We found ourselves in
a sticky
sticky mess
didn’t we?

We can be so intimate,
because I hate making my walls
from already crumbled bricks and
clay of wilted loves,
the dredge and slurries of everything that went wrong
plasters together the insecurities I hide from,
to protect you from.

You didn’t even build the offence I expected,
to prompt my building, my construction and strategy and
internal combat.
I didn’t have to crouch at your feet,
long forgotten how to feel for myself.
So mastered at letting you take over my body,
make it move with you where you need it to be,
matching ecstasies and heartbeats
and sweat and moans,
feeling you aroused,
secretly wondering if I was made of stone.

It took one touch
to do it.
Just one hopeless exploration of two bodies,
for me to return to my shrivelled husk,
tearful and vulnerable and exposed for all the others,
tainted parcel, envelope turned inside out,
only wishing to be your absolute perfect,
in and out of bedsheets and
the expectations we see peeking out of the shade,
******* us and ruining us as we go.

But you make it seem all ok.
You make that one shadow in my past,
turn me into something else entirely.
It still bothers me, plays me, screws me over and over
until I break a little because it’s just to much trauma to overcome.
Being used for little night-time, quickened searchings,
finding out what people always want from me,
and what they are happy to leave behind them,
with me.

I’ve always known about emotions.
But I don’t think it’s ever been this easy to feel them.
To feel that rise and fall of a wave people keep ranting of.
Because of you, I get it now.
It makes me see stars and feel everything hit at once.

It’s always a start that ages before it’s time.
It’s always the nerves that settle under my skin,
bumps and bruises and dead hour wanderings,
waiting for the inevitable moment it all ends.
As soon as you like me, I start to panic.
I can’t sleep and eat waiting for that little rattle,
pop shake
of when you pick up the phone and make my panic real.

I can only believe you for a day.
I can only like you for for a day at a time.
I can only show you what I am for a day at a time under very
rational considerations.

To feed you until you want me no more.
You can scrunch up your eyes and turn to plead you would never,
but having been a lot of messed-up lovely things to a lot of people,
I know you are a human emotional puddle.
And they were all human too.

And all our time together
becomes a heartfelt plea,
the heavy, pressure-on-chest of hope
that no one ever warns you about,
of the dangers of letting yourself go
with them
that special person
feeling everything you strive so hard to suppress
given over to trickster hands and laughs
of those emotions you fear.

We don’t regret it.
Not at all.
But all our movements and affections are
dictated expiry dates,
and I hate it being about us needing
to consume as much of each other
before the time ticks over and
it’s all spoiled.

So this solidifies where I am,
where I am coming from,
when I curl up next to you.
This is my flagged position,
in this strategic push-pull, give-take, want-relinquish
games we desperately seek to play.
I’m always the loyal friend, crying when you close a door on me,
or leave me aside,
or throw me away for someone, something new.

So instead
for now,
I’m going to remind myself of all the things one day could be true.
And get a little lost in you,
because that’s all I can do.

It’s that or I’m going to have to watch you walk away,
and hope I feel this rollercoaster again.

I want to let you in.

On a little universal secret.

We are an exhausted pool of all the little blind, maddening

instances we confuse ourselves with;

over people and instances and places left unexplored,

for us who feel the weight of lead limbs dangling limp from

the craving of sleep;

patient waits cut short in frustrating moments of self-pity and loss,

bereft and lonely over insatiable appetites.

Over friends we keep only to abuse,

lovers never giving enough but taking everything wrongly advertised;

the needle driven deep under skin after seeing jealousies dance,

float like unreachable things,

taunt and play and roast your heart in an oven,

cooking in the promise of eventual redemption.


I want to let you in.

On a little universal secret.

Being caught alive wrapped in shrouds of your own

faint darkness is miserable.

As a flower feels the warmth of sunlight,

so quickly it droops to meet the rough earth.

We are a maddening crowd ticked off at always

being second best, runner up, participation award;

jilted contestants,

competitors making allies and lovers, sequential,

in an ongoing battle of self and image and

all the ****** up soliloquies we recite with rough tongues

to an imaginary audience of our selves and their incessant advice.


I see your facade.

And i’ll challenge it every time.

Don’t think you have never heard the whispers circling;

don’t think you go home to shut all these truths inside a box of your own,

don’t think everyone else does too.

It seems like a sordid, unfair jibe, between the ribs and spikes in your head,

to wish you were that one perpetually fortunate, lucky, charismatic creature we

worship in our private dark;

we all worship each other.

And that’s where all our collective monsters feed on us poor, poor

struggling souls.


I want to let you in.

On a little universal secret,

that you can only deny so long.

There are many of us, made to feel few,

hidden in millions and billions of tight springs

that only gather so many more of these confusing thorns.

I’m talking about us,

the ones that have to leave a ‘do not disturb’ sign

inked on our foreheads when we disappear to somewhere else

because we have to. As far as we can.

We are the people who fight for conversation first,

and always back away first not because we want to

but because our minds are thick, and sore, and so

exquisitely filled with self-deprecating jargon and patched, sewed

stitched in places clumsily,

a surgeon not paying close attention,

that fails to keep the muck from seeping out.

The pressure in our heads that makes teeth grind, eyes tear,

mouths shut dry and parched, a surge of nausea

a general lingering present future lasting feeling of unsettling nerves;

sparking blossoming dull throbs of hurt that make us bow our heads

half in physiological need and half in the self-fatigue we feel

fighting ourselves every time we rise to a challenge.


I take my meds, I think things over.

I take my meds, I think things over.

Repeat until you’re tongue-tied.


All my friends are getting wasted,

and i’m feeling lonely getting self-wasted with them.

We know abandonment like no others,

because even our minds leave us for a time,

even our very selves walk away from us like broken lovers,

hurt friends, empty strangers, sworn enemies

it lays ambush to our patterns of self, lightness,

trodden leaves melting slowly into the ground like

the cycle back to dirt and lowness again.


This is half my little secret.

But I’ll tell you in time if you’re ready.

So now I’ve let you in.

On our little universal secret.

A time,

sometime before the last time,

or even a little more lost

in a dusty box

the time even before,

I wanted to tell you something, sweet.


When you press against my skin,

or hold me at length,

you are wearing, shredding,

tearing and smoothing my very

surface.

I wear myself upon my skin;

internals are external,

I don’t hide behind mirrors or imagery;

magic tricks, pops of champagne,

dazzling details or embellished,

encrusted, coated

and processed

goods.


Those who are privileged;

ungrateful and cursed with ignorance,

little awareness for the multiplied demons nesting

in blackened hearts,

sipping sour emotions and rancid feasts,

those are the people who hide what doesn’t need to be hidden.


Those who are privileged;

independent and cursed with anxiety,

pressure behind their eyelids at night

and a very heavy head to move and keep

the walls up, guarding against the terrors and the screams

and the glistening shadows, slick with grief and

self-pity, self-loathing and what people judge

as an infernal mental contagion,

but really is just an unfortunate, battle of imbalance and chemicals.

Awry and lost and deep trodden in a mind that never rests,

always misses a beat chasing other beats

and fearing the biggest monster in the fields called mistake.

Those are the people who wear it all like skin, coloured by bruises and patterned

with cuts, carvings,

soothing over the outside and deciding its already faulty,

can wear it on the outside because its already broken,

not really worth protecting

and don’t hide would could and would mostly be hidden.


Sweet,

this is me.

I’m rough, I know.

I rest

in your bed

when I’m scared of being alone with myself.

Depressed again and as I lose control,

realising I never really have an end

keep pounding and chipping at

every word I’ve ever though and every feeling

I’ve ever had to succumb to,

I’ve ever always had to feel,

sending for help and working on strength to rebuild,

shoots flares in a black blanket of sky;

lending your little demons the opportunity

to find you.


Jealousy is the most dangerous form of punishment for us.

Me.

These people that we are.

We crave respite, sweet.

Out of earth and mind and here and now,

out of beats and taps, clicks and repeats.

Out of straddled cycles and digging into ourselves with

our own fingernails.

But really, I can’t call you sweet.

You’re just the person I imagine

so I’m never caught alone with myself.

You’re just the person I want for myself,

and can’t reach towards, afraid and corrupt and broken to you.


Blacking out with my eyes open.

A blank space, a blank knot and a blank guess,

rolling over inside.

Short-term memory shot.

Feeling the weight

and the hatred of my omnipresent self,

mind disheveled, unraveled,

fighting a battle you can’t even see;

takes one to know one.

I deal with my pain,

no one else digging enough to find a spring,

land-locked and bone dry,

questioning the mirage I stumble through a desert for.


Questioning what real is,

something everyone can pick and grasp,

smoky cloud and bitter wind to me.

I try and see some reasons,

stumbling in the finding

of plain ground, nothing else.

Perpetually uninvited yet constant host,

parasite,

addicted to everyone else’s company.

Asymptomatic to symptomatic,

mind the bickering beast,

same person, same bodysuit,

but I,

I’m locked inside with you,

yet watching you wreak your havoc,

vicious, bitter monologue ringing wall to wall,

grating and wailing and driving me broken

and twisted and pinned like your own art.


This is what I wanted to tell you,

eventually.

When I noticed a break in the internal racket,

a clear view from my cell into yours

I realised nobody wants to hear about this abuse,

not even you;

avoid, ignore, pretend it isn’t real so you can sleep

alone in your cell just one more night, again.


I just want people to better understand what this is like.

Why I simply can’t explain it.

Why I can’t tell you.

Why you will run.


Now here’s your cue.

Stand up and

Walk out on me.

Nights of thinking alone,

gathering my proofs,

I’m still unsure you were real.


I loved the sweet caress of your voice,

the way your mouth shaped my name,

your eyes hovering lazily over mine.

I loved the soft touches and frenzied hands,

as you carried and explored me, explored together

in bed sheets and a summer night’s heat.


Balcony doors embraced the ocean with open arms

before us, the tingle of adventures together

left tickling my skin.

It was a night that brought so many gifts, so many

tender looks and sprawling affections

laying waste to the floor.


But it was a night left to my fantasy.

No videos, photographs, Facebook statuses

or afterwords of gratitude.

A night left as bundles of touches and

portions of tangled desire beautifully coiled like

ropes inside my head.


I need those proofs.

I need to know that love-nest even happened.

That it wasn’t some sickened dream I had,

whilst I cried in bed alone that it would soon

all end;

a frayed and ***** heap of pity left in place of you.

My heart would conjure anything to protect me from you.

My heart would drill holes in those fragments if it meant

lies from you, if it meant little pieces of love you could

hurt me with.


My heart is grateful for what you showed me,

the love you painted with me, for me, over me.

My heart is still in love with the times we shared,

the memories that glide around silkily in my sleep;

but my heart is also still frightened, of you.

And what power I gave you, over me, to make me

weep and search for evidence like this.

To finally know you loved me, or not.


Because that is what it needs doesn’t it?

Prove that it needs to, that it’s real.

Were you real beneath my fingers?

I live a life collecting pieces.

Pieces of fantasies forever the

realm of

childhood;

Pieces of imaginations turned wild and wonderful.

Pieces of laughter, confusion, delight and tears.

Pieces of melancholy, shards of sorrow;

fragments of regret, portions of jealousy.

Sections of desire, passion, leading us on

blindly to others of

heartache and yearning.


The rough edges of frustration, yet the

smooth curves of contentment, peace.

I live a life collecting pieces;

this is what I’m told makes a life worthy.

Worthy of remembrance, joy; fulfilment.

But only I can see the struggles,

feel my bones bearing more weight;

the aching tiredness I fall into,

when I’m not at work,

collecting the pieces I speak of.


The fright I hastily pick up off the ground,

when I compare my clumsy, ***** array of

pieces to your perfect and bound ones;

when you aren’t looking.

The dread I reach for, because you leave it crushed

beneath your feet.

The nervous tension pulling strings beneath my skin;

leaving me a reckless, vulnerable puppet

collecting the pieces left in your wake.


Torn to scattered, dusty pieces;

Reborn a puzzle of simplicities,

bright and shining pieces woven into form.

No matter where we have been, where we

were taken,

where we were loved,

where we were betrayed,

where we fought bravely,

where we surrendered nobly,

where we were embittered,

where we learnt of strengths and weaknesses;

we are all made of pieces.


We are collections of pieces.

You and I.

Our collection is known as life;

each piece is our experience of something.

Someone.

Somewhere.

And the more we know each other, the more

often our hands can reach for two of the same,

available pieces left before us.

I pen them down, keep them special and fragrant.

I live a life collecting pieces

and often they are of you.

This is what hurt looks like.

This is what pain creates, added that

you are conditioned to feel sad.

Chemicals unbalanced and unchecked,

You’re a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.


The sudden icy tingle of cold

as you move from warm sunlight to shade;

the sudden shimmer before your eyes,

blending into the last sight you wish to see that day.

The sudden jump in your sleep,

before you fall and wake knowing you will, soon;

the sudden lights that dance before you,

before you know they’ll eclipse you as soon

as you are left alone.


These are all the ways you are unpredictable.

These are all the little things you

plead for others to understand.

And all the little things they never will.

Because that is the cruelest blow, the

omnipresent bleed underneath the skin,

the constant broken limb and sickness that

doesn’t heal.

That is the cruelest part of all;

they just don’t understand.


I write and let the frustrations climb the pages;

mountains inked out before me to mark

the journey’s edges.

I write and leave traces of every scar and wound,

praying one day you will find them.

I write to leave it all behind;

leave the roads mapped as far as they have been followed.

I write in order to tell you things I no longer can,

to remind you of what I was, what I did, how

I helped you move on to someone else.

I write to ask you the questions you never allowed me to,

to ask why

how,

who,

when?


This is how I process all the ways I hurt.

So I can avoid the physical cuts and bruises.

So I can gather my defences, to brace another onslaught.

So I can enjoy, love, laugh, grow while my demons

are away, left on quests to search for the proofs they can

use against me; paste on walls in my mind.

I know you won’t understand,

I know you can’t and I have learnt to allow you

to fall short.

But you need to hear some truths regardless.

This is how I process all the ways I hurt.

How do you look at yours?

We always make sure to hold each other.

We always cry to be wrapped in

each other,

heated embraces,

breathless kisses;

trailing bodies and entwining limbs.


I pen this wrapped in your abandoned

bed sheets,

the lingering smell of you staining my skin.

I sprawl over where you laid,

hoping to take in as much as I can of you.


I pen this while we’re disentangled,

to let you know something.

Please don’t loosen yourself from me.

Please, I worry when I wake

in your bed to find you were never

once there; you were never once taking me in your arms.


I pen this because I’ve realised what

makes it so painful,

to imagine you lost from me;

a distant, faded smudge in a photo album.

You’re a biochemical addiction,

a drug I can’t seem to avoid, I can’t seem

to stop taking my daily shot.

A sheer addiction rooting me down to my

bare bones.


I pen this because what we are is purely

selfish.

Relationships are purely narcissistic.

Lost in reflections of each other,

I want to love you as much as I can

while I want you

to love me as much as I can only try to love myself.


I pen this to open up the box of secrets that

sleeps between us.

To open up the lies we paint on each other’s skin,

when we lie in bed and dream across each other.

We bury our hearts in the beautiful rubble of

romance, ecstasy, heated passion and blissful reunions

of bodies and loves.

But really we cover our insecurities.

We believe we are worthy only when we know

we can be desired by another.

We believe in love, only when we are the object of attention,

not in our own eyes, but reflected in yours.


I pen this because we are each other’s poetry.

The sketches I get to make of you,

the colours you can pull out of me and place

on your canvas.


I pen this,

because it’s so impossible to let you go.

A crumpled dress thrown like rags

upon the floor.

The hopeless, desperate appeal

of rumpled bed sheets, a fortress of

your own.

Waiting for a message in silence,

curled and surrounded by your

dismembered pieces.


The days when you shy away from

the light;

Wrapped in a wall of quiet,

except this isn’t calm.

It’s an unbearable weight,

marking impressions on your skin.

It’s a deep, roaring stillness;

gushing, rolling and sweeping around

everything you touch.


People can leer,

eyes prying to find what

little cracks you speak of.

But they are immune to what you feel,

layered beneath your skin;

what you see etched in coloured mixes,

painted brushstrokes making art around you;

what you hear and sense;

what you think, to yourself,

the countless visions and places you peek

behind doors unknown to them.


The freedom you alone shall know;

yet all the painful days to follow.

The brilliance you alone can seek;

yet the relentless torments you are to meet.

The feats of strength, russet desire and

hidden depths you could show;

yet all the nervous energy,

self conscious woe you show.


You can be the exhibit of both worlds.

You know what it is to feel the deep burn

of quiet pain inside,

yet the warmth of healing and the

fiery blaze of strength.

Be the exhibit you know you are.

Render even the most lonely and heartbreaking

of your moments beautiful.

Because they truly are.


You may feel broken, torn and ripped in places

you long forgot could be wounded.

You may feel empty, insides carved out for

another’s purposes.

You may feel bereft, lost, confused and vague,

feeling the frightening gaze of the unknown making you

their favourite puppet.


But burdens can be treasures.

Use them and invite people to your show.

Make them laugh, cry and grow.

Your burdens and treasures are necessary,

to be the exact person you are.

Without them there is numbing, nothing.

And you,

you can be more beautiful than that.