Am I not pretty enough?

What the **** is pretty anyway?

Do I not workout enough?

Am I not on the same hypes and drugs and drinks as everyone else?

Am I not on the same rollercoaster of routines and work of sleepless drones?

Do I not live fast enough for you?

Am I not forthright enough, demanding enough, shocking enough?

Am I not tall enough, too bulky, too reserved, too quiet, too confused for you?

Too little to be involved with

or too big of a person to begin understanding?


Am I too rigid and formal for you; are you angry I tighten up when

I let you touch me?

Or are you intimated when I make you drip desire all over me

and I make you touch me there?

Am I too sophisticated for you; too intelligent, am I too bothersome?

Am I not a bad girl enough for you? Because you seem to like whatI give you

in the dark.

Do I make too much effort over you?

Do you run away because I fuss and ****** over you when we say we

love each other?

but you pull out too soon for that.


Am I too difficult to comprehend, too broad, too much danger and disaster

and sadness and realism for you to deal with?

Do I not change my ideas, swap decisions enough for you?

Am I not a good little lier?

Am I not good enough in bed?

Or are you worried I’m faking it?

Do I not want you enough? When really, i’m itching all over to have you to myself.

Or are you scared I’ll start using you for *** and desire and

lust

like you do me?

Am I not tattooed or scared or brazen or daring enough?

Do I not try and meet your friends, while you hide them away because I

can’t get too attached?


Do I look too lonely for you?

Am I not needy enough for you?

Do I not party like you?

Do I not make moves like you do?

Do I look beaten and bruised and battered and scared of you?

Because I have every right to be.

Sometimes I need to hit myself with spirits to remind myself how unpredictable

and unbelievably cruel you can be.


You get to slide your eyes all along me when I walk past, on my way home.

You get to ask me questions that are only designed to pry my legs open.

You get to glide your hands around me and daddy me long past bed time.

You get to buy your way in to get me closer.

You get to make your intentions too clear, and no one stops to question you.

You get to wait and watch and steal a glance or graze your fingers up my skirt,

without a flinch.


You get to own me whenever you feel like, send a text or blow a kiss.

And I’ll be a fool to cave in, and be blamed for doing so.

You get to use me for your rough release; i’m left tender and raw and you love seeing it.

You get to push and pry and tease and taunt,

just **** me already so I can cut these ****** strings. It’s all you ever want, even if you

tell me it surely isn’t.

I’m your animal, your toy, your prize and your trophy.


So **** your opinion.

Keep your approval personal.

So **** your designs; your proof I’m dexterous and skilful for being fun, not for

commitment.

Keep your work in storage; placate me and say they’re failures.


So I ask you, am I pretty enough?

Or am I too self aware of your righteous *******?

I’m so scared of what you’ll do to me.

I push you away at the start because I care.

I’m all cold fingers and neck as you inch closer.

I know that giving my heart over to your hands is delicate and dangerous;

I realise having it injured by you is more fatal than another, more blood loss,

more bruises, more painful blossoms.


I always want you nearer; no one can comfort as you can,

until you turn off the lights

for the night

and all I see are abandoned impressions of you around my room.

But I need to stop you. Right here.


I need to keep you an arms length apart from me;

stop you kissing and touching me.

Not because I don’t want you;

I will always reserve a place for you, always part of my dedication.

I want you all over, from head to feet.

But I need to stop myself from falling into the one abyss

I know too well.


I need to prevent you from loving me for a time,

or at all.

To keep you from breaking the blissful illusion I conjure;

to keep you from lying to me about why you can’t love me anymore.

To stop you from taking me over.


To stop you from making me believe you are like all the others before you,

inked and stabbed on my skin like knife cuts.


To keep me from imagining you were never there;

a dream that swirls with reality where it has no place.

To ensure you don’t start picking me apart with your teeth, while I sleep,

and you begin to fade.


I don’t want to meet the same river of conclusions, fussing and moaning and

screaming about the agony as you pull me apart one final time.

Take what you need and run.

Scoop it out like melting ice cream and disappear somewhere out of my reach yet

close enough to invade me again when you need to.


I don’t need to feel this again.

With you of all people.


So.

Stop.

This.

Now.

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?

You place a rose in my hand to

tell me you love me.

It blooms, a single rose;

luscious petals of red and pink and hues in-between.

The folds and intricacies, the frailest branching veins and roughened stem.


It ages.

Softness becomes dry and crisp beneath the pads of fingers.

It rustles together, sheets of parchment with your words of love imprinted

on blossoms that stick together in the dry, stale air.

I watch it everyday.

Through the smiles, the laughs, the moans and whispers,

the tightened holds, the anger, the confusion, the lies and the tears

you litter across my bedroom;

desiccated, broken petals of faded pastels and trust I take back and

hide from you.

The thorns draw beads of blood whenever I touch my flower.


I place a rose in your hand to

tell you this is dangerous, and that I can’t love you.

It crumbles, this single hunched rose;

jagged fragments of petals stuck together in the heat of

hot breath between us.

The cracks, the disappearing veins don’t trace the fragile openings.


It has aged, beyond repair.

The stem a dried, rough twig in my palm, I hold out

to you the dusty blossoms that fall straight to the ground.

It’s light, incredibly pale and thin and cold today.

One flick of my finger breaks it’s stalk in two; one for both of your hands.

Thorns scratch your palms, twisting lines on your skin;

scars that remind you of the flower you brought me

and what happened when you let it degrade.


Time dragged its sticky corrosive fingers over it.

I’m worried for you.

I’m worried about what I’ve done with you.

I’ve buried you in the sand, grazed your skin with fingernail cuts;

half moons pattern your arms and back like wallpaper.


I shouldn’t succumb to this.

I’ve dragged you into a pit and stored you in a hollow.

I shouldn’t need to pick a random lover, I shouldn’t need them now,

urgently.

I shouldn’t crave the physical I know you yearn from me behind the

silence

that snakes around the room.

Behind the intensity and firmness of your face.

I wish I didn’t see it all so keenly, a sensory power I dredge up

from secluded stores and hidden vaults.


I shouldn’t have fallen into my own snare every single time you

pull closer, warm breath and lips and teeth,

and I push your chest away.


I don’t understand why I have to do this.

Puppet pulled on strings to do strange and filthy acts;

gaining strength and poise not necessary but pleasurable,

lying with you knowing I’m with company but feeling so alone,

so cold and dusty and ***** on the inside.


I lose myself in a moment, spending all the time

thinking in the moment.

I’m so wrapped up, I don’t hear you mutter to relax.

I will not do this with you, because it means

ultimately hurting one another, in particular you.

I will not try to encourage you, because me lying next to you

knowing you will hand yourself over, is like slipping on ice.


I taste blood in my mouth.

I think it’s yours.

I bled out years ago, over the bedroom and into the bathroom;

showering off filth and wetness and ****** handprints.

That lingering, thick smell of sweat and fluid and nothing.


I’m so sorry I can’t be strong enough to resist my shadows,

my faded lights and creeping tongues;

I’m so sorry I set them on you, like vultures given

the scent of already culled meat.

I am your predator, hunting amongst the heaving animals,

long into the stillness of the empty dawn.

I’m so sorry, sweet, that I will reach around and take something from you.

I’m so sorry I tried to protect you and betrayed myself.


I wanted to embrace you and welcome how you felt in my arms,

I’m sorry I just couldn’t express it.

I wanted to make sure to uncomplicate us; secure that safety you felt

with me guiding you too all those vulnerable places to touch together,

I’m sorry I just couldn’t express it.


I still long to try again.

Will you let me try again?

I’m frightened.

I try to follow the rules, but danger is contagious.


When you breathe, something breathes back.

When you start to truly feel the sun, the rain clouds settle in.

When I take a chance and smile at you, you don’t even see me.

When I try and tell you to protect yourself from me,

you unburden your chest before me.


When you try to take my clothes off, I don’t let you.

When I try to hold back from needing your skin on mine,

I give myself over to you and succumb to what I can do.

What we are always free to do and make and see and need and feel and

lust for.


When I tell you all my truths, you reply with homespun lies and

glistening dreams

far too slippery to hold on to.

When I donate half of my order to you, you run from the attention;

hiding out in the deepest shadows and insecurities that are threads in

relationships.

When you push me out and let me in, I only try to destroy your walls and

invade your lands.

When you make me feel like a woman in your eyes, I fear you in the dark;

where your hands are going, what you want today and what you’ll need

tomorrow.


When you lean in to kiss me, I can already feel the metallic tang of

blood on your lips.

When I get to pull you closer, it’s a second of spark and minutes of

emptiness.

When I desperately want to savour what you say, I can’t begin to make

the words stay still.

When I dream of you, I can never remember what it was about.


When you prepare yourself to invite another into your sacred spaces;

witness the shadows, the creatures of your thoughts, the past and the

present you,

you must also prepare to bleed.

Prepare to kiss back and notice the cracks in your lips.

Prepare to touch and notice the bruises beginning to burst beneath your

skin.

Prepare to love and notice the heart the begins to hurt and skip its beats.


I go to bed and wonder why I was never

obviously

good enough for you.


When she says no to you, think of me.

Because there are always two sides to every argument, every process,

every feeling.

And you are entitled to bear them too.

We speak to each other in graceful touches,

left aching and throbbing with hearts out of sync.

And then we fail to speak at all, the throbbing stops

but the ache doesn’t.


We take photos together when we feel most alive.

And then we take photos to preserve what’s left, and

snap, snap before we see the stop sign.


We call, back and forth,

like flightless birds on opposite branches, needing each other’s wings.

And then we shirk, avoid,

run and flee at the slightest word in acres of blank space.


We cling like trembling flowers,

blown to brush together and meet petal by petal.

And then our slender stems snap, both falling to the earth

to not touch again and shed our tears in the dirt.


We sketch out our dreams, like mixing colours on a free easel.

And then we refuse to blend them into a painting of ourselves together.


We teach each other how to feel in love,

to feel desired, to embrace and to collapse outside our own arms.

And then we teach each other what absence truly feels like,

burning and itching and rough.


We whisper nothings to each other;

promises that we shall stay, that we would wait forever and long

into the dreary days of the in-between, honeymoon long gone.

And then we turn our backs and walk to opposite sides of our universe,

to hold hands with the scarce left-over stars.


We show each other who we want more than anyone else.

And then we take each other’s hearts when we realise we are

who they never wanted.


We understand our voices and our flaws.

And then we scream foreign tongues at each other,

hurling shattered insides and twisted hopes across our distances.


The double blade to every sword we wield.