i'm not looking for pinpointed lights
in the sky or my veins like
emission spectra of petals you leave
around my aorta
with daisy chain bracelets
whilst holding my heart like a
baby hedgehog or a shard
of glass left from broke-into car
windows our getaway driver, misery,
scattered across the pavement of your
gaze i met for five exact seconds
i remember, clean as new linen,
the geometry of your living room
seventy-six centimetres from your
glasses or the symmetry of the
bridge of your nose or the sound
of your soft exhalation.

to three decimal places i
was in love with you, then.

the rain need not spell it out in
morse for me to know that. the
sun need not rise to devour sleep;
through the ten factorial seconds of
each six-week fraction of my
life,
i dream of you.

being a discarded paper bag
in a sunbleached ditch roadside
moment, i rode past on the
stifled cycled exhaust fumes of
the intercity from oamaru back
home: second home, fifth home; how
many times have i left home,
now? being a stinging
sensation in the back of the
throat of some lost child
(me), some lost ******
human (obviously
me), this is the only thing
i'll ever regret being a
{oh, i am just a}
thought process cycling,
stifled, thinking, through
ultraviolet-polarised perspex
there, with
you with him, and he's
making you smile, and my
head hurts
just
a little more and i
fall
a little further down, like
apples drop from trees, like
lies drop from your insides,
and i mutter something stupid and true,
like: "i'll get over it this
time" and stay still stay
still, i will get over it this
time, just i, yours {never} truly. so, do
you get that feeling
like you're losing something,
(because i don't need you)
like you're caught mid-fading,
(because i don't want you)
but you can't figure out why?

i hope you feel it in your smile
tonight, darling.

you give me butterflies
butterflies made of antifreeze
butterflies made of fish hooks
    i don't like you
       i don't like you
    i need to throw up
  i think i love you
but i really just don't like you
    because you twist my arm
           with heavy wrenches
    but never break the skin
    and i have
      a thing for blood
     i guess
           'cause
i'm too ******* lazy to
      throw myself off a bridge
   in front of a train
           on fire with smoke signal
            "*******"s trailing behind me
but who cares
who cares, really?
           love is all fish hooks
       in the eyes of the devil so
         i'll save
              the last waltz in hell
                           for you, honey.

i think i’m in love with you. You have a nice smile, no, nice is a ****** adjective. you have a smile like slow-twisting clouds above the line of dawn, it tears me apart in the best possible way. You make me unable to focus on anything on a continual basis. You

should come over. please?. Someday, i'll stop being so sad. i hope you realise it'll probably be because of you. You + me = well, we could merge escapist tendencies and get out of here, if you'd like.

If i saw you now i’d kiss you. no, i say that, but i’d probably just look at you and say nothing and wish i could say... everything, but all i want is to see you, i want to just smile at you, mainly i want to kiss you. i

would build an ocean, just

for you. If i could sing you any song it would be untitled, like all the rest of them.

We could curl up in blankets and ignore everything else, except one another’s eyes, under the stars.

Love,
sad little tom

(P.S. just try to be happy, ok?.)

*((P.P.S. try to realise how ******* wonderfully i feel about you though, ok? my tongue is a knot, but i really do. next time i see you, i'll tell you. promise. x))