When you’re not around,
I can’t stop myself from imagining
our future.

A little brick house
with a white picket fence and
two kids running around -
playing in a tree house.

Your smile could be my
favourite thing to come home to -
going on drives to the beach
on summer nights
diving into the
ocean feeling nothing but
safety and security because
you’re by my side.

I would trust you
with our children,
let you place rings on
my finger and
take care of you
when you need it most -

you just
need to let me.

Broken people bleed.
They bleed
when no one is looking.

It seeps from
cuts inside,
cracks
from dull knives

dragging against wrists.
Knifes too sharp
that leave
scars never quite healed right.

Faded, the impression never leaves,
indelibly pressed into the brain.
Painful secrets not yet told.
Like a memory that you can’t repress
it follows you.

You say,
‘forgive and forget’
but how can you forget
when it lingers
like his fingers on
my thigh, a
gentle contrast to the horrors just been.

Contrast between fists
slamming into walls,
my walls,
my ribs.

Begging forgiveness for his sins.
Clouds of tobacco smoke and *****,
warming insides,
hot shower burn my skin,
for if the dead can only feel cold
the burning heat
must mean I’m alive.

Broken people bleed flowers,
blossoming into rivers
of red.

In English,
we’re learning about
Winston and Julia
in 1984, but
it’s 2017
all I want to study is
you.

I want to study less
about the
control and freedom
Big Brother has
and more about
the calculation of your
moves.

I want to study the way
your knuckles could be an
infant’s home, small
hands reaching out
longing for you
or the way the veins in
your arm makes abstract art,
beautiful enough to be showcased
in any gallery.

I understand now why they say
“as pretty as a painting.” Because
you’re as timeless and
breathtaking as
Mona Lisa.

And your blue iris's,
swirl with dark and light
tones with a slight
a golden glint,
I could stare into them for longer
than any
Starry Night.

Maybe,
I’m just better suited to an art class.
I want to learn the primaries
so I can swirl them all together and
get your dark brown hair.
I want to add the most expensive
white, so I can paint the
faint freckles on your nose and

I want to mix blue and red adding water
until the colour is a perfect match
for the faintest birthmark
on your shoulder.

Instead of the History of Russia,
I want to learn the History
of you.
I want to learn what makes you smile
and what makes you cry.

I want to study you,  
I use each brush stroke to
perfect your skin,
each pen writes down
notes until
I have a whole book
full of each heartbreak,
so I can learn a lesson
in you.

Letting someone touch me
is like dancing with the devil.

The way I flinch
whenever someone
goes to touch
me

or the way
I have to try and train my
brain that the
boy that is holding me
at night now isn’t trying
to choke me when he
moves his hand around
my face -
all reminds of a
duet dance the stumbling
and passion.


Touching me
in the slightest is like
balancing on our toes to tango
and I hate
that my past still haunts me to this
day and I think that everyone in my
room with an outstretched hand has
a gun behind their back and
that at any moment a
sweet encounter
could be something else.

Something
terrifying,
a reminder of why
I don’t trust guys
and why I’m so desensitised
to the violence - why
don’t my eyes close and
let me snooze or drift into a
place where I cannot be hurt?

I am an adult
that is
learning to trust and to love
from the start again -
learning the basics
of human connection and
communication and

sometimes I wish you
could see through my eyes
just to realise
how dark the other side
really is.

Twisted metal
The thrill of it all
His hand cold instead of mine
God punish me

The world watches you fall,
the largest proven oil reserves
but you couldn’t call out to your brothers
acknowledge your mistake
so that you may grow.

You **** children,
hunger grips every mother
and fathers struggle with
children of eight trying to earn a wage.

Your country is ****** up
holding it pride to its chest
waving the flag never admitting that
their force has killed eight thousand
or that their children are in hospitals
starving.

Kenyerber Aquino Merchán,
less than two starved to death
because hospitals have no formula
to feed the innocent.

Spine and rib cage protruding,
mourners with wildflowers from the hills,
and relatives cut out a pair
of cardboard wings from
empty white ration boxes.

Let you pass away,
sleeping now under my wings,
we’ll conger the wind
and ease the president's pride,
he is hiding under the cover
cowering the corner -
he has no one else to blame.

I,
have spent  
the last  
three hours  
crying.

My eyes sting
and my entire
face feels like
this dull yet
numb pain
that I couldn’t
compare to anything
other than a gunshot wound.  

Each time my  
heart beats without you it
sounds like a loud
boom.

Maybe because
there’s a
hole in my heart
that I try to fill
with memories of
things that I did for you,
all the compassion
and trust you placed in me.

All the times
I got to hold you,
feel your heartbeat against mine,
see you take each breath and
relax into me.

There are
memories we
have that I  
will never forget.
Each memory
placed in a tear
which I’ll keep
in a little glass bottle
with your name written on it.

I wish your
last memories
were never filled with pain
that you could have been  
graced with dignity not
suffering - I
wish I could have helped you.

Maybe if I looked  
into the warning signs,
read a little more online,
maybe if I looked you and
cared for you just
a little bit more -

I wouldn’t
have to carve your  
name  
into
a stone.

I wonder
what secrets
strangers hold
in their hearts -

did he hold them
in his arms and
carry you off
the cliff too?

Or did he lay
you in bed
and cover you
with sheets?

There are things,
we write about
because
we don’t have the strength
to speak them.

Unpublished,
sitting in secret journals
or folders on phones,
harsh enough to bring
tears to every mans eye.

Times of attempts,
death, troubled loves,
childhoods too traumatic to share —
we see no resolutions.

I wonder,
if that’s why
occasionally a poets
most emotional works
are not found until
their death.

It has been four
whole months
since you’ve left,
your jacket
still hangs in my closet
and you still have a
draw full your stuff in
my dresser.

We never celebrated
valentines day - yet
I still think of you
and our misfortunes -
of our three year path
that lead to
heartbreak.

Often I break down
I sit on my
knees and pray
that you never meant
the things you said -
I keep your number
saved in my phone
with hearts and x’s and o’s
just in case you call me

which, you have
when you’re drunk or high
when you’re trying to remember
why you hate me -
why my world crumbles
when you’re around
I can’t see straight or
hear the words coming out your mouth
everything you do
for better or for worse
just sounds to me like
you saying

“i love you”

my day -
no, summers day,
lay cloacked in
my fog

thick and veiling
there's distant screams,
tears from another
and
the smell of
drugs - just lit.

is this how we
mourn our
violence?

I have a sign on my chest
that says "trespassers
welcome."

It's written in red ink,
the cheap kind that never really dries
and with each new boy
that invites himself into my home,
the letters become smudged.

I try to remove the sign
but it remains there
etched into my skin
and the more I pull at my skin
the stronger the pain
in my chest grows.

Trespassers are only temporary
and I pray that one day
they will stop reading my body
as an open invitation but

until that day.
My chest
will be painted
​red.

You came into my life
like a hunter
an his rifle.

You held me in your arms
and when I tried to run you
made me fight and
even when you knew I was right
you’d make sure I’d lose.

But I’ll swear on your bible
that next time you’re standing
on my porch in the pouring rain
I’ll scream at you -

“Don’t you dare
try and paint me black
when I
used to be pure gold.”

I have the mouth of a sailor
Yet there are
still words that are
Unspeakable to me

I heard rumours —
everybody gossips,
you were all that I believe.

Keep me wanting more,
tell your truth —
everything gets blurry,
I know I'm addicted
to you.

I’m right where you want me —
I’m young and your precious.

Straight from
the cross on your wrist
to the scars on mine.
This is to familiar
to my past,
you know it runs in my mind
that I spent half
my life living
in yours.

one. small spaces
two. immortality
three. becoming an alcoholic
four. admitting the truth
five. commitment
six. people
six. life repeating itself
six. people who promise that they won’t hurt you
six. having children, not because I'm scared of children, but because I know I'd be a failure of a mother
six. loving someone new
six. loving someone healthy for me
seven. waking up in the morning to the same thing, to the same routine, to same people who hurt me the first time.

we dance under the moonlight
until my mother
can forget the sin of
marrying my father.

I’m sure sometimes even
doctors
have to practice
telling bad news,

until eventually they
think they’re desensitised.
But I’ve seen when
they have to tell themselves
it’s a just story,
to deliver it without crying too.

A little vial of blood
determined the difference between
losing life and growing it.

You were something I never thought I’d have,
the news was delivered like a punch to my ribs,
even after the fist had left
I still felt the pain between each breath.

You
could have been gorgeous,
could have smiled at me from bed
every step of mine reminds me
of the ones you will never take
could have laughed at school and
become the cure to our misery.

Instead, you became the cause;
a tender bruise too new to touch,  
a ripping of my stitches,
the beginning of my end.

To this day
I imagine your smile
in every baby.
I hear your every laugh and every cry
through them —
every video of first steps
reduces me to tears
for they,
could have been yours.

It’s cruel of mother nature,
to remind us
something as common as life
can be so precious, so fragile
that just a crack in the window

in a sheet of glass,
thin as my patience,
lies  between
life and death
and can leave us both
breathless.

We,
who watched them,
down bottle after bottle.

We,
who are afraid to look
at a mirror, simply because
we’re scared to see
the alcoholic who raised us.

To all of us who don't look,
knowing we'll only
​see our predecessors -
those who couldn't stay sober
enough to raise us -
instead of seeing change.

yesterday,
jesus walked past me
no salvation -
called me weak,
spat in my face
red
     w
        ine tinted my skin
dribbled from my lips
if ‘I could change
the way she saw us
you wouldn’t wonder why
she doesn’t save
those who have
been deserted’

Light me up like a cigarette -
I’ll be the smoke you swallow in your lungs
and I’ll be the toxin that kills you
as you take your last breath.

You texted me the other day
my phone lit up and
despite there nothing special
set about your ringtone
or about the vibration pattern
attached to your number -
I knew it was you.

Now I’m
chatting with my therapist
about small talk,
tequila, religion
what you mean when
you say you’re ‘over things’
despite having left me months ago.

I leave letters to you attached to
my poems and my work
I doubt you’ll read them -
we haven’t written in a while.

I know it’s wrong -
inviting you over,
but you’ll come to my door and
you can come in quickly before
the people upstairs realise
there’s an unwelcome guest.

I’ll always find myself
tangled in your path,
our lines are forever connected and
our tangled limbs will always
outweigh the mixed messages
in-between my own lines.

men who slam doors,
punch walls
are just making sure you hear
how much they want to
                                          hit
                                                you
                                                      instead.