You’re like a version of my favourite person
Warped with colours of the boring mainstream
You drink your oat milk vanilla latte
And punish me with exhaustive details of your youth
My lips curl into a smile on purpose
Only because it will your eyes glow

You reapply some sort of makeup
Only to pretend the bill isn’t due
I gladly oblige with my battered wallet
It’s been four years - you don’t need to be awkward

But that was then
Emotions ripe
Our weary eyes saw warning signs
Each in their own corner
Predicting each others crime  

When light hits the pane
Are you thinking of my name
When you’re dancing in a crowd
Do you wish I was around
When the high hits hard
Do you miss what we had

Would you turn back time
Only to end up here
Just to do it again

that touch that burns and warms like wax
that pull and push that leaves a question mark
the smile you love but cannot read
the woman seemingly fragile, whom you cannot lead
the self-fulfilling prophecy of loss
a comfortable distance that you choose,
Is your familiar routine;
To me - a spark, my irresistible in-between

Addicted to the fear
Before you gained a speck of understanding her
you wish she'd disappear
a lot too soon but not enough
to see beyond each others mud

a heavy heart, two hundred miles
i hope you find somebody closer with my eyes

Strobe lights
Whisky highs
Your shoulders,
Eyes
My weakness cries
For you
White shirt,
Wheels screech
Let go
I wish I could

When it rains, the sky blue-black
When scars re-open
When eyes are wet
You are a friend
You are the secret garden
I have not discovered in full summer
I wish rain to fall on your soil only to make you grow
I hope clouds only exist to shade you from scorching suns
And when we bleed may we share the hurt
And when we laugh
I know we are women
Girls, sisters,
And are enough.

it moves
like the moon: full to crescent to nothing at all;
existing all the same until the next phase

it burns
like a knife; eventually less, as the knife gets blunter,
the desire gets weaker

The lights inside your mind
Flashing from the inside
The mirror smiles back
So sad the lengths you have to go to
To escape you to find you

The night does not exist
Heart beats to the melody
Seeking something it can’t accept
Nothingness is the greatest escape

She has plenty of room
But he chooses his own
He comes over
And she lets him,
Taking more than what is offered
(What noble love)

Cry in the dark
(What sweet love)
She lights the spark
Cigarette burns
He talks about his day
But not all of it
Catches a flight
She’s full of him

And I see us, two wrongs together
Gave up 6 months ago
And walking in different directions
Continuing on a burned bridge
Looking at smiling pictures

If only you loved like I love
If only you let everything go and held me
I would be yours
I would be alive

She held me in those tired, capable hands and from them I am yet to sprout
Doomed to be a seedling, an apple of the tree
Never ripe enough, never my own branches or my land
Must forever hover around you
Feeding that need of purpose  

Every button you did, every hole you sowed,
Every essay you thought you wrote
The friends you called foes
The lovers you chased away with scornful words
The meals you forced and the blood vessels that burst when you yelled
And smacked the solution to that math problem across my head
And I mimicked the blows with mirrors and ceramic objects so my skull knew what it deserved

I learned to recognise the dark
At first unfriendly and strange
Then it was the only colour I knew by heart

The kind of hurt that only more pain numbs
Bony, thin-skinned wrists
All fingers and thumbs,
Make it smile
A welcome friend: it’s me! It knows!
The fire in my head dies and turns to water,
It fills a basin it fills a sea
Then a clarity forms
A small but singular necessary piece
It is love
Within me this warmth toward my child self

You can do this
You did it when you were 12

It was a cool night in her cool eyes the sun was up high and we were yearning
There was a blue sky and we drank white wine but there were clouds inside her
I sang a song the words slipped softly off my tongue and poured right in
Into her cool heart where things grow slowly
Slow enough to see the process - in some moments - life seems dying
I see her face wrinkle like asphalt in Africa, Soft with weakness, open with warmth
Her eyes are small boats bobbing above her private history
Her hands are silky and small, bumpy with blood pressure
She is a victim of this blood,
However thin, a sure horizon will come, overbearing with menacing red lines
Is the sun sinking or does it set
It’s all in your head
Her military love shaped me with blades
Too many questions, she tied the knots
Unlearned lessons await you in your last eternal moment
I shan’t attend this last pity party
I shall no longer dance and hit and bend my bones to fit your pretend.

Thousands of miles away but the sunset reminds you of me
Smoking in silence and suddenly you hear my laugh and you let me know
I no longer swallow my pride for your needs
Though your body was very nice when it was happy

I look to my left: the sky is dark;
I look to my right: sunset is nigh;
I look ahead, envision my home:
The gravel path, the creaky door,
The chirp I will hear as I say 'Hello!'
(With that loud, childish joy, concealing the weight of the day)
My bird in the cage, the symbol I swore I would shake;
Yet here I am:
Moving toward the same metal gate.

I’m hypersensitive - this is my low and it dips lower
She uttered tiny daggers aiming surely nowhere but landing in my mind where they would stab for days on end
I tried to fog them out with smoke and spirit but my spirits got the best of me
I attempted a similar approach to life, to do just as she,
Debauchery and all
But it was no good
I needed revenge to truly heal by way of equal hurt returned twice more
Unforgiving and bitter I dwell and I swell until the pressure of my feeling turns to water
Drink it and leave me alone forever.

In the cocoon of the warm moonlight
I’m nursing the inner child
For all the love you didn’t recognise
I saved it just in case, deep inside
For all the small efforts I made to hear that you’re proud
There is a hollow in my heart
But each hello and how is your day
And every kiss planted by someone who cares
Little by little there’s less of you that I crave
And more of me I learn to not betray
Maybe there’ll be a time for us to be unlikely friends
Maybe blood will run thick under the bridge
When you know that you’ll always be my maker but throw away the chains.

Sweet and salted
Like you wanted
We watch in silence
We aren’t holding hands
You shiver lightly
Move right beside me
I feel your body heat
My heart skipped a beat

Your hand feeds
me metal
Your hand like a petal
I say I’m not hungry
You say it’s for your own good honey
You plaited my hair
I cut it like I wanted
You say I’m ruined
I feel you’re intruding
You throw the china
I feel it still

Popping candy
Medicine moonlight
I’m wearing white lies
Doll faces with red smiles

You think you are the sun divine
I look at you and you multiply
I’m hungry but I can’t eat
Give me those eyes will you

My best friend, I was so afraid
Lay beside you, your body like a warm sandy beach
My body like washed up **** trying to get free

I was looking for salvation in the rock pools
Little snails and ***** would cling and pick at me
Til I finally gave in
You turned me evergreen

How long til the moon pulls you away
Leaves me to rest again, dehydrates me into a skeleton serene
How long til your silky arms stretch out again
And tickle me into an object of a lust, desires obscene

I feel you close
Like echoes in a tunnel seeming to whisper in your ear
But you’ve a long way yet to grow
And know just what this strange **** craves

It isn’t simple as giving orders, or showering me with delight
The heart of the matter lies in the murky deep,
The root causes the illness I wear from head to feet

Dissolve me in heavy salt and weightless oil
Purify me on mountaneous rock
Shake me in the willows endless, indifferent sorrow
Throw me away to make sure I’m for keeps

And maybe then after years of struggle
Summers burnt and winters melted,
I will still play my vengeful game and give you eyes that say
“I’m better, you will never win.”

You will be taught by this world that you are a man from a very young age
It is a great responsibility to carry
In some ways, a great burden;
I cry in my heart for the times you are not fast enough, strong enough, brave enough;
These adjectives that define your gender.
Above all I hope that your person is gentle
Above all I will teach you to love before they get to you.

They say keys are meant to be lost
And when I lose mine I get that feeling when you've reached the top of the stairs in the dark and your foot feefor predicting another step

Are glasses supposed to break? A tiny drop of blood seeps out my finger
I squeeze it to make more

Maybe roads are meant to wind and take you some place you've never been, didn't want to go

I want to lose my keys and find new doors and pick the locks and hope you're not behind one
I bled for you and kept the scars - my skin a battleground for wars I fancied were for you

I'd like to travel high and far and when I reach my heaven will be waiting
With all keys ever lost and doors unlocked and straight roads and I will toast to the memory of you that got me here

The final words, the slamming doors left me to wonder whats the use
The warm embrace the aching womb each time you pressed your lips
And whispered 1000 things that guaranteed my trust
Now it weighs me down

Hold me tight
Hold me like a gun you will not shoot
Just embrace being the keeper of fate
To have the power to end it all and thus end this momentary suffering
Hold me like a mother, countless of times comforting her child and letting her soft cotton top soak up the tears
Just take me and squeeze me so I don't feel
So that the only thing I'm aware of is your touch and my body is a log and my brain is a dock and the waves crash
The buzzing wind in my ears
The crackle of the bones
The wetness of the shore
I look up, lifting my head above water
Your eyes warm and blue-grey with seagulls
I'm your little baby
And your prey.

All my stories end the same
With snow in summer
I am sun-kissed wearing black
In the passenger seat
Cigarette in hand
Feeling down
Next to the best person I know
But he's far away, I don't care
And the sky couldn't be more white
The take-out coffee isn't as good as it should be
Hands are damp but we never let go
We get to the city at last
Let it swallow us
Blend into the crowds, we're simplified
Hiding behind the a-la-carte menu

In the hotel the dark silence grew  
We leave the sheets stained with a bit of me and you
And go home to pretend we want someone new

I hold you close
Between reality and dreams
If I plant you where mountains grow
Will you spread
If I fly over your scattered body
Promise you'll flower
Like dreamers look upon the stars
And only allow themselves to dream in solitude
I allow you to exist in my fantasy

I try to understand your mind but will never be sure
Unless you give me more than your eyes
More than a drunken grip of my waist that seemed like an accident

That night you kisssed my cheek I felt you hard against my skin
And I'm not sure if you knew but I acted like it didn't matter
But inside a small part of me let you in and I was surprised you were capable of affection

White jeep
That's where I hurt your head and you cried to your mum
The same one that my grandad crashed
The mafia wanted to exchange me for money
I didn't understand

I found a gun in the kitchen draw
It was pretty cool

And someone's wheels rode over my mums knee
They planned to throw her off the bridge
But she woke up  

And two men made an offer with two angry dogs on their side  
A deal went wrong and they took her dignity
Afterward they threw her on the steps like trash

I am your mother
I will make you feel incompetent all your life
You will always seek my approval
I will reject your individuality
I will know what is best for you
What you should wear
What you should eat
Who you should be
Who your friends should be
Who you should marry
I am your mother
You will be grateful
For raising you
Feeding you
Teaching you manners
Allowing you to have an education

I will bully you from the bottom of my heart
But you must accept me as I am because I am your mother
You only have one

Sun-dried it was, with freckles and pimples each individual size and cause
Mixed with strange colors from the blue UV
A canvas for sweat, where I’d sleep, drink and eat
The surface I treat like a marble dream I walked upon without slipping
Like those shoulders I gripped when you made me feel little
And I begged you for more

Was I cinnamon to you, not perfect all the time like her
The vanilla that she is, pure and classic
She is the real porcelain inside and out while I am ceramic
My cracks don’t show at all, then all at once
But the scariest part is that I haven’t fallen yet, I live on
And you’re on the other ******* side

The first time I looked at you,
In so many ways I asked you to be mine
And although it wasn't spoken aloud, you said no

You're under someone else's thumb
Numb to my tiny spells
You live on an island with your Beautiful

You walk around under the Sun
And pay no mind to my dark
Each time I see you I let you go
But I hope you never go far.

She was a crescent moon never completely lit
She imagined someone out there would find her and strike a match
She never considered it might hurt
This moon hid from most things
She orbited around a planet that was so unfamiliar to her
She knew others like her existed galaxies away
It made her feel both lonely and special.

The moon befriended stars
She sometimes wished she was small and bright and fleeting
But she was large and slow

One day one of the stars started mocking the moon with his light
He would shine right in her eyes and tell her she was nothing

The moon gradually grew smaller
It only looked within itself with shame
Finally, there was just a tiny spec

The whole world burned.

saw you: like an arrow you shoot
but aimlessly, merely for effect

i saw you: animated like the world was your audience
but i heard what you felt
and your ship is sinking

heard you: melodic tones and harmonious rhythms
but a chorus, do you even believe it
Maybe I'm hearing it wrong

the window
looking through me

tracing my steps as i walk away

you're behind it, intruding
my private love shattered under your gaze


the sun sinks

skies turn grey
The lamp post blink and my path is moonlit

Your curtains hide prisoners 
my mind won't be open again
It was a warm December
It Melted you away

Bluebells only heard by joy
They're saying something about life
I try to understand but it's all foreign

So many miles to walk to reach that clarity that's as clear as snow
But I'm confused why we walk when we had what we were looking for

So I'm drinking cheap wine and smoking Swiss cigarettes

I never cared about things
I only wanted people there
And fields
And skies and everything in between

The day comes around too soon
Brings me back to where we look no further than our screens
And I'm only skin deep

And Im always outside your window, within which my spirit is trapped
And I get no service
I get no air

the window looking through me
tracing my steps as i walk away
you're behind it, intruding
the sun sinks

lamp lights push me
the path bends my waist

now she's a memory  
one of the prisoners behind your curtains
these spirits you hold captive
to whom you couldn't give back

To talk to at 12:30 am when my heart is wide open
To tell about the little things I witness
You always make it about yourself

Seconds streaming down and I am no wiser
Every moment pushes you into the past
Pushes me into myself
Like a time-bomb waiting

Then the wrists won't be held
And the eyes won't reflect
And the hair won't shine
Are you mine

And the wind swept them away
All the blue grass
Where we lay and you made secret plans
It swept the memories

I remember to this day
All the others
Love lost maybe buried in a chorus of a song somewhere

Pictures smiling through the rain
Framed to hide the times we struggled but we felt no pain
We felt nothing

And it's the brightest ones that die
Always falling
Slowly becoming something else

I was hoping we'd get through it all

you are a perfect song
flowing through my walls
the kind of sound that makes me empty

you are a single person
that makes me feel together
when i'm alone in a crowd

you are an endless dream
disappearing from view
just when I'm about to collide into you

you are my vitamin
when i run out
no longer hurting just curing and curing

you pull me with your joke
i really do not care
i wanna see the lights
to take me everywhere
you always give me more
cos you say im a friend
but i have better plans
im lying to your face

You're not going to always get the perfect things
And you're not always going to feel the best
But to me you will be just right
And if you're wrong I will explain and teach you better;
You're not going to like me for it,
Sometimes we will be enemies instead of best friends
And it will be a sad time when you keep secrets from me
But I will try to be tolerant and excuse you,
Remembering myself at your age.
Know that the hardest thing is not letting go of someone, but keeping a hold of yourself whilst you have them;
Know that music is merely an escape into a bunch of emotions we apply to reality and not the other way round;
Know that your actions must be sincere and noble no matter what and you will be okay.
I love you.

What if my soul can only speak
Through my eyes when I fall in love with you,
What if I only fall when you're pushing,
Why do my lips not pronounce my heart as well as they kiss;
If only it was enough to suffice

I know in time I will learn to let my black birds fly,
In time I will let your waters take me,
But I will not drown.

I breathe you out, take in another view
I think about new places with you
I might have called,
I might have lied with all my criticisms

I know it seems
Like I'm clipping your wings
But we're in separate nests
And I cannot rest
Without you

im overflowing like smoke that crept higher up the walls of a glass container and only knows to seek an exit
there are no means to an end because there is no source to accept my energy
i say things that make perfect sense only to me and sound like white noise to everyone else
im a dangling wire violently waiting for that corresponding part to get hit by the current to become one and complete circuit
and im going to scar everyone who gets in the way

Goodnight, the fire burns brightly
Goodnight, you kiss my forehead lightly
Almost paternally now
- We were lovers

Goodnight, clinging to the sheets by your side
Goodnight, heartache in this house tonight
Someday we will forget
- We were lovers

This distance will turn my blood cold
A grave look on a pale face of youth
If I could shrink the ocean to be close
Would you save me anymore
Love became an ugly truth

Goodnight, the fire burns brightly
Goodnight, I held on to the moment tightly
Almost in retrospect
- We were lovers

tied your shoes and polished them up
put your scarf on and did all the buttons
i loved you splashing in the puddles
the autumn leaves rising
flying, as if growing, falling
your magical smile wiped the sky clean
but your laughter was winter's calling
as you ran deeper into the woods
the soles of your shoes flashed a-going:  
i stood standing
withheld my arms and wept, knowing.

You were dating that girl from heaven
So angelic yet mind so brittle
You took her to better places
And gave her things you couldn’t give me.

She’s polite, all tender hand shakes and smiles
And she’s even nice to me to be on your side
She’s not the stereotype of perfect
Cos she’s got a dark side but it’s worth it
Cos I bet you want to see her naked
And I bet she looks better than me
And if you do something wrong
She’ll never tell you.
Nearly perfect.

So why

You were dating that girl from heaven
You were dating even when you didn’t know it
Your walks were romantic and flirtatious
But oh so gracious
And so ungraciously you fell for her
And bought her better perfume
But I wasn’t in competition
Now I don’t want to be involved -
With a silly girl from such a tragic, lethargic world.

So why

I hope you and your girl from heaven dance in woods
And run on hot coal together
I hope your love isn’t based on words
I hope she offers you things I never knew
And I hope you get her name tattooed
Girl from heaven, thank you.