remember

and repeat to myself
in my darker hours. Homesick,
lonely and craving

the ****** of your skin
on my skin. The pain disappears
when you touch me.

I weep
at night because you love me.
Sweet relief.

There will be no right moment
to throw yourself headfirst into darkness.
To go feeling along the walls
of an unlit room—

hands sliding through cobwebs,
feet shuffling forward
praying the floor does not suddenly give way
to stomach churning nothingness.

You must just go.
Listen to the voice of your lover
honey tongue calling out in the emptiness,
let your steps grow faster.

Run toward the abyss.
You can't accept this void within your mind.
And you will feel his hands soon,
let them guide you.

The cold creeps in.
Familiar friend, that same despair.
My heart folds in

on itself — an origami thing, flipped
and smoothed out by the fidgety
hands of a girl needing distracting.

For the first time in my life
that I remember, I am quite sure
I do not want to die.

God knows why. Maybe it was
seeing her in the casket,
hearing the noiseless howling.

Or maybe you are the meaning of life.
When you chastise me for staring
because I can't tear my eyes away

for fear I might blink and be dreaming,
or that you might not want to stay.
If I let go you might leave me.

I'm petrified of the cliff edge
of tumbling into the water
and hitting the rocks on the bottom.

I love you.
Oh my God, I love you.
What have I got myself into?

We stumbled home
hand-in-hand as the sun rose
over your notoriously boring
working class hometown.

Not your real hometown
it adopted you.
The place you come from
has a name I can't pronounce.

Your accent is rough—
more common than your native friends.
I think you're afraid that your name
might shame you.

We stood there
outside your gaf in the morning grey.
You told me
that you can't stand your father

my hands ached, I want to
bare myself back to you
but I don't know how.
You just embraced me

kissed me all up the sides of my head.
I want to tell you
nothing has ever been this real for me,
but I can't.
You are everything I didn't know I was hoping for.

I like your stupid tattoo
and your ****** piercing
that you got with the boys
in Magaluf
the way you can't spin decks
but you keep trying anyway
your stupid, beautiful laugh

your stories
like the time you stressed out in Ibiza
or blacked out for hours at
the same gig I did
before we'd even met

I'm freaking
I'm 3AM not sleeping
I've never liked someone
that cared about me
I've never met anyone who suits me like you do

I'm desperate to run
you're gripping me by the forearm
as soon as you let go I'm gone
terrified, rabbit in headlights
I want to not be afraid
the lessons I've learnt still haunt me

How can I cast them aside
wash the slate clean
I want to believe that you want me
How can I? Help me, darling
teach me
how can I?

I barely even let my eyes
drift over you
the first time we met but now
I think you're as beautiful
as the aurora or orion's nebula
or candyfloss or a sunny day
all rolled into one and
stamped in gold leaf.

When you rest your hand on my thigh
when you call me sweetheart
I feel my ice heart cracking
I feel my childish innocence
and long lost naivety
come shuddering back in painful waves
dragging insecurity
old scars are splitting open
I think you might heal them away.

I actually said
"I'm all yours always"
Me, the girl who rolls her eyes for a living
turns green at the sight of kissing
I'm so afraid of losing you
I've known you for a week
I've known you longer than I've known myself
I know you like the flowers in my garden bloom every time spring rolls around
reliable and beautiful and brilliant.

You kiss the soles of my feet
and tell me I’m beautiful

I flinch at the words,
recoil at the raise of your hand

squeeze my eyes shut -
you stroke my cheek.

I’m feeling panic,
my stomach is turning. I don’t

understand this feeling.
I want to push you away

but you hold on tight and won’t let me.
Thank you.

Good evening.
It’s hot, but the dark clouds roll in
promising rain.

I can’t stop shaking, remember
drinking to forget the pain.
Now I can’t even find it

in me to go out for the night,
take loads of drugs and
hospitalise

myself. I’ve been there
done that too many times.
I just want to sit here.

All my friends are off
having fun. The boys
I want are in love

with girls who aren’t me.
Excuse me, can I offer you
something, something,
would you like anything else? It’s final call.

in the photograph from the wildlife camera
she appears at dusk, side-on
her full tail in the air: the big ginger cat
from the farm next door

she is one of those puzzles you find
in newsprint books at the tobacconists
— which one of these doesn’t belong? —
because before and after her on the camera
were a mountain lion and a red fox

Film ain’t dead yet.
We brought three
disposables to festival,
the ones that whirr up, do thirty
exposures and flash so bright they blind you.
Immortalize the medium, the moments
are secondary.

I remember Dad, toes in the sand,
shorts and his eczema legs, with the camera,
you were building castles –
the photos are somewhere. Shining
millennial baby then,
ringing me now, drunk, crying.

i thought of the two bobcats who came
to the picture window on St. Stephen’s Day
at three o’clock in the morning
looking intently in
and the man in Finland whose dog got out:
the wolves at the forest fringe
were calling it to come and play

there was no blood, he said
the dog just disappeared into their jaws

There was more blood, this time,
the third time, third time, that you had tried to
excommunicate
yourself from this life without consulting me.
You know, when I tried that nonsense
they dragged me
kicking and screaming to the clinic.

still she comes around:
again this morning on the deer trail
where she sat gazing up
the jays and the blackbirds with new hatchlings
diving, exploding into the air

and her
wearing their worry and disapproval
— even, you think
their appetites and their hatred
like a bright blessing
the urgent chatter of the birds an electric hum
almost to the horizon

*Here you are again.
This last time past you were probably on drugs,
you were
vomiting adoration down the phone. Reborn?
You’re seventeen,
the black dog keeps going for your throat
but lifts you by the scruff.

I’m watching you fly up in a spray of wings,
loose feathers, high heels and lamentation.
I’m no lioness –
I’m just a fat, cool cat you think is mighty.
I surrendered to the mice though, when I
was your age.

It terrifies me
that I question
if you finally let me mind you
would I give up on moving

you're an anvil
I would chain myself to
if you gave me half a chance
I'd sand your edges

there's a big world out there
there's things to see
men to sleep with
I call it networking

I think I'd consider giving it up
if you asked me
Chicken
I'd probably give my all to you

even though you treat
me like a disposable
discretionary past time
when you put it in me

I feel a little bit more
whole a little bit more
deranged you mention
the words panic attack

and I'm half insane again
I don't think you
understand
how I feel about you

I don't think you understand
I'd give up dreams for you
I barely even
like you

They gave me Xanax,
you got ******.
You say meditation helps.

I want to keep you under my shirt—
cradle you in my arms
against the skin of my belly.

We could give this a go.
Eat cold pizza,
have *** with unshaved legs

get sloppy drunk and confess
how ****** in the head
we are. You made me feel

a feel. Patched up a gaping,
numb and empty
hole I didn't realise I was missing.

This past year has been so empty.
I’ve been trying to fill the space
you left

with glamorous friends, rich men
drugs and adventure.
It could have worked. It might have.

You turn up, nothing’s changed.
Same smile, same wicked laugh,
same freckled skin.

Rest your head on mine
and suddenly I’m whole again.
Frantic kissing like

trying to lick out the last drops
of medicine.
Who knows how long you’ll be gone for this time.

I remember your first name,
your county,
I remember the way your words slurred,
tripping

over themselves, how you stared -
watching confetti melt
as it floated in fractals.

Passing instances.
I wonder do you remember
how I sat on your shoulders,
or how did we meet? In that field

I drank too much, the music
was loud and the air
packed with hazy heat.

You painted a picture for me.
A landscape of lives briefly
intertwined and a future
so clear I could see it.

Our phones were dead. You said
“I should find my friends.”
and then you were gone forever.

My mother first wrote it
on my birth cert
by street name, by nature.

“You shouldn’t do that,
you’re no race horse.”
Then why am I running, running

perpetually
carrying little men who kick me.
Filling the hole won’t fill me.

If I eat sugar, orange candy
and lots of honey
I won’t hear the boys be mean to me.

I'm leaving
the city that made me.
This city that smells

like a peach after rain.
It's full of junkies,
no one cares about the homeless

forever camped out, cursing
bankers earning six figure profits
still living with roommates.

Out of it again on the Ha'penney.
Watching the sun rise and wondering
how you could ever

live in a place that isn't
this filthy, this guilty,
this beautiful and pure.

This riddled with history.
With bullet wounded buildings
painting memories of not-quite-war.

Wide streets, tall terraced houses
pale era, ***** all over rural Ireland
yet still feels like home.

And you go and you go and you go.
Music bubbles up through cracks in the road.
I'm looking for a place where my womb

is my own.
I love you like a babby loves an alcoholic mammy.
Dublin, I love you to the bone.

Soothing, mothering hand of a soft day
smooths away a wrinkle in my head
pressed there by the grimace of constant self-reflection.

The warm rain offers me solace, the grey
sky seeks to calm and I notice now for the first time
the leaves unfurled and the dandelions ticking.

A coffee and a glass of water, a cigarette
and some poor-man’s lunch shape my day
until another slips away into the furnace.

I’m seeking affirmation. I keep asking:
“do you think I’m coming off the rails -
Or was I always running off the sleepers?”

It’s met with a **** of the head, usually,
or a ‘hmm… you’re great fun though’.
I know but that’s not what I’m asking.

I was a mess
when you left. You made
a mute of me with absent goodbyes,
bored morning niceties.
Glued my eyes
shut together with slobbering drunk
‘Seen 2:41AM’
regretful mixed messages.

I see you, when you’re ***-in-hand,
wincing on the words,
tip-toed, nose-to-the-floor,
trying to spit out the fact that
you’re miserable.
Amnesiac
on a whim with a foggy gut feeling
I could be worth telling.

I’m listening
to the things you’re not saying.
The silence much more silent.
I would have looked after you.
I still want to, but now I'm
forever perched on the edge of the bed,
touching boys and feeling nothing,
and seeing boys and feeling nothing,
and seeing boys and seeing nothing,
and seeing boys and seeing
boys and seeing boys and feeling nothing.

Black leather
boots; worn through the sole,
my socks are flooded with rain.
The coat
is not mine, hair combed back
and pinned I
may look the business but it's
all a facade.

What if they
hear the buried country accent, see that
I'm an imposter? Realise I'm not even
twenty one? I've got
to push on, keep smiling,
keep climbing, swimming upstream
in my battered black boots.

You've been my daily
pen pal for months. My timely
dose of quasi love.
An artificial sweetener,
sugar with no substance.
Too sweet to be real.

Too afraid of real connection.
We chat on a dating app,
you live across the Irish Sea,
upper class in a different country;
miles from me. I feel a sense
of relief I'm not repulsive.

I'm not interested in marriage, kids
or love. Not willing to invest in
business based on luck.
I need control, won't gamble
away my life on you
but can't be alone. On my own,
on my own. On my own.

Drink makes you spill your guts
and I shouldn't stand laughing
pretending I don't know it's real.

You say you adore me.
I think I might be using you
for fun and drugs and validation.

I'm so ****** up.
I'm evil as they come, and everyone
seems to think I'm normal now

I hate myself, but I'm better than you at least.
Maybe I'm mad and I just can't see it.
You said you'd buy me things.

Fly here. Tonight.
We can score six grams of blow
book a hotel room,
order hookers and room service.

We could chain smoke
cigarettes out the window
and **** on the floor
'til the cows come home.

Live a little. I'm sick and tired
of this, day
after day. I'm so bored
and I'm finished my therapy.

You crop up in my dreams so much
that lately
I think I might still be in love with you.

It's been nearly two years
since I've kissed you.
It never worked, it was doomed from the gun.

You drove me *******
crazy. Your hands
were forever blackened with oil.

I'm making things of myself,
discarded home like old receipts.
I haven't been back in a while now.

You must have known that I'd leave.
I love words and you loathe them.
You'll be married soon, I think.

I'm sick for the days in the sun on the beach.
The familiarity of your skin,
your boring bravado, your gentle talk.

I miss kissing you in the dark.
I'm so far removed from the bog—
trekking the streets of Dublin with big dreams.

'Twas far from ambition we were reared.
Big city girl in the smallest pond,
where the fish all slept with eachother.

Slicker. Full of ideas.
All I want is a carvery dinner.
To sit in a souped up car at night

at Ross, off, but the heating on,
old blankets tucked up and
watch the waves lap

over and back
over and back.

Dreaming of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
The wine is cheap, but sweet,
and fast. My eyes see stars
in the tiny kitchen, floating
over the microwave oven, I'm eating
Brie on crackers, alone— wearing
a Christmas jumper. Drunk.
I'm not looking for anyone to love
all I'm searching for is self love.
I'm hunting enjoyment of my own company.
I'm not a monster, for once, the self
loathing dissipates into laughter.
It's Christmas. I'm learning to be happy
I'm learning to drink six euro
2015
Cuvée Réserve; singing Sinatra
and smoking rolled cigarettes.

Haikus. I'm a fan.
Just because I don't really
have that much to say.

I don't understand -
It was just raunchy pictures.
Now when I send them

you say "nice *** lol"
and ask my opinion on
EU politics.

Porcelain.
They get more pretend,
every one of them. More ridiculous,
film star, rich kid,
sometimes I don't even meet them.

Trophies. Little silver spoons,
rugby players, Tories, DJs.
They come from faraway places,
I make myself sound amazing,
make believe that it means something.

My little heart has been diced up
like the rats in the labs that I slice up.
Running the same experiments,
it gets boring after a while.
I can't stick at it for too long.

Time to move on.
Playing games in the lives of real people,
I want to be a story at parties,
a tale to regale for a suited man
in an interview.
I'll make you seem interesting.

I want to be shiny and pretty and new
for a week or two.
Don't take me for granted,
don't forget me but don't hang around.
I have lives to live, things to do.

A few floors up.
The doors slid closed
and stayed shut.

We could have ascended forever,
or seconds. You were so pretty.
Looked at me from under your lashes,

smiled and I was transfixed.
We stopped at every floor.
You could have got off

but you lingered. The smell of you
filled the small space
and we kept climbing.

The higher we went
the harder it was
to say anything.

Too afraid to speak. Too vulnerable.
Strung up by thoughts of other people.
Then the bell rang and you got off.

Goodbye then, I should have
asked you to stay but you would
have gone anyway.

Your name has a bitter
taste, like cologne. A muggy
sweet scent that deceived me so easily.
I always tried
to spit it out, but the spray
stuck fast
to the roof of my mouth.
Made me heady,
heavy. Sleepy. I started nodding,
going. Wake me up later,
give me a month or two.
Shake me when the sight of the back
of you won't phase me.
Shout when your eyes and your smile don't nauseate me.
Please let me sleep off the feeling
of losing again. Of everything slipping
into the ocean, of my life
crumbling and cracking open like old brick walls and peeling front doors
and old wardrobes.
I thought you could be
that breath of fresh air I needed so badly,
to come rushing in when the bell jar
cracked open.
But you weren't,
you weren't anything special,
you were an Oxfam shop
bottle of cheap perfume.

Trying to fill
a gap. Those moments
we had were all meaningless.
You don't miss me, you don't ever
try and see me,
it's insulting. You know,
I have boys that never stop calling,
fall
all over me. Ones I don't love,
just love their company.
Like to tell them eat their dindins,
worry for them when they say
they've been two days
without eating and that they
owe two
grand tick to the white man.
Laugh at their jokes, we're
best friends,
they tell me I'm cool and I know
it's true, boosts my ego,
makes me sad,
hold my hand it's the same
way you crack me in two.

It consumes me, the guilt for just living,
existing isn't easy, I try not
to do bad things, but I'm human.
They catch me. I'm a sinner, and I don't
deserve to be happy. Self
destruction is essential,
a gruesome necessity.
I used to stick pins through my skin.

Now it's pills, smoke and gin,
it's beautiful boys that I won't see again.
Living for the thrill of the chase,
the dragon, I need to keep running
away from my daemons,
keep up the pace, catch the
old feeling of knowing my place
in the world.
It's three PM and I'm still in bed.
Maybe soon I'll get dressed.
Maybe soon I'll go eat,
"you look sick" they said,
it's all in my head.
It's all in my head.

When the light crept in over me,
my breath stopped up in a half gasp,
choked on my fear, was it just a weird dream?
The fact we had no clothes on
says otherwise.

Oh my.
What a messed up, war inducing **** up.
Sleeping with you was not an option,
until fifteen drinks in your hand was on my leg.

Shivering, bent over the bed and screaming,
doing bad things we shouldn't have been doing,
if anyone found out we'd be in big,
big trouble. I can't even tell if it was worth risking.

You kind of repulse me,
getting off on how ****** it would be,
and it's scary how the guilt wouldn't stop me
from letting you touch me again.

The bricks and mortar are not pretty.
Semi-modern, terraced, magnolia painted –
each street lined with nosy neighbours
among copy-and-paste suburbia.

SUVs and sensible
hatchbacks sleep in the driveways.
There's a bus stop nearby,
but the buses only run Monday

to Friday. The sea is so close
but hidden
by train tracks, and an ice cream van
calls every Thursday.

The wardrobes are empty, skirting
boards cleaned.
I sob into the sink,
clutching the porcelain rim to my ribs,

pressing my hands to my cheeks.
I have no home to go home to,
just a flat with no gas,
making promises of new beginnings.

Offering bags of pretty things
to fill up my life with.
On the last night, we climbed
up the obelisk

to watch the starry city lights
sparkle across the bay.
The smokestacks stretch
as if it were morning. I want to kiss

this year goodbye,
but keep holding on
‘til each finger loosens
and slip into a new way to live my days.

How am I expected to not imagine you,
sleeves to the elbows, tensed hand
on a gear stick—
after a hair cut, batting your lashes,
bashful, slanted smile creeping
over your face? How could you?
When my chest contains this balloon
that is constantly inflating
at every gentle wind chime
mention of your name,
elated, I can't keep a calendar.
If I did! I would just be ticking off the days
until you were here again.
I can't begin to wonder what would happen if you'd found another girl,
if someone else realised what a catch you are,
if another heart was swelling every time you walked into a room,
or was silenced just by the sight of you.
Come back to me and hold me like you never meant to go,
I want to feel tiny and yet still invincible.

"I've noticed you cry a lot."
Yeah, that's me. On the wardrobe
door floating on the Atlantic. Except
nobody's noticed the ship's sunk.
I think they're reclining on lidos,
like the water is warm for them.

A tsunami rushing up side streets—
life flows on, collecting things.
Stops for no one and if you fall
you're dragged along until
you find your feet.
I'm drowning here, nobody else
has noticed the swell.

I've pressed paused on a stopwatch,
trying to grasp at a flimsy reality.
They're still all doing the motions,
I'm stuck still refusing to speak.
My friends are strangers in the street,
they're all calm in the madness.
Maybe the chaos is all in my head,
time carries on for everyone but me.

Love is a word flung round
so easily. I've strung myself
out on boys I loved
but knew too well,
and aside from being unobtainable
before midnight on Saturdays
were unsustainable contrasts
to a person like me.

I don't love you.
I never loved you. I barely like you.
I love the smell of you, the feel of you,
waking up beside you and cracking
jokes with you. I weep for that smile,
the way you can't speak in public,
pick the label off your beer
and listen in on conversations
because you can't make your own.
My mother says you sound like
you're boring at parties.

I say no.
It makes me feel special that you
have things to say to me.
In fact, until I heard you speak
I never thought much of you.
I think it's why they say you don't think much of me these days,
only I heard those silly things that you told me.

Don't tell me you believe
that vitamin C in an IV
will cure anything until you've been
crying by a dead child's
side and it's made you decide
at nine years old
that you will spend your life
finding a cure before any more
people you love lie hooked
up to food tubes
morphine titrating
venous dreams by their bedside.
Don't tell me those
expensive diets
or money making schemes mean
anything until you've
slept in hospital wards on floors
or sometimes an armchair
praying to a God you know
isn't there.
Don't tell me the answer is there to find,
that I just haven't tried—
I know I never let anyone die.

Love sick pup.
Couldn't you have just
****** me, why would you
lie entwined, head on mine
gently breathing,
breath sweet smelling
I forgot your
perfume smells so good.
I wanted so badly to kiss but it's
been so long since someone
touched me. So long since
anyone showed love to me,
I'm so tired of being lonely.
I forgot how you made me feel
like nothing was unfixable
and now you're gone again.

You called. We hadn't
spoken in weeks.
You needed drugs,
I had the contacts.

If I can't get love
from you, I may as well
get ******* and ****
someone new.

Now I'm trying to explain
to a Brazillian kid
what an 8 ball is
at 9pm on a Tuesday.

Drinking packet soup.
It's grey outside,
and I'm working the opening shift
in the morning, boring.

We were just friends that had ***.
That's what
your roommate said. I'm in two
minds. He was never in the bed
as we lay, heads pressed
against each other, singing stupid duets.

We were just friends that had ***.
Then why can't you be a good friend?
Remember
the jokes, the little kisses?
The sitting and listening and clothes
that smell of you
lying on the floor of my room?

Is that why you left?
With no second thoughts or regrets,
with no loss felt for the way you could
wrap your hands around my chest
and almost touch fingers? You said
I was pretty. But considered your feelings
and we were just friends who had ***.

Two months is a long time. I'm
desperately clutching at lives
so recently made I can barely
believe they are memories.

The past can't change,
but the present is flippant.
I'm holding my breath in.
Do not disturb.

My bedroom is a prison cell,
I'm pressing my hands to the windows.
I don't want to leave.
There are bad things out there.

There's a pain in my teeth.
I do wish you would just come here,
into my room and lay down beside me.
Allow me some dignity, tell me you're sorry.

I'm angry at everything, drowning
in conflicted reasoning. All I do
is count down the days to something,
and pray it's better than waiting.

HR told me I look
like **** and sent
me home. I was supposed
to give up the drink
but I couldn't think of anything
else to do.
I am good at my minimum wage
job but I'm
not good at life.
Maybe it's quitting time.

I remember not being sad,
I wonder what it was like.

Seeing you was horrifying,
and I missed you so much.

Stopped dead in my tracks
"Hi?"

Do you even know who I am?
You couldn't like me

I can't even stand myself.
I can barely stand at all,

it's secret vodkas in the dish pit.
It's drinking until I'm sick

trying to ***** out the black tar
that lines my insides.

Cracking open.
I feel the
skin give way like
fractured marble.

Porcelain.
Your words a sledgehammer.
My thoughts like
moisture under years-old warping
floorboards.

I touch my pen
to paper and the ink is blood,
it rushes out into a little
puddle.
I miss when I cut myself
and let out steam.

You left
your things behind.
You didn't say
goodbye. Why
am I surprised?
They always leave.

I light my cigarettes backwards,
spit out my coffee with nervous
laughter. Hands shake,
you make my chest ache.
I don't pretend
to make good decisions.

My lungs still expand
for the time being. My heart
still beats if it's bleeding.
I still eat junk food,
drink Red Bull, kiss you—
I could kick these bad
habits if I had to.

You're leaving —
Surfactant. Summer
months reduce attraction.
No one remembers fast food,
the things they eat for convenience.

No one would miss it in its absence.
I'll want you even when
Summer dissolves you. Dilutes
my memory into flat beer shandy.
I won't call you.

The summer is short,
the road is short.
But too much sun can
make a man insane. Time
is a solvent. An effective surfactant.
Say you'll miss me
and think of me in muggy summer rain.