I feel like you want to bleed on me.

Bind my frame to a ball and chain.
Handcuff me to the bed and break my legs.
I’m convinced you’re going to ****** me.
With bone and body alone, you will be my killer and I will be your meal.

I feel like I want you to bleed on me.

I want to take every flood of serotonin you’ve ever felt and stretch it. Seep inside and make bedfellows with everything. I want to rewind your head-space, explore your dark-place.
I want to clean your clock. Study your tick and your tock, watch your gears shift and synapses shock.
I want to know exactly how to take you apart and adore you enough to never try.
Let me rest between your eyes. I will give you my body if you give me your mind.
This is how I will love you

I watched you fall in love with the blue bird.

When the weight of whatever you shouldered left you feeling like a cracked sidewalk. When the contents of your head look like a dirt patch with no Flora.
I watched you sink your hope in its wings. I watched you open your beak and tweet out a plea that someone would make sense of your puzzle pieces

Do you know that feeling, when you love someone who hates themselves. Like trying to paint a picture in the rain. Watching whatever you have to give dilute in the depreciation, your affection can't **** depression. But you had to try.

To me being absolutely powerless wasn't enough to stop trying so I tried.

I fashioned cannonballs out of phone calls Fired at any wall that seem to cage your smile.
I'm more difficult Days you’d dance between dejection and distress. I'd watch you waltz between the lines of every conversation you had that day and you overthink entities into the world around you. Demons that would pull at your eyelids as you tried to rest. Clawing abysses that sat in your stomach. You thought if you consumed nothing you could starve them before yourself.  You built an army of opponents all born from the belief that your calm sat beyond your own two hands. That the long drawn and difficult sighs you choked through was just how breathing worked.

You believed it was meant to hurt this much...and it did, and it does, but it's not supposed to.

Your graces hung in my sky like a star, and what would dim your shine would in turn dim mine
So I tried..

I’d say… talk to me.
A quiet plea, hoping you'd articulate the things I hadn’t seen.
But you existed behind a phone screen
You were swept away by the blue birds.
You slept in its nest hoping it would always return your quick fix.
You were one with the roost and your song was only audible through an application.

I lost a piece of you to twitter.

You slept in my bed.. we’d skip between oxytocin dreams of lustful energy or blissful lethargy and if the slumber was harmed we’d make enemies of snooze alarms. I knew frequency of your finger tips. I was in tune with the cacophony of your head space I curated the museum your beauty sat it. But you didn’t care. The bars between us looked more and more like hastags every day. Slowly I became just another follower... In 140 characters or less.. “My concern was the only thing you didn’t think was worth retweeting”

It was funny that she would be born in January.

When the Frostbitten fingers of British Winters outstretched themselves hoping to grasp a springtime that we won't whine about. It's funny that our sunshine was born in winter.

It's funny that I once slept inside her.

How at one point, everything that was me was just as much you.
It's funny how even today that still holds true.
It's funny that I can't love someone without thinking about what you do.

I've opened my arms to labours and abuses because in love you have to try. Or at least that's what she did.

It's funny that someone who's been through three marriages is still my best image of what love looks like.

Cracked skin, tired eyes, minced words with hope and struggle more times than I know. But no regrets.

It's funny that she acts like we were all meant to be, like the breaths we've breathed we're always an eventuality, like we weren't all the longest labour in her entire history. Like the whole universe crashing down on one woman didn't stop her raising a family.

It's funny that we act as though we have one day a year to celebrate her.

As if not a day goes by that our still beating hearts don't sing the song of an angel with no feathers.

When I’m struggling to write…
I like to think about what I’d say to a crush.

I only recently caught a disease called a break up, and there’s no cure for a love cut short.
Only Pain killers, symptom minimizers, synthesizers for all the oxytocin you’ve been short on…
And the still sodden service receipts for all the shoulders you’ve had to lean on.

But crushes don’t wanna hear that, so let me try something a little sweeter.

So… I think you’re so pretty, like really, really pretty. Like so pretty I would never say it to your face!
Like I imagine your line is long and your time is short, I imagine you’re busy being pretty and stuff…

I imagine... sunshine compliments your character…
I imagine watching you listen to music. Seeing the corners of your mouth dimple and dance and the sound of passion striking the vocal chords of the lyrical legends we dreamt of one day overtaking.
I imagine getting to sing with you… I imagine disturbing the floor boards. Heart beats like hi-hats, the ground beneath a dance mat, we’d toe the gap between us. Every inebriated motion, a mishap waiting to be laughed at. I wanna laugh with you.

I wanna watch elation escape your frame. An exaltation so insane you feel it kicking at your walls. Laughter like squalls, like wind, like fire, like… all the **** I wanna say.
It’s all just hot air, it floats away… and the problem still remains, I’d never say all this to your face.
The problem still remains that every sweet nothing is a paper crane hung from ceilings hoping one day to soar in your skies…
So, I’ll sit here… and polish your shine from a distance far enough to sustain a steady heart.

This is not a hope… or a plea, more just catharsis for those tired from shouldering the apprehensive affections that the best years of your life will present to you.

It’s okay not be flower picking. There will be times better spent watching them bloom.

If you could do anything.
I'd catch you plucking at the twilight.
Dipping you contour brush in nebulae, you'd paint your eyeline with a skyline...  You'd bejewel your accessories with quasars spinning in quartz's and supernova sapphires and... your eyes would shine with star light...

If you could do anything, You'd sequin your extremities with snowflakes. Pattern your skin with the shine from the sunrise and you'd refract yourself into the world around you. You'd dye you hair like the northern lights... Stand still in squalls just so you could emulate its animated shimmer. Against the back drop of the night you'd glimmer. But that wouldn't be enough... You'd go to any length drown your frame in beauty.

If you could do anything, You'd steal the sensation of rain drops disturbing roof tops and overdose on an feeling of shelter from the storm. All attempts to subdue your high would met with scorn.  You'd break off the part of you that caused concern. You'd burn the
service receipts of ever shoulder you'd had to cry on. You'd outsource your own insecurity. Any obscurity to your character would be shot dead on discovery. You'd invade your own humanity and pillage it of difficulty.

If you could do anything you'd bargain with calendar just for a couple more days to avoid doing something. You'd fashion your words into hurdles and litter the ground with more and more reasons to fall. You'd talk yourself out breathing because the threat of suffocation is less intimidating than the thought of persisting.

You are swallowed by your own ideals. You're drowning in the hope that you can live like a statue, staying ever beautiful as time crumbles away at your stone. You're begging for someone to save you from yourself.

If I could do anything. I'd pay you a token of gratitude for every imperfection you're still convinced I don't treasure. I'd write sick notes to your anxieties to inform them that you need time to get better, and in that time we'd strategize. Make a battle plans for a better life and show you how to fight.

This is your battle, Not mine. But it hurts to see you struggle, hurts to watch heartache eat away at your smile. Hurts to watch demons blow raspberries in the reflection of every tear drop.

It hurts to ask if you're okay...

Gamble -a risky action undertaken with the hope of success.

Derived from the 18th century English word gamel, meaning to pay games.


Remember the players we left behind…
The strangers who you held one night friendships with on evenings where the sun refused to shine.
Remember the fairy lights. Remember the benches outside of Bodega and the smuggled bottles of wine. People seem so much more friendly when they drink.
But hey, if it takes a glass of poison to make us all less toxic then we can pass out happy…
We’ll creep out of sobrieties bed knowing it’ll be the angriest alarm we wake to as the sun tries to steal 5 of our 40 winks the next morning.
But you know.. Gotta risk it for a chocolate biscuit.
I’ll trade in sleep at the chance I’ll be dealt a more interesting night. Break ice with strangers at hope we both share a bit of over lives.
Trying to to create a story worth telling is a gamble.

And I feel sorry for people who fall asleep at half 11. Seems like such a wasted day.
Like if life composed of options and outcomes there must be a better way. I slay the idea that each night we have 8 hours of sleep debt to pay. Because in those wee hours of the morning, those are when demons make music videos, those are when normally vacant balconies play host to the half drunk couples finding comfort in each others bodies. That’s when the parties get quiet. When the humans have intoxicated themselves into lullabys and start softly singing their lives into the ears of a friend willing to listen and I will bet you have something I wanna hear, and I bet I'll have soemthing to give back, and while you and I are here we'll keep betting. Each syllable is a chip on the table. Each sentace is an opportunity to double down. The bar will not close, the roullette will keep spinning and we'll grow a little ritcher with every new story we share.

I make bets with time and breath.
And if you spend time with me then you will to. You the few who have paid you admission fee into my conciousness. You who throw dice with me on the empty streets where street lamps themselves begin to sleep. You who I will one day come to love.
It's risky. Risky like petting stray dogs. Risky like telling your loved ones that you've been seeing demons in the mirror. Risky like getting one knee and offering your life to someone. It is risky.... but that's fine.
I will teach you how to gamble.

I told her, "I wanna write a song with you."

Her immediate reaction didn't seem very musical. But she managed to wash down her reluctance with a glass of my enthusiasm. It looked a little too hard to swallow though.


Between you and me... I think she just didn't want to hurt my feelings...

Knew that anything musical we might share in this space would come at a price. Having played piano in the past, she knows…. that every…  key... requires effort. Every chord requires contact, every verse must be attacked every note ... needs impact.

Channeling all that we are and hearing the universe equally and oppositely react. Like science ... She knows there's chemistry in this musical contract.

And between you and me... I think she's scared to do that.

She houses pipes that were silenced a while back. Now all noise is mute, all lyrics refute, and the tones are all flat.

She is a little mermaid.
A villain stole her voice at the promise of companionship… and nower days what a bargain that is. String up your vocal chords and I'll meet each pained utterance with a kiss. Make a hostage of your own tongue and I will grant you bliss. I'll be the hiccup in your throat, the stutter in your sentence my sweet nothings will be the only sound you hear. The only tune you’ll dance to. The only lyrics you know.

She ... was choked, by an individual who was  more shark than he was man, more predator that he was person, and after all that submersion she can’t look at love without feeling like she’s downing.

Between you and me, I think when her fin was torn into a pair of feet she found it difficult to find any other fish in the sea. Violence is nobodies natural habitat. But like I said was silenced a while back. She made to believe that like every note, each future affection would require impact. And between you and me… I really wanna change that.

I told her “I wanna write a song with you”. Not to test whether she is musically faceted but rather to see if she is still passionate. I wanted to see if my prayers had reached you yet… I wanted you to be okay. Little mermaid who was washed  away. I wanted to is you fire stayed, to see  you recuperate. In your time at sea you overcome bigger waves.  So… sing.
Understand that are the most wonderful lyricist and  your pitch and tone are not a akin heartache and woe, you can be loud. Be proud in knowledge that any music you make is only the overture, only the beginning to a symphony called “done with this ****”. I will hear no requiem, you’ll play no finale. The stage is not a battleground. Let there be no more tears in which to drown, sing! Sing and make sea sirens jealous of how mermaids sound

To the boys who like girls with eating disorders.

1. Be unafraid to call her beautiful. Feel no hesitation when articulating the grace in her intricacies. The delicacy she wields when flicking back her hair. The shape her semblance set in as she sleeps. The way… she holds a fork.
Even as you call her beautiful  you may experience pangs of guilt. Acknowledge that despite your appreciation for her formation you do not want her to be like this forever. Watch as polite small talk and casual compliments get swallowed up by half full plates and half empty stomachs. Watch her try to chew and words you feed.

2. If you make if to boyfriend status. Her disease may begin to look like the ex partner she’s still hung up over. Watch as she quotes all his favorite things he use to tell her. Do not tell me, I look like I’m getting better I can’t look like getting better. She may look like the embodiment of the phrase “old habits die hard”. But remember… Mother taught you patience and forgiveness. When someone abuses you, you may be vocal about it or you may repress it but you do not forget, and boy... she has some scars. Across every angular bone protruding where a body use to be. In every atrophied muscle where disease did once grip and seek to claim something as it’s own. In every mirror. In darker shop windows where that display mannequins sport the latest illness and in every look you give her. There is no vaccination for this victimization. It will take time.

3... If her condition has left her anxious...

Left her white in the face like porcelain plates serving a future that tastes like insecurity.

If her condition has left her hopeless. Left her thinking that a full stomach means an empty future.
If her condition has left her broken, in any sense of the word, he is not without fixture.
She was a woman before she was a victim. She was a person before she was a patient. She is still a woman, she is still a person. She has a destination outside of disorder. She has dreams that could be bigger than these demons.

And 4… and this is not is not for the boys who like girls with eating disorders, this is for the boys who love!
4. Do you think she is worth it? What can you outweigh?.. Can you make her smile, can you... fill her?

There will be poetry in my place.

On evenings where we wrote stories to be told to future friends.
In every den we built when we were 8 and every drink we spilt when were 18. In all the questionable bottles we looted and and the high 5’s we so poorly executed. There’s as much poetry in our lips as we chug as there is in our fingertips as we hug.

It’s in my mother's muscles. How, to the naked eye it’s invisible to see what weight she’s carried. The friends she’s buried and the men she’s married.

It’s In silence as much in sound. It’s found in the desperate and passionate. As much as the meek and the modest. It’s in the the sound your feet make when running from something… or to someone. It’s in the silence my friends pill bottle makes when depression is over and done.
It’s in every fight lost but every war won. It’s in your glee after tragedy. In recovery after injury.

and I like to hope you see in me. See it in my eyes at the same moment you leave. See it in our sheets as it gets harder to breathe. But we don’t care because there’s poetry in there!

There’s poetry in the time people share.
Poetry in the way fingers interlock and voices grow soft.
Poetry... between us.

But it isn’t always that easy to discuss. Easy to pull from pages into air. Because there’s poetry in that which is unfair. Poetry in the fact that death can bring people together despite the heartbreak. Poetry in the realization that some people will abuse the only partners they have in this world. Poetry in the girls who refuse to eat because society told them that hungry is synonymous with weak. Poetry in the boys trade kindness for cruelty because they were convinced it would give their likeness a better quality. There’s poetry in there and there’s poetry in the warfare.

And yeah… you might not see it but it’s you too. In the way that you grew and memories you’ve accrued in all the things you wish you could do… and it may sound crude but it’s in the statistical probability that you were the ***** that actually got through and this was the poetry event that you chose to go to.

This is why I seek art in words, ‘*** there’s as much poetry around us as there is blood in the world. It’s beauty in the overlooked and understanding in the mistook. If you feel anything that’s poetry!
If you love or fear something, the ecstasy or anxiety is poetry! Even if you feel nothing. Even if you wish to leave this life. There’s poetry in your strife.

I am no superhuman. No prophet, no hero. Just a man with words on a page. But with all this poetry in my head, I no longer fear death. Because if where I rest is in the deep space, if somewhere across this earth I find myself misplaced, if today is truly that final time you see my face,
there will be poetry in my place.

I wanna express my gratitude... to the few of you who didn't think I was too young or naieve to give advice. As a person with my analytical mindset, I love problem solving. I told my uncle that I have a weird affinity for broken women. I love people with stories to tell. Love the way legs can still stand despite the struggle. Love watching people break away from their own tragerdies.  I love the thought you can dilute a great concentration of pain with just a little bit of kindness. Like liting candles in pitch black spaces, it only takes something small. My uncle says it's because people like me are wired to seek out things that need solutions. That's not to say they can't find their own solutions. I just like to see if I can play a part. So like tatoo artists on surgey wards.  We sketch our art over people scars. Inject colour into their dark sides. Extend ourselves into their life lines.
We wanna fill what feels hollow.
Inscribe instrustions on how to smile and see if you'll follow.

And to anyone who thought what I said was good enough to act upon... thank you... and sorry.

Because hypocracy is a crime I practice all too often. Putting my own advice into application is extceedingly uncommon.
I would never take my own advice.

Because honesty with my loved ones would cause too much heart ache, I can not simply "just be open and real with her"
I cannot wear this skin with genuine pride because I would never "just be yourself man".
And despite the words falling falling out my mouth as we speak, why the **** would I understand "you are your own worst enemy.  If you'd just believe in yourself you'd be surprised with what you can achieve".
To the many or the few who took my advice.
Who rolled the dice, who paid the price.
A penny for my thoughts  and whether every thing changed or if all was for naught.

Maybe we just need to hear someone else say it. We so often are expected too try and stand tall in a world with ceilings that are too small. All some of us need, is to know that we're saying the right things.

So for everytime I was never told, I'm telling you. Let our voices be glitter and our ears be glue. Let people sparkle! Entice their shine so brlightly that they startle. Tell people all things you wanted to hear.

On Saturday the 7th of November, I had a small panic attack when a man approached me at the till wanting to buy paracetamol.

It’s official. You broke me. Now in retrospect I saw this coming. Falling for someone who wants to leave this place means I should not be surprised if you try to take steps outside but… that doesn’t change the facts.
You broke me. Broke me like the photos frames of all the people I thought you were still living for. Broke me like the hinge on the door after  forcefully trying escape so many times.

You broke all of my security. The last person who put this many dents in my armor spend 5 years starving themselves on a hospital ward. And I can’t look at her anymore because I’m thinking about you.
Thinking about the scars on your thighs. The lines under your eyes. How hard it is to sit on your bed because it feels too much like sitting on a grave…
but how beautiful you are all the same. You broke me more efficiently than any other.
You will talk to me about anything, except the overdosing. So here is my conversation. Here is me asking what is wrong? Here is me asking how did your sister react. This me saying I would do anything to see you smile. So to knows you are still hurting, breaks me!

But **** this ****. I wanted to write something happy so here I go.

You know that one softer yellow tile up at the tram stop on fletcher gate. Man’s a ******* boss.
It's meant to help blind people see but between you and me, I think it’s meant to spread a little glee. It’s squishy… and that makes me happy.

Reminds me that in a world of callous skin and rough edges there are people who take pledges. People who vow that somehow, here and now is the time to make a difference. Send assistance to the hopeless so they can focus on their brilliance.

And that’s what I wanna do. I’m not here guilt you. Not here to shed light on the fact that depression is depressing for more souls than the just the one diagnosed. I’m here because I want to be. I wanna duck and weave between your plight and grief. Sit relief and self-belief on you back seat. I wanna remain upbeat when you sing songs of defeat. I want to be there despite you feeling weak. I wanna hide step ladders in your sheets so when you wake up in the morning you feel as though there is no goal you can’t reach.

I wanna teach you how to smile. Teach you that just like the one yellow tile, you can feel so down that may already appear like part of the ground but you can still be wonderful and brave. That more and more reasons to smile can be discovered or made.

I’m sorry it’s easier to say than to do. And keeping it together was easier for me than you. But this is how I pick up the pieces. This is what I want to teach you.

If I go to a party, and see at least one girls ***, that day will be my best day of that season.

I’d drink myself to the point where the toilet could be advertised as a painkiller. But **** standing up, It’s not that I don’t trust my aim, I just like to keep things as clean as possible.

I often find myself apologizing for actions the morning after inebriation. It’s weird. I’ve grown old enough for understand consequences but not enough to try and and avoid them.
Old enough to regret the relationships I’ve destroyed then still find time, to break down a few more.

I’m still scared of commitment. I’ll spend 2 years learning to love all of your facets and flaws, but spend so much more of that time looking for a cause.
Exploring why I bother to love anyone when I feel so insecure. You’re affection may grow but I’ll never feel sure. It all becomes a chore. Asking you to outline whatever good in me you thought you saw. But sometime or later I’ll be asking for a redraw.

It’s a funny word ‘insecure’. It’s funny that even with all the nightmares we’ve been through. The experiences we’ve accrued. The places we’ve had to get to, Your deepest fears will always be about you.
You and your expectations you feel you must attain.
You and your image you present to those who judge.
You and your aptitude for keeping those you love happy.

Even now. I’m only saying this because I’m scared I’m far too immature for life I lead,
and I know anyone else in my position would want to hear these words.


Mistakes are as natural as breathing.
With both it is imperative that at some point you must let go. You must exhale and exorcize what is unnecessary from your body. You must learn to forgive yourself.

2. Unsurity is the siamese twin of certainty.
Before you come to a decision you must be comfortable in the knowledge you will never know what the future holds  but if you ever want to move forward, it requires that all important first step... so put your best foot forward.

and 3. Bolster yourself. Be proud in the understanding that your 2 feet hold a place in this world that no else can fill. That everyday you live is your opportunity to bend the universes will. That live may not be a continuous thrill but boy is it scary!
You have a lifetime of wishes to fulfill.
So settle down. Life is a series of small discoveries. No one expects you to find everything.
All we ask is that you don’t ever stop looking.

I use to stand in the middle of the road, just so she'd see how if feels.. to think that you could lose someone at any moment.

Exacting this kind of revenge is impossible if your target is someone you love so instead… you must tug on their heart strings.
This… is for you...
This is for the chosen few that never knew they had a blurred view. This for all those who withdrew themselves from the belief that they were cared about. This is for all those who dared to doubt. Paint us as the visually impaired scouts send out to find something valuable in you. This… is for everyone were still clinging to, and everyone else who fell through.

Machines break sometimes. When something is used frequently it has the potential to encounter hiccups in its regular cycle... and I am yet to find a machine more complex than the human body. And as forgiving and loving individuals we understand that these things take time. But not everyone sees those stood by their side. When someone loses their heart or their mind you'll often find… they lose their eyes. This is for the human beings who live like mechanics. Fashion spare for those with broken hearts. Sewing handles on their own bodies when others feel they have nothing to hold on to. This is for anyone finding reasons for someone else to smile.

We are so protective of those we love because we understand how much of them make up ourselves. This is for the mothers who ask ‘Are you sure?’ after they receive an answer to the question ‘Are you okay?’ This is for the parents of dead youths who slipped away from us far too prematurely. This is for anyone who hears a buried name and sings the phrase ‘if only!’. Because if only we had known, if only we could have done something, if only you had spoken to us, if only you were still here… This is for Anthony... whose gravestone flower bed is still kept watered by the tears of my brother and my sister. This is for all those who suffered in silence, the victims of violence the play things of tyrants whose sadness grew like a virus. Their minds start riots.

For those who feel alone... I do not mean sound angry. But it’s not your decision to choose to what extend we will love you. We love you! Love you like it hurts! and it does hurt because finer points of suicide are… when you hang yourself, you do it by the heartstrings of other people! Whatever toxic substance you choose to line your throat with will leave an unending hiccup in the throats of those who spoke your name with some semblance of joy. However many painkillers you take in under 60 seconds will never be enough to alleviate the affliction you leave behind. This is for we. We the engineers of empathy, we the deciphers of understanding, we the overflowing, we… who just want to help.
It’s complicated. I know we might never understand. But we all have better things to do'' than argue about how it would feel without each other.
So if you know someone… who feels alone…. tell them... “shhhhhhhh”
Then….. hold them.

If you stay awake with me long enough to watch the sky give birth to the colour blue, long enough to watch the moon finally deny it's 7th encore that night... if you stay awake with me long enough to see the streetlamps go out... I will be 6 feet under before I forget your name.

It's ironic really. Had actually been that far underground your sound would still pound across every surface it found including... my sleeping skin... and in the face of anyone who asked you, "Are you trying to wake the dead?.." you'd say no... the people at this party are already taking a break from living... the dead you speak off is everyone dancing, everyone singing, everyone drinking and getting really ******* annoyed at the one guy with all the red shells in super Mario kart. This is our Día de los Muertos. Our day of the dead, organized by the dead for the dead. Death was seen as the ultimate escape, but we're too young for those kind of commitments, so we fled the world in what little ways we could. Often found in bottles or cans, or in the arms or hands of others. Some get lost in the beat, let it travel from our ears to our feet. Greet our friends in dance moves as if there is so much noise in the air, it's the only language we can still communicate in. I ... invite you to the sofa... where there is already a gamepad with your name on it, and what we play is never nearly as important as the fact that we're playing. However... at some point I will expect you to play super smash brothers and if you dare pick Zero Suit Samus I will call you a ***** and show you the grave error of your decision... Unless you beat me, at which point I will commend your skills with the utmost sincerity... *****....

Regardless that's my 2nd favorite thing about parties. The thing I love most are all the people being more than how they appear. Spilling life stories of their glories and tragedies, watching the guy with the with the topknot become the warrior who survived several broken bones after a motorbike crash. See the girl who loves flapjacks become the next Beyonce in the making hear her voice light fires in the in the minds of those who had forgotten what talent looks like outside a TV screen...

See the the one in the corner with a mouth like a clam shell, finally show her pearls. She told me told me about all the things that were hurting. All the people she's scared of losing all the drugs she was using and all the people here... who were amusing. The fact that she can feel so broken but still hold herself together here was a greater compliment than anything her clam shell mouth could articulate. She had finally explained all the bruising, all the excusing, all the substance abusing and she found it confusing that I was still approving. I said 'tonight what you told me was moving. You've proven you're more human than what people have been assuming so.... smile for me' ... It will be a long time before I forget your name so I want whatever I remember of you to be good.

If you stay awake with me long enough to teach me 1 reason you're hurting but two more why you can keep smiling, long enough to have us make memories out of cheese burgers and tap water, Carl, Danni, Matt, Alex, Eden, Jade, Sean, Sebastian, Katy...  If you stay awake with me long enough to watch the street lamps go off, I will never forget your name.

She said I want to be a mother.

These words froze me.

She was an old manager of mine. When I'd spend my days on the phone, sold products like stones thrown at homes of customers whose windows were only mildly less valuable than the stones I broke them with...My manager looked bored, So I asked her... "What would you rather be doing than this?" she said "I want to be a mother."

At her managers post she earns more than most but would rather play host to...a baby girl or boy, trade orders for toys, she'd write work programs for her maternity like vows on how somehow... She and her partner would raise a baby.

I asked her... "That woman you're with... Do you love her?"... Yes.

I couldn't find the words to articulate how I felt so I told her what she said make me feel like the opposite of my heart breaking.

I don't know much of her past. But with me having more unexpected oddities than anything you can purchase for less than 73p from BnM bargains I know how hard it can be to be anything less than normal... And despite how far we've come in accepting women who love women or men who love men, I wonder how many people have told her... She couldn't be a mother without a father around. Whatever deep-rooted bigoted or religious grounds they may have found, it's not an excuse to put you down. They'll turn their feelings into frowns wear their ignorance like crowns and do everything they can to prevent you wearing a wedding gown.

You wanna know what I think.

Love requires patience, and patience is a liver. It can handle a lot of toxins and forgive a lot of poisonings, but overload it and it will die. For that reason... I went through puberty without a dad around. I had one war monument of a woman to ensure that I would grow to be a man who wouldn't poison livers. That compassion would be my arrows and respect would be my quiver. I'd send shivers to the spines of anyone who dared me to be anything less than everything they could see and... That I'd be a boy to be proud of. A woman and a man gave me bricks and cement, but only one woman helped me build a home in me... So imagine what two can do. It's such an outdated cliche just because you're gay doesn't mean you can't raise kids the right way.

I mean... Do you think two grown men can't change a *****? Can't stitch love and care into the clothes that child would wear, they pull out the hair stressing about the same questions that a straight dad would...How warm should this bottle be? Is it normal for him to eat this much? Is now a good age to have the talk? You can be a child's guardian but father or mother is a title that must be earned and with no doubt I believe you'll tick every box.

You've been mum to this office floor for more years than I've even spent in employment. Your throat holds the best kind of resume that no one can takeaway,  and when you make the transition from manager to mother... I know your child will be loved like no other.

I wrote you a poem, about why I'd write a poem for you. You caught me one time trying to tame my mind with lines of rhyme, when I told you it was about a woman we both knew you said, next time... why don't you write about me? I said because you don't inspire me. The easiest excuse for writers block... I need to be inspired. I need to be hotwired into a matrix of men and women who are driven by every feeling they are giving. I need rhythm and words. The pen is a decipherer and the page a treasure map where we will write our way to gold. We sold ourselves on the belief that we could... write smiles onto people...

So we write. Muster our might and write light into the dark times. Stitch beauty into the scars of the harmed,  arm ourselves to the teeth against those who act beneath what is considered humane. With ink in our veins we write like we fight. Unafraid of a broken bones because the next blow we throw will be through our throats. We are mouthy poets, and the most powerful weapon in arsenal is our battle cry. And should one of us die on the field we'll uproar, we'll outcry, we'll encore and we'll breathe life into what remains of our fallen and give them the best ******* send off ever.

And when we finally reach home after our time together ... We'll keep writing. We'll write worlds out of words. Write instructions to the sky and orders to the ground will write love notes to sound and have this all down before the next sun swings around, with metaphors abounding and similes astounding we don't clown around with the words we've found.

We write in skin grafts. We talk the hollow into wholesome entice oppressed into the inspired and paint the lonely as lovely. We fill in the gaps. We are the ifs the ands and the buts following the 1 word answers to the big questions. Do you love me? What are you angry about? How do you feel?
And we'd say, yes! If I was terminally ill and have the doctor prescribe me you, because you make me feel more alive than I've ever felt!
We'd say, everything. Sometimes I just feel trapped in my own skin like the society that we live in has made jail cells out of my skin cells!
We'd say... Okay. I feel like his smile told me, he'd catch me if I should fall. We write so we can say it all.
We write in passion and love, we write an apology, we write in admiration, and affection. We write in absolution as much as uncertainty. We write in purpose as much as apathy.
We don't write because we should. We write because we can and It's everything we are and everything I am.

This!.. Is why we write.

I've walked through the locked doors of a mental ward to go and visit someone considered a danger to themselves. Half starved girls make short steps past me and I double take to check if I'd seen a ghosts.
But ghosts are the ones looking for their mortality not the ones looking to drop it. So I turn my face away... And despite the nature of where I am I manage to crack a smile because somewhere on this floor was a small room with lost and found and I had some misplaced love to turn in. The young women on this ward have been here anywhere between weeks to years and they considered it a hell away from home. But the Afternoons I got to spend there will continue to be some of my greatest memories.

There's a lot going on up stairs. Between our 10 fingers 2 eyes 5 senses and 1 voice we're going experience this place one way or another, and your experience will be unlike mine and mine will be unlike his but we can go to sleep knowing that what we felt was real.

So I imagine it's scary being told by a medical professional that some area of your viewing experience is not as it seems. There's dead pixels in your screen. You've been meaning to redeem the warranty on that broken dream of a reality you've been living. But the company that sold you your world is out of business. That is to say when you check into insanity, there's no reception to show you to your room. Every spoon you're fed tastes real, but the people sitting across from you sees no meal. You feel scared.

And yet through all the poor unfortunate souls to behold on this ward one of them taught me beauty in the crazy, and seek these lessons in all of the other people. I want OCD to teach me to arrange my audience in such a way that you all look perfect. I want ADHD to teach me speech. Let me cradle impulse in every corner of my mouth and when it finally flows out let it roll about like a newborn who had it's mother craving haribos and red bull for 9 straight months. I wanna start speed dating for the narcoleptics and insomniacs and see if either can sleep on their wedding night. Watch them grow old together and have no concept of time passed because who the hell knows what time is is when your sleep patterns been ****** with. I want tourettes to teach me that this feeling is uncontrollable let our hearts be uncapped, every open armed come back, every face to face sweet embrace you give to those you love feels so natural that words like 'can't ' or 'no' become unfathomable.

But I can't pretend that these are easy gifts to accept, so many tears gave for the labeled and named, asking what's inside my brain, can I be called sane?

So my friend in the lost and found department of the ward taught me, recovery and stability are part of the beauty. Her dress size was the fine line between happier times or a cut short life. But now the time she's kept out of hospital grows like her smile. She's come miles and miles and and all the while is a living monument to the phrase 'things get better'... and that's all this is. Despite reality itself being an uncertainty and and the skies throwing all kinds of weather in the end, we're all birds of a feather that flock together and we need to remember that the sad times aren't forever, so this is a handwritten love letter to the things that get better.

She wore a smile like a scented candle. It was warm and comforting but… too easy to extinguish. This other girl existed on one end of a knotted piece of string suspended between 2 tin cans… It was hard to reach her, and when you did, her tongue seemed as knotted as the string.

But on days where these two can’t seem to stop smiling. When their bow tie tongues make phone calls sound like miracles… we say things like..

Don’t jinx it.


When underdogs bark like poodles but bite like alpha wolves. when the up-and-coming upstarts undercut higher overseers. At the risk of burning too quickly or too brightly, we say…

Don’t jinx it.


When the meek and the naive achieve more than we perceive.

When we dream on Christmas eve of what we may receive.

When we say things like ‘We’ve been through worse… she won't leave’.

we say…

Don’t jinx it.



The human condition demands so much caution and fear, we shed tears and rub our eyes till all we can see is the least of what we can be and we… live like slaves to the thing that stole our confidence away… ourselves. Somewhere down the line or self belief was found K.I.A so when we try something new, we’re already D.O.A.

So when we play pika-boo with our power, appear like a shower of rain in a desert when you’d already chosen dehydration as your only way out, we dare to tell ourselves, don’t jinx it.



Ladies and gents, boys and girls, you don’t have to rule the world. You don’t have to cure a disease or discover new species or banish hatred from the hearts of man or travel the and experience sights and scenes that only in your wildest dreams did you think you’d see. You don’t have to do a single thing!

But you can do anything.

When Martin Luther King said Let freedom ring, he didn’t fear jinxing a single thing.

And when the Beatles sang love is all you need they weren’t deceived by the forethought that their song wouldn’t be well received. They believed that they could plant the seed that would lead  this musical scene into places unseen.

They believed that all you need is love. That they had the stuff to turn lyrics into legends. They wrote songs so deeply entrenched into our musical history... you’d need a yellow submarine to find them all and… they didn’t care about what they jinxed along the way.

They held their hearts like David held his sling when Goliath told him he was too small, and so should we all, we should stand taller than our legs can and every man or woman who said you can’t you, you shouldn’t will fall! Fall silent like when the voices in your head are all in agreement and are screaming yes!



Confidence is a bag of marbles with a hole in it. You’ve got to think back to where you’ve been to find it again. But whether you’re happy with your marbles, still looking for those you’ve lost or if you lost them entirely… we can share. We’ll stir sweet smiles into your coffee, stitch compliments into your clothes and we’ll garnish every plate and bowl with the untold hope that you’ll believe in yourself.

Like I believe you. Because I do believe in you… and I won't jinx it.