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.

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.

I know boys that have smoked for seven years
and quit for a year
and they're not even twenty.

I know boys that eat
sandwiches
with black hands
black from motor oil and tar
and shower four times a day.

I know boys, I love boys
that can fix cars, milk cows,
get up at six and drive two hours
to work
with three hours sleep
still drunk from the night before
and never puke.

I breathe boys that smell of slurry,
silage, and turf fires
that shout
things about tractors that I can't understand.
Smoke joints at 8AM before work
and reckon they work harder for it.

I love FÁS boys.
Untrained boys,
rough and ready, picked at the seam boys,
home boys, lover boys, my boys,
curse like a sailor and hand on my thigh boys.

"You should stop picking men
based on their ability
to open beer bottles with their teeth"
said Mam. But I love those boys,
those earthy boys,
those make me feel alive boys.

Most of my friends aren't from here,
I know this because of their parents' accents
and their aversion to pig ****
even though they still get tired in the big city.

Most of my friends take drugs,
others don't. Surprisingly the smokers
are the least ****** up.
Least manipulative, capable of loving.

Most of my friends tell me they love me
quite often actually. I don't believe them
but it makes me feel secure like
putting your hand flat on the ground when you have the spins.

Most of my friends have problems, like
crazy mothers or hopeless fathers,
drug problems, money problems, forgetting
who-the-****-they-are problems

and I'm sorry for them but I can't help them
I try and I try to tell them
it will be okay and we will be alright
but they're too busy helping me to see the light.

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.

Every Sunday the same lurching
same turning
It's a problem I'm fixing
just a little more than recommended
just enough to forget things.

How do you explain
to someone who is always there
how lonely it is?

How do I feel sad
when I am sideways on a rock
hurtling through space
through black and night
past stars and everything?
How do I feel lonely
on seven billion people planet
and a house full of family
and a mind full of voices?

I rang Bill last night,
he was in a *******.
Hey, I thought, at least he's living.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Admittedly I miss kissing you
miss your smell and stealing
your cigarettes
but really I just miss you
and the talks we would have
about nothing, for hours.

I had been hung up on you
but I kissed another boy.
I think it's all better now.

That niggling feeling is gone,
I really don't miss you at all.
I don't wonder where you are

or what you might be doing.
I suppose when I swore not
to fall in love with you

I didn't believe I could keep the promise,
but I kissed another boy.
Not that you'd care but

it mattered to me.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Half a year of you in my bed,
meaningless *** and a lot of nothingness.

I know I meant as much to you
as spare change on your rich days.
Mostly forgotten but nice to have around
when you didn't get paid.

******* and your truth.
You say you can't do it anymore,
when did that occur to you?
Did you find something else to do,

someone else to use?
I was a good kid once. I'm sure you were, too.

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

You don't sound special.
My name doesn't drip off your tongue
like a rolling wave. Like honey
or a dew drop off a leaf. You sound
like home and smell like rolling
tobacco. Your sallow skin turns
olive on the bog when you sleep in
instead of waking up at six am
to beat the sun. There's always oil
in your fingernails from the garage
since you dropped out of school -
but now you're going places.
Despite what everyone said and despite
the fact you have to ask me how to
spell some things and despite
your excessive drinking and even though
you left me I hope you're coming back.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

She is so sure of it, one minute,
then the next is a flurry of tears,
curse words and disappointments.
I can never say the right words,
distrustful stance;
she raised me. She can ground me,
she thinks I would lie in a heartbeat.
She waits for
some lady in pinstripes
with money on her mind. "Can I
drain the mind of the poet for cash?"
She will ask, and sleep on her dollar pile
in diamonds and furs,
my mother a pea in the eighth mattress
down,
never noticed by thieves, the true princess.

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?

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.

Kiss me hard in the car
again, please, just another quick ****
and that's it. I miss you
do you miss me too?
"Kinda."
And that kinda killed me,
in the college canteen crying
to your ****** favourite song on replay
trying not to be seen.
I wish it was ****** coffee too,
it would have been more romantic—
but the freshly ground beans
make for a stupid white girl
and a stupid scene.
And your song isn't even deep
or something worth crying to.

I wanna I wanna I wanna touch you
(you wanna touch me too?)

Their passion for science
pours out like patriotism.
Hungry and rabid, irrational Eros.
Eyes on fire, spills from the gut—
insecure geniuses
that know so much, accepting
they know nothing— and always will,
yet their idiocy enthrals them.
It catches them by the genitals
like an old and nasty lover.
I can feel it too,
the insatiable emptiness,
the inescapable desire
to open up atoms
and **** the world dry from them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.