And sitting with you
I get to relive exactly where I’ve been before.
Only days ago.
Come full circle.
My flip-book details the same seconds of
unrequited confusion and unwanted heart to neglect.

Life is made up of cycles.
All it is
are cycles breeding more cycles;
circles one can choose to stop circling
to replace it with another.

It is the mixture that we cycle through;
the number of repeats,
the speed with which we tumble, and roll,
and dive head-first into an oblivion with all the colours
of artworks and fireworks, vibrancy and vitality.
The people who make up small cycles, large cycles,
the in-between lonely transition between new circles and loops
to contemplate, fight, submit under gentle lulls and thrilling loops,
that we educate ourselves to thrive upon, those that
we unlearn because of disappointment.

Each cycle doesn’t make it the
love affair it once was.
The friendship it could have been.
The tempting mirage of escape we were to each other.
The fuel and coursing fire that once was our motivation.
It doesn’t get simpler to manoeuvre the longer you cycle,
with you, without you, around you, for you, because of you,
too scared to lose you…
it’s still the same sticky sharp bend in the pipeline
the same foreplay of games;
‘now, who loves you most?’;
fingered silences’;
your heated chase and me always one step behind;
I have to branch off the loop
to prevent myself falling over you in the dark;
toxicity bubbling under surfaces red, raw,
swollen and teary;
I know my triggers.
My shotgun is you.
I know I feel something- to not feeling anything at all.

I may only be able to walk in circles,
but at least I can make them the right circles to trace.
I need that physical space; that walk-through
corridor in my head.

And now I get to sit with you,
realising I’ve been here all before,
not quite so long before.
Only days ago.
Come full circle.
And I think it’s time for me,
to be over your cycle.

On to the new circular track.
And the later loops and whirls I get to
embrace
on my rounds.
Well and truly,
over 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.

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.

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?

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.

Hours of staying up, contemplating
you missing me.
Eyes crying blood all over the floor.
My chest grew smaller, an engine room
with the pressure vandalised and turned too high.
Fuzzy vision and lungs not filling; not soaking
themselves with air.
I can’t breathe.
Why is it so cold?

Drunk on sadness;
it permeates my skin
making everything loose and intangible;
my bedsheets become suffocating surf,
rolling and crying and sick
alone on misty rocks.
The next step could be the cliff.

I saw you with a another girl today
How numbing it is to know you are definitely ok,
More than fine,
when all I crave is to know and see
pain and misery bleeding from your wounds too.
It isn’t selfish;
because I need to know if you felt something.
If you had felt anything as you delivered your
sorry, goodbye.

I need to know why I suddenly wasn’t enough.
Maybe I gave too much to you,
and you were’t ready for it.
But maybe it was you.
You pictured a future
together, saying you had never felt this way before,
about anyone;
until you woke trembling, sweating one morning
realising the cruel hoax your heart played on you; as a fool
you listened.

And as a fool you made me crawl along at your knees.
As a fool you blindly made me ****** in the dirt for something
that proved to me you loved me.
Truly and deeply meant the promises you said.
That the words which passed your lips
were sacred, gospel and bathed in love.
But you fooled yourself.
And it was despicable for you to fool me.

I saw you with another girl.
How does it feel, wondering how I know and feel?
Or do you believe I’ve forgotten you?
Snap of the fingers, forged a new grove beside
someone else on the waiting list.

I’ve been with another man.
Though you haven’t seen it.
Perhaps even two.
Come and go in the life you always knew.
I don’t wish to hurt you,
but moving on means I have to.

I have to drive a knife beneath your skin
and watch you contort in pain.
Just like I did then.

Restless days,

torturous nights.

Thinking.

Always thinking.

Click, click, click,

always clicking over in my head.

Snap to one image,

snap to the holiday you gave me,

snap to the dinners and treats,

you temptingly placed before me.


Fading hopes,

nightmares rising in the daytime.

Thinking.

Always thinking.

Click, click, click,

I confide in you what happened.

Why I’m always cold when

you reach to touch me.

Why I always patiently wait

for you to want to touch me.

Why I always wish to say

something but I hardly whisper instead.

And how it broke us.


Lasting, loving smiles,

darkening gazes and empty silences.

Thinking.

Always thinking.

Click, click, click,

I shared as much as I could.

I gave you whatever was

left over, still mine, not theirs.

You fell for me, I know you did.

Showered me with silken kisses,

steamy nights,

in all my curves

you found something beautiful.

Me on top, you

lulled me with sweet words.

I was like no other.


Fanciful dreams,

a bruised and aching reality.

Thinking.

Always thinking.

Click, click, click,

You made me want you, so badly,

because you believed I was good.

You handed me golden platters of

worth, passion;

I could finally acknowledge the shape

confidence takes.

It walked beside me.

I was foolish to place this charge in you.


Click, click, click,

Snap.

You promised you would always

be there.

You phrased such blissful melodies.

You wanted to be with me through anything.

You said that.


Why did the tide turn?

How do you go on pretending,

deceiving yourself,

when you said those exact words.

I heard you.

I heard you every night onwards.

I don’t believe you wanted to lie to me,

but you did.


You tore those stitches out,

thread by thread.

When you walked away,

leaving me turning to stone

in the freezing night air.

It whipped me, beat me and still

you didn’t look back.


Only now can I go to sleep,

knowing I don’t have to see you

imprinted

behind my eyelids.

I don’t crave you anymore.

Is it the same for you now?