Built like a shard of ice
She grows taller in cold climes;
In environments hostile to
And envious of
Anything that breathes.

Hard flung words may try to break her
Howling winds will shake her strength,
But she is rigid and growing sharper,
Too spiky to think of bending.

With all the potential to break,
To crack, dissipate in the onslaught of storms
She screams into the avalanche of hate and says,

I am you,
And we are one,
We are one kind

All of us are lonely
All of us are hurting
Each of us doubt the other
Only feel our body’s pain

But when you cut me
You will be the one to bleed,

One day, when you learn to feel what matters.

It doesn't matter now.
Not today, and not tonight.
The Foxes are foraging in all force,
And they will not stop until they draw blood from ice.

Father is
The strength of the tea he drinks-
He shrinks with age, but it is not evaporation.
I call it distilling.

Mother is
The rain burrowed deep –
Giving life, stripping away the moss that covers the truth of my world.
Inescapable. I cannot live without her.

Brother is
The boy who breaks my heart
More than the one who has my heart.
Come home, be done with your wicked games.
Let your pulse calm as we drink strong tea,
And listen to the rain.

Tempt me

If you can.

If your eyes sparkle,
If you're 6ft2
If your eyes are brown

Tempt me.

Dare me to see you for you, and not for being exactly like

That six foot and two inches of absolute chaos
Like that boy who never takes no for an answer and is never honest and
Doesn't know how to be functional.

It never works.
You all look the same.

And I don't like boys with blue eyes, green,
And anything in between.

I danced with the other girls,
And you watched my feet,
I saw you in the wings.

Your eyes were dark as my knees caught the light.
Spin, reach, drop.

Get up, carry on going if you have the strength to, girl.

My hips catch the fabric of the shift.
Swaying, rolling like the sickness growing.

My waist is small but my backbone strong.

This dress is not for you,
This love song is not for you.

It's all been staged.
Necks stretch,
Heads roll.

And I leave the floor,
Feet sure.

I don't run,
But you do.

We've played this out before.

Out the door and on the street
She waits
With impatient lips.
Hands on hips.
Smiling eyes,
Sweet candy
Wrapper tacked to bottom of bright red heel.
Nobody looks at the sky.
What need is there to hide from clouds?
Rain can only wash tears and fears away.
This is a jubilant day,
Flat foot.
Coward.
How many friends do you have left?
Some are gone to pasture in fields,
Some are posturing and misunderstand.
It's not your fault.
Listen to the brass band and her voice as she calls you down,
And into the light,
Where you can become once again what you always have been,
An every day hero.
Loud Father to your children,
Proud Husband to your wife.

I visit a city
And there is blood on the streets;
Dried blood,
War blood,
Blood from my own heart.

Women birthed here
And died along with their men.
And the babies became soldiers and bled.
And died.

And there is blood from those who dared to love
To hold taboo soulmates in the dead of night,
And they're all sleeping now, safe and tight.
Mass graves and funeral pyres
Leave for little room in their retirement.

The streets are clean,
But listen to the blood as it sings.

Feeling bereft

Isn't an odd thing, an entirely new thing, or disorienting

At all.

But my head is spinning and my guts are churning

And all

Because I cannot call you. My fingertips are stuck on the first few numbers

And the key

For the padlocked zip on my mouth...

I threw it away, out in the trash.

Along with all the common sense and hope for us I had.

I changed.
I know
The blame lies with me.

It festers within my growing limbs
My lightening hair
And the fibers of my fight-or-flight muscles
Honed through experience
Of running into mistakes
And away from confrontation.

Your kind of confrontation.

Bully.

Best friend.

What's the difference?
They're one and the same
Now that I've changed

For the better.

Just a little spinning oak
Leaf

Flimsy,
Born of strong roots

Destined to decay.

I wanted to be so much
More

And perhaps I will be kept pressed
In a book

In a romance novel

To mark the page.

Close to the words:

'I love
You

Dearly',

But never quite immersed.

If I could get back all the years that I wasted
On being so perfect for you

It'd be like getting a pension.

Having so many years to spend, all at once.

But all the miles racked behind me
Would just slow me down.

When given a second chance
We rarely seem to take it.

The weary are stuck in their ways.

I hope you die lonely
Without any children.

I want to pack my life in a rucksack
And leave it behind, so I can really travel light.

I hope your wife leaves you
For your brother, like I didn't have the guts to do.

I hope that one day I will be able to
Get the first choice, instead of your left overs.

I wish you don't ever come back to our classes
So people won't think I'm evil.

I stole a shell out of your garden
And gave it to my best friend. We hate each other.

I feel privileged to know that you snore.
And that if
I nudge your cheek with my nose
You stop
And squeeze me close -
Crack my spine
And I love that feeling.
And the best thing is
That you don't even know you give me chills.
It takes a talented soul to thrill me when sleeping.

To love
To love
To love
It takes so much courage
And so much faith
In those who don't,
More often than not,
Deserve it.
And sometimes,
Faith
Is left entirely out of the deal
When cold nights
Are made warm
By a body
Who belongs to another girl.
Don't mistake me,
The body is male.
But I stole him
For a while.
Can't remember
If
I put his heart back.
Maybe we shall see.
Time will tell if the time
I spent wrapped in both
His arms
(Because I fit)
Has left tattoos on his skin
The way those hours have
Printed themselves on my
Flesh.

23:11
Kisses on my shoulder blade
23:12
Kisses on my  cheek
23:13
Kisses, so many, on my lips
Right now
Kisses moving closer to my heart.

To love
To love
To love
It doesn't take much
At all.

This crumbles like
The topping of
Apples.
Apples baked with so much heat and potential.

Children and sugar - one on the same.
Sweet, but too much in this creation.

Marriage was
Dessert to life
But no crumbs are left;

Consumed by young greedy faces.

I can't figure it out right now, let's just leave it,

I say.

But what about tomorrow?*

I think.

When we're ninety,

What then?

Because I want to be with you,

I can admit.

I want snowy days by the fireplace, and sonograms and rings

I want your future, I'll need you in the morning

Some day.

But right now

I'm sorry,

Love is a foreign thing.

Not all of these monsters
Who prowl the night
With blood shot eyes
Are to be feared.

Some monsters,
When they love you,
Keep their teeth sharp
For the sole reason of keeping you safe.

And when you grow to love a monster,
You learn to love them in the night time too.

Large actions
To fill the large space
In my heart.

It's not working.

How easily you kiss me,

Like a plaster:
Lay it on.
If you mess things up again, there's more where that came from.
It's a small comfort for a short time
But when you take it away,
It hurts.

And sometimes, it takes part of me with it too.

I love you.
And honestly, I hate you.
And you're all that matters in my life,
And I don't care at all about you.

Because I don't need you.
I don't need you.

I need oxygen and hope,
And happiness, too,
That's true.

But you give me my happiness
In rations
Like it belongs to you.

And the air we share will run out
One day,
And it's hopeless.

But it's the best thing that's ever happened to me,
Discovering bedlam,
Bed land, with you.

So to Hell with it,
Say it, won't you?
That you love me too?

Because I do.

I do.

I do.

You were the death of me
I
Have nothing left.
I see a lover with his bonita and I suffer  
With regret
Because
Because of reasons I can't explain.

To say that I am

Broken

Would imply that there is
Something left
To fix.

And pain is nothing really.
Nobody feels it except for you.
Therefore it can't possibly exist
Right?

I'm so confused.
There's a gun to my head
And it leaves kiss-shaped indents
And I'm bruised black and blue.

In a coma.
Or something like that.

This is our little corner of the earth
Right at the edge of the world.
Fall off,
Fall off, you tell me
There's no going back once you do.

I'm well aware
No pleas, no tears,
Nothing
Could have stopped your life from drifting away
Through the wounds
Like gas out of a balloon.
Would it be wrong to compare your soul to helium?
You were always so high.

To the man with
A thousand contradictions cradled within his skull,
The very same man with
The hard eyes and the gentle hands;
I've resigned to resolve
My resolve
When it comes down to solving you.

She calls you by your full name.

Sounds **** from her lips.

Not like honey; your name is the buzzing of the bees that make it and when I say it

My lips tingle.

But you'll never know.

Somewhere along the road I turned into
A bit of a nightmare,
Right?

With my laugh too loud and my heels -
Head in the clouds
Each night.

Crushed by bodies but I'm the last person in the world, and
I've brought it on myself.
Such a sight.

I can feel a storm approaching.
It comes in the guise of a lover's lies;
Favours bought and friendships diced.

But I do not hate him. That much I know. I  am not making you choose.

But I DO hate, and I hate with a passion;
That soft-spoken pillow talk holds greater weight than the anguish you know I've drowned in -
That you would put me through it again because your lover holds your hands
And exaggerates.

I am cold. And my tears are the colour of moonlight.

Need to make you see

The love I bear you

I...

I can't.

Love is the fourth state of matter -

Or fifth, I haven't counted them lately.

You will never know it exists unless I bash your skull in with kisses

Crumple your hand in my hold

Cave your face with the strength of my stare. That same gaze that's trying to memorise -

Or map - every eyelash, and the tiny mole just above your eyelid, for further exploration.

If only your heart could compress

Any time I touch your chest

Then I

Then I think you would know.

No need for explanation.

No need to punch or kick.

I don't want
To break with you.

Can't we still be babies
In a tub,

Tattling to our mums;
Watching our worlds end,
And still falling asleep as friends?

I want to still be
The angle-face good one,

To your fantastically beautiful spiky one,

But you see, with age,
Comes bitchiness and a sense of

Self respect.

I never had that before
Around you.

Oh, I was your good little dolly,
Darling of your heart

But you like to beat that muscle well,
Don't you?

Much harder than necessary.

So why then
Do you think that
This constriction and skipping of a beating
Was a surprise attack of the heart?

This is the first
Time I've been out of love
In years.

It's odd.

I'm clinging to heartbreak; I find
I am
Thinking of your lovely hands, and how I miss them:
Your shallow sleep-breathing
And your stubble in the evening.

I'm pinching myself in places that you kissed me,
Wanting to feel the wanting
You stirred inside my body.

Needing to remember;
I conjure up your laugh -
But it's more alive than you ever were -

And in death this romance seems to be sweeter.

And in life, in truth, it was all just so much simpler.

There is a photograph of  you and that man.
You: in a dress we shared -

Looks better on your frame anyway.
But when you're standing next to him,
Forgive me, if I wrap you in thick black sheets
Of Kevlar.

Because that frame has been shattered
And I don't have enough glue left for the next time.
Because there
Will
Be a next time.

Long bare legs and pouty lips, your hair; dark, and mine
Lank; I can't sleep.

I'm afraid for you.
I'm afraid of him.

I'm sorry I couldn't do enough
To break you apart -

I'm sorry it's not what you wanted
I'm sorry your whole family adores him -

I'm sorry I can't - won't - be there any more.
On that we agree.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

I am not forgiving -
I am not to be trifled with -
I am not a fool,
And I am not about to fall
For your watery smiles
As you make yourself the victim
In the aftermath
Of the ****** mess
You made of my head.

Rarely am I ever,
But in this I am innocent,
And I will not stoop to your level,
But neither will I raise you to mine.

I hate you.
And I think I always will;
Because how can I love the bullet
In the guise of a friend
That exposed my thoughts
And my fears
And my worries
To the open air
And its pigeons
For ridicule?

This was not a two sided thing.
This was a trick coin
That showed your two faces.

So don't you dare throw forgive and forget in my face,
When a minute ago, you were flinging ****.

In your eyes, I see a storm.

Tells me that
There is no safe harbour anywhere -

No point in trying to dock in your arms.
Nothing left to hold me down now.

And it's starting to rain.

And I have nothing to say but

Sorry.
I am sorry.

I forecast this morning all wrong.

Some days I
Want to forget you exist.

Those are the days when, crowded by faces and laughter
I get lonely
Because you're not there.

I want to pretend that I've never known your love when faced with
A glance between myself and that Adonis technician,
Because I'm just dying to be someone's goddess myself.

I want to forget that you were ever born when
Looking into the faces of all my friend's babies,
I know that yours must be a thousand times more cherubic;

Whoever the mother is.
Because I know she will be beautiful.

You have a passion for collecting fine art, my love,
Then breaking it apart.

She lives in a time when her kids were young.
She doesn't know the surname of her daughter, now.

They could be sisters, and for all she knows, perhaps they are.
They have the same, glossy wet-paint eyes.

Who are you? She asks, and her mind drags her deeper yet.
Where's my Tom? But Tom, her love, is forty years dead.

Anna sighs and brews the tea, as her mother stares in horror at her own hands.
Whose hands are these? A reedy wail; the same question asked fresh each day.

Photo frames only confuse her. Who is that man by my side?
Anna replies with a stale, much used answer, It's your husband, mama, he's out walking the dog.

I have a dog? She asks, But then, where's Tom? And where's my baby Anna?
*Somewhere, mama, they're here somewhere. And they're waiting for you to find them.

Today I crushed you out of my life.
And it felt like smashing a beautiful butterfly to pieces
In my palms.
And nothing -
No matter how many times I apologise,
Or how deeply I carve old scars open
Just to explain why -
Could ever bring back those bright, beautiful colours of yours
Or those hopeful, soaring wings.

There are no words to describe
The Hollow
That could be considered musical,
Lyrical.
The Hollow:
No words harsh enough to describe it,
Either.
Everything is bland
In The Hollow.
The Hollow is the pressure in my skull
And your skull,
If you feel it.
It's the place that surrounds my heart -
It amplifies the beating,
Like a drum.
It is
What proves I am alive and what
Shows me how little it would take
To die.
The Hollow is the non-stop crying that they all call
Weak
And pointless.
They don't get it,
I don't get it.
There really is nothing to understand.
Because that's all it is,
The Hollow.
It's empty.
It's nothing.
It's constantly looking for something
But it's always coming up short.
It's always trying to be something
And then, learning that it's a lot,
Lot
Harder
Than that.
And that all your efforts are void.
And your whole life is
Hollow.

In my fingerprint, the thirteenth groove from the nail,
The one that curves neatly, until it breaks
(A scar, I think)
That's you.

There is a braincell in my skull that is red, not grey:
Red for love; red for anger; red for that STOP light that made me stall
(The kind of complete stop that scrambles up your nerves)
That's you.

Every eighteenth heartbeat is you.
Every flex of my left hand little finger is you.
Every wish on a lost eyelash, carried away by salty currents, is you.
Every swiftly sheared blade of grass  is you.
Every nerve ending in my lower lip is you.
Every cell of oxygen is you.

You are
Every
Hope
Every
Fear
Every
Dream
I ever had.

Put simply into words that in the end, are nothing;

You are everything to me.

There is no guilt
Like the guilt that trips
Back and forth between
Our lips.

And I have never known shame
Like five a.m.
Getting light
And desire is only just
Turning to lead.

There is a screaming
Inside my head
That begs us to stop,
But we're comfortable
So devilishly comfortable
Inside this guilty bed.

I tell stories,
And yes, I tell them well.
I give you straw,
And you thank me for gold;
I tell you I've seen things,
And you give me the respect of the old.
I am a songstress -
And no, I don't need my voice
To get you to believe that.

I play games,
And yes, I play them well.
Better than stories, because...
They are that much more fun.
Games of love,
Games of blood,
Games of fire,
And of desire,
I play them
Second fiddle to none.

I am a fighter
And yes, I do fight well.
I won't kick, or spit,
But in my eyes there's hell.
'You disappoint me.'
'You make me sick.'
'You don't deserve forgiveness.'
I say it - don't always mean it,
But you're in pain, and bleeding,
And so it does the trick.

I am a lover
But I don't know if I do it well.
I remember when I held your hand -
That moment was a story being woven at our fingertips.
I remember when we slept beside the other -
All games were consensual.
I remember when we fought together -
And well, that says it all.
I am a lover.
But I am simply unlovable.
And that's nobody's fault but my own.

This is driving me crazy
Because
You are laughing

Who knew you could do that?

And you're squeezing the sponge
That is my memory
To see what still remains of the echoes of the
Rancid mess that
You
Made of my childhood.

I blamed myself for so long but now I
I
I am breathing, and I'm breathing free
Because one of these days
You'll die.

Because you're only mortal.

And I beg it sooner rather than later.
Because then you'll be as far away as possible
As far as humanly possible
(Which I didn't know was possible)
Away from me.

Beautiful curves
Like conjoined maltesers
She melted under your touch,
And you crunched away all her inner toughness
With each little nip at her neck.

It was hot and
She stuck to your fingers.
So you bathed together,
Hot and steamy
And then you melted too.

I have decided that I don't need this new thing

Called hope.

It's fine, pretty, petite, fiery friend, you may have

My hope.

Isn't he lovely? Please treat him well. I think I would have.

I hope I would have.

But we shall never know now, because you played your hand so well.

I can only hope you'll listen to my warning next time.

If there is a next time.

I hope there will be.

Because one day, I won't be quite so content with the memories of those

Who stripped me of hope.

I imagine that one time you told me about

When you came into my room and watched me sleeping.

You said it made you happy to know that I was there

And in that moment I wouldn't yell at you, or look at you like

You were a stranger to me.

I remember that night

That I dreamed all the dark things in the world were hovering over me

With sharp teeth and hungry eyes

And whose grabby, pushy, possessive hands

Would smother me at any second.

I need a window cracked ajar
So I can breathe
In submarines.

I need an umbrella
On sunny days
And sunscreen in storms
Just because I think they've got it wrong.
I always seem to tan in rain.

I need a little more laughter
When we're all dressed in black,
And at your wedding, in your tux,
I need you to find me for a little cry,

Just so things are normal.

And just so this funny old
Un-funny world makes sense.

I dreamt once that I danced with you.

Fox trot,
White dress,
Dim lit room.

I looked more like my grandmother than myself
But you just looked a better version of you.

No needle marks in sight.

You told me you liked us this way,
No fighting,
Everything clear, reality perfectly defined.

No confusion, nothing bad,

Just us, a gramophone, love,

And just when I don't need it most,

An alarm clock to wake me up.

And the sound is no dancing tune. It is

As harsh and loud
And crass
As the you who stirs beside me,

As unromantic as a broken record.

There's a bruise on my collarbone.
I waved it off as, um,

I'm clumsy?

But if I am I guess I just walked straight into your kiss.

My dress is clinging to the scent of your aftershave
And my cigarette,

But they're both secrets

So I've locked them away in the back of my mind, to keep them fresh.

And I've hidden the dress at the back of the wardrobe, just in case I forget.

I lie in bed at night,
And my hand rests in the dip between
My ribcage and my hip.

And if my fingers were larger,
And longer,
It could be your hand there.

In the morning, I crawl out of bed
And I fancy I'm your lioness,
Hair ruffled, stretching for the sun,
All gold, all lonely, while you play with others of my kind.

Something presses on my throat.

I think it's my past.

I can't turn round the corner of memory lane

Without seeing

Your face at every window.

My mind feels haunted.

My skin brittle as glass

Too much heat

From embarrassment

Or touch

And I will combust.

I used to own the board we shared, your knights,
I had my spies in your Bishops, and your confessions were mine.

I played my strategies so quick,
That I stole your heart without you even registering the thievery.

And as often as you breathed, as often as I laughed,
I would say; 'Checkmate'.

But somewhere along the line I got complacent
And you stabbed me in the back, simply by growing a spine.

I think I've been in recovery for half a year now
Because I've forgotten how to play.

Didn't you at least try to clear the cobwebs in my absence?
Because everything looks so sinister now, and I don't like it.

And everywhere, daisy-chain crowns lie rotten,
Like the wasted queendom of my youth.

But you,
You still proudly wear your crown of bloodied thorns.

And somehow, all my pawns have turned to dust,
And the board has dirtied its way to black.

Everywhere is open to you now,
What once was mine is yours, and yours alone.

And now, I've lost my footing.
By all rules I shouldn't be here

And everywhere I turn,

Checkmate.