I can hear a clock ticking somewhere in the back of my mind and I can't reach in far enough to take the batteries out, and that's when I realised it had stolen mine and I can't remember how to work, how to breathe, how to be and you're laying next to me but wait you're not or maybe I'm mistaking the fact that I'm mistaken or god I must be daydreaming of your lips against mine and it's only half past five in the afternoon and I'm sitting here in the middle of uni trying to think of how to say your name without it taking a hold of my throat and scraping down my lungs and choking me half to death and I'm wondering how to touch you or let you touch me without setting myself on fire and I'm trying to remember where all the stars have gone and then I looked into your eyes and found them and then you opened your mouth and more came spilling out and I'm trying to concentrate on what your hand feels like in mine but I'm also concentrating on how your bones feel underneath my fingertips, your collarbones, hipbones, your bones that I once only thought of as part of the human body but now it feels different when I'm touching yours and now I'm thinking about the way your fingernails dig into my back I guess you could say you use it as a canvas and as long as you're the only one making art on this strange substitute of a canvas then I'm okay with that, as long as your name stops choking me and my lungs stop being raw from your name and from trying to scrape out the taste of another's breath when he kissed me at a party you weren't at and I threw up afterwards because I only wanted your lips, not his and I hope you know that I love you and I hope you love me too, and I can hear footsteps coming and all I can think of is you and I hope they are yours but I know they aren't because you're not down today I don't think but I'm still hoping and I wish you had come today and I've lost myself in thoughts of you, and oh god I think I'm in far too deep.

Your name is imprinted
in my mouth,
under my tongue and
scraping down my lungs,
your fingertips are finding
holes in my body
that other people have left,
and you have a piece of string
and you're trying to stitch me
back together,
sewing the holes
shut,
kissing my scars that,
if they ever reopen,
and i swear it would be an
accident,
they would bleed your name.
And your nails have left
a mark on my back,
as if by digging in hard enough,
you could make art on a
canvas made of skin
and I don't think you know this,
but, by sewing the holes shut,
you wrapped the broken bones in my
body back up,
I remember when I tried to
glue my bones back together
with glue that never actually
worked, and I never tried
stitching them up like you did.
I like to imagine you made a
row of ribbons along my
ribcage that spell out your name.
And someday, maybe these
broken bones will be fixed,
with cracks along every single
one of them that scream your
name like the air in my lungs
do, and I guess that's okay.

I want to write a
beautiful poem
to tell you
I'm going to
**** myself.

But there are
No words
beautiful enough
to describe to you
the way
I'm about to die.

How to act okay when I'm not,
how to smile like I mean it when I don't,
how to laugh like it isn't fake,
how to live when I want to die,
how to sleep and then still wake up.

I saw you fall asleep
amidst a garden of stars,
underneath a moon
that if I looked closer,
would realise was just
as bright as your eyes,
and I found my favourite
constellation running
across your collarbones
and down along your chest,
and somewhere in between
all of that,
it collided with planets
that would never have
looked so beautiful
if I had seen them on someone else.
When I looked at you,
I found myself wondering
how a person could look
like that,
like they were the galaxy,
a galaxy so pretty that
for a moment,
the air left my lungs.

I think I realised
I was in too deep
as my eyes closed
when you fell asleep,

as my eyes closed
when you fell asleep
and what I saw
was the back of
your eyelids, not mine.

The back of your eyelids
and the beat of your heart,
the touch of your hand
and the rhythm of your words.

The touch of your hand
and the rhythm of your words,
against my chest and
falling out of my mouth.

Against my chest and
falling out of my mouth,
your words behind my tongue,
your breath in my lungs.

I think I realised
I was in too deep,
as my eyes closed
when you fell asleep.

I don't think anyone has ever looked at me
like you do, before.