Is someone retching in the stairway?
Or *******, I can't tell.
It's too early for the drunkards
who stumble in, yelling in whispers.
Fragmented Portuguese drifts in from next door,
too loud, even under the shower head.
They can probably hear my thoughts.

In the beginning we sat on the steps after dates.
Walked down to town
for good street food.
I would be drowning, going,
flying coming back,
as you stopped to kiss me in every bus-stop shelter,
drunk on the night, lateness
lack of sleep, and the act of trying too hard to love.
Was your soul once the colour of mine
Till you painted it over,
god knows how many times?
Or was that you at all?
Did I invent you? Did you invent me?
I close my eyes and world drops dead
I think I made you up inside my head
I'm sorry. It's not fair.
In the end you didn't understand
how free I felt.
I tried to long and too hard, slow fade,
for you, a bomb.
Weight and weightlessness tangled inside,
guilt, freedom. Guilt.
I cut your memory out of my thighs.
I didn't want to remember you between them.
I can't sleep, guilt is crushing.
You hold my sins before me like broken plates,
and when I cried
you said I was playing martyr, burning in lions jaws.
No, dear.
Martyrs are sinless.
I play at nothing.
Forgive me.