I am an old friend of bruised knees and bathroom floors,
exhaling until the chest is empty and body no longer breathing;
only absence lives here now. Cold stone tiles,
so we meet again: spilling secrets into each other’s mouths
until we see the light of dawn, we whisper
with a hope of being heard, yet fear of being listened to.
For weeks I have been swallowing metaphors like honey,
gulping down apologies for breakfast,
biting my tongue until the taste of forgiveness fills me –
for once my throat is not made of molasses.
There is a reason why our hearts began to curl like fists
and we aimed them at ourselves, because after all,
self-love has always been the most important thing.

Last week I was taught that
no matter how complex an expression may seem
if you multiply it by its conjugate pair
you will always end up with a non-negative real solution.
That is a metaphor for how we have learned to love.

I used to like mathematics, as strange as it may sound,
because memorising the value of pi was
somehow easier than forgetting the notion of you
and I thought maybe comprehending the mechanics of the universe
would lead me one step closer to cracking the combination.

In a world that spins at the rate of 27,900m per minute, a constant can prove tricky to find.
Hence, there is solace to be felt in knowing that even when it is all said and done –
when the final bullet has slipped from our tongues and we are left trembling
upon nothing but the rubble of our own destruction,
two plus three will still be equal to five.

In an attempt to clarify a theory to the class, my teacher analogised
that mathematics is like one big giant jigsaw puzzle:
everything always fits together perfectly in the end
Since then I have learned it is the method without the madness,
the passion for the predictable; it is everything - that love is not.

Not even the greatest mathematician in the world
has been able to measure how much a heart can hold.
There is no algorithm for how to make you come back;
I cannot draw a line graph on the speed at which love left
and even if I could, our gradients would never be the same.

I may have both halves of the bed,
but there is never enough space to fill it with.
If a task takes four hours for ten people to complete
and the same job takes five people twice that time,
how long will it take for a human to feel whole again?

Sometimes I think we are nothing more
than two parallel lines that accidentally crossed paths.

There is fire in my bones and lightning
in your lungs. When we kiss it’s like
a thunderstorm. Two tectonic plates­
crash against each other and
somewhere in the world starts
quaking. Seismic waves are quicker
than calling. Continental drift is the
earth’s defence mechanism for
commitment. Static electricity, like
miscommunication, is simply friction
in motion. I am crushing sandstorms­
between my teeth, breathing in
hurricanes like oxygen, swallowing
the volcanic ash of survival; to think
we are all made of liquid love and
some will never feel the force of a
tsunami. Sometimes I am stuck
in the eye of a tornado, others I am
spinning in it. Either way, we are a
whirlwind of skin and bone; flesh and
blood; bruises and scars. Laying in
the fresh rubble of our own creative
destruction, I realise, our love is an
oxymoron; a natural disaster; a
phenomenon scientists could only
dream of understanding.

There is no
"blurred line"

just a clear cut
crime scene tape

with the warning
"DO NOT CROSS"

stamped all over it.

Poets say how beautiful it is
that the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shore
no matter how many times it is sent away

How chasing thunderstorms can make you feel so alive
that sometimes you forget you are in the path of a hurricane.

This is how we fall in love
This is how we fall apart

This is the burning flame
This is the burst balloon

This is saying “I love you”
and only hearing a siren song

This is feeling at home
even with your hands around my neck

Maybe I jumped knowing exactly where I’d fall
Maybe I held your heart so hard it exploded

If we are just two people playing with fire
Why am I the only one who gets burnt?

In sixth grade biology class they taught us
that the average human heart is the same size as a fist.
I didn’t know we would all grow up learning to use it like one.

i.

do you ever think
that maybe the sun
gets sick

of smiling
down at strangers
in an audience

that
never
even
bothers
to look
up?

and yet still, each morning
the spectacle continues to rise

shining, singing
to deaf ears
blind minds—

silent applause.

ii.

i feel the wind's breath
creeping up my spine
and can't help but wonder

if maybe the only reason
he whistles is to be heard.

maybe
the wind is just as lonely
as the next passer-by

he tries to hug
but gets lost in translation:

soft skin kisses
transform into blows

this power
he cannot control—

he calls it
love.

but others only ever see
destruction.

and maybe now they
both mean the same thing anyway.


iii.

perhaps trees
only sway
as an attempt

to unchain themselves
from the roots that
shackle them to the ground

confined by the soil
that anchors them
to a cage

they're convinced
is called

"home."

they say
every tree
has a story to be told:

the squirrel
who hollowed out its heart

and made a life out of
the rotting rings inside;

dead voices
carved into peeling skin

arms outstretched
only ever greeted by air

and the occasional bird
that comes to sit
on a broken-***** bridge
that once led to somewhere.

it's true.

every tree
does have a story
to be told

and if a tree falls in a forest
and someone is around to hear it,
it does make a sound.

but the real question

is would anyone
be listening
anyway?

iv.**

i think
in a way

humans
can be a lot like nature too.

You say, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”
but I say surely something

must taste nicer than the burning acid
being forced back up your throat.

Why not hug people instead of
toilet bowls? At least they’ll hug back.

Except Mia is your only friend now.
And her cousin, Ana, of course.

And I understand that you never
wanted to die, but this is a thousand ton truck

hurtling towards the edge of a cliff and
Ana took the wheel a long time ago.

There is no strength in this: in you, in a
fear of calories. Even your bones creak

as your muscles sigh with exhaustion -
for this, is not a war you're winning.

This is a battle with only one contender
and I will not be the one to disarm you.

That's your job and it always has been. I know
you only wanted to be beautiful

like all those stars in the magazines
you saved under a file titled ‘thinspo’

but the only stars you ever saw were in
your eyes from the dizziness

and to tell you the truth, you are not pretty.
For there is nothing “pretty”

about the layer of fuzz your body grew
to protect itself from the big bad wolf

when really, the only growl was coming
from inside your stomach.

Or how your little sister is afraid to touch,
let alone hug you, in fear of snapping you in two.

For there is no glamour in having to
remove clumps of hair out of the plughole

at least six times whilst having a shower,
just to let the water run down.

Or that one time you "accidentally”
took too many laxatives. Messy.

There is nothing admirable about the way
you sat shivering on your bed

at night instead of kissing boys,
or dancing, or eating ice cream.

There is nothing to be marvelled at
in dying.

This, is not a life to be lived.
God, this isn't even a life.

This is being a slave to your own body,

a walking zombie, a ghost stuck
between two sides.

You are not alive.

But it was all still worth it, right?
Slowly killing yourself from the inside out.

A small price to pay for perfection,
a bargain for a broken mirror;

for a half-written book
with 97 blank pages,

a camera
that only captures in black and white,

a clock
with frozen hands.

And most importantly, for a peace of mind
you never received.

No refunds.

i used to think you were the first thornless rose to ever exist
until i accidentally pricked myself on you
and haven’t stopped bleeding since.

that was the day i learned that
sometimes it’s the beautiful things in life
that can hurt you the most.