I wonder about summer days
and screaming until my voice is hoarse;
of time that runs like oil
and gets between my fingers,
of how you hate the taste of olives.

It's April.
It's living again, breathing something other than car fumes
and I'm sat breathing smoke again,
hand dangling out of my bedroom window.

I stare at green.
I make jokes.
I do the things.

But there's a hollowness.
A warning of sticky, forever days that
cling to the surface of my skin;
bloom like spring in my lungs and starve me of oxygen
with an aggressive, loving life to them.

yes.
it hurt.
it all hurts.

i want to forgive you.

All the love I could not use
has rotted into shame.

it's a shadow on my shoulder, a sky that's too dark too early, the way my brother laughs without covering his mouth.
it's the metal between my fingers, between my jaws, inside my intestines.
the blood is ugly and runs like treacle,
sweet and covering my skin, like hands that grasp too much, fingers that walk for miles beyond their home.

tell me what you thought of that night. if you think of that night. if the taste of wine reminds you of the touch of my inner thigh, if those fluorescent lights—

no.

just one more night of locking my door twice.

I watch your breaths;
slow and even
and I love you so much in this moment
I'm glad you're asleep
not to witness me
as I fall apart in your unconscious hands.

In the corner of my room,
where dust and shadows collect,
you lay your body there.

Your hair drapes over your face,
strands like spider legs,
and I watch as you turn pale.

You stiffen and groan with age,
skin washed with blues and purples,
your death is so pretty to see.

You're the very air around me,
  the very thing I
     gasp for each time
we      
break apart.

how can I change what I am,
what the tangle of my genes read
and the sharp corners of my face.
how can I dilute myself to a soft shade of salmon sky
and smell as sweet as summer's sunset.

I keep chipping away at the parts of myself,
hoping to find some sparkle of gold,
but I just become less and less and less