Ready? Unready
To step swiftly through the inviting crowd
Of potential impossible beginnings

The nerves are gone.
It's a phrase familiar but never applied to me.

She's at her wits end.
The image strikes of a worn - torn - woman
Frazzled hair and arms out of sockets
- the tear of demand
- the air of long gone reprimand.

How has it become my reflection?
Two tortured shadows.
Muscle power that has been splintered, cracked.
No breakthrough, no expression.

Excuse me, please?
My nerves and wit -
Well they seem to have escaped me.

Can you join me in the search?
Can you help me understand?
When did time pick up its legs and run?

My nerves, my wit, well yes of course
My very self, you can be sure
I'm afraid
They have long gone and betrayed me.

The eyes - they haunt the carved out hollow.
A strange relief to know the evidence lies in front.

Excuse me, sir?
Have you seen what the last few months have done to me?

A child cries as loud as she can so that you will hear.
Do you do the same?

You sit and swig one, two, three
because you know he will not be home

You take a drag one, two, three
because he hates it when you smoke

You wait until it is dark, dark, dark
to walk far away from home

You like him but you also like him and him
just in case one lets you down

And when the light shines through the curtain,
onto his worn out chest, you turn to the dark shadow
to pick up the ashtray and the shattered glass

You lift the hood above your head and close your eyes so still
because you know he will be back and you will feel fulfilled.

Trailing in these shoes, my feet no longer hurt
Straight line and bearable now
In replace of the pain and dirt
We know that they are not mine but I have made the buckle fit
Now I stand in front of you, your smirk triumphantly lit

You believe that you have tamed me and all that I come with

Oh how I wish I could be your perfect server
You turn to those customers
with your stress ridden eyes
But keep it all masked with that vile business smile

So very slowly I am becoming what it is you need
Soon I will be carrying your ticking metal box
inside the left of my freezing chest
emotions disabled are the settings suited best

And before I realise,
as I leave through this door
I will no longer be able to switch
back to my emotions so pure.

I ask how your day is,
I cannot listen to your response

I exclaim how beautiful the spring is,
it has been years since I gazed at the sun

How am I to ever feel beauty
when I cannot feel at all
How could my work be flawed
when this box remains forever installed

I am living in the 1920s
I am missing the shaking tassel dresses, the whispering red lips and the springing curls
I live through the deep emptiness of an uncurled smile from a boy who has a shine in his eye
A shine from a coin filled with the greed for the nothingness of wealth
His gaping presence has replaced wickedly free men
What remains are toying boys craving meaning
Behind the shade of the thinly golden pattern
Of whiskey blurred nights
Of shivering embraces
Barely touching in numbness
I love you meaning I do not acknowledge your depth or care to know mine
What meaning?

I am happy now, I am here
I needed a rest, a break away
But I am here now and I promise not to stray

I scooped her up, she was barely there
A shadow of me that was withered, laid bare
It is only now when I look within
I see the extent of the state we were in

To flee my own self, how did I ever try
Neglect too harsh and true to deny
And yet still now I neglect to know
How I left and the nowhere I go
Without you - My poor and lonely soul

I promise
There is no need to worry
My Holy Ghost
I have you here - and I'll hold you close
We are happy, and here, and now.

Pray for me
And I think I do not pray
But - Yeah sure.

But pray, won't you?
And I think I will
So - Yeah sure.
Just not in the way you hope.

It is in the way I beg to the ether.

I pray to you to tell me it's not real.
I pray to myself to hold it all together.

I pray to life to change its course.
I pray to remove you from the source.

I pray to dream with you.
Here and never-ending.

There is no time, there is no measure.
You and me, protected here forever.

I pray for you to face no fear.
I pray for me to fight any near.

I pray to time.
I pray to you.

I pray for you.
Always.

The polyester cardigan grows thin
As I nervously tug at its tiring seam
The silence does not dare to lessen
And I dare not to break the stream
That fills this exhausted space
We so ashamedly know

Please, just turn on the radio
To drown out my thoughts
Of Yours.

I have already decided it will be another six months
And Guilt has already welcomed himself
Tearing through the bones
Pulsing.
Agony, pain.

Take him away.
This Guilt
is Yours.

I dread the day that I will see the water fall from your eyes,
the same squinted hazel as mine,
Your shoulders will give in and Collapse,
Your chest it will shake, like my old rattler,
as we attempt not to relapse.

But I truly dread the following day,
as I will hear that radio play.

I was present in this place but my body was not.
The familiarity saddened me to the core.
There was a gaping hole in my gut as I realised it was winter now.
The air was stale. It was more contained, as was the person in it.
Almost as if there was a double bolt lock on every means of escape, there was no exiting this place.
Along with this darker season also came the darker feelings.
The room within this place was so dull it was difficult to differentiate objects. It became impossibly older.
There was an overall grey shadow around my entire sphere.
Although within this shadow was warmth and protection.
The protection was from the bewildered, crisp breeze that was beyond this place, the place that was once my home.
Feelings of fragility and vulnerability were within this home now.
Me, a minuscule being, hiding from the roaring winds outside the windows.
The powerful breeze sounded as if it was aiming to destruct my safe surrounding.
The only heat within was an artificial heat.
The window was being mercilessly beaten with forceful, constant raindrops.
The room felt empty and I felt empty also.

When would there be life again?
When would it be Spring?

I miss how the protective warmth forces my muscles to relax
the cool bitter beer tastes sweeter on my yearning red lips
As my eyes have become a minimal size, a forcing squint from the demanding shine
How the earth welcomes me to lie with it side by side
How the long green strands tickle my freckly skin
the calm of a welcoming outside, inviting me stay and play for a while
I miss the openness of the colours hovering in the haze of heat
How it reminds me that I am part of this overwhelming world
And how nature is my version of a God

I do not miss the way in which the colours fade to leave a shade and it leaves without so much as a nod

Assume the burial of the you to me that I conceived
The soil's earth, the soul engorges my strives to reach the air
It renounces me to make way for the reborn root of you
For me, I seek to force above the fold
But the mound engineers my innocence
To drown down to your fading hold
Is to feel the heavy weight of yearned existence

I will never reach your delicate grasp
It forgets to lay claim to mine
No, forget me not for it is a measured miss
Your intended dereliction by design

You, drifting steadily beyond all redemption
Me, approaching abandonment of the quest
- A hymn to the blind revival

Be assured at the closing breath
You are fated to offer a whisper - a shadow - a gesture
Grant full life in the depth of your distance
To keep me in hope yet to know that hope is empty

Anchored - aligned
In preparation for denial
Of your piece
At the end of the never-ceasing coda.

When the light has fallen away
And our facades
of rush
momentarily glide
on the breakable ice
in a haven of realisation
Your darkness unveils
the beautiful layers
of the night's
loudest silences
As you hear what the day steals away

You slide your wrinkled eyes to the other side
Thankfully

If you had turned to grasp my hand, to share a part of your thrown apart heart

I would crumble and stack
all of your emotions onto my bruised back

A waterfall could leave my heated eyes
Being only the youth of the overwhelming stream
Because the emotions you bear in this place so rare
Run too deep for them not to seep onto the keening edge

To reach the end of the never ending stream
Would leave none of you or even me
Just a torn apart wall in between

No matter how fulfilled my new love feels
There is still a little bit of the memories you created
Leaking through this creased smile

At endless points our skin met
Both fighting against each other in the contrasting texture, tone and experiences
We both felt and dealt with different ground until we fell here
From that moment on
Our energy caved and we were combined as if the water met the sky in one never ending curve of beauty

You ask if you can have the rest of my water
I turn to pull my lazy jumper over my left shoulder and leave it to you
You drink like you have been deprived for endless nights
As you accidentally slurp, I am aware that my judgmental stare is unnecessary
But it deepens to be sure to burn through you
How could you not notice?
Maybe I am the thirsty one

Weary, weary
You left my space
This unforgiving place

Teary, teary
From my eyes they crept
Ready? Unready.

I let you go

too early.