I make myself small, I bend and contort.
Crawling into the crevices and corners of your cozy north London flat. I settle amongst the plants you care so deeply for, staying still until you call for me.
if you call for me.
I apologize, move slowly, softly and without intention. As the sun sets in the early evening, I reach out for you but -
I wriggle and squirm in your arms at night because there is no comfort there.  
I remember how we said no matter where we were, we would be looking at the same moon each night.
It is September, and I am a tender object living in your house.
I fight every urge my heart has to feel loved –
as if I wasn’t a heavenly body worth praising.

One day when the oceans turn to ice
Ask me the mistakes I have made
One day when the sky is on fire
Ask me if what I have done in my life has been good.
Some have crept and crawled and slithered their way in and out, some have arrived softly and quietly and stayed.
Ask me what difference their strongest love or hate has made me into. I’ve fallen in and out of love so much that now my hands are libraries of all the people they have touched.
What the ocean says, that’s what I say.

number one. you exist. you can’t do anything about it.
number two. my love is peace, so be that or be nothing.
number three. balance is an abstract concept I never understood. The devil dances in me.
number four. whoever abandoned you there in the middle of the ocean, has no right to know how you made it back to the shore.
number five. It is all in gods timing.
number six. Say something nice to me.
number seven. When I am in pain, I will pray for you.
number eight. If you sit still, you rot. do not disagree.
number nine. there is no fury like a woman scorned.
number ten. Let go or be dragged.

i wish i had never met you
i don’t think there was any good reason behind it
i think it was an accident
like the gods got distracted + when they looked back again we had crashed into each other + it was too late
the damage was done + we had met
i don’t think it was a good lesson or that it made me tougher or a better person
i think it just became part of the reason i’m not the same anymore
the reason i’m so closed off, the reason i don’t trust people the way i used to
i don’t think we were supposed to meet
i think it was a complete misfortune
sometimes i think about the day that it happened + how one minor decision could have stopped the entire thing
because if we had never met i would still be all the good parts of me
and there would be a few less parts that needed fixing
and i would still go for walks by the river but you wouldn’t enter my thoughts
and i would still have these friends but we would not reflect on how broken i was when you were a part of my life
what doesn’t **** you makes you strong sure, but i was strong anyway
and the time i spent with you is dead to me
i wish i had never met you
i wish the gods had been paying attention
it was an accident that wasn’t waiting to happen
a calamity
a catastrophe
a mistake

I am done talking about my sadness like it’s some holy thing.
My skin is all honey before noon. I wake to celebrate the anniversary of a lover I never kissed. Of a body I never once adored. Then kneel back into a dream where I am good and loved. I am good. I am loved.

all of this anger was once love you know
none of this fate was deserved
I didn’t realise I had to be brave and then brave again and again and again and then actually
for the rest of my god ******
life

You begin to wear the same shirt almost daily. You sit very still.
You feel most at peace when no one is watching, you feel most at peace when you imagine he might be thinking of you like you think of him.
You let him convince himself and you and the world that the pain he caused you isn’t real. You spend days and months questioning the reality of those four weeks in London. The world agrees.
You convince yourself that nothing really mattered, and no one could truly care.
You start to resemble a crumpled gift bag in the corner of the room. You were once something to somebody.
You tell yourself you should have known better. After all your mother always told you about over watering plants as a child because you never knew how to stop giving.

I sleep with my hair warm and wild like a sonnet.
When I wake, I am new again.
All the religions you know could not teach me this.
All the gods I don’t know are begging me to meet them.

Most men will never be happy and that is what they deserve  
I found peace in stillness
I stopped living for the temporary people
I realized my mum was trying her best too
I let go of the grudges
I stopped sabotaging my own life
I found out I always deserved better

Your mother cries without tears. Your mother has sad eyes. Your mother has never had anything she ever wanted except you.
And you tell her to give in to the demons that possess her, and that god has never blessed her in this life.
You think, I’ll be greater and smarter, more grown up and a better daughter to make it worth it for her.

You told me I looked like your prayers, so I asked if you had ever begged God to die.
Time is honest, and every morning looks more and more like forgiveness.  
But every October you cross my mind, and I force myself to swallow your memory because I never told you how I always knew you’d break my heart. Every October, I close my eyes and imagine a life spent loving what is already good.

my heart has its own memory and i have forgotten nothing
lord, i worry that love is not more than violence
i hate to wait for you unbearably and breadcrumbs will always look like a feast to a woman starved of affection
i’m learning love as an act of mercy I’m learning love as an act of sacrifice
maybe in another universe we didn’t let go of each other
maybe in another universe you chose me
maybe my worst sin is that i have destroyed and betrayed myself for nothing

Good would have to exist in this world if I were to win. Some days I am an island wishing I would sink for my sins.
Every love has its landscape. Every landscape it's baron winter.
We sat by the river talking of saints and sinners, of wonders and mountains and you never touched my hand, did you?
But I -
Cannot please
Cannot charm
Or win
And the Thames is thick
The warm weather is holding
And all I ever wanted was to be good
Maybe if I run fast enough I can get back the time I lost

i.
I do not hate men. I do not rue the day you were born. I do not sit with my friends and think of ways to hurt you back. I do not egg your car or sign you up for spam mailing lists. I do not fantasize of casting a hex on you. I do not ruminate the many ways in which I want you to fail. I do not stay awake at night wondering how you can be so careless with another person’s beating heart. I especially do not miss you.

ii.
All the Bell Hooks in the world could not save you now. All the palo santo and sage can’t undo what you’ve done. All the quasi therapy speak of intentionality and avoidant attachment won’t turn back the clock. All the protests you attend or statistics you repost cannot scrub away your sins. Who are you without an audience? Who are you in the dark? Oh, how well I know you now.

iii.
I liked all that you said before, but for your information, you lied.
So, save your words or swallow them. I no longer want to be known by you. You’re nothing but a lost thing. Honorless, a mercenary, a slave to those intrusive thoughts. A performer, an actor, a dancing monkey and I am your ***** grinder.

On Saturday night I open my legs for a man I don’t love
On Sunday morning I cry for you in the kitchen with my friends over coffee
Every gentle part of me wants to give up
But it took a miracle to make me, and I go on being made
Love is in everything around me - look for the clues and wild women well, they don’t get the blues.