Cracked vinyl bus seats
Windows that have heard the stories of every passanger smeared with truth
The spit of the elderly woman who fell asleep while reminiscing about the son whom she's visiting that she hasn't seen in 35 years
The stubbled cheeks of the older gentleman who is counting the pennies in his pocket on his way to the store to get food for his daughter
The knitted scarf of the middle-aged woman who is slowly pulling her coat closer to her in an attempt to warm herself because it was the only article of clothing she could afford that year
The ponytail of the teenaged girl who is tracing the scars on her wrist from the last time she tried to end her life
They congregate for a common purpose, but
The doors to their hearts open like the hinged door, letting anyone haphazardly stumble in for a moment,
And
Their souls are brighter than the lights of the megabus as they are honest with themselves for even just a minute
And their walls are temporarily demolished because who would ever have to lie about who they are on a greyhound bus?

Smooth polished church pews
Floors that have been tread upon by every saint stained with lies
The flats of the elderly woman who is nodding off while pretending to pray for the son whom she hasn't spoken to in 35 years
The loafers of the older gentleman who is calculating the amount of money he can sneak from the spagetti dinner fund without getting caught
The high heels of the middle-aged woman who is slowly pulling up her skirt on one side in an attempt to catch the attention of the younger men further down the pew, while her husband holds her hand on the other
The tennis shoes of the teenaged girl who is tracing the bruises under her blouse from the last time she started a fight with her boyfriend
They congregate for a common purpose, but
Their masks are painted on more elaborately than the Sistine Chapel
And
Their lies are built up more intricately than the stained-glass windows that surround them
As they read their words to live by from a book collecting dust in drawers throughout America because who could be anything but holy in a church?

I was not made to be a waitress. To carry plates and pull pints and count coins and be able to breathe at the same time. I should have given up. Four years in and my boss was still telling them that it was my first night, not to mention that time someone half-jokingly asked me, a completely sober seventeen year old with an anxiety disorder in a family owned bistro in white middle-class conservative Hexham, if I was drunk. I was not made for fake confidence and biting back tears, for toilet cubicle walls and breathe in, breathe out, all you had to do was carry the potatoes to table five. I was not made to be a waitress in the same way that I was not made to understand the art of mathematics. The times tables in their white linen shirts stained with my clumsiness laughing at me as I dropped plates and couldn’t subtract fifty four pence from five pounds seventy two at the till. I wasn’t made for sequence. For questions with definite answers, I was not made for having to be right. I was made for having to be wrong. Over and over, for ******* up a lime and soda, or was it lemon? Four years into a job. I was made for honesty. For answering you truthfully when you ask me what I am thinking. I was made for chocolate on the hob and strawberries tickled with sugar in hand, for the familiarity of the songs of a home friend’s band, I was made for softness. For your lips on my lips and my hands on your hips and the imprint of your freckles on my cheek. I was made for learning that this is not weak. For learning that I was made for me.  For dancing badly and laughing loudly and eating messily. We, on the other hand, were not made for each other the way people appear to be on film, the megabus trips without air-conditioning and the seven inches and 165 miles that fall between us the ever persistent proof. I was not made for you, designed so that our lives would perfectly intertwine but what does it matter when in this moment I think I was made for this. For half-lit, half-fit bliss. For reading poetry to you at three am until you fall asleep, when all that is left is the hum of your breath as my voice echoes milk and honey, making me feel like I could be made for anything, even though we’re apart.

Sidenote: June ’17- this time there was only one 'first night' at my new job.

yellow light from the coach station
against marble houses-that we wish
we could buy- reminds me of the silver
moon we watch when we’re high.
now I’m crying into the duvet
and feeling far away from whispered
happy compliments I don’t know how
to describe you but you’re mine but
it’s time for a forest fire to still the fire
in my heart. I start to want to hold you
forever though my forever is over
my love, my never again. feeling your body
pulse with each sleeping breath reminding
me of death and I don’t want you to go.
I like being bad when I’m with you, sad
though it might seem when we dream
and you ask me to speak french when I’m
smoking cigarettes, trying to forget the plans
we made. we plan to go to europe because all
our dreams sparkle under the weekend skies,
you sigh, I can’t get back from here, my dear,
I fear I don’t know what’s real anymore,
what to feel anymore. your broad shoulders,
we’re getting older, they wrap around me &
your eye lids flutter, reminding me of a kind of
innocence we have yet to discover, my lover.
now the sun is beating down on london parks
where we sit and talk and dream, it seems
you are so beautiful reading kerouac,
what a cliché but we’ll get away, by megabus,
counting our change, courting our lust,
on 5 hour bus journeys from city to city
ambitions to home, joy to pity.
cuddling to britpop, we keep popping
pills and thrills and whatever is going.
don’t go, I know I’m a romantic
(you have no idea) your passions kills
and your mind excites, I might have to die
tonight, I might. I want you in the kitchen-
I can never untie my shoelaces- living on shoestrings,
tightropes and other things, I think that drinking
in cinemas could be a new favourite pastime,
are you still mine? drowning in wine, I know
I cry too much, but touch me. that night we went
out in your car to the docks, no stars, but you still
shone for me. buckingham palace is against a grey
sky tonight, against us but we still try- england is mine,
england is mine. we don’t usually kiss in public.
I used to spend a lot of time in the cathedral,
scribbling poems in the crypt, hoping something
would stick, but we drift towards a moment now,
my muse. you use me. red flowers in the buckingham
palace breeze, I breathe in daydreams of paris and patti smith
I keep rehearsing my life, it seems.