I dig my nails in and it feels good.
I wish you would hit me harder sometimes
when we’re joking around, naked,
I deserve it.

You bruise me but you don’t mean it.
It’s not your fault you’re taller than me.
The boys before you, they meant it.
They tried their best.

Has anyone broken your heart?
A boy once got a girl pregnant, she wasn’t me.
And another one.
Still not me.

I don’t want babies.
I don’t want to draw dole, smoke draw,
earn three hundred a week and blow it all
in the bookies.

I haven’t seen my Mam in a month now.
My brother might be taller again. I miss
the sea and my golden retriever.
I wish you would pretend to choke me for longer.

Sometimes I don’t want to breathe.
I think you’re just proof that home does not own me.
You don’t know me.
I can be arrogant as a priest.

Precious child, your face
is all the boy I loved,
all I wanted, all I
left behind, mixed

up in a girl.
She thinks I'm ******,
I'll never hold you.
You'll be raised to hate me.

I am not your enemy.
Just know
promises are rarely kept,
please
see the human that I am,
my soul, my mind, I'm
not a hateful girl—
a mixed up kid,
not yet the person that I
want to be.

You're beautiful,
I'm sorry I am not
your mother I
would spoil your teeth rotten
with chocolate candy.

I lie beside him and I'm tiny,
weak and helpless, but he
holds me sleeping, strokes
my hair. I
forget with one quick
movement he could **** me.

Two hundred pounds, he lifts me.
Eats twice as much as I do,
plays guitar I
play ukulele. Giant,
how do I know that you
won't break me? I am wary.

Shatter me if you will, take my body
it's no use to me anymore
it's too unholy. Just leave my heart
alone it's
been overused and battered,
bruised and I can't
cry on my own again.

I raise my hand, she
mimics me. Her
hair is yellowing, fraying
rope ******* to a boat,
knotted to the dock
she thinks she's seen
the whole sea yet
never moved from that
one
spot. Pathetic.

She is useless and broken—
not fragile, not
romantically so.
She's not a girl
people would want
to try saving. She's
pudgy. Vile. Boys
on the street spit at her.

She takes it graciously. She
once would have been angry,
once held herself in high esteem,
once thought herself pretty,
a clever wee girleen.
That imposter now she
hides from me
I could almost
break this glass and touch her.

Water, Diet Coke,
eggs,
lean chicken breast. Sit
in front of the mirror and eat
naked. Eat so much you get sick,
eat tomatoes, avocados,
eat eggs, eggs, eggs, eggs,
watch them spin down the bowl
when you flush.

"You're not fat" no, not fat,
but too fat still, not
huge
but too large, just slightly,
just time to stop
hiding and eating while crying
stop dressing
like a stuffed
sausage. Time to start
smoking again, sniff ******* I
hear it helps with that kind of thing.

First, don’t go to any of your lectures.
Drink
yourself half-to-death,
hope
to fall into a coma. Have fun
while you do this.

Make it so bad that the friend
who was once
your drug dealer
expresses concern
for your health. Step two:

Don’t study either,
procrastinate, find sick notes,
push back the date
for the inevitable
until there’s one day left
and the workload might **** you.

Finally, step three;
stand on the steps
outside the exam hall, smoking,
have your dad call you
explaining
the death of a good friend’s father.

Use your last ten minutes
to ring old friends who need to know.
Pass on the message,
blank,
leave the exam after twenty minutes,
cry in the bathroom
and go.

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.

My room smells of smoke and cologne.
You seem nice,
your eyes are lovely. My inner thighs
are peppered in bruises,
my legs hurt, my cheeks are flushed still.

It’s sweet to look at the milk skin, the ink blots,
remember I’m real. Remember
the feeling of being wanted,
your weight on me, the sweet nothings,
the drunken kissing, the moaning.

I want to hold on to you, but I’m
sure I’d be fine without you.  My ex
had a baby, I wasn’t angry.
I wished him luck; it’s a girl.
A new main lady.

I drank something crazy, I lost my cigarettes,
brought you home and we went to bed.
I wonder could this ever be anything really;
could I ever look into your eyes
and say I love the bones of you?

There's an itch on my back
that I just can't scratch.
A chronic pain.
Maybe it's
all in my head?

At eight A.M.
sometimes I just can't get up.
Then one o'clock comes
and nothing
changes.

Today was a good day,
my friends proved their friendship.
Their presents were perfect,
they must really listen.

But the voice in my head says
"guessing."
The voice in my head says
"just using. Who'd care?"

How has it
got like this? How has it
become so serious?

It'll pass. Surely
this feeling will go.
I rang Samaritans,
but they didn't answer the phone.

The feeling is viscous. Impermeable.
I’m restless, doomed. I can’t explain
why I love art
but wear a lab coat, just
so I’m forced to remember
what life is worth.
I can’t find that in words.

A white noise, a terrible ringing. I
used to feel nothing. Not anything.
Now I hear my fear and anger competing.
I’m listless. Delusional.
My mind is irrational.
My heart says “don’t listen”
but I can’t always hear it.

I wouldn’t
hurt myself anymore, but sometimes
I can’t sleep on my side.
I’m balding from tearing
my hair out. Sometimes
I dream I’m pulling at wires
and on waking my palms are bleeding, sometimes

I wake up and I’m crying,
fingernails buried alive, and I’m prying them
out from under my skin.
But, these are just days the SSRI’s
aren’t working,
the days when I'm ill
and my whole body's hurting.

My dad is so sad - he says
“when will you stop them”
I say “hopefully never.”
He’s downtrodden. I’m sodden in rain.

I want to lie in bed today.
Is that okay? What if I
never get up? What if I forget
how to feel, and lie here
for weeks and weeks upon end?
I’m so afraid of
losing my mind again.

It's weird but, you said it,
how you had to close all the doors
like I tapped every railing
and blinked three times.

You only ever wrote in black ink.
I'm two hours early for every
single
train.
I have dreams that I miss them
every
single
night.

You're sorry that you're angry
because you can't settle down.
I chose not to plan anything
that I can’t control.

I remember feeling
my bones hurt, because the pencil
lay sideways
on the desk. And my heart break
just because I couldn't get through on the phone.

Do you see yourself in me?
Could you bear to kiss me,
or would you dry heave
and rinse your mouth out
six times a day
repeatedly?

I’m compulsively
dotting i’s in the main library.
Red bullet points, but my wounds
bleed blue ink. “Wouldn’t it be nice?”
you say
“to be sane for a day?”

I look at you, not really feeling anything.
I find it
frustrating
that you don’t want me
and I’m left counting,
obsessively
nitpicking.

Loneliness is a silence,
a kind of tinnitus, a ringing.
I’m not sure if I’m deaf or
it’s really that no one’s speaking.
“You aren’t worth anything”
We both look up, but
neither of our lips are moving.

It’s an anxious tapping. Midnight
cigarettes so you can
taste
your breath. How else
would you know you were living?
Although
there is nothing to fear but fear,
so I couldn’t fear death.

Smeared myself
in a foul smelling home bleach kit.
It's nerve wracking, but now
I'm blonde again. A bombshell.
Ready to hit the town, smoke
cigarettes balanced between
my index and middle fingers,
and blaze spliffs by the beach
as a storm howls around us.
I'm ready to have
the boys eating out of my palm,
texting me, intoxicated,
wanting to hold my hand and
smell me. Wanting me to be
their blonde baby. Kiss me, honey.
Drive me out to no where
I can be everything you dreamed for.
I can be your water in the desert,
your shelter on the mountain.
We can watch the sun go down, and you will wonder if I'll
stay the whole night.
Will I move on tomorrow?

Coffee, modafinil and two cigarettes,
sweating and begging for a few more Ds.
Another pass by the skin of my teeth.

*******, pills and Jameson.
Pints of beer and two more cigarettes
hunched in the cold in the street.

And buses. Hours of buses.
Eating pasta by the lake between classes.
They'd never notice here if I disappeared.

It's snowing, and to keep warm
there's blankets, jumpers and casual ***.
Maybe a brandy if the going gets tough.

Are you ***** calling me? Drunk texting me?
Who knows, I dropped my phone in a nightclub.
I didn't get home until sun up.

Pray for me.
It'll mean nothing, I worship no God,
but just
hold me in your thoughts for a moment
remember my smell and the touch of my skin.

Pray for me.
Forgive all my sins. When I took your name
in vain on the bed.
Remember the small of my back,
tell your deity to watch for me.

Pray for me.
Let my memory roll off your lips
as you kneel, hands clasped and eyes closed.
Picture me. Wonder where I am now.
I was never holy but my soul still needs saving.

My right lung is an orange.

There's something there,
but it's not quite tangible.
A chill in the air, I'm sweating profusely.
There's a man on my chest
and I'm fine for a minute
when someone is talking but not for too long.

It's an abyss. It's a locked cupboard,
I'm trapped in a room
that's so full of air that I'm drowning.

A padded cell. Dark and completely,
totally
safe. No visible symptoms
of the crushing worries in my head.
Just an itching, tossing,
turning in the bed. Maybe I shouldn't
smoke so much
or drink so much
my thoughts are jam and garbage
it's a mess. Shouldn't I be
all better by now?

There’s plastic
eyelashes
on the carpet.
Makeup-covered and ridiculous
telling stories
of drunken mishaps. Of tears
and desperation,
tearing these things clean off black eyes
and crying into a bathroom sink.
They say; “put me to bed”
“take out your contacts”
“work in the morning.”

They’re everywhere.
Little harmless spiders,
insects we fear more than insects.
Unmoving, staring, reminding.
They say; “where did you go last night?”
and you remember
trying
to stick them to your eyelids
for twenty minutes, and kissing some boy
and then
ripping them off and sleeping.

They say; “why do you care so much?”
“why are you lying?”
and you’re wondering why
in a house full of girls
there’s a handful of eyes
on every wall, floor and ceiling.
You say “why do I care so much?”
“Why do I cry these off?”
These silly things make you
a devious enchantress
but it’s never enough.

The air isn’t crisp for November
but it’s still soup and brown bread,
shivering **** on the terrace.

It’s dark at half four, but it’s still
not fast to throw my coat on.
Stopping and smacking the closed library’s door.

The rain’s hissing off the new tarmac
making clouds that my breath won’t.
But it’s still no sun, and old makeup washed off.

There’s no slush,
but there’s brown leaf sludge.
There’s ten thousand prospective students on campus.

There’s a panic. An anticipation of exams
and Christmas shopping.
But it’s still quiet nights and used teabags.

Four hundred of us pour out
from the lights turned on,
girls in bare feet in the rain and the wind
to see Christmas lights on Grafton street.

Trinity’s beautiful, but not where the heart is,
the grass is muddy on college green
a cold breeze is whipping off the Liffey,
and everyone’s singing, low lie the fields.

The guards are milling, we’re trudging,
some holding hands or kissing –
bring me back to Stillorgan for ten euro?
*******! No come on sir, I’m freezing.

It’s grey, it’s wet and it’s cloudy.
I want Burdock’s or some dodgy chippy,
I want to hear the song of a boy from Ballymun
and live forever young in Dublin’s fair city.

She's screaming at me
from the tile floor of the bathroom
and there's sick in her hair
so I just ring her mother.

I'm disgusted at her,
it's pathetic. I'm sick of listening
to this, and holding hair back,
and stuffing my hand down throats
to feel the ***** crawl back up to catch me.

I'm standing in a house in a bad estate
and it's 8AM
and how did I get here?
I left my friend behind in a bathroom
because I can't bare to see her and remember
crying in a nightclub bathroom in Carrick
and not knowing why.

The room is spinning, but at least I'm smiling.
I think this boy is quite pretty, really.
Where is she? Sprawled out, puking
in the sheets of her bed. I'm not sympathetic.
Take your medication you headcase,
we need it to function - just take it, I swear.

I'm pulling my hair, but it's easy.
Head against the bathroom stall wall,
staring at my feet and the tiles
and I'm smiling. It's easy.

There's no one to love, but that's fine.
Just plenty of friends, good articles,
wine and a big warm house
not far from the sea. It's so ******* easy.

Do you love me? Of course you do.
Look at me. There's so much to see.
I'm smiling, I'm so ******* happy.
Maybe I'm empty, but it's so easy.

I'm adjusting to life as a level-headed,
less narcissistic ***** who was a force
to be reckoned with. And this is it -
a kinder, better me. It's so easy.

"I don't give a **** if you get shot,
if you die. Your pain -
I feel the same pain.
Together or not."

"You don't want me to get hurt?
But this hurts - and you've been hurt.
You know what this feels like.
I need more than this, I believe in us."

Under the sheets, so many nights
pretending what we had was love.
I never sent it, but I saved it,
my broken up love letter to you,
a selfish drunk.

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.

A great, big fish, slapped
out on the ice. Rainbow
skin, and the smell of seawater.
I sit
and chat with the fishmonger.
Four kilos of salmon or herring,
for chowder, or something.

I keep finding drugs in my bra.
I'm not even sure
how they get there. I told a boy
how I felt. He got scared, and he ran,
but then he came back
like they usually do.

My boss makes me tired.
This town makes me tired.
I'm getting ***** looks from a pregnant girl
because I slept with the father
of her unborn child.
And I can't even blame her.

This town is a cesspit.
A melting black hole of *******,
ecstasy, Guinness and cheap cocktails.
It smells of cigarette smoke
and no one uses condoms.

I'll be going back to school soon.
A different world where books are cool,
where drugs aren't glamorous
and tobacco is stupid.

Xanax is my new best friend,
it numbs me to dish-washing,
fish shopping, coke sniffing,
*******
and hopeless despair.
Get me out of here.

Prozac could be
a better choice than ******* —
but at least coke
has character. I went
for a walk and it made me feel better,
except for the hayfever.
That just made me blind.

I'm so
******* paranoid. I can hear
them laughing
behind me. What's worse
is that I know they're not,
because they don't give
two ***** about me.

It's just a smaller dose of serotonin,
I can get that in ecstasy.
Just a smaller cut of dopamine.
I can get that from boys for a kiss
and some flirting.

I wish you were here to smell my hair again,
I miss you like sleep and like calcium.

I haven't smoked once today
for the first time in weeks.
Dear God - please,
give me a cigarette. Please
give me a line or a drag
of a joint, or a glass of wine
or a hug or some sunlight.

Work in seven
hours and I've been crying all evening.
But why? For no
**** reason. Paid tomorrow,
and I might
spend it all on drugs or a tattoo,
or tobacco or I wonder
could I pay someone
to love me.

I'm trapped
in an I'm-not-OK-hole—
in a *******.
In a thousand-of-miles-from-the-city hole.

I'm a session moth.
Wake up like a ******, rollie
on the bedside locker.
Not knowing where I am
or how I got there. Jump
into the nearest car and just say
"drive"
and eat nothing but still look fat.

This morning I was suicidal,
I nearly walked out in front of a truck.
But it was alright,
I remembered
I hadn't taken my pill in a day or two,
stopped crying and
went back to work.

Half asleep, driving for hours
with Budweiser bottles,
warm from the heating.
The windows were all down,
we were smoking rollies,
all sharing one lighter because the driver
dropped his in a can of fanta.

Next thing,
the roar of an army of twincams.
VTECs, something insanely beautiful,
and incredibly ridiculous,
a convention of petrol heads—
Gardaí everywhere, searching for tax
and insurance. My God, I was in it.
Hundreds of thousands of them,
all excited like children,
the screaming of a million voices,
no exhaustion in the exhaust fumes.

The hills rose around us, the traffic
packed backwards,
expensive cars all sardined in a roundabout.
How loud can you get it?
Can she sing like a canary?
Can she find herself at the Letterkenny rally?

You seem so lovely and gentle,
it's nice
that you don't find it strange
when I leave you ten voicemails
drunkenly rapping
about how fantastic life is.

Why,
do I find it so easy, with you,
to embarrass myself?
But I'm never ashamed,
I just laugh when you laugh.

That weird feeling,
that comfortable feeling,
that I haven't been feeling
in a long time now. It's cute.
It's warm and all yellow.

Love is blind. But this isn't love.
This is sugary, syrupy,
I could almost call you sweetheart.
Buy me an ice-cream, maybe,
I might let you see me eat.

You're a bit of a *** head. But that's okay.
I don't mind it really.
You're a little bit lazy -
you remind me of sweet hazy grass
on grass in the summer sun.

I've got lines, I know them off,
I sniff them off my student card.
I twist them in my mind,
add a smile, I'm an artist.
I'm a smart girl. An actress.
I cry in rooms with the doors shut,
reapply my mascara and rejoin the party.

No would notice I'd been or gone.
No one would notice if I wasn't around.
I liven up a room,
and they like me to be there,
yet I'm never missed.

Tell me did you mean any of it?
The dreams of getting old,
did they mean anything at all?
Did you look into my eyes
and tell me you could see a future with me,
knowing all the time,
you were going to have a baby?

Imagine, a kiddie,
all little and childlike and calling you daddy.

Why did you cut me off?
Couldn't you just
explain it to me?

Who was I for a while there? Happy?
That couldn't have been me.

I'm just a fridge door,
magnetic, a face full of memories.
I'll reflect your life back to you,
I'm all smooth and shiny.

I'm great at a party. I'm blonde,
and I'm fun,
I'm numb
and all empty.
Just pass me a drink, love,
just let me forget me.
I'm in the ******* crew—
let me never see twenty.

Friday, you said you'd meet me
Saturday,
so I waited in, scrubbed
my bedroom clean. But
the call never came. I fell asleep
on top of the neatly made bed.

The call never came again,
what happened? That you
so suddenly forgot me,
could kiss me on a Friday
and move on in a heartbeat?

A girl told Rachael
I should wait away from you,
you were trouble
and I shouldn't stay with you —
I don't even know why,
you just said it was nothing
and ignored all my questions.

"War" was the word used,
I'd be dragged into fighting.
But I don't care. I've done it enough,
I've taken boys from nice girls
and fought with them all.
Just tell me what happened,
if you're coming back and
I'll throw on my boxing gloves.

They all have opinions
on how I "let" boys treat me.
Why I shouldn't be crying,
or trying so hard. Why I shouldn't
stand for it when they stand me up
after saying they'd meet me.
And then they get angry
when I don't tell them anything.

I'm so ******* sorry
that the boys don't treat me
like I'm a queen,
but look at them telling me I'm stupid
to run back to them.

Look at them telling me
to cop myself on when I'm already crying,
to get my act together
when I already hate myself.

It's a vicious cycle, the boy breaks me—
they tell me I'm backward,
dig me a hole and make me feel bad.
Then I'm lonely, want someone
to hold me,
whether it's alcohol, coke or
to press my lips to a cigarette
or the same boy either
that split my heart in two.

Here's the thing girls,
I don't deserve better. All I
want is to be let suffer in private.
I don't deserve someone
who thinks I'm his world,
and if a boy did that I couldn't act right.

Stood on the car roof
with a Stanley knife from the milking parlour
cutting down posters
and their vicious screaming.

*******, *******,
the corrugated plastic cuts my hands
and it's raining icy and
hailing mercilessly. I hope
that's the wrath of God on us.
The cable ties take a few
goes of the scissors.

"Vote No" to love —
I've been denied of it
too many times myself.

Have you ever had someone
tell you you weren't good enough?
Or worse,
lie and say it's all down to them?

Let a man kiss his man,
that's his business.
Don't tell your dad that I'm doing this.
Partaking in sociopolitical
vigilantism, with a dairy farmer's
knife and my best friends
and a farm vehicle.

I don't
read the bible. Holy water
means nothing to me.
I won't marry you in a church,
probably. Or at all, because you
don't ******* love me.

Let a woman kiss her woman,
what difference is that to me?
I'm just a leaf in the ******* breeze.
I'm just an acorn fallen from a tree.

My hands bleed.
There's rain and there's tears
and I can't ******* see.
The wind is howling around me
as these posters come down I'm finally free.
All of ye can have love,
**** hatred and all that it gets me.

I wonder who she is.
Whoever's got your attention now.
I can't believe
I've done this to myself again.

You won't even realise
what a mess I am. And for what?
Two more nights in a car,
and a morning watching two and a half men?

I'm pathetic.
I've been run into the ground too many times
and I don't understand
how boys don't have feelings.

What is it about me
that makes them think - "Ooh,
she looks tasty, and ripe
for the picking."

Then for taking one bite and dropping?
And thinking
"it's only one little piece"
but over the years I'm ate to the core.

I'm just the passing fancy.
A little bit pretty,
but boring or something.
Why have I done this to myself again?

Your eyes are soft, wrinkled at the sides,
gentle sighs, peach skin
every time I look into them I'm terrified.

Your petal breath raises my hair
to a stand. I wonder
how did I lose you before and
what if I lose you again?

Last time,
I cried on the couch for a week
and in the canteen
my roommate  just watched in confusion.

Yes, I kissed another boy.
But how can I explain to you
that I only kissed him because
I was so ******* scared of falling in love with you.

You're so out of my league
and I'm just a blonde silly girl
hacking my way through a science degree
and crying because I can't
find the time to sing or read.

I want to love you,
but I'm not prepared for the stomach drop feeling.
I'm not prepared
for you to kiss me any less.

This is why I look at other boys —
you're too good for me,
but not in the
"You're too good for me,
so I'm leaving you" way.
In the genuine, you're such a diamond
in the rough
that I can't possibly believe you'd ever stay with me.

Nervous and shaky, a newborn,
barely stood up. My wobbling voice
must give way to my anxiety.
The words are like *****,
thick and rancid —
When I hear what I've said I just cringe.

There's a man in my chest
stamping on the inside of my breastplate,
squeezing my heart at the wrong time
every
time
I hear your
name.

Your face is so little and beautiful.
I love to look at the little earrings
in your upper ear.
I love your expensive car
and leaning over the handbrake
to kiss you.

I've never done this.
I've never dated. I've never felt
butterflies and obsessed about a boy.
It's all drama,
it's all push-my-hair-behind-my-ear
and lay your lips on mine.

**** me dry boy,
take my soul because it's all yours anyways.

methyl (1R,2R,3S,5S)-3- (benzoyloxy)-8-methyl-8-azabicyclo[3.2.1] octane-2-carboxylate

Cahn Ingold Prelog

Whose rules are these? Press
on my lips boy, fill my face
and my hands with love.
Fill it up with confetti
little pink hearts that flutter
like Eskimo kisses or snowflakes.

Chop it doll. Link my elbow.

I'm so in love with a boy
that doesn't even drink -
I wonder if he loves me too.
He doesn't.
I wonder if he knows
that without him I'll get in with the ******* crew.

I know the chemistry of it. I can read the IUPAC.
I can breathe the molecules
I can taste the bad decisions I'm making.

I eat junk food and drink too much
€3.99 Revero
so I can stomach bad things.
Your saliva swims in with the bile.

How many times have I puked
behind cars
or old convents? Too many.

How many boys have I loved? Too many.

Anyway,
uni is finished soon.
I'm going home. Home again.

Straight on a plain, miles with the blowing wind.
Miles on a plane, nowhere near the mountain ranges,
nowhere near the Atlantic shore, no lapping sounds -
Just your gentle breathing
I’m just happy you’re alive.

This bulldozed land is barren,
dry like my eyes like a dirt road.
I’m stung on the arm by an imaginary bee,
flung out the open window.
This reminds me of the pleasantries we exchanged.

How polite we used to be.
And now your tired arm is slung over the wheel
angry with me. “Can you just
shut the **** up.” I’m not saying anything.
Let’s pull over at the next petrol station
get some Red Bull and make out like we’re American.

Lick the sting. Does it taste like Pepsi?
Can I be your blonde baby or your Barbie?
These dust clouds are haloing the sun,
as we sing out loud and off tune harmony.
It’s just you and me and nowhere baby.
So use me up until I’m gone. Drag on me
like a cigarette and extinguish me on the lawn.

---------------------------------------------------------
­
Nowhereland.
Head ready to burst
like elastic bands around a watermelon.
I’ve been getting angry.
Snappy again.
The long drive has left me whacked,
our conversation gone putrid,
the air swimming with expletives.
Hay bales.
Green fields.
Lost track of how many.
Wasn’t counting anyway.
Into sixth gear then.
South Dakotan sun
stretches into the car,
over your body;
I knew it well. I know it well.
The milometer slides
to fifty-seven thousand
and the silence stings my skin
like a small fresh burn
so I raise my voice - your mouth is closed.
I toss an empty Coke can out the window,
hear it scuttle over hot grey road.
Then you begin to sing, so I sing. Why?
Awful. Wrong key. Don’t care.
You look across,
destroy me so well,
the tumbling heart in a tower of cards.
I know. Stop the car.
Find a bar.
Let’s numb ourselves together
so we feel something,
gorge on US TV
till our eyes go red white and blue.
Look what we’ve become.
Just your gentle breathing.
This is what alive feels like.
Now give me a drag
of whatever it is you’re having.

You sicken me.
Put me in bad form in a heartbeat—
I don't
understand
how I didn't realise all these
feelings would come back.

It took so ******* long
just to get over you.
Why did I think you'd be nice to me?

The worst thing being
I can't tell a soul. Can't breathe a word
about the hold you have on me.
You just
belittle me. Make me feel tiny.
Not just because I'm 19
and you're 23, but you make me feel
young and silly.

You embarass me.

Listen,
you know at fifteen, sixteen,
someone beautiful arrives
and wins you over
with childish butterflies.
You might become obsessed
or think you're in love
but you're young -
you don't even know what love is.

Sometimes,
a person can be a security,
a little safety blanket or a dummy.
A soother to wipe down
my feverish head
when the night terrors kick back in.

You're not that.

You're the older, more beautiful,
bubbling entity I could tell my life to.
Imagine little kids
and a house in someplace boring.

You're exciting, terrifying,
you make me nervous. You make me
laugh like a geek
and scream like a sinner.

"You're a bad girl aren't you."
Yes, boy, yes I am.
I could be good for you though,
I promise I could be.