you wanted me to see your gods but i am afraid of heights;
i wanted you to touch mine but you cannot swim

you washed your hair in salt by the shore, smiling
with your cracked-skin lips like a perfect line of stitches

holding my head in your wet wet hands,
and i hadn’t heart to tell you that to me you smelt like death

but i suppose you thought the same of i—
like seaweed in the sun, sand in all my joints; breathless

“i’ll get my sea legs some day,” you said,
sealed beneath a new spring moon

and i just, just hadn’t heart to tell you
how these things always tend to end

1.
friday morning at the beach, you've got a pocket full of change and a stone in each fist, a mood ring on your *******, wind-brushed all purple, la la la. slowly now i drift across a world of all-blue and even from here i can read you right through and through: i know you and i know you want to pull me up from beneath the waves and cut me open, crawl inside my sea-weathered carcass and sail my skin out to god knows where, crooning to the heavens, la la la, la la la.

2.
gathering rain in the stoup of my cupped palms, carving your name at the base of every tree, you are a hymn, you are a prayer, you're in my garden dressed all in grey and you wont let go; i'm running and running, bruised to the bone, struggling to breathe. summer is here—the locusts are singing. the sky's pure gold. wont you say hello?

3.
its a papercut day, a hairs-breadth day, and i'm perched on the back of your bike like a splash of young love—a raincoat and a red-shirt and a pretty mouth and nothing more. i put my arms around you and squint up into the sun, watching an august shower find its bearings, and we hit a bump in the road as the rain hits us and you swear and you swear and i breathe into your ear and we keep on going, bird-calls in your mouth and clouds in mine: la la la, la la la…

so i go searching charity shops because
i forgot to bring a book today and
i want to get something to eat in a momen
because i am hungry
because i have not eaten anything yet today
because i forgot i am a flesh-and-blood thing
but i want to sit down somewhere to eat
which is something i do not like to do without either
1: the company of a book or
2: another living being of some sort
(one who will not make small talk
or touch my hands or think i matter)
since these are both fairly good excuses
not to make eye contact—even unintentional—
with anyone who happens to be around you
which is something i do not like doing
as every time without fail it makes me feel
a little nauseous, just a little
There are two major measures of eye irritation.
One is blink frequency which can be observed by human behavior.
The other measures are break up time, tear flow, hyperemia
(redness, swelling), tear fluid cytology,
and epithelial damage (vital stains) etc.,
which are human beings’ physiological reactions.
Blink frequency is defined as the number
of blinks per minute and it is associated
with eye irritation. Blink frequencies are individual
with mean frequencies of < 2-3 to 20-30 blinks/minute,
and they depend on environmental factors
including the use of contact lenses

i settle on a three-book set of stephen king
and i read the first thirty pages of "the girl who loved tom gordon"
sitting in a cafe between very slight interspersions of rain-watching
and i manage to avoid looking quite directly at anyone,
even the waitress,
which i am proud of myself for
in a small sad sort of way
but then i get up and i go to the restroom
and i spend several seconds deliberating
over whether to use the womens or the mens
because i am a liar either way
but i settle for womens just like i settled for king
and when i walk in there is a lady there
washing her hands at the sink
and we meet eyes for a moment
before i flee into a stall and, sitting on the toilet,
knees drawn up and tense,
holding my head in my hands,
burst promptly
into tears

i leave and i stop at the counter to pay the bill
which i almost forgot
and i find i have change, yes,
i have exact change, precise.
i worry about the chance of this
for five minutes after i leave;
i stand in the street and i find the rain has gone off,
but it hasn’t,
so i stand there holding in my hand
an unused £10 note that is verging on soggy
and i worry about whether that is okay
and then i go to sainsburys
and i buy tea and chocolate
just to get rid of that ******* ten pound note
that my gran gave me yesterday
that has a pen mark on it
that my granddad was almost certainly responsible for
(which does not make me cry but
does make me clench my fist very strangely
for a moment feeling embittered
towards this self-service checkout
that i am going to hand this tenner over to
knowing it will be eating up something
that reminds me of the way my granddad smelt
and the way he sort of hurt to be held by
because he was so odd and bony and my face
could never rest quite right on his shoulders for it,
and i do not know whether this is
a bad thing or a good thing i am doing, here)
and i almost buy bread too
but there are too many people in that aisle
so i do not

i go home and i read on the internet
about piercing one’s ears at home
and then i almost buy a suturing kit
from a medical supplies website
for a dog that i really like
and i get changed out of that jumper
into a shirt, finally
but now it is too cool rather than too warm
so then i just end up
taking all of my clothes off entirely
and crying naked
under the bedsheets
like a coffin-baby
because the world just won’t stop for me
and i really
really
should have bought some bread

the day after they found you
a wordless homage to ophelia
i walked down to the shore
and conversed with god
trapped in a seashell

you're writing me letters
from out at sea
and your handwriting
is not quite the same
but it's all sealed in salt

you've got me on the deck
at last, and i cover
your eyes with my hands
they're in the wrong place
but that's okay

i can't untangle
your legs from your skirts
and your skin doesn't fit
but i've given so much
it's okay, it's okay

SUNDAY
had a go at hating you, first
found it wouldnt quite fit—well
things like this never did suit us
we're really not the right people for it
not those dark-eyed shark-teeth people
who could craft art from the wreckage
of one another: split each others atoms
open, and maybe find beauty
all the way down
i know we're far too ugly for that
and it occurs to me today
that you likely know it too
so again i'll be the fool, will i?
that's alright; i know you'll get your turn
and i know its always good to have
a little mystery left

MONDAY
i found some old pictures of you
private things, badly-lit:
spent two minutes thinking about
how you almost got there that one time
watching my collarbones twist up into my skin
as i shrugged and said "alright—
do what you like";
spent another one
wondering if youve been there since

TUESDAY
look,
i remember it all just fine
dont tell me a single thing
about how much i did
or didnt eat, and dont you dare try to tell me
how you were always a little drunker
than you let on
ive decided i dont give a ****

WEDNESDAY
i saw your latest ex
just last week—thought you should know
they walked fast like someone with nowhere to be
who does not want anyone to see the aimlessness
of their travels
it reminded me of a bird, i think
or a desperate little moth
or a locust
lost in lieu of an swarm
either way: something with wings
and i wondered for a moment
if in the end theyd believed me after all
and then i went back off on my way
just a bit faster than before

THURSDAY
sometimes i think it wouldve been easier
had you just really made me **** myself
i think you couldve come up with
something really beautiful
if you tried
so at least there is that

FRIDAY
theres a bloodstain on the tracks tonight
a little faded, a little old, not quite enough
im waiting for the last train home
turning myself inside-out
with thoughts of you
and suddenly i am hoping
that wherever you are
you are okay
(i lean my head in against the window
and sleep, all the way
and i dream of you)

SATURDAY [1AM]
i wake up shaking
and i miss my stop
and some other things
and i realise on the long walk home
that you liked my writing before you liked me
and i wonder if youd like this
i wonder if youre winning

SATURDAY [1PM]
you wouldnt touch me like this; sickly
and sweaty and small
paying respects to a watery grave
youd love me but you wouldnt touch me
i left you a message in-between waves
just to ask if you meant what you said the last time
i couldnt even quite remember what it was
something slurred that hit me running
like being passed over by a storm
and then i heaved a dozen flecks
of language up into my hands
watching some illusion of coherency
a quiet, collected existence
drip out through my fingers
and didnt care one bit
yes, im quite sure now
youre winning—no
youve won

SUNDAY**
i thought about it and decided
im starting fresh; it is 10am
and i am trying earnestly
to hate you

in our garden, i am growing
a new universe: one fresh
and clean and golden-sweet;
a world of milk over water
and honey over blood.

it’s not that i am unhappy
here with you! it was never that.
i’m just sick of these old stars,
and this ill-fit skin. so today
i am watching the bluebells bloom
and the ivy unfurl—cutting my hair short
and dreaming of a hundred new eyes,
skin that smells of summer.

this evening i cannot see the sky,
i cannot feel your gentle hands,
i cannot believe all your ghost stories
of a better world, a kinder world:
the impossibility of tomorrow
where everything is fine.

but all the same i will thank you.
i will tell you i love you, and
together then we will go to bed
and as you sleep i will watch
matter begin to seep and spill
through every ceiling crack,
and the sun start to rise,
firework-red,
over a sea of stars.

i am growing a new universe.

a story: today i went out shopping and i
bought two pairs of the same earrings
in vaguely different colours
and so i stood there in Peacocks
holding one in each hand
looking up at the lights and thinking
i ought to have worn a shirt
instead of a jumper today
but i just didn’t expect it to be so warm
im wondering if i can pierce my ears
at home by myself because ive just recalled
my lobes closed up three years ago now
a needle, i am thinking, a needle and thread
and i’ll stitch my ears shut cartilage to cartilage
til not a word will scratch its way in
because every shaven-haired loose-lipped
teenage boy in every crowd
is God and we live by a sea where every gull
speaks the devil’s tongue
and i dont want to hear a bit of it anymore—
three pounds, i am thinking,
do i have change?

its a tuesday and you are waiting for me
standing at the central dressed all in grey
inoffensive, unassuming: avid
i can see the whites of your eyes
all the way from point zero down
so now your voice comes plain
through a sea of fog, and i know
we are coming up death row
red steel, old stone: is this how it goes?

i throw myself all around you
flesh onto flesh, man onto man
two guts into a gordian knot
a futile attempt at lessening
your incomprehensible hugeness
your bones, the empty room
i cannot see any walls to
you are: my har megiddo
my mount, under thunder

and the sun is brighter than white
if only i could see it, and the rain
is clearer even than air--if only
i could feel it! but now we are grey
among grey, concealing seas of pink
storms of milk; there is no sky
where we are bound
no opening, no end

you press your hand into mine
and you are warm like dirt, maybe
like you are barely born from the earth
only just learning the load of being addled
with such clumsy comfort, this rough touch
the worthlessness of words and the distance of skin
but we are stretching our necks to rise above it
do you like what you see, now?

so you bring me to your little home
and you feed me little pills, one by one
and we take to your little bed, spilling over
too much, not enough, back and forth
the same air again, the same words
no lines of demarcation left to bear
just your blood and mine and
one little winding red road
from here to (THE END.)

1.
it's a new year and you want to go hunting
so i peel off all my winter clothes
and consider the blessings
of mud on my feet and
you on my heels

2.
i pick all the first blooms of spring for you
and we swill them in scotch til summer
i'm shot through with bee-stings
but you're speaking with devils
and you've never been prettier

3.
i'm bearing revelation down the skin of my back
vertebrae like the tower, all down to bits
can't you see? our tongues don't fit
but i'm an altar of salt and water
beneath your stony weight

(4.
and in the shade of hypoxia
i am nothing, nothing but content)

it is one week before the scheduled end of days
when i make myself fall in love for the first time
and the last—but that goes without saying
as do my thoughts on how lovely your voice is
when it is not brought to melting under tears
(but when do i ever hear it otherwise?)
or how i do not want to have *** with you
not really, but now the dark is seeping in
and your hands are warmer than mine
and nobody wants to feel alone
at
the end

hey, wake up.
there’s that girl at the door for you again:
this time she’s got you a little cardboard box
full of withered browning poppies
straight from her garden;
rain-stained and trembling,
she’s got on the sourest of smiles.
she’s crowding your room with remains,
she’s teaching you self-preservation,
she loves you.

today, she’s knocking on your door
with the impatience of a devil;
yesterday, she’s holding your hand,
rolling the pads of her fingers
over every bump of your knuckles
complimenting your bone structure.
“when you die, give your body to science,”
she says, and you know that she means
‘give it to me’—you have already said yes
quite some time ago now.

today, you’re waking up,
you’re wondering the time,
you’re opening the door,
you’re saying hello i missed you.
it’s been fifteen hours.
you’re eating your heart out
and feeding her the scraps.
tomorrow, you're picking meat
from her teeth, just one little bird
that can't believe its luck.

she invites herself in, and you see
with a little stumbling delight
that she’s wearing those gloves you like,
oh, that soft old berry-red pair—
the ones that smell of ash and ink,
used matches and newspaper-print.
she peels them off her hands,
presses them into yours, and,
entirely shameless,
you grip them tight.

you savour their warmth,
you savour their feel.
you consider residual skin cells.
you consider honest infatuation.
neither of them seem to you
to be the truth and nothing but,
not quite, not wholly.
you love anatomy, you love her.
save the both of you some trouble
and don’t bother trying to choose.

she’s sitting on the edge of your bed
and she smells like old perfume
that wants to tell you it smells
like a summer day;
she’s kicking off her shoes,
she’s talking about cutting your hair:
where do you keep the scissors?
she’ll say she wants to paint your nails, too
but really she just wants to think
about tearing them out.

it’s hard to know but you think
you might want that too.
everything’s so complicated—
you just want to be beside her
so that’s where you are! now
she’s ******* crisp shrunken petals
right into your mouth. is she?
she’s got her nails on your lips either way.
you’re tasting nature at its end.
you’re just waiting to join it.

hey, wake up.

youre in a too-small bed in pediatrics
all sticky plasters and twitching toes
stuffed full of wires, pink to the bone
hollow and soft, impossibly close

youre a skinned hare, still running
eyes drippy with moon milk so fresh
teeth carved from wax and every orifice
a wound; every love, from the flesh

so now the sun rises on a sea of all-pale
im holding your hand, waiting to flower
you let down your hair--i know its gone thin
but dear deer, ill still try your tower

we're wasting away in symmetrical styles
one from the heart; another from the head
ill leave it to you to figure which is literal
ill leave it to you to see my blood be bled
(its too much for me, now: all i can consider
are the slow and subtle pains of sharing your bed.)

1
with each passing day you only grow yet more sickened by your every birth rite; keep your loathing for your *** and your name in a glass full of soil on your bedroom windowsill where the light will bring life before your societally imposed sense of shame can strike it down. you belong in a textbook of the future, a born-astronaut’s biology class.

2
here is somebody else’s name; here is your voice, with the texture of a nimbus cloud; here are your eyes coloured all blue, but a sickly sort, blue like a vein, blue like the wrong side of the sky, and the wrong shape of skull.

3
by the time you wake up, the world has already determined who you are going to be today. randomised generation: you are, you are a girl, you are doe-eyed, you are bitter, you are sweet, you are a puzzle to be solved, a shell to be broken, a wrong to be put right, you are pity’s cygnet under the wing of the mother bird, you are beautiful. you are beautiful. but you want to be ugly.

4
you want to be a blank slate.

all the birds in your hands go south for the winter
the ones in your mouth flutter and preen
and prepare to nest in mine

the goldfish in your gut skim the water
light and trembling—children at play
darting through intestinal knots

you want to be my boy
you want to flush the mites out
you want to lick my wounds

you want to wipe the old maps clean
youve been under my skin now and you know
there are no dragons, here

you’re the pink-dripped prints in the snow
of a wounded buck;
i’m the bullet in your back

you’re the little stories i was told
of prints on the shore;
i’ve forgotten the feel of sand in my toes

you’re the between of me and the moon
far too much to cross;
i’m burning so slow for you

you’re asking me to light your cigarettes
wires wormed below your skin;
i lean over the sheets towards you, and

you’re gripping your fingers tight in my hair
bones against a hospital bed;
i’m coming down, right down to the end.

take off your tank top
shuck off your short shorts
remove your heart-shaped glasses
squint til my mouth is a skyline
and mountains form my teeth

mess up your makeup
clean your cuts, old and new
shrug off your lonely soul my love
put on a smile; dive down to pluck
pearls from my dusty guts

burn your mary janes, baby
peel the covers from your pink
while i dissect yesterdays disguises
i'll be a blank slate; fetch the ink
they're waiting so patiently
just to hear from us ♥

someday i figure i shall live with you
in a little pastel-pallet house by the sea,
one where the shells are full up to overflow
with the dusty tones of my dead old-lovers
and the gulls leave flowers on our doorstep
after each and every rainfall
(today, tulips: secondhand and sun-dried,
brittle as bone)

someday i figure i shall know how to love you
properly, with no regards to reservation—
someday i will learn how to swim,
and i will forget how to fear
the sound of stirring thunder—
but today the sand is cold and
the sirens tell me to watch my step
and yours too

oh,
i know we’re in it for the long haul now.

there are weeds in the front garden
bundles of flowers turning brown on your bed
the imprint of your back filled out within the month
but the dust between your vertebrae never quite clears
& i've been sick twice trying to empty your fridge
we've got it all wrong again

1: when i dream about you, i cannot see your face. you are made of light and glass, all your colour cast through a filter, like i could dissect the uncanny reality of your existence the same way i could the blueness of the ocean waters, or the gold of the sun; you have no breath, and your fingers are bent in all the wrong places, but you smell of cat's fur and you're warmer than summer air.

2: it always manages to creep up on me, even now. i'll be picking at the burn marks on my thigh and i'll start to wonder about the wine in your cellar; i'll find myself teary-eyed in the chalky grip of morning and i won't know why, so i'll simply suppose it's you again, coming round my room in the middle of the night, putting your hands on everything, dreaming the prints will poison me. i wish just the once i'd wake up.

3: so what if i miss you? haven't you ever cried for the demolition of a slaughterhouse?

4: well, it's just—i don't know who'll spill my blood now.

books about mental illness,
a future where i dont
get up and walk out
towards a dream of
someone i care about,
no way of stopping;
this is all there is

i burst into tears in his office
sent home alone:
something’s gotta break,
something’s gonna break

i dreamt of holding your hand, i dreamt of hating you; i am hansel & gretel sharing halves of a sexless edgeless soft young body together sitting in your home and waiting with folded hands patiently, quietly, to be devoured. look i am telling you — it's fine. sink in your teeth, i like the feel of them. today in the trees i saw mary magdalene's shawl-framed face written in shadows between the branches, today i saw the ***** of babylon's hands at my window and i wept. today you kissed my barren chest with the mouth of judas, today i am nobody's child. tomorrow i am yours.

i dreamt i poured you wine from my mouth, i made you bread from my flesh. all i ever did was miss you even when you were right here. you cradled my hand like a mother and later the bones of my fingers like a lover; the walls were stainless peach and the sun was setting and filtered through the window the light from behind made your hair glow, your face was so dark i couldn't find the colour in your eyes. i cried now for what you made me feel until you kissed me quiet, your breath so warm and my voice lost within it, lost like a sailor all at sea, and i felt so safe with you then even knowing how this story ended — you drew away and in my mouth from yours had slipped charon's obol, slipped all down my throat with no resistance. through the suffocation i laughed a little and through the laughter i said to you "yes, that's right," only glad that you had remembered.

look i am telling you — i died perfectly happy because i had not died at all. i watched you from the eyes of the wood-pigeons at your window and i know you burned my body and i know you swallowed the ashes and still! still then all you ever did was miss me, even when i was right there, right inside of you. silly boy.

i dreamt of hating you and by the end i only loved you again.

49°f on the sunrise, wind in your sails
the coast all calm, my mouth all red
"you want this?" you say, and i kiss you
quick and sunken, teeth like graves
with every inscription an old treaty
international law between the lines
of our coexistence; it is: definition
and redefinition of forces
peaceful conflict, maybe
content desolation

i say to you shining, i say "of course"
i am: the golden boy with a fog on his heart
you are: slimy, so sweet, a snail full of kisses
dismantling the borders of my skin like
a needle, a bug, pure irrationality;
but the sea-breeze sobers
and i know i will be fine
in the stability of your hands
and the love story of your fists

and when i breathe into the sand
i can feel my bruises swell
my scars flutter
the sky burns grey and my thighs
ever pinker; my lips ever more split
and now you hold me like the tide
and i come home with you smiling
52°f on the morn, salt on my face
and i know, i know i will be fine

you were sitting in my garden
legs folded under you, hands stained
with orange juice and apple flesh
fingers slippery on your ***** zipper
and on the earth i was a smear
of pure red, i ran to the horizon
and further still: deep and raw
and endless -
all the bad with all the good
how much of me do you want?

beneath your thighs the grass was wet
your skin was all sprinkled with green
and i could breathe the dew in you
taste the want of a hundred worms
smothering all of yours
your hands were between sticky and soft
and i watched my knees turn purple
until the sun came -
all the dark with all the light
how much of me are you taking?

clearly now i saw you, nature had no mercy
roots grew around your ankles
i cut you free and watched you run
i wore gold for you, wrote psalms for you
like ripened fruit i bruised for you
bled a road going home for you
and i could smell the peaches
oh i felt you now -
all the fear with all the hate
and how much of me will there be left?

1.
it’s a monday night when your ma first tells you
that she never wanted to raise you catholic
and she’s sorry you had a breakdown
at the soft-mouthed age of twelve
but you have to understand
life is more complicated
than crooked teeth
and even tones

2.
on this day, in 2008: the sky was red
and you were very lonely

3.
your uncle smells of sweat and scotch and little secrets
the sun is shining and your blood swirls
a sea of brown, bubbling, tense
you cut your meat quietly
and
later,
throw up in the bathroom
with everything golden
everything burnt

4.
“you’re kidding,” she says,
ashy and freckled and too good to last,
and outside the rain falls
static in your chest
you say “no, really;”
her teeth have a gap
and you can feel
the smoke
stitched
into her breath
and

5.
“what?”

6.
there are flowers on your windowsill
in medias res: dying, never dead
and your bed is always cold
and your shoes don’t fit
and it’s alright to miss
the tears, if you want
but you don’t

7.
“oh.”

1
i carry with me at all times a single fond memory of you ******* out venom from under my skin, right where you forgot you put it a very long time ago, —and beneath my eyes, as the vitreous shrinks and contracts, every sweep of your tongue becomes another dilution of the pigment of my iris, and every stem or stalk taken from the roof of your mouth, here is where hell begins—and i carry in me at all times your own discarded cells, and the stalactites of your bones beneath. here is where

2
you let me drown, which i will not blame you for, but i will blame you for the tears of my lovers all shed over not having a body to bury, or to dig back up, or to hold, simply because you couldn’t swim—but i couldn’t either and did i let that stop me? at least we know now which one of us is more so the coward, or i guess was

3
(…which was my worst fear if i am being honest, if i had ever told you: they say there are two deaths but i know there are three. the first is when you are buried; the second is when your name is said for the last time; and the third is when the worms give up because there is not enough left of you to bother their mouths with)

4
nothing i say makes any sense today
you took my tongue; give it back, give it back

5
it all comes back to an oral fixation, i know that, just wish i could tell you why

6
—no, i remember why now, it’s because
you kissed the soil of my grave when you thought i wasn’t looking but the joke is finally on you because decomposition had begun early—sickness is the only bedfellow we’ll ever have—and after that comes

7
return to start?

i
you are dreaming: dreaming about your brother in spirit, brother in arms, you two sides of the one coin, him without his name but in every other way all the same. oh my brother, hiding in a hotel room with no windows, speaking in tongues, speaking in nadsat—dreaming of bowing your head to him, bearing your neck. if it is dissatisfying to you, cut it off.

ii
here it is perfectly silent. your mouth moves without a single sound and the fish clean away every trace of your blood: their gills tremble, inwards, outwards, endless; their scales shine like the moon upon the surface. you are born today into a monstrous world, a better world, and Lilith's womb ends at the shoreline—seaweed entangles itself round your ankles, the last despairing traces of an umbilical cord, sixteen years late. if it is dissatisfying to you, cut it off.

iii
serpent, sink your teeth into the apple of Adam; his throat wields to your fangs like the tired breath of a lingering lovers mouth. his hands are rough but your skin is rougher. today, Eve laid down asleep under your bones, your heart beats its last. everyone you have loathed is forgiven. everyone you have loved is not. but forget theology for a moment. you are dreaming. you are dreaming, and the rush of a thousand years of rain around you is your wakeup call—in your navel collects an ocean, in your eyes is painted a storm. civilisation on fast-forward sets up between your bones. sorrow makes a home of your heart. ashes to ashes, water to blood: if it is dissatisfying to you, stand and let it die.

how are you? what's up?
you sense my loneliness and
tell me:
you're cute. you're cute
kind of turns me on in a way
i'm glad we're on the same wavelength
we're connected--so synced
so obviously vulnerable
i don't know how this works
but
i'm not interested
in anything else
and
can i just, can i just say
you don't have to put on a front for me anymore
you are
this sleepy, rumpled,
put-together mess
of
hyperempathy issues
fear and sadness
and frustration
you're perfect
beautiful
god, god, god
i have to tell you something
incredibly embarrassing
(shivering--
really gracelessly
i'm laughing but
i can't breathe)
i'm glad you pushed me
to get to you

so your wandering hands may be the death of me
and your grave of a mouth might turn me blue
youd ruin me, sure--but youll own me for good
now how does it feel to know im dreaming of you?

look, dear, let me tell you something: of the atoms
in your body, 98% are replaced each year
so its fine, keep going: i promise you never fell
for this flesh below you now all fake-filled with fear

your mother called today--i think shes missing you again
oh, dont look at me like that, you know im right
dont you? its fine. ill pretend. ill let you loathe me
just a little; if you liked i could even put up a fight

yes, i know theres something wrong here
i know you care for me still--dont say it that way
please stop, please, youre making me sick
i cant do this much longer. please, go away.

in me there is a serpent longing
to crawl from my throat into the warmth
of your frame, and eat, and eat.
turn off the lights, please,
i say, and place one hand
on your own: too soft.

last night, all my joints
turned to ice—today, your spit
burns. i cough into the alcove
of your collarbone; sorry, you say,
as though you are not sure
why you say it at all.

on the couch you struggle
to fit all our parts together
and as you kick your legs
between mine, i begin
to work out exactly
how wrong this is.

a memory: holding you;
i am all heat and tremors,
meat and muscle,
interrupted breath.
but who can trust their mind
as well as they can their body?

i am hungry and tired and
falling to bits, an ugly affair,
the ugliest of all, and i cannot tell
if i mean it or not when i say
that i do not love you
anymore.

—all im saying is
dont you ever get sick
of the salt in the air and
the mist that contains you
the winds that know your name
the boys with crooked teeth
who turn to men with crooked fists
knuckles like mountain ranges
everything pointed,
straining
like a misplaced patient
confined to the morgue
under sheets of skin
and hair and fingerprints
saying “look at me, girl”
with their eyes dark
chests swelled
"look at me when i talk to you"?

i have this fantasy where:

1.
i leave you, because i can; because you would, if you could. a short story: i have become extraordinarily good at predicting your movements but only during the night when you think i am not awake. it is tuesday, 3.46am, and here is 3.49: you make coffee, you pour it down the sink and graduate to whiskey before you'd even begun, you lay your head down upon the kitchen table, and you cry, oh you cry until you're wasted on every front. it is 3.47 and you are kicking off the bedsheets.

2.
i have *** with another man, right in front of you—it doesn't matter who. he is sober, clean, and loving; he holds me afterwards. you clench your fists and drink yourself a path to apathy. chances are you want to **** him, too. but you don't. i do.

3.
he got my hair, and my bone structure, and you never asked a single question.

4.
i gather all your alcohol and your cigars, and, with every one of us still in it, i burn down the house. in my last moments, i am cleaning ash from the floors, hopeless, helpless, a lamb to the stove and an old queen to the guillotine: i am hoping you will go before me.

had a dream we took a road trip
all round the southern states
you taught me how to shoot a gun
taught me how to be his son

i walked you through confession
every chapel we set foot in
i told you how i bound my chest
showed you how i hid my breast

but you beat me out a dozen times
scotch on the rocks, blood in my socks
said to you i couldnt walk no more
you told me id been here before

in mississipi you got whiskey-****
tried to ruin me in pearl river
i heaved my shoulders, cut my breath
laid in the reeds and waited for death

i rolled your **** and laced your boots
tallahassee took us kindly
you sat among the palm trees
just watched me bruise my knees

hit the end near south carolina
woke up lonely, woke up wet
said a prayer quick for my young soul
showered for hours; wished i was whole

you spit blood up into the river water
til your mouth is as clear and clean
as ****** tears: til your lips are
all embittered, sticky-soft;
tongue rolling over the back
of your teeth, you find the cold
has numbed you all through
from toes to hips to fingertips

hands rubbed rough with dirt,
she grasps in the dark for you
"so that’s that, then," she says
a voice like the scorned Lilith,
the weary Eve; she has been hurt
for the last time, the last ever
(you, on the other hand,
have only begun to ache)

among the grass your knuckles,
fresh and smarting, meet her palm
she spares one long lost look towards you
—and in her eyes will be your end
not unlike was his—
before she lays his clothes adrift,
spread out across the seafoam
funeral boats bound home

"that’s that," you echo,
and together now
you watch the water turn pink
pink like a bed of roses

you drink to lose weight
i want to start smoking
southern comfort; a lucky strike
it's poetry--bruises on my thigh
where you almost hit gold
youre getting closer, i know it

teeth go crooked, grow apart
you almost tell me something sweet
next dance, between ****** feet, broken ankle
dont worry: it burns to the ground
the world wont listen but youve nothing to say
im getting closer, i know it

in a fit you take me to your first home
turn for me pages of teary-eyed diaries
tender, light-fingered: obviously lying
a sad necessity--but theres things left to know
places left to go, and well i wonder
arent we getting closer?

scrunches his face up
he thinks it's a joke, at first
he thinks it's just
another one
of those dreams

hurt eyes; small apologies
he's never been prettier
he's going to throw up

i know you do crack with the kids down the road
and i know you smoke when im not around
your nails are turning to clay, your mouth
is going grey; you must think me such a fool
you must really want to laugh
watching me hide from all your friends
the boys with big hands, bigger fists
the girls who flush my pills
can you see the way i tremble?
can you smell the burns
between my thighs?
i caught you looking yesterday
it mustnt come as a surprise
you must have known how sick i was
you met me in a waiting room, didnt you
did you? i cant remember now
i suppose it doesnt matter
i suppose none of this does
hey your train leaves soon
id almost like to walk you there
id maybe like to say goodbye
id like to cry alongside you
but no—no i know i couldnt
its the worst thing of all
the last loss: oh
you must think
i want you
to go

1:
it's a monday morning and the sky
is a washed-out steel-wool grey
(pregnant with rainfall, drooling
fruitless little white streaks of cloud)
and as i settle down to sleep
i consider quietly the weight of knowing
there is a high probability that you
do not love me anymore.
there are worse things.
there is you

2:
you have a very bright smile
and it does not burn
when my gut tightens for you
and the sun will not hide its face today
and i cannot see a thing
and i am beginning to forget
how to run

3:
its okay to be afraid
i just wish that i was

one: playing dentist on a friday afternoon in your bedroom, watching the sun splay stripes on the carpet through your venetians—i filled every gap in your teeth with wads of faded pink bubblegum that i chewed for hours on end (and kept rolled up in the wrapper in my right pocket for the next time i wanted on impulse to bite out a chunk of your skin), and i told you that every time i kissed you now i could taste sugar, just like it was meant to be.

two: i watched my saliva settle glistening on your lips and it called to mind de-saturated pictures, polaroid-quality, of a deer's heart exposed, trembling, glossy and soft: eyes shining with pure lack of life. i fought to keep down *****, just a little—a hushed war on the edge of reason.

[two point five: when i touch you i try so hard to find the pink and not the red.]

three: i got into bed with you. i lost.

hey, lets watch a film if youd like that—lets talk about death
lets turn off all the lights and think about warm bodies
wet mouths, hard hands, copper and smoke
lets make an awful mess, if you want
ill rise with the moon if youll set with the sun
lets agree to meet somewhere
in that milky void, if you want
if you want to know my craters
if you want to burn me up
thats okay, thats okay
ill plant a few flowers for you
ill practise the rhythm of your breath
so one day lets grow
beside one another
lets have our chests
move, together

here’s the story of how i remember you all wrong:
i’m on the number eleven bus, top deck,
and the hair of the boy right in front
is making me think of your own
—although when i try to recall
how you kept yours
i can’t.
i can’t think of the colour of your eyes
or the length of your fingers,
but i can think of how your arm looked
after you sliced it up to bleeding
that one time,
and i do,
i think til it hurts.
(i used to want to hurt you because
i liked you; now i only want to because i don’t.
but you know i don’t want to give you the wrong idea—)

(here’s the story where you didn’t hurt me:
—the wrong head, the wrong heart,
the wrong number under my name in your phone,
the wrong sound of a nervous little brought-in breath
coming between my teeth
as i roll my fingers over your knuckles,
the wrong airport in the wrong city,
the wrong voice for the first time i say
‘i love you’
to you without a single stumble,
or all the wrong questions to ask.
don’t you?)

and here’s the story of how i miss you all wrong:
i go home and curl up under the bedsheets in the dark
til i forget the precise colour of my eyes
and the exact shape of my hands, too,
and i guess that’s how i win,
just the once.

problem: im waking up to the end of the world
observations: the sun is a spot of oil
in a sans-borders sea of perfect white;
youre explaining heat death to me and
your hands are so warm but all i can think
is that your blood has never stopped moving
not for a second, and all the air in this place
you have re-breathed a hundred times over;
all i want is something new

cause: beyond your view everythings off
youre redefining the weight of the world
twisting every beginning to an end
every unexplored to a nonexistent
and im far from a traveller
effect: theres not one single place to run
but im not sure theres ever been

question: when will you leave me be?
hypothesis: not ever; we are going down
to the end together, whether i like it or not
evidence: i am beneath you and burnt,
breathless--ash ****** between my teeth
refutation: i have your flesh in my fist
and im taking you to pieces; too many
and too small to even think of seeing
conclusion*: its nothing new,
its nothing new