"Do you still love me?" she whispered in my ear,
"How can I love a girl who is no longer here?"

"I am not ok", she said,
"Two letters cannot possibly explain
The pain that resides in my heart.
There is not enough ink to begin
Describing what is within.
Find me a word that is real".

You cannot capture my heart
When it is already kept in a cage

This was a place I used to call home,
Now it is just a building with no name,
No touch of endearment on the doormat,
No letters of love but maybe they are lost in the post -
A name is just a word
But I have never heard my footsteps walk
These halls with an echo following
Like another ghost woven into the tapestries
Hanging on the walls,
Old photographs of memories that time
Turned into black and white,
The colours of an old life lost and forgotten
In this empty abyss the world has left behind.
My fingers trace the smile of a young girl
That I believe I used to be,
Innocence untouched by the man
She would fight to unsee.
This used to be home
And now my body is just a shell
I long to crack under my feet,
Feel the bough break
And look at the damage underneath
A disordered house is a disordered mind
But people don't see the fight thats inside
These walls that are shrinking to make me less space
So I can go to bed knowing, there is less I can waste.

She was a girl no one could understand.
Her body was her voice
And she was screaming for someone to hear
The unwept tears that were caged by that night,
When she learnt stillness after the storm
Was the earths brave face mourning
What was lost in the fight.

Envelope me in your love
And return me to sender
As darling I will always keep turning up
On your porch on a summers afternoon,
And without any words you'll know
That this kiss was meant for you.

Hand me down the love you had before me
And sow gently the tears in your sleeve
So I can wear your heart on arms made
To hold you as you drift through sleep.

I traced the crack in her smile
And spent the rest of my life trying to find ways
To fill her with laughter, love and fumbles beneath
Freshly washed sheets.

The books scent lingers on her fingers
Lightly tying up her loose ends till they read
Like Shakespeare carved on a tree for all to see.
Her lover sips her coffee with an elegance only history
Understands;

She is the girl who leans across her rhymes and reasons
And bends her binding around her waist.

She is a woman whose strength
Pauses a book store into a silent stillness;
A muse that is written across my face
As she traces the pages of their story, closing the chapters
With the bite of a lip and a touch of a cheek.

Hers recite the poetry of rosebuds blooming in a far off place.

Still she knows that next season only memories may grow, but today
The taste of her lips remind her of those yet to be sown.

you tell me to let go-
you were my ocean
you were my storm.
to let go will surely drown me
so forgive me, I can't move on.

Petals drifted through our garden, and rested on her toes.
Sprigs of rosemary waltzed in the wind
and time captured the orange peel of her hair with perfection, a memory kept hidden in the pocket of my jeans.
The air had embraced indigo violets,
their scent imprinted on the collar of the breeze.
I get to my knees and hold the stalk of a forget-me-not,
And whisper she loves me,
She loves me not.

There is no such thing as a goodbye.
Nothing was good about the way her eyes changed colour,
How the street was drained into a black and white portrait
Capturing this one moment in time where she bit her lip
To remind her she was still alive
And turning her back she knew
That she'd never forget the promises she signed,
The ones she kept in her coat pocket
And the ones she left behind.

The monsters under my bed
are merely shadows of my shattered mind.
Each night they dance in a trance of moments too late
for she beneath the bed is the curse of deception.
only can you see her
if you look in your reflection.

Her fingertips were stained with pollen
With the vase I bought her with freshly cut
Flowers tainted with prints of butter yellow.
A pinafore wrapped with ribbon around her small waist
a chaste smile fashioning her face for the neighbours of our place.
one look at her and I see a fingersmiths daughter.
a girl who outgrew this ***, this house, this girl the porter.

You ask me to ***** in a light bulb
as if I'm planting seeds to let us grow
but rather than gardens and trees
it's light you want until you leave.

The dolls house was an escape exist masquerading as child's play,
Emerald curtains open for all the neighbours to see.
Gentle, delicate, Miss China lays the table rather than in bed,
Spreads the table cloth rather than her legs.
The tea set lies daintily on the table for when he comes home
When her mother plants him a kiss in the garden to grow.
And watching the car park on the fading lawn
She wonders if window panes feel happiness at all.

She filed her dreams in alphabetical order,
Wiping the dust from her minimalist future.
She boxed them up and piled them high,
Shrinking them to match her thighs
And the looking glass began to lie each night
Telling her the weight of her dreams
Was too heavy to fight.

You asked for the world
So I gave you a mirror
And if I could not say this any clearer,
*darling you are my world
Your gravity pulls me nearer.

I gave you my word,
Wrapped it up in cellophane so it would never lose meaning,
Enveloped in the kitchen draw where you placed for safe keeping.
And now when you read my poems with another preserving your touch
You'll realise you had all my words-
One was not enough.

She heard the door close and the sound of a trail of clothes
Then the room filled with silence as she lay exposed.
Her heart started beating, like a laugh too shy for her to undo,
"I'm in the bath", she whispered, "and I'm also in love with you".

The promises were left unkept and forgotten in the spare room
Thrown in with last years fashion and the years before,
And standing at the door I can't remember when we started
Hoarding words to make a life boat we'll never sail,
Never say; did you mean them at all?

She told me I was her favourite cologne,
The kind you wear on special occasions.
Soon my glass began to wear thin
And I realised, you cannot own what I have from within.

Candy canes made her lips wet, sweetened with the thought of trips to the seaside and her pleasure in pain

"I am not a fighter.
My knuckles aren't bruised, but my heart is.
What does that make me?"* she asked tenderly,
"A girl in love", I replied.

She folded me up like origami, turning something used into something beautiful
And smoothing out the creases of my geometric heart she kissed goodbye the girl she called art.

When you entered my life you bolted the door
Leaving it shut so I was forever yours.

You have no right to take away my foundations
And tell me to walk the plank of wood beneath my feet.

I spent my nights reading books in our greatest libraries
Searching for what it is I am still clinging on to,
Then after the final vowel I realised
The one thing I miss about you, is you.

You broke my heart
And still I gave a piece of it to you freely,
Leaving me like a jigsaw puzzle
No one could ever truly complete.

Suitcases aren't made for dresses and skirts or any such thing,
They are another type of box they try to trap you within.

Don't use your words to build me a wall
As I am the foundation on which it will fall.