They say lots of things about love,
They make it seem it is the ultimate desire,
Wanton and wilder than the known universe,
An cataclysmic explosion of two personalities,
Born separate, reborn together,
And yet...
I have loved worse men,
And lost better women than I deserve,
And now my convex chest is as vast and devastated as abbey ruins,
sanctuary,
sacred,
crooked,
ruined,
beautiful,
still here,
After hundreds of years.

Maybe I will live on in my memories,
For there are graveyards in my bones,
Eulogies imprinted on my arteries,
Long lost love letters scarred on my very marrow
For those that I drowned,
And those I saved.
My faith is a moorland hillside war memorial,
An obelisk to reach the very gods,
Your love is but a squall,
My hope is a trickle, a stream, a reservoir, in the deepest steepest canyon and Valley,
Your love is but a rain drop,
My clarity is at the bottom of a whiskey bottle,
Your love is but an ice cube.

Do not ask me brazenly to die for you,
When ******* me is your finest hour,
And I am but a pleasure boat ride for your masculinity to take a trip in,
We are not divine here;
My expectations are as low as your esteem:
A water you paddle in, a toe dipped perhaps,
but you wouldn't swim through, dare to at least,
And yet,
I am a rushing beautiful rainbow of a waterfall on a sunburn induced day,
The haze in the corner of your eye,
When you begin to question,
"is this too good to be true?".
Yes.
We are all but fallacies.

Dip your fingers and cross yourself,
As you wish for clemency.
But still,
Be still,
And know,
That,
I am,
God.
Am I?
Or am I just divine on your tongue?

I don't find limiting myself with a title,
There are no boxes left for me to fit in,
Or burst out of....
I find it's excitingly horrifying to be,
This lost.
There's a similar difference between identity and persona,
I am what I am, am I?
What am I?
Do you think the men I have only half loved,
But stroked their meek egos of,
And the woman I have cowered at,
As they screamed my name,
Know what I am,
Is not who I am?
There is a solace to be found in being wanted;
Are you the one they fall to on a late night,
When they are alone and drunk?
What about when their beds are cold?
When they cannot see you because, they are blinded,
By their quest to find themselves more, and you,
And you,
My dear,
Oh my sweet you,
Who is no one in this world,
Are a literally stepping stone in under their feet,
As you wish to be a moon in their stars.
What they don't tell you,
About surviving trauma when your brain is developing,
Is that your world turns to opposites,
Chaos is home
Drugs are home
Hate is home
Fear, is home;
Here secreted beneath my pallid skin,
I try to find them all a home,
Knowing I'll never find mine.
If self care and therapy was literal exercise,
I could bench press all of you, and more,
And save you all;
My motivation to not be broken is stronger than my will to die,
And they'll never know that,
As they try to break me,
Over and over, and over,
And over again.
Everyone's broken.
No sorry, everyone has cracked edges,
Worn
Rusty
Mishandled a few times
Repainted
Cracked
Not broken, slightly damaged.
We, the ones filled with gilded light, and songbirds,
We know the ******* difference between depression,
And eternal internal sadness,
From not understanding love, to
Loving EVERYONE
From seeking solace in the extreme,
To running away from arms that seek to confine.
Where for art ******* thou?

We are not here for your pleasure.
But we are.
How could we be, but anything else?

I tired.
Sorry...
I tried.
Men.
Women.
Whisky.
*******.
Driving too fast.
Telling them.
Saving them.
Being everything.
Hating.
Fighting.
Drowning.
Breathing.
Exalting.
Cryi­ng.
Pain.
Pleasure.
Writing

This isn't a shopping list.
It's. Not a bucket list.
It's what we do to survive,
When you're born without love.

I sat
Across from the face of death,
He wasn't smiling,
He was tired and,
Frustrated.
His skin shone a pallor of crying,
And exhaustion,
And the irises of his eyes,
Held fear,
And trauma.
"Why?" He asked.
"I am not here, I replied.
I have tried, I have, tried so hard
I am not of this life,
I am not broken, but I am not fixed,
And I am ashamed to say,
Love is not real."
He took my hand, I could see
The bones of his fingers
Take mine.
He held up my fingernails,
Peering at the blood and the blisters,
And gently set them down.
His eyes took in my face,
An actors delight,
Some would say.
I could see he was confused,
I was not scared.
But then he stared in my soul,
And sighed.
I never once looked away,
But his eyes found it hard to find me
And his voice cracked, dry and weak,
"Wise choices come from hard decisions,
Strong people are made by tough experiences,
But,
I have seen more broken wings than I have bones,
More fallen tears than fallen leaves,
(Can I tell you about the leaves?)
More storms than calm seas,
(can I tell you about those sailors?)
And now I see you, more death than life.
I see black holes where there should be stars in your eyes,
No-one is born to survive hell alive,
And no-one is to die to feel free."
I sat uncomfortably, ashamed.
"No don't" he said.
"Many more than you die without warning,
This is your why."
"There is more," I replied,
"But I cannot give you more,
It's wasteful;
I do not hope on wishes hanging from stars,
I learnt that,
A long time ago,
That this hurts too much,
To much for me, anyways.
Existence is pain...
Who said that again?"
He then turned his head to the side,
He returned his hands
To his body.
"To die is not a negotiation,
Or resignation,
But it is a destiny,
What is yours?
Is now your destiny?  
I have seen too much,
And only those who sit with me,
Know they have to answer
That question."
"The only question I ponder,"
I replied,
"How many people will be at my funeral?"
He smiled and turned back to me,
"Then you already know,
What you need to do
Do not be jealous of the dying,
They have so much to live for,
It's the living who have to think,
Shall I see what happens?"
So I sat with death,
And I closed my eyes

There is an edge.
To me.
Where the lines meet the air, where I am a juxtaposition between the earth and the sky.
Where I am black or white,
Never grey.
There is an edge,
Folded in half, into quarters, into eighths,
Into infinity edges are folded
To fit, to puzzle, to contain
A box, a boat, a decision.
There is an edge,
There is the stopping point,
There is a long way down,
A line I cannot cross
A place I have dared to venture,
And died a thousand times.
There is an edge,
And here I sit on the precipice,
Here I contemplate the fall,
Contemplate the sky holding the air,
Sharp to the tongue, and whipped into the ears
Here is the edge
Where the mind and the heart,
Do not cross,
Multiple edges, of juxtaposition,
Of falling, of dying, of breaking,
Between the earth and the sky,
The black and the white,
The heart and the break.....
There is an edge,
Where I sit and contemplate,
The line between life and death,
The edge between safety and chaos,
Between fear and bliss.
There is an edge,
to me,
Where my edges met yours,
Where lines were crossed,
Where bliss met fear,
Where the edges of my heart,
Thawed,
Where my edges met yours,
Between the earth and the sky.
And I'm here on this edge,
And in tears I wonder why.

I'll still be there in the morning,
Cold hard sweat clinging to my bones,
A smell I'll remember to my earthly grave,
That holds my skin like a dark cloak that you gave me,
When the moon was light that we read each other by.
I'll still be there, even when the bell tolls,
Rolling over in creased sheets that we ironed with our legs,
And the heart is still there, not sure where I expected it to go -
To be let in as the sun rises, I'll still be surprised to feel your heat.

Everything will be just fine
Mother said.
Mother said, "you're worth more than ironing sheets and giving freedom to caged birds"
How far would you go to wake up?
Do you still feel him on your skin,
Do your bones still ache slightly, for that touch.
Mother said "graves don't dig themselves, stop carrying that pickaxe"
Mother said.
But where else will you find diamonds except in the deepest mines?
And I'll always carry the cold sweat of coal in the morning,
My handprints will touch everywhere, and all you feel is silk,
All I will see is embers, from my burnt hands


And you'll let me touch the sun a thousand times before i get to touch you.
Mother said "stop thinking, stop crying, stop doing. Stop trying so hard"
Mother said "no-one will like you as you are, be better, be harder, be tougher, every single time"
Mother said.

So as you lay there in your sheets, wondering who I am, remember these things,
I am ash, I am bone, I am heat, and I am fear. I am a million things that have been extinguished before you met me,
And if you don't like charcoal,
I for sure can't forge you a diamond.

Sometimes, i think,
'if i died, how long would it take for someone to miss me?'
And that's a true thought.
It lays heavy on my soul.
Because life is heavy.
It is suffocating,
Like someone is sitting on my chest,
not an elephant, that's silly,
No,
an actual human being,
one that i love,
but is content
with watching me die,
and probably being busy with, "something",
whilst i struggle to live.
So,
Let's talk about that heaviness,
how it creeps in,
sometimes you don't know it has a pulse,
that it's something actually living,
a parasite that you grow to love,
stockholm syndrome.

Oh man,
people,
are,
heavy.
They think their weight on a scale
bares their true worth,
not knowing that their
wearied shoulders carry the burden of truth.
The heaviness that you bring with you,
through life,
that you carry with you like a dead body,
dragging by the ankle,
behind you,
for who you think you should have been,
and a boulder you push in front of you,
with your other hand,
for everything you're trying to be,
whilst struggling, choking for air,
whilst dragging your legs through invisible tar,
whilst trying to keep your eyes from drowning in sand,
and all the while your heart
covered in lead,
your **** beautiful, ****** heart,
keeps beating.
Oh, man,
The anxiety of living through this,
the beautiful exquisite torture,
the utter privilege,
of living a heavy life.

Oh man,
how,
heavy,
people,
are,
and how they do not know how to stop
looking,
at the numbers,
on the scale.