I was high when the call came.
Beer and pills
and too much green.
I was wasted when the call came.

The cheer struck up like a match caught flame
went up like a firework
from all these boys I barely knew
and they lit a J to celebrate.

Ninety-seventh percentile.
I could have just
drunk
my way into medical college.

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.

Even though I slept with both your brothers
and your mother hates me
you look after me like a sister.

When you try to buy me food
and cart me around for the day
you can't imagine how great it feels.

So happy it hurts,
the black pain throbs in my hands
and chest.

Just to feel cared about,
looked after.
Thank you Daniel.

Nobody else matters.
How long has it been like this?
Streetlamps are moments
orange illuminated sparks
each kiss
burned into my memory, the flame,
the little light of a cigarette
your arms around me
and I don't think this is infatuation.

How much can you love one person
or two
how much can I still love you
when you're so past and yet present?
How long has it been like this
a thousand nights trying to forget,
you're just the ocean waves
in my head.
A conch

subconsciously forever there,
your smell is my rooms smell
your cigarettes my own smell.
Is that love, who can tell?
Is it just *******, is it hell.

Some sigh, like a mild evening wind,
my hand
sleeps on my folded knee, the hairs
from the nape of my neck
stand like fair soldiers, soft
static runs through with a shiver—
an engine purring,
like a cat or thunderstorm
on the slated bedroom roof.
More moments like these,
non-jumpers glued to a ledge.
I'm leaving, I'm going,
but staying, yet hoping.

I think I'd like to recline into my mind
for a while and just speak French.
Ooh la la my pretend friends
inside my head are real again
their little voices sont parfait
here I drink tea and discuss politics
au francais and he didn't leave me,
Rachel isn't dying and it's okay.

She's crying to me down the phone
and all I can think is
how ****** it all is. How sick,
twisted and manipulated it all is.
Love is a ******* gift,
but it's a trick.
A menacing, broken, soft-spoken,
seductive *****,
that strikes up against your ribs,
just a match that caught flame.

How dare you ask to see me again
when you knew how much I loved you.

How dare you try and spin me into your web again.
Don't you know that I've become
so much better than you?

Then why does it feel like I'm
glueing together
old bits of rope and string,
tying together bits of old things
that everyone else has left for dead?

Isn't it worth fighting for?
Isn't love worth fighting for?
Why do I have to explain this to everyone I meet?

Every half-finished painting, song or poem—
they don't make masterpieces
if you take them all home, stitch them together and leave them to grow.
Just leave them alone.

I'm cold to the bone. In the twilight
I'm empty,
my heart turns to stone.

I watch all these sunsets turn red to navy
and I numb it with ***** because I can't handle the happiness.
You were my baby but baby you left me.

You were my baby but baby you left me.

Maybe I'm just no good at what I do.

My clouds all have silver lines
hung with fat steel
hooks
into the puddles
casting reflections
into the tunnel of mirrors, the fish swim by
sometimes they bite. Those nights we eat.

Maybe I'm just no good at wanting you,
maybe my dreams of you are wishes
that may come true but make you say
be careful
be careful of what you

wish
for.


We eat enough, we come too full to talk
and stuffed like plucked birds -
forever flightless.

Maybe I love you but don't think I do,
the only way I could have you all
is if I ate you whole

(I would cover you in honey first.)

I think it would be fun to be in love,
but merely fun. I couldn't see the obsessive
nature taking over me, I couldn't see
myself falling for that trick again. And
anyway, there's uni fast approaching
and I am tied to the tracks. There is
no escaping the rest of my life, it hurtles
toward me at the speed of light. I think
it would be fun to be in love, but
merely fun. Like when your hand moves
up my thigh and when you kiss me
while I'm on the phone. Fun like drugs
in the dead of night, but fun is for children
and I'll soon be no child.

You didn't jar with me when I saw you
I didn't want to cry,
so that was good, I guess.
Your girlfriend ignored me so
my girlfriends called her a *****.
(Not to her face, but the sentiment
was real.)

I asked you had you found the earrings
I left in yours
when you threw a party for my birthday

you said
yes, and I didn't believe you
but you described them perfectly,
in a way that told me you had studied them for a little while
before deciding not to throw them out.

they're in the bottom of your bedside press
with all your other memories of me.

I almost wanted you to keep them,
maybe years from now we would meet in a bar in our hometown, you having never left. And you would go home and retrieve them and think;
"What if?"

You are still
mist in the mornings.
Dreamtime, still haunting.
Unforgettable ghost, my heart's healed wound
and in the half light
you stand by the door in my bedroom
a winking shadow, gone then,
dissolved and lost to the air.
My breath catches like a skipping
CD
and I know you're not there—
the curtain ripples and I shiver
you are still here, always,
stalking my thoughts, feeding my fear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imogen, here's some advice
never give yourself to a boy
that doesn't love you like I do
never let any man convince you
to sacrifice what you have
because you want him to love you.
I did that, I forgot who I was
thought I was worthless
and now I know I am.
Baby sister, know that I'm sorry
for everything I did wrong
I made enemies, so many enemies
and work so hard now
to be the best I can, but it's not working
nobody wants me,
only Clara cares and I'm grateful
for her but so empty all the time.
So Immy don't do what I did
stay true to yourself
stay young, stay a kid,
stay sweet,
remember I love you more
than any boy ever will.

My teeth are sore, lips cut,
my eyes are dry and my ankle
hurts when I twist it back
because the bouncer
****** me into a puddle.

I could take 100 pills, little colours,
little fun shapes,
but you know
it still wouldn't fix me.
It wouldn't fill the hole in me.

I have nothing left now.

There's no boy my heart calls for in the night
except you, boy,
my only boy, but you're gone from me now.

It's real this time, my grinding teeth agree.
A baby's cry eats at my soul.
I cry for my baby and it eats at my soul.

I'm so tired
and I've been off my face
for a week now.

I dived into the lake to escape the killer bees
but on resurfacing
they've started to sting me.
I can't live underwater for much longer
but I can't live without it, you,
or whatever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are good memories
and thank you for those, I suppose.
Thank you for caring from time
to time, I missed you for a few days
but now don't miss you, just
the idea of you and the notion
of having the same boy want me
for any time at all.

You kissed me but it wasn't urgent,
it wasn't passionate and it wasn't
hurried like it was the last
even though it probably was.
I just wanted to hold you.
Press my nose to your jumper and smell you,
and pull you so close to me, I could sink into your skin
and you could carry me around in your chest.
You were tired though,
you didn't care I hadn't shaved my legs
or that I stank of brandy,
and when I said I missed you
you didn't say "me too"
just laughed as your warm body pressed me into the seat of your car.
But I could love you if you let me,
and you could love me if you tried.

I need to leave and not tell anyone where I'm going.
I've booked a plane ticket and plan to go
in two weeks time.

I need to get away from here and the gentleman
who's breaking my heart to pieces.
See if he notices.

I'm turning my phone off for a week or two.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
and coming back makes them realise

just how much they've always needed you.
I just need to see if they'll be waiting
at arrivals in three weeks or so.

And if they're not, I'll move. For good.

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

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

Stopped dead in my tracks
"Hi?"

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

squeeze my eyes shut -
you stroke my cheek.

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

understand this feeling.
I want to push you away

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

My heart is a brick and an ice cube,
you were a stick in the ground
my dog buried once and dug up
every beat is a crunch crunch sound
music has no place here
and I feel I am sinking again
into the bog's cold tea juices
into the depths of the ocean
I am a plane caught fire
drown it out.

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 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.

My leggings are a little bit loose
maybe it was a virus
maybe it was for you.

I just want your wandering hands
to find bones
to find their way back to me

I'm only hungry for you,
and when I stand up I'm dizzy for you,
see stars for you

not food.
I want to taste your lips again
lick the skin of your stomach

I want you to tell me you love me
for me to love you too
and for me to be beautiful

then you can mean what you do.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Remember trying to blow smoke rings
in my bed, and how
you always looked after me
when things got rough,
but you couldn't look after yourself,
white found it's way up your nose.

Now it's gripping your brain
the money and the glamour of it all.
I can't see myself in you,
barely yourself in you.

To be in love is a disease,
relying on drugs incessantly
and I can't breathe when I see him,
he's not even talking to me.
I know in myself he's not worth ****
but it lives in the depths of me
the feeling of utter worthlessness
hopelessness and jealousy.

There's no bedcovers on my duvet
I'm just wallowing in my own
sadness and illness
and I can smell you in every inch of this room.

I'm going away, maybe I'll stay away,
but homesickness is so hard to remedy
when home isn't home anymore.

You know how lonely you've left me?
Tired and empty—
I don't want *** with a stranger
I want you to hold me,
in the crook of your arm like a baby.
It's so hard to love me, so
hard to be happy. It's not even you,
just to know you don't want me.
It's so ******* lonely.
So cripplingly lonely.

By Tuesday they'll let me vote
and stop protecting me.
Push me out into the big wide world
and forget me. Who will love me then?
When all my hair has fallen out
and they let me buy
big bottles of ***** to soothe myself.
Who will love me then?
Still vulnerable, but discounted by them.
****** out on my **** into the wild
with sharp words and a bucketful
of angry tears.

Forever caged by our fears
the past mistakes that haunt
our moments in the half wake
condemned to relive
every old nightmare,
to fear ourselves and never love
again. And yet,
there is the look you give me
in the mornings
half closed eyes, observing
tired face with turned up corners
of your mouth. When you don't
stop staring unless I tell you to,
that tells me you could love me
if you tried.

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

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

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

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.

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?

"When did your hair get long?"
Has it really been that long
since my hair got stuck in your mouth?
Isn't that weird that I could have loved you
that much
and we didn't speak for a year.
When did my hair get long?
I was so busy drowned in my misery
that life was going on around me
and I never noticed.
"I should get it cut."
But that's not your business anymore.
I mean I'm ******* your brother.
It's all so ******.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How could I question your word
you ask
but how could I not
every promise you made me
dissolved
sugar on the tongue —
It's cold, freezing
in the mornings, and yet
it's the red hot
image of you when I wake up
there 'til I sleep
and in my dreams. You
haunt me, and everyone
knows I'm in love,
so in love with you.

Quiet and darkness brings
you
lit from the back, not a memory—
restarted afresh. Ear-shattering,
bones-to-dust, heart breaking,
nails-in-the-back-of-your-neck


screams!

from the depths of my throat.
Two sinners in a car. Outrageous.
Kids with strong notions, hilariously
slumped ****** victim, yet breathing
heavily. "Where did you learn that?"
And you are so beautiful? And I am so not.
And you are so staying. And I am so not.
And you have won me in a week.
And so ******* perfect, and I am so lost.

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.

He had found someone new,
pale turned white, the blood rushed
out of my face,
ears rang like a bomb went bang
I cried for the longest time
until I was empty and rocked
myself to sleep in the dark.

When you found someone new,
or old,
I remembered how you called her a ******,
I laughed, was a little bit sad,
but I guess that means it's not love.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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