Your back looks like a brick wall
after climbing out from bed,
my fingernails give less scars than what
a blanket or two can do.

Do you
wrap them around your neck
while you sleep, do
you love them more than me?

I would give you my arms if you didn’t
already have them.

he asks how lovers
sit still when one’s hand is not
holding the other’s.

mania is everyone you have ever met hiding in your bones
and depression is feeling them break, this
is supposedly the beginning and
end of life but I heard that those you love are
not even as large as the sky (I just don’t know for sure).

the thing is
everyone is a body of water, but nobody is an ocean
we can drown inside ourselves and

most importantly, we can drown inside another person too
(I just don’t want to believe that the man
I love could hurt me anymore than he already has).
somewhere there must be an island.

I put what I thought was a castle in my mouth but it stung.
He pulled the pulp from my teeth and I remembered
some use this to make their skin white, some sting every day.

haikus are about
nature - here is one about
his haematite hair.

I could never help him hide a dead body
in a forest, where creatures have whiskers as thick as vines
blood’s green from chlorophyll falling from trees
dried leaves shield wounds,
because it would be mine. One day
when he is stabbing my heart, it will have to **** me.

I use weeds as bandages. I have had three broken hearts
but never experienced heart failure.

Eight years my senior,
I wonder what I would have thought of him as a child
if I would really think of him at all. I could
have become quite obsessed, worry about his whereabouts past
my bedtime, when I should be asleep and he is anywhere
being almost a man. It could be frantic
or peaceful – like what is called the wise mind.
I had it as a child more than I do today, an inner confidence
that he might put his hand to my face
and give me the time of day,
have the deep attachment of two friends who cannot
break trust. Then again, it is much more difficult to hurt a kid’s
heart and not want to piece it back together again.