I was played,
played for a fool.

I wish I didn’t need to abide
by my own rules.
I wish I didn’t have to feel for you.

I wish I didn’t have to build a
shelter of broken sticks and dead leaves
while you fight your insecurities and
a heap of people I walked in on
around me
like I’m the no-man’s-land,
you trample to edge closer to nowhere.
I only want to leave your suitcase,
in the middle of the ***** street,
and not look at it,
as I walk away
and abandon it there.

Because I can’t take this
slow ****
anymore.

Amongst your blank texts,
I have a message

You bring out something better in me, than when
I’m alone with myself.
What the **** is stable? I’m not stable.
Do not break my heart please.
I’m warning you.

Newspapers are only covered in ***** print;

of despair and distress and danger playing master of our moves.

So I can’t talk to you through that.


Paintings are for love songs left unsung;

they are the inner kept journals of unrequited dreams,

scrawls of abuse or lumps of hurt, growing like tumours.

You wouldn’t understand.

So I can’t talk to you through that.


Music is only for the sunlit realm of lovers found;

of certainty and confidence and devotion above the sordid,

tangled affairs of wayward souls.

Living in a fantasy to escape the loneliness aching in soft spots inside.

So I can’t talk to you through that.


Letters are lost in nostalgia;

a celebration to be had, words unspoken for decades,

births and deaths, reserved for life events detailed in the past.

So I can’t talk to you through that.


Movies are just reenactments of dreams;

stunning heroes, masters of skill, justice seekers,

adventures of awe, loves broken but patched together with stronger yarn.

A world of little lies to helps better cope with heartache and grief.

We can’t immortalise ourselves in something

when it runs the risk of breaking.

So I can’t talk to you through that.


But I can do something much harder

then writing or filming or singing or painting…

I can give it all up, over to you.

I can trace patterns across your shoulders as you wake,

our special language which tells you I love you, I’m trying to trust you.

I can write you little notes, decadent words and sultry ideas,

and make a trail for you to follow to me.


I can be vulnerable in your arms, more than skin and internals

and a framework of bones.

I can be more real with you than I have never known to be possible.

It’s not just me showing how much I need you by the length I hold your kiss,

or how long it takes for us to disentangle ourselves from sleep, how often

we see each other naked.


It’s more the heart I dare draw on your skin with my lips.

It shows itself in the mornings, too brisk to leave my bedroom;

soft tumblings in bed fighting to scrabble for warmth with a body like ice.

It shows itself in the lines and creases on my face;

prematurely carved in stone and worn rough with care.

It shows itself in the dreamy daze I wade through;

I stumble around you and on into some frightful collage ahead.


It shows itself in the strings unravelling behind me,

that you follow until you’re inside.

It shows itself in the pages of unseen messages you keep,

the ones you ignored or purposefully forgot, asking if we are ok.

It shows itself in the way I can never afford to be calm,

never around you at least.


It shows itself, the way it pummels and pounds the inside of my skull.

It shows itself when I can never sleep, like resting on a pillow of

broken glass.

It shows itself through my eyes;

the way they rest on the floor and silent tears

fall down around me, leaving silent stains that disappear before you notice.


It shows when I twist away from your lips,

but then instantly move to pull you close, on top.

It shows when I love you, and begin to let that fall from the window,

to somewhere else.

It shows when I learn how to love myself, then proceed

to wound and maim myself;

because I left you dangling on my line, my fishhook buried in your side.


There is a chaos.

Inside my head.

Are you prepared to face it?

It’s a raging ocean and you need to want to swim in the tides.

You need to know how to float on a sea of rubble, crushed up words,

sanded-down motivations and crashing waves.

It doesn’t soak you in salty coldness,

but the dark relief of being numb. No sensation.

Just observing the world from a tiny crack in the wall.


Are you alright, steeled enough, to try with me?

To brace against it all when I come tumbling at you from nowhere.

Are you strong enough to try and understand the chaos?

Dear you;


I have tried,

so hard to paint my feelings out for you;

to relinquish those delicate flowers into the raging torrents.


I have always wanted,

you to understand what I do, is for you;

I don’t have to pretend I’m not falling into your fibres and strings.


I have craved your smiles,

to know they are for me, mine for you;

I frolic along with you, hands bound and the world a riot.


I have never wanted to cry for you,

to let myself feel something so large, trembling inside a shell for you;

to feel is also to know I can hurt, wounds and scars do show.


I always was excited by you,

what you could make me sing for, praise in you;

to feel the sudden rise of temperature, soar to new ecstasies.


I have never known that I could predict words for you,

being able to moan and shape them from my tongue;

I know what they are, before you growl them out and

bite me

with those sharped teeth

and I collapse with them

buried deep within,

my head, arms, legs and in between.


Yet, there are things I have always wanted to say to you.

Things locked away, deep;

bottled and barrelled in caverns and crooks.

I’m so sorry I haven’t been able to voice them.

You make me nervous. You don’t help me wrap my tongue around them.

But maybe it’s simply me; I blunder through it all, you know me well.


I have to tell you that I’m sorry we will never be able to know

exactly who we are, together or separate;

there is no one who knows another person so intimately.

We are lovers, but I will never truly know your body like you do;

and for that I only wish to speak in answers.

Never questions.

Or I’ll be haunted by their coldness.


Take care. I love you.

At the same time I’ve already begun to miss you.


Me.