I suppose I spoke too soon.
Thought too quickly and let
my hopes climb walls like creepers -
vines entwined like the blue veins
in wrists, pale and visible in light.
I spoke far too soon.
Now nights will be cold, as before,
and when the blackness rolls in
I will hear no gentle breathing
or talking in your sleep. Feel no arms
wrapped around me at five am,
and I don't know if the worst part
was when you said you cared for me
or how obviously you didn't.

Half of my love songs
were written for your brother.
Now you're the subject.

“Does this mean we can be friends-with-benefits again?”

Well, we are friends, and we were *******, like before.
It seemed like a reasonable question to ask.

“I don’t know, I have to figure some things out.”

You had always been so sure of yourself,
‘til now - there was a sadness in your voice
I had never heard before.

All I could do was turn over, breathe your smell
and hope you were
okay because

I didn’t have the right to ask you what was wrong.

When it first started it was
sneaking around in

the dead of night,
stolen kisses and

excitement.
Now,

it's familiar. Same old story,
my mother makes you tea

in the mornings.

Sly smile, slick man in a matching three piece suit,
sleight of hand, small coins.

Small and round, pink and smooth,
washed down with a whiskey burn.

Pop, pop, crunch, split.
And the come up...

Heart beating out of the tin cage
I had been trapped in my whole life, and now this--

Perfect moment, beautiful people,
laser lights, infinite energy.

Puking blood in the back bathroom.
Sheer happiness.  Ecstasy.

My country is my cradle, gently rocking,
gently spinning dreams of further isles,
prosperous waters and rivers of gold.

Dystopian land of watercolour sunsets
the fiery sea illuminates foreign pathways
and we know in our cold cores we must go.

Sand burns red, sunlight hits the little
waves, dappled Connemara coat.
Berries form. Sweet orbs,
sweet life, Spring ticks over.
Time's a running clock, silent
and unnoticed. May dances in
on a breeze. No ribbons, no pole.
The dandelions roar in the field,
in the garden, daisies blush
and whisper to the trees
the hawthorn blushes too,
what giggling conversation
takes place on the seashore?

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.

like the rubble of an old house
that had burnt down and left me for dead,
and I'd survived.

Drunk, weeks ago,
you said

"Whatever happens we're best friends"

your hugs felt familiar,
like home but I was wary.

I went from loving you endlessly,
young girl with an innocent pain
to coldhearted, callous

"She must of loved him blind, that she needed
to replace him with all those boys."

That was the smartest thing the boy
with straight A's in my physics class
had ever said.

I dreamt I killed a man.
Somebody really burnt
the old mill to the ground
down in a crackling
bonfire
as half the town just watched,
eyes wide and gaping mouths
like mackerel.
My skin is whiter
than the snowdrops
in my garden. I imagine
you, kissing my belly.
I wish someone would just
relight me.

Three A1's.
My father says the world is my oyster.

I guess I could do anything,
continue to learn

anything I wanted
to know, I could know - anything.

Knowledge is power
and the world is my oyster.

I'd never ask anything of you
or expect you to love me at all.
Cheat as many times as you like,
I'd suffer in silence.

Want me until you become incontinent,
Incompetent in bed and as fat as your father.
Want me like some kid on MDMA
wants water and a bassline to cry to.

Never let me sleep alone
maybe love me a little but never tell me,
and if your feelings get too strong and potent
go **** your ex girlfriend.

Just don't ever stop wanting me.

I imagine your DNA replicating hundreds of times
per second. Imagine mitosis exponentially repeating
itself and a billion trillion of you dividing
and multiplying inside of your own body
logarithmically jumping by extremes and simultaneously
dying as fast as you're made. There is not one cell
in your body that was there seven years ago
there is not one cell in your body that is not
resisting DNA mutations caused by your smoking,
you could have had cancer by now, but I watched a documentary
the other day and they are curing cancer with ***.
There are doctors out there saving lives and I
spend my time trying to figure out if I am capable
of love. I don't know the truth and can't lie.

Flood myself with
poison
my blood with
love, alcohol,
what ever drugs they give me.
Produce antibodies,
fall asleep. Awaken; groan.
Roll over, smell you.

Don't ever leave me.

Two hours later,
flood my bed with
sighs, smell your
smell, try
not to care
then cry.

The female temple.
Hollow shell in the minds of men.
An autoclave
for a belly, a copy-and-paste mind
of blasphemies. A page
in man's contradictive bible. Just blondes and brunettes.
Just virgins and non-virgins.
Nothing more than breathing incubators.
I am a person, I have a brain, I say.
They smile at me with a condescending
wink. A nod. Good girl, well done.
They tousle my hair. Well fine, boys.
Watch me climb the ladder with one hand,
backwards, in heels. When I reach the top
I'll ram these six inch Louboutins
straight through your hearts.

I will never love again.

Today I woke up at 7am
remembered the boy who climbed
out my bedroom window last
night after we watched Pulp Fiction.
I smiled like the Cheshire Cat
for the boy who promised he'd
never love me.

Never love me, and I promise to never love you back.

Maybe there's a parallel universe
that runs a track close and alongside ours,
where we are not commitment phobic.
Then again, maybe in that
parallel universe
you marry the girlfriend that you cheated on
with me.

I am not pretty.
But I have your virginity!
A big ugly chunk of you that I would happily throw back
if I had half a chance.
Yet, I still cling to you like a lost girl

we sit in silence and I try to show you Pulp Fiction.

But you won't stop talking
and then there's a moment of highly charged ****** tension
and Uma Thurman says
to paraphrase
"Don't you just hate those comfortable silences"
Why do we always yak about *******.
I realised I don't know you at all
and I kissed you quietly because your eyes were closed

Because that's what you do, right?

Your car came through town
a queen on her chair
with a silver spider web
smashed windscreen
and no door
on a scrap truck.

I didn't call you.

Told you in the pub last night
it was none of my business now
if you died or not.

Did I kiss that boy on the stairs?
I can feel myself falling in love already.

I stole prosecco off the kitchen counter,
drank the whole bottle.
It fizzed like stars and hopes and dreams
in my belly and
I started walking when the sun came up.

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?

Your hand in mine, twiddling
the silver around my right
ring finger. The point
of the heart faced out,
in hope you'd turn it
toward my wrist. Your mouth
brushes mine. You take it off,
examine the stamp - "925."
Slide it back on, the crown faced up,
the hands mirror ours,
clasped
around my heart. I wonder
if my father knew
what it would mean to me
when he passed it on.
I wonder if he knew
I'd fall for a boy
and this ring would twist my mind in folds,
you're a menace, a silversmith
you solder my mouth shut.

My body aches, shakes with cold
I await the return of my parents.
Head pounds like a kick drum
stomach acid burns, burns, burns.
I love you Mam,
I love you Dad.
But I'm bad. Evil and mad.

Depression comes in two forms;
Extremes. I loved but could not have
and now. Nothingness.
An Arctic sea envelops me.
I love you Mam,
I love you Dad.
But I am bad. Evil and mad.

Alcohol could never save me.
They all love me, then they leave me
take my body and abuse me.
Use me, use me, use me.
Help me Mam.
Help me Dad.
I'm sick. I'm mad, mad, mad.

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.

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.

In fifty years, all my land
Might be swallowed whole by the glorious ocean
By means of erosion.
See? I do learn things in that concrete prison,
Where they raise concrete children, in a plaster mould
To fit their vision. Aren't I rebellious.

Tell me I'm brilliant, I am the future!
I am all you people's pensions, I choose your nursing home
Give me your money.
I am your investment. If I spend it on *******
That's your risk factor right there. No insurance policies dear.
I am reckless. Aren't I fabulous.

In fifty years, my nasal septum
Could be eroded by means of class A narcotics.
But there's always rhinoplasty.
And I'll be married to a big fat banker,
With comprehensive cover on all of my dreams
I'll divorce him for millions. Ingenious.

I'll be a plastic hollow Barbie,
Dripping with diamonds. I will be everything
That I ever stood against. Sitting
perched between ******* delicately
The fat rich men will take drags on me
Until I am ashes. Old nicotine.

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.

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.

It comes in fits and bursts
I hide from it sometimes

others, I zip up the backless
dress, stick on my heels

and strut
take the knife and sing

cut loose
swing my hips and forget

I am heavier than I should be,
remember all the boys that used me

used to want me,
glare in the mirror and say

today
I can be better than I have ever been

today
I am queen

today
I am blonde and young and beautiful

and fabulous,
drink ***** raw as burning flesh

my mind is a million men on fire
screaming and dancing

only alive as it is dying.
I am a *****, I am a metaphor

I am the only one,
only me, only.

I had been lathering in the shower, worrying
about whether or not the shampoo
Mam had bought was going to sufficiently condition
my abused, bleached hair, and smelling
coconuts – being transported to last summer,
my first sip of lemonade and malibu in the sunshine.

Did it matter that I had ever smelled coconut before?
Did anything matter when I
and all that I was, were just stardust –
Balanced on a not-quite-infinite,
but exceedingly long time line, with billions of years
either side of me, and I, a white dot or speck
on the face of the space time quantum?

Why had I been worrying about how healthy
my hair looked now, compared to last summer,
when the only importance it would ever have
is when blonde girls – other white specks -in the future
fell upon my Facebook profile, and wonder
if I was ever anyone worthwhile, and find out that
no. I wasn’t.

All I had to my name
were a few emails where I had tried to help my friends,
but couldn’t. And some terrible poetry.

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 don't know what it is I like about you.

I like your mannerisms, your politeness
and your willingness to chat to my mother
with a smile on your face that says you aren't scared
of the world, and welcoming arms that embrace
the unknown and death.

I like your warmth, how you complain
that I'm always cold but my house is too boiling hot
and that you strip down to your underpants
as soon as you walk in. But there is no half
dressed for you. It's nakedness or done up to the boots.

You'll even lie in bed with your boots on, smoking,
and I hate when you do because I know you're
texting. Waiting on a lift. And that's it for
a month or more. I like how you're so unpredictable,
how irritating you are. I like your stupidity

but I hate you and I don't know what I like about you.

The sun isn't even cooking me
it's just not raining,
the brown Liffey is dipping and lapping
the bus windows are all open.

"What think ye of Christ"
asks the poster by the driver.
"Not much," but if he's real
I'll thank him for the blue of the sky.

Is this what happiness feels like?
Because it's pretty ******* good.
The silver lines on my arms
tease me about years ago.

I remember
tightening a belt around my neck
and wondering how it felt to die.
But I was silly back then.

Look at the blue of the sky.
Look at the wispy clouds.
Look at my friends saying
"Go outside and look at the moon."

Life is strung up by a rope.
I miss the boy who I love
but not too much.
One day I'll find a prince for myself

in Rome or America
in a land far away on the sea.
I'll sail away in a couple of days
life's going good for me.

I have expensive taste, I love
leather and satin and innocence,
and its willingness to give me things;
diamonds clawed from the ground
by peasants, miles below oil,
and boys that call me beautiful
when I so clearly am not.

I love jewellery, the gold
that binds it's way round my wrist.
Asp quietly slithering alongside it -
by my arteries, twisting repeatedly,
kissing my blood stream, pulse
throbbing beneath the long pearly
fangs, ready to puncture skin.

My addiction is killing me
the shiny things, the pyrite,
the glittering quartz is all worthless.
And terrified of the outcry I flaunt
what I have - all fool's gold, all of it.
Only for fools that we kiss,
you do not love me and so I am foolish.

I remember every scar.
Every mark left on my fickle heart
the silver lines I hide under my bracelets.

I remember all the lessons
When I said I’d never love again, how much I meant it
I remember who kept their promises.

I am becoming numb
The build up of emotion, the hatred and abuse
when my friends stop talking to me

when I get called a cold *****,
a ****, a *****, attention seeking bleach blonde *****
the build up, build up…

the anticlimax.
The unanswered expectation.
I do not cry anymore.

I do not laugh or love or live.
Every morning starts with a longing for a blunt,
or a bottle of something strong, for a pill.

I can’t even look at the boy with the lovebites
that I left with my teeth
I remember every scar, every mark

When I found satisfaction
I remember the relief
of finding the light in the dark.

Your psychopathic sleep hours tick by slowly,
dreamless time, unconscious to the world -

a temporary death each night. Do you know
how much you hurt me? I suppose you do.

I crumbled like the flaky leaves in autumn
underneath your feet, and fell for another boy

eventually. You moved away, and now sleep undisturbed
with another girl. She must sleep soundly too,

oblivious to your reputation, the way you once ate
fields of girls as though you were a swarm of summer locusts.

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.

When I was younger they told me I was always
full of heat even when I swam in the sea and danced in the puddles,
I could be feral and free because I was always 37 degrees.
They marvelled at me.

How things change, swathed in blankets. I am always freezing.
I produce just enough body heat not to denature enzymes,
I am only warm with someone beside me, so dependant
that I need you not just for my dreams, my skin craves your heat.

Piano, piano, soft as moonlight
silken fingers on ivory skin. Glissando --
run your hand up my thigh
plucking every string. Arco, arco.
Softly, softly, the clarinets breath in, breath out
arms envelop me in the tune up,
four notes each fifths apart. Your voice
chimes lovely, the conductor flicks start.

A symphony, a symphony, a whole opera
house inside this bed. Observe me through
small binoculars, roll back your eyes into your head.
Violins slow crescendo, your sigh
an answering phrase from the cello,
listen to the tuba and the piccolo
and the mounting tension. Crescendo, crescendo,
forte, forte. Presto boy, presto. Ritornello.
Fin. Dream with me. Belissimo.

Semi-permeable.
You absorb what's good of me,
all I stand for
with osmosis. You are soulless,
letting nothing free.

Perhaps you thought
I had enough to go around -
but I can't go on
sharing pieces of myself
with heartless vampires
that give nothing back
for temporary love. I am
not far from having
forgotten
who I am; for I
am starting to bleed dry.

****, ****, ****.
Sometimes my brain kind of seizes
like it needs to be oiled.
Like it's rusty and old
and out of new tricks.

My body is cellulite
and broken bleached hair, flaking nails
and dry spotty skin.
You, on the other hand
are just ******* breathtaking.

******* breathtaking, boy.
When you round the corner
my face goes red
and burns like fire.
The butterflies kick off

like a starting pistol woke them.
Sometimes I wonder if I'm pregnant
the kicking is so powerful
and I am so **** fat.
Whereas you on the other hand,

are ******* breathtaking, boy.
I'll give you that.
When I fell asleep in your arms
I wonder if you stayed awake
and studied my worn out face

the same way I watch your walk
watch how your lips move
when you talk
how your hips move when you
fill me with joy and use me.

******* breathtaking boy.

"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.

It was crazy, and loud, and fast
yet right in the middle was you
in all your normality.

Emigration is inevitable,
that's what they told us,
we knew, we knew, we knew

it was coming.
The land of milk and honey,
it was calling.

We stood under big ben,
sat close on the tube
and wondered if we should kiss

but didn't. We knew
I had to go home
and you couldn't. And wouldn't for the longest time.

Crouched in a bath
in a house in my hometown.
5AM and the moon's out.
Kevin hands me a rolled up bank note,
and tells me I'm innocent
all in one breath.

There's blood on my hands,
rolling down my wrist.
Big, fat, poppy teardrops
blooming like the cherry trees
in my university.
Home is a funny thing.

I'm not a cool kid.
Just a drugged up, loved up,
half pretty girl with a good brain.
Mad
after the wrong people
in love with every
broken soul.

I'm just chasing dreams
and welded differentials,
the car turns and screams.
One hand on the steering wheel
and one on my thigh -
can't you just need me for a weekend?
Can't you just
sigh your little promises
and chew my ear?

I went away and dropped a dress size
and then came back. You told me I looked good
in disco pants. Asked me to go back
to your house. God, you treat me like ****.

I said yes. Didn't try to play hard to get
just went with you in my heels, smoked
your friend's **** and followed you
like a lost puppy to bed after you went.

Lay in your arms and you definitely
hugged me tighter than before and kissed me
all down my front and up my arms
and swore that you missed me.

God, you treat me like ****.

I confused loved
with love
and now-

Ten thousand
miles
away

I don't care
I just don't care.
Psychopathy is cute anyway.

To irritate me, you twist the pegs
of my instrument while I'm not looking.
Strum, the clang pulls at my ears,
I cringe.

I drink.
You irritate me, pull at my ears,
then twist my arm behind my back
I cry 'stop' and lean in

sometimes I kiss you
sometimes I don't, I always want to
but I don't really have a say in it.
I cringe.

My words always come to that stuttering stop.
Hurts hidden past their dates
don't pop, don't explode, scream
or make a scene. The *** bubbles over
and the hot rivulets swim southbound.
There are never more than two.
Colourless, without sound; inside, the reaction
of heat energy, raising temperature
and changing state. My thoughts evaporate.
Escape.
I regain myself and carry on
the endless day and stagger home to bed
routines don't change, and in my head
I hear your voice and ask you
what are we doing, what is this madness,
why are you doing this to me when I...
I...

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.

I want to scream at you until you apologise, then hug you and kiss your face.
Make sweet trembling love to you in the faded
moonlight. Make you see the hollow hatred in my eyes.
You always apologise, no matter if you've done
wrong or not. Because you so often do wrong
sometimes you don’t see the difference.

Who influenced you? You live in such a big house
yet still you steal kerosene and sell it
to romani gypsies with long socks and wives
the same age as you. You are so easy
to find infatutation in. My drunken words
were thrown at you and you accepted them, sober.

Inside I felt this shred of hope germinate, but
as quickly as it came up it died. Some girl
I barely know loves you more. She cried over you
while I never have. Despite having wanted you so long
I cannot find enough love in me. But oh,
how I long to make you apologise to me.

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.

Listen.
The drunk girls are so loud
when they cheer for us.
You know?
They're more excited
than we could ever be.
We are terrified to the bone.

Well, I know I am.
Though you fascinate me.
You don't need love, you found and lost your home.
Neither do I,
My old scars still sting.
I've ****** up.
We ****** up everything.

It's not all the girls,
just the ones that can't handle their cocktails.
Not the cool kids, who smoke,
drink pitchers of beer and
full bottles of *****
but can still count backwards from thirty.
Just the ones that love me,

know what would make me happy.
I'm not incapable of love,
we just don't like it.
My ego wouldn't let me anyway,
my important sense of self
forever blocks the way.
Do you understand how perfect I would have this be?

It horrifies me.

Loneliness is an epidemic.
To have all your breaths cut short
by the ghost of a boy fizzled out.
Just a burned down wick,
the aluminium shell of a tealight.
I didn't even burn at both ends.

By the mist of an old bee sting.
Was pain any better than this?
I remember deciding to stop feeling
but not why I did.
Loneliness is a piercing migraine.
I am a bottle washed smooth by the sea.

My skin is a reused Manila envelope.
Well used and travelled,
every scar is an ink blot, how did
you know where I was going? You didn't.
Loneliness is an epidemic and yet
you scream in my loneliest moments.