Beach shell varnished, kerosene,
A crack in coastal stain glass window, like a hair across the face
Disrupting the vast porcelain
“you’ve got a hair on your face, let me just”
and then it takes the lipstick with it,
a line printed like a paper cut,
“where’s the razor? Where did you put it?”
I put it in the bin and try and not seem too desperate.
We bundle into a car
Like some odd kind of sleepover.
A plaque on the wall saying the current prime minister opened it back in the day.
The old building is cracking like sedimentary rock in reverse.
The lemon lime and bitters clink in the bag and
I can almost convince myself it’s a summers day packing to go
Off to the beach, running down
With a picnic blanket
Sand in shoes
Tinkling down like an egg timer.
Seals, odd floppy babies about to bark,
The tussock a balding old man, spattered across the dunes
“let’s get icecream”
“let’s get fish and chips”
“let’s get out and stop take a photo”
the wind whipping your hair at your face
flicking icream off the cone onto your face,
why is it all so messy?
Let’s got to kākanui, let’s go to moeraki
Let’s stop to get a coffee.
You sure it’s safe to drive, this tired?
Let’s stop and have a nap.

You good to go?
Yeah
You sure?
Yup

Hello my blade
    My age-old friend
You've been with me
     Through thick and thin
And now I've come
     But once again
To use you now
     Once more to sin.

My life in shambles lays ahead
Behind, a falsehood, love is dead
No options, I agree, remain
So though I have, my best, 'till now refrained
I seek the bitting edge once, evermore
To ease the pain which ever-beats its sore

And as I open flesh-ed wounds to scar
So my soul numbs, heart as black as tar
The pain, it blessed, ebbs away quickly
And I can breathe again, rattling, sickly

No cure for panic, loss, and crippling pain
Have I found, but blood, which falls like rain
Not of a Savior, Christ within
But of the broken drowned in sin

We may soon forget about them,
Perform our daily tasks.
Seek what pleasure may be found.
Regain contentment in whatever measure.

They will still claw at the razor wire,
discomforted by rain, wind and snow,
determined to resist their pains,
seeking to share our inherited treasure.

The grip on my disposable razor
Is tighter than the grip of my own reality.
Reflection distorted by the humid condensation,
I still see my hands trembling as I shave.
I still see the designer bags under my eyes.

The familiar aroma of shaving cream,
Paired with the sobering twinge
Of the nicks from my razor.
The haphazardly spilled pills,
Horizontal bottles in the medicine cabinet.

White-knuckling the porcelain sink,
Decorated with dried toothpaste and the blood of my gums.
I reflect to my reflection
Distorted by drip drops of tap water,

“Am I still myself?
Or simply a prospect of my own delusion?”

"Shhh....
No one needs to know..."
The razor whispered
To her skin as
It violated her.

My devotion fell like cinders of empty rain,
you were my blood soaking the
desolation felt within my veins.

Now I am hollow within this beating vessel,
that ebbing into emptiness was your gift
that once opened depleted what was special.

Your enchantment was a false fairy-tale woven
in razor wired kisses. We are an ending that
left cadavers of lonely hearts behind.

Af all the ecstasy one can enjoy
As if with no soul
Left in some gutter while *******
              watching them go by
Flames the night to all sorrow
Hookers doing their nightly and noble
Act
An escape from the brutal
frenetic evil
My lonely nights
Of vagrancy of thought and action
Alike
The intoxicating smell of lost lives
Pipes empty of crack
The desperate look of a tormented desire
Floating the dense fog that slashes your eye

Do you pretend that pain does not exist,
That my presence is irrelevant?
Maybe it is not pretend for you.

I'm here looking up at your shadow as
You walk over me and walk alone
In San Diego. The city of my youth my home
Away from home.

You are, that city, my heart away from my heart.
Beating and ebbing as the waves on the sand,
The arteries ache and stretch with the breath of my distaste,

I feel something with you gone.

And with you here. But that's not now because you're there,
Healing and skating and smoking with strangers
And taking pictures to remember being 19
in the tunnels
like the veins heading away from me.

19 lines to describe what eye feel when you ignore
Something you said was unique.

******* Anne. I ache.