Here is the word I
would place alongside myself.
A neon placard, no
hesitation.
An ugly-shiny presence within
the confines of my breath, the
whispers in my hair.

Bittersweet.

I split it open into near-perfection like
two halves of a peach or
two sides of a brain.
Right, left,
right -
I don't even like peaches.
But I offer them to you.

My 'sweet' is a sucker-punch candy on
your tongue, you confess. Like
licked-off icing, 100%
perfect.
You love it. You love her.
But it's only half of -

The 'bitter' I hand over, all
slap-dashed with hurt and
hope that
maybe finally
you'll be that boy who holds the glue to
put me back together.
Pick up
the halves of the half that
stop
your tongue and
put me back together again.
Would you do that?
Of course you
don't.

It's okay.

You cannot, I cannot deny,
the 'bitter' is grinding, grating,
binding
and I don't tell you that
I'm tired.
So tired
of pouring sugar on it,
with my hands all out of breath. Pouring
sugar
that's only stolen.

I have starry lights on my breath and
I don't know what to do
because I'm
choking.

Why did I start writing,
feeling
like this?
In an attempt to fill the spaces
in my narrative?
They gape open like
self-forced split wounds.
And yet are empty, so
empty
and bloodless.
Just numb.

Every **** self-help book
tells me it's my choice
how I feel.
I've been thinking and thinking and
I disagree.
It was never my decision to
paint my rib-cage blue,
to dull out and flatten, like a piece of
wood, my eyes into a lifeless faded varnish
that others mistake for spark or
mystery.
Or to stuff my head with
cotton wool that won't stop
pressing,
pressing.

I've just realized this is a not-good poem.
Forgive me, I'm
choking.

I'm 'sophisticatedly' sticking a pen
in my mouth, pretending
to smoke a cigarette.
I don't have the courage to hurt
myself, but
I do.
In 'subtle and implied' ways, he
says.

I make watery coffee and convince
myself, my happiness
lies in there,
floating. And I pretend
I'm in a Parisian cafe.
But these are pipe-dream dregs,
nothing else.
I guess they can't substitute the
vividness of being,
living.
Of sharp technicolour experience that can be
smelt.
Dregs, indeed.

Today, I borrowed Birthday Letters by
Ted Hughes from the library.
I'm wondering if
salvias were his favourite
flower.
His favourite.
I can't figure it out.
For his words are only stricken,
messy with the rawness of
too-technicolour experience.
Beautiful.
But sharp
enough to pierce and
poison,
like Paris.
My Paris, your Paris,
our little Paris.
So startlingly, breathlessly
red.

I suddenly know why I have written this.
The colour of salvias,
of Paris,
of me and you,
is my soul's favourite.
His favourite.
And salvias, their fragrance, it
douses the fire that's threatening to
suffocate, swallow my
life whole,
incomplete.

Red is my favourite colour.
And it's yours.

But I really don't think I want it to be.

You've been crying into your pillow for weeks now
because he-

Never mind.

Today, you walked into a grocery store
and stared
at all the people
buying broccoli and shampoo and dish-washing liquid.
All those people with their own
chapters and textures,
their own loves and hates and
personal heartbreaks,
all their embarrassing habits.
Mundanely gathered in this over-lit shop...
You realize that for this short while
all your lives were quietly mingling.

And then your heart sighs
with relief because
you've done it, finally.
You've realized something small but so very
important.
It's quite simple, really.

The world is larger than your heartbreak.

(You smile because you know that things just might be okay.
Eventually)

Bathtub music and drums played on the surface
of Davy Jones's mirror: the ceramic holds
the sea, the sea, and all within it: ***** me.

Scrubbed you off my skin again for
the umpteenth night in a row. Row
row row our boat away from the constant,
constant rows. Stormy arguments and
weathered mistrust. You'll break me,
won't you? I'll break you, won't I? Won't you
come drown with me Ariel? Won't you
come up with me to the kitchen and lock up
the door then lock up the oven then lock up
ourselves in carbon-monoxide poetry?

But then how does cooking gas end up as sass
in a library? How did sustenance turn into
asphyxiation?  Why are our hands on
each other's throats instead of being binded
by the absoluteness, the certainty, the assuredness
of palms within palms and fingers interlocked
and question marks dispelled.

Splash! as way in and over my head
is the bathtub music
and my absorbent curls are
drinking, drinking, drinking, thinking
about the why you only call me when
you're drinking, drinking, drinking; thinking
about the way I cannot suppress you when
the cellphone has long gone quiet and
your Hughes of blue are still loud but
your red is dead.

Ariel, Ariel,
I want to be your dark-haired prince.
Ariel, Ariel,
my country is landlocked but I still see you in the sink.
Ariel, Ariel,

gurgling away as the bathtub music fades
into ugly brown rings around the ceramic
pause button
that shows no hope of continuation
Ariel, Ariel, you are the final splash!
as the false sea drifts away, the final splash!
that scatters bathtub music past the drain
and into the air. Ariel, Ariel,

you are the false rain
that my landlocked country never prayed for.
Ariel, Ariel, toneless, begotten and forgotten
Ariel, Ariel. I cannot sing for you. I cannot.
You will not sing for me. You will not.

The final splash! past the drain and into the air
is you Ariel. The false rain.

The rain song of our endless games.

My eyes are a constant glitter when such dreams
pop up. It's nice to feel that way again, still,
after the endless march of time separates the wheat
from the chaff. Guess which one am I:
the one that doesn't get exported, which makes sense
because
My eyes are a constant glitter when such dreams
pop up. It's nice to feel that way again, still,
after the endless march of time...

And what exactly is that glitter?
Stars? Ghosts? Memories?
Or the final flicker of a bedroom light bulb.
Or the last swipe of now-dark screen.
Or a distant goodnight from chaff to
wheat; fertile land to barren desert, yet

still planting himself to the irrigated seas
of Spring, where burning sun was still growth
and when one looked forward to growing up
like this.

Winter has never felt so warm.

Nor wheat and chaff so warm
and and
like the thoughts of you and me.

And every night
she unhooks the
stars
to string them
'round her neck.

She can't decide
if she's making a
noose
or she's making
a necklace.

They didn't know that
her heart was perpetually on vacation,
stuffed
between the pages of Austen and
Murakami.

Yes, they loved her
autumn smiles, her conversations, even
the jazz ensembles of her
clothes. But her heart
was locked in the New York Public Library.

The distance was far
too great, the risk far
too much.
After all, this was the place where Paul
Varjak told Holly
he loved her
and all she did was look at him.