a lifetime of gestation;
of making myself,
of bringing myself
back from you,
of trying to get over someone I was
only ever under.

bend me, shape me
whichever way you’d like me
for I could be the apple of your eye if only you’d
let me;
- kiss me to
      pulp

you turned me inside out,
naked,
viscerally
      exposed -
heart beating tenderly not upon my sleeve but
atop my inverted chest;
I asked you to cradle it,
care
      swat me like a fly;
      a throwaway affair.

saying you care about ‘this’,
but not me, I think

      lacklustre lover lacking the
      love in the
      - making

and above all, I keep thinking about how unrequited love
is the sweetest kind of self-inflicted wound.
something that never was shouldn’t be so much,
      oh but it hurts just right.

I’m forever pulling cells,
bits of myself apart to
examine, deconstruct.
cytoplasmic, holding it all together,

I'm just looking at your scars, you said.
      would you like to add another?

suture me then pick me apart
- I’d let you.
It's not your fault you didn't
know, don't
know how I feel, not really;
I don't want you to run
better to have a piece of you than
      none.

we only do this to ourselves,
I don't blame you.

this mouth tastes like an ashtray
I'm sorry,
it’s just that a lot of sweet nothings have died and
burnt away in here before they could be said.

everything changes yet it all stays the same
we know how this story goes,
so please don't tell me I'm
beautiful from all angles
because I can’t take it. I can’t.

rising for him, a flowerbed for the spring
blush as pink, which,
bleeding into the edge of the skyline at sunset,
anamorphic, consumes.

      [HE LOVES ME HE LOVES ME NOT
      HE LOVES ME HE LOVES ME NOT]

my heart is so heavy
with the ways in which I love you
quickening,
the birth of something new -
or maybe I just have a penchant for self-destruction.

and on getting out alive:
we’re all here,
doctoring our hearts,
recovering from the cataclysm of it all.