Who the **** was I?
And who the **** am I?
In a tree, on a limb, suspended
on the thin green twig
upended
from the hands of the old gods,
let fall to smack
every fat
branch on the way down.
Penniless and unpretty,
useless and sometimes silly,
sometimes a little bit clever,
sometimes a listener
sometimes performs well,
tricks, no old dog, new *****,
forgotten in the bottom drawer
every seam of that old life unpicked
everything we stitched
torn up, cut up, ripped.

I live for these days,
cold, wet and rainy,
overcast and hazy,
smoke-filled, getting wasted
in cars with the boys
ripped jeans soaked to the waist
in motor oil, cow **** and meal.

Flat tyres, rollies,
tar stained fingers, and buying
his girlfriend's morning after pill,
my best friend beside me
and it's not
impressive, it's not my degree,
it's not the big city
but it lives in me.
In the deepest part of me.

I think it's important that you know
that love was never my strong suit,
or a weak suit or a suit
I ever wore proudly. Indeed,
it stung me harshly, and I,
being clever, learned not to grasp
the thorny branch of the rose so tightly.
Like every Irish child,
learned not to slap the stinging nettles
for "biting" me.
I am fine, honestly,
but I won't pursue you. I might just
**** all the nectar out of you
until you're a skeleton,
a little shell,
a little mark on my arm of a lost you.

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.

We get drunk, there's coke,
there's yokes,
there's drugs in abundance,
emotions pour out through
the broken dam, exploded
temporarily by big eyes,
slurred words, and a general,
overwhelming sense of well-being.

Euphoria brings euphoria,
I lie in your arms "just be with me."
You agree, it's easy,
almost beautiful.
We talk about how we've hurt eachother,
your brother, your ex, your roommate
we blame these people for our losses,
for our inability to just love eachother.

But then
sobriety
crippling and loud, the day is crisp,
lights are bright and suddenly
I am on an operating table.
You are brandishing an instrument —
a scalpel? Or a needle.
Are you stitching or cutting?
Your hand poised above my heart
we stare at eachother in silence.

You turn, your white coat swirls,
you leave.
But wait? Where are you going?
Is this love? Is it love? Is it?

Upon your leave my body crumbled.
The doctors said thyroid things but I found it
poignant that you took ten percent
of my body weight and half my hair
when you went. My teeth broke,
but now you're back, and as I stood blind drunk
in your kitchen you said kind words to me
that I don't really remember but I know
in my heart they didn't fix me.

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.

Grey days melt sideways --
constantly overlapping, calculating and deriving,
integrating and balancing chemical equations,
tell the teachers I am chasing dreams with cold numbers,
lines on the page or Lego blocks.
If you added every one together ad infinitum
it would be zero. Doesn't that say so much? Or enough?
Midnight brings music and words, I bury my mind
in their useless and beautiful noises.

I got ******* caught in my nose piercing
and the *** was overwhelmingly
disappointing.
He tried to spoon me
but I just don't have time for that,
you know? I just don't want that.

He was a **** kiss,
probably had no notion of a female ******,
he's a country boy stoner
doing **** all ever.

They used my student card
to chop up the coke
while I puked behind the car.
That's home though. That's life here.

And you, you ******,
when I woke up I missed you.
I really ******* miss you.

It is cherry blossom season
the white dust is settling into
petals decorated with boot prints.

Spring brings nothing new.
The same old worn out truths,
my doubt in all of you

lingers as clear as distilled water
pure and bitter as Russian *****
no matter how much I love someone

trusting them is not an option.
This is not a crisis of faith,
it is Springtime again, as it always will be.

Reliably.
The seasons never change.
They will never disappoint

so triumphantly.
I dug the grave, my friends
just threw the dirt to cover 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.

We sowed the seeds and faced them north -
sat on the ground and pushed fresh shoots
down with pokey fingers and old *******,
poured salt on the soil so nothing could grow.

But the summer was hotter than we'd imagined.
The caterpillar we kept caged spawned wings
undetered by our criticism and clenched hands.
We could not stop nature, though we tried.

Awoke to our patch full of fruit and vines
and tried to destroy it with poison and lies.
Watched every tillering flower bloom back twice
as though time were the only cure for loneliness.

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.

If I could only dream of blissfulness.
Oblivion and oddity riddle my sleeping mind
and my closed eyes make
hallucinations
which never seem to fade.
The shutters open, mother draws the curtains
but still the shadows dart beneath the bookcase.

We drank myself into an unbreakable stupor
and just a year since I vowed to feel nothing in extreme,
I could not cry if I tried.

And trust me, I try.
But things change, I've changed. While all you remain
and wonder why I'm throwing my life away.

I only breathe when I sing,
feel the rain on my skin and the warmth of the sun
and
with your fingers through my hair I am happy again.

But love or fear is not an option.
Only eventual dreamless death.

I swim in jealousy.
Up to the brim of my teeth,
floats litres of envy and greed.
I don't need you but, oh, I want you,
so I can discard you at your opening sentence
as an idiot or a hypocrite.
I want to want to love you,
for you to "love you too"

I want to reach out in the morning
and touch your soft speckled back
browned by the sun
to roll into your armpit
and smell your tobacco smoke.
Murmur my love for you,
kiss my hair
tell me you'll want me forever.

Why can't I just want a boy
who wants me back.
Or better yet, want a boy I actually want
instead of these fictional imaginings,
these stories I play out in my head
these lackadaisical dreams.
As if I would ever allow myself
to be happy!

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.

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.

Once you called me beautiful, for a laugh
and on my worst days I call back to that
just as I rely on ***** and dope
I rely on memories of our good days
when we could sit in bed and simmer
in eachothers warmth, I asked my friend
if I was ugly , she said no, you're not fat
anymore
but I wanted her to say "yes you are,
don't go fishing for compliments you *****"
because you used to say that.
It made your kind words mean so much more.

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.

It offends half my village
when I say I'm an atheist
but I worship no one.

No one boy,
no one God. Not my parents,
not love

not anything.
And if you don't sin
then didn't Jesus die for nothing?

Or is that blasphemy?
To be perfectly
honest, if it's P.C.

or not
P.C.
It never mattered

to me.

It's the same old betrayal I've been expecting,
with hair like fire she graced you, two
hawks circling high above your prey,
my mousey whiskers trembling in anticipation
to be snapped up by bony yellow beaks
and see my friends stand with the same old pathos
saying it's not my fault and never was.
I wonder why I ever came out from under my rock
and why I stepped long legged into the path
of predators. Why did I expect different
when experiments have provided me with quite
conclusive data. Why would I,
seeing no merit in faith, be as blind as this?
Air headed blonde ***** with a high IQ and no smarts?

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.

Bells chime, ding ****.
Cue the long run.

Rumbling empty belly
of a concrete anthill.

The same faces, same routines
same air, same space to fill.

Run, children, run!
Two hundred green pullovers

move in unison.
And the beautiful ones detach themselves

with heavy lungs
they inhale the fresh air

stamp out rollie butts.
Nobody cares.

Eat, sleep, bleat.
Two hundred green and grey sheep.

Day in, day out.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.

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.

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.

Heavy sticky eyelids drooping,
mascara heavy lashes flicking out
in curls one by one, fighting sleep,
fought it last night until I could
take no more. Made it to
4am by white powder and woke
to a thin roll of red stringy Thai smoke
that stank up the house and helped
me forget for a little while.
What am I doing waiting for your call
so late because I need to be held
and can't sleep alone.

You say
you don't want to hurt me
but don't you realise this hurts
these lonely days
these hours in bed
you're never off my mind
for any moment -
that hurts,
a deep pain
the wondering if it'll ever change pain
the empty
I'm so worthless pain.
You don't love me
that's what hurts me.

Paradoxical paradise
I love
drugs - and I hate them.
I hate
staring at myself in the mirror
of a dark bathroom
drowning in my own big eyes
stretched pupils
I hate the smell of *****
the chemical taste of MDMA
and the non-taste numbness
of speed
or *******.
I hate the emptiness,
I hate the crowd that swills around me-
hundreds of them
and I'm still ******* lonely.

But I love
getting so high that I'm just
numb
empty and lifeless and childlike,
kissing strangers,
forgetting the meaning of love.

So I love being drunk
I love casual *** and doing what I want
I love the facade
I love to forget everything else.

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.

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.

I don't like computers .
You must be specific to get them
to work with you.

I prefer people,
the vaguest smile, the subtlest compliment
can make them fall in love with you.

Manipulation is an art
when done very well, like I do,
disastrous when seen. A risky business.

Those boys don't love me,
this computer doesn't know me,
but they obey me.

I suppose I am a sort of God
I could control their fate
on a temporary basis,

some kind of Satan.
Lamia
or a Pope.

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.

The windows broken seals make whistling
bottle top noises in the ruckus, the seagulls
swarming like spiders in the back field,
the fat geldings hide by the hedges searching
for shelter. The fire roars and we sip hot whiskeys,
boys stroke their whiskers searching
for wisdom. Hum advertising jingles, hum
in agreement, wolf whistle at the young girls
in small skirts exploring something they call
"fun". Wonder if you remember what is was like.
The taste of brandy reminds me of something,
of a few things. Once I took a bottle to the head
of a boy that betrayed me, stinking of it,
and once my friend spit up like a baby,
milk of her alcoholic mother into my lap
in the back of a car. We're all so much older
and yet younger than we are.

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.

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.

Never really knew who I am, everyone
says something different. I am a thousand
things. Exceeding expectations,
constantly disappointing. My mother
is a hippy, a philosopher. London born;
Oxford made, and in love with
my father, Limerick man,
clawed his way up from the bottom, philosophy,
UCD. Are you beginning to see the pattern?
Spawned from thinkers and writers, I know that
every moment that passes is an opportunity
to ponder, to spill my guts to you strangers.
I live in the country by the beach, with a strange accent
neither London nor Irish. I am nothing
with no identity. I leave it with the farmboys
that continually excite 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.

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

At 2am, the knock came. Axe murderer loud,
my little brother answered the door.
You asked if I was in, and when he said
'Yes' you handed him a firecracker
and stomped down to my room.
I was asleep. "Gerrup t'****"

I should have, by all rights, shat myself,
but I knew you would come in the end.
You act like you don't care, but
you do a bit. Awkwardness doesn't work
for us anymore. We're far too comfortable
In each others madness.

We learned to have *** sober. It was funny,
it's been nearly a year of constant want
and yet only now can we summon
the courage to open ourselves to one another
in sound state of mind.
(The lights are still off.)

I think you're beautiful, but I can't
let you see me in my vulnerable state
on the brink of ecstasy. No,
that would make it too easy.
Then you roll over and fall asleep,
and I lie there thinking until morning.

The smell of you lingers, cigarettes and whiskey
stay with me 'til the close of evening.

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 need the nights
with you, and mornings with unclean teeth
making my sister bring my shoes to the beach
because I only have heels.
7am, and you,
shouting down the phone to your ex
"do you think less of me?"
but how could I ever.
48 hour days, I got dressed for the club
but just met you after work.
Driving through the night
as you traced out your life on my knee
and refused to stop kissing me.
You showed me how you diffed rings
after dark,
to blow smoke rings
we made love in three
of your cars
and never in bed, just drove roads
you worked nights
an end of summer miracle that couldn't last.

Multicoloured streamers torn and confetti
spread below your feet. A whole pile
of my insides just for you. The baseball bat
swings loosely in your muscled hand
and all the while, I lay here, silent.

These are the last words I have for you.

Love is for the weak and so I fought it.
But you drove it into me against my will,
waited for me to dissolve in it
then left my love behind
and left me lying still.

There was always an unspoken assertion
that there was time before this,
before my time. Ninety six. A few billion years
in fact, before this. I knew about Jesus
and world wars but had always assumed
my parents had evolved from dust
to just be
thirty-something. Spontaneously
erupting from nothing the day I was born, carrying
on as normal three lives and my brother's,
that until then had never existed. Like ninety
six was the beginning of it all and all history.
It never occurred to me
or became any afterthought that mine
was just another life on a timeline.
That my mother would be ashamed to have once been
a Stalinist. Or that my father would have lifted
women and children over a cemetery wall
during an IRA funeral in Belfast under fire.

Black wave rushes, gushes inky black
water. Icy cold, icy.
Dead man pallor on my hands,
I reach forward, but a cut throat pirate
hurt me too much to eat. Must have caught
it from that boy I often kiss,
he must have caught it
somewhere else. Black wave envelops me.
Off-colour, no red in my cheeks,
lost to the churning sea.
How is it you manipulate me
like this, so easily? How is it
you have drowned me
in myself,
in the ocean of my hometown?

Education is a difficult subject, it is all I have,
and I can never have enough. It is easier
to calculate facts and filter through numbers
than to tell you how I feel. It is easier to pretend
that in the stars I see swirling infernos of flammable
gases, and not your eyes, dreams and the nights
we slept together. Education is a master of disguise.

How do you oppress the people? Keep them clueless.
So I eat books like stale bread, dry texts
inhaled by the lungful. You sit in the bed
beside me, *******, and smoke. I tell you the same old
rigmarole. You'll die of cancer, a painful death
with no hair or dignity. You smile. Your lungs will bleed
and I will die of old age, alone, but thoroughly educated.

Woke up at six AM to the sun
streaming in
your window, to your mother
banging pans downstairs.
Turned over,
you were there, asleep,
reached out and you were so real
and alive and I was confused.
I had made myself believe
you were gone forever but
you won't teach this old ***** new tricks.

I.
What killed me the first time didn't necessarily **** me,
they tell you what doesn't bleed you out
makes you stronger, but sometimes it just
half kills you.

II.
How could seven lines of speed and two
or maybe three big red pills that made me feel so alive
and showed me stars with long arms that clung
to each other in the night,
how could they lie?

III.
Maybe I am dying.

IV.
So are you. I've been dying my whole life.
Every breath is one breath less,
every step leads to a closer step. What is inevitable
if not death? And yet each laborious inhale exhale
is magic.

V.
I know of the end, just choose not to acknowledge it,
won't ever look it square in the eye.
Don't wear my seatbelt. Cool kids don't die.

VI.
I admire the girls that don't put up with cheating
and I admire my friend who won't put up with her dad
because he's ****. But I'll never
be able to stick up for myself or keep myself
from crying when I've been let go of once again.

VII.
I heard a bean sidhes scream and it was death's
breath down my neck but I am not yet dead and
not yet
even
half dead.

One day, we sat on a cliff's edge
scooping jelly shots out of cups--
fingers to greedy mouths.
We drank beer, Captain Morgan and Lucozade
and gradually got wasted
where no one could reach us.

I had been lost, and alone
and I found you buying chewing gum.
You said you were going to go climb,
like a child I begged to come with you.
We reached new heights,
approached the sky.

You told me things I'd never known,
I realised although although you looked strong
to me - you're a boy
with a heart full of love.
It shouldn't have suprised me
but I'd always thought you were unshakeable

and I love you Cy, I really do.
You make me feel OK, and
I'll never forget the day you became my brother
on the hill, with the whole world below us
gradually getting wasted
where no one could reach us.

The dim glow illuminates my face
as I search for the perfect playsuit, perfect dress

or something. Something beautiful.
And everything is. Colours and elastane,

polyester, nylon, lycra.
Peplum, bodycon, strapless.

But the models are all size six,
and you must be pretty to wear a pretty dress.

I'm going to spend a week's wages
on this ******* wedding outfit,

and if you're not impressed
I'm going to ram a slice of cake down your throat

and smile, and catch the **** bouquet.
Will you look at me? Look at me!

I'm a sad, pathetic wreck.
I want to mark my territory. Your neck

will speak for itself.
Will say that I've been there before.

This perfect dress I'm searching for
to be left crumpled on your bedroom floor.