Lily X

Lily X Oct 2018

And it falls out from me.
Pours from my fingertips.
Grief floods the room but I’ve been drowning for a long time.
I cannot contain this.

It’s a fog like carbon monoxide.
Silent.
It wraps itself around your lungs and whispers that this is the only way.
And you lie down, mistaking its vapours for clouds.

It never leaves.
You just get used to breathing poison.

Lily X Jun 2018

hearts and swords

I always thought that violence was physical, brutal, obvious.
I thought that violence was carmine washed down the sink in the dead of night.
I thought violence was sharp and hard and damning.

Not when it comes to you.

Your violence is subtle, lurking behind soft blue skies and the warm glow of sun.
Your violence is an inflection of words that makes me flinch more than a raised fist.
Your violence is comprised of memories and reminders and blame.

You don’t wield a sword, you wield your heart.
And somehow, it hurts so much more.

Lily X Jun 2018

a mess

I haven’t tidied in a while.

Clothes coat my floor in a strategic mayhem; makeup rocks on its side, contents slowly seeping out.
Medication lays scattered, dots of colour in the ocean of obsidian.

I think I see you in the madness.
Your essence.
One of the last places you breathed in.

Maybe I think that when I clear away the buried floor, I will find you beneath the fabric.

Lily X Jun 2018

Did you feel it at all?

In that moment I wonder,
did you ever feel it?
The excited humming of the Earth and
the caressing breeze that drifted through the house.
The way the Sun brightened.
The way every metronome in the home sped up, like a competition between them.

Did you even feel it?

The way time would falter as you stepped foot in the door, hesitating for just a moment.
How gravity seemed to double, intent on bringing your body to mine and succeeding every time.

No, I guess not.

Lily X Jun 2018

watching you go

I didn't move for a long time, well after the last carriage had disappeared into the horizon. I felt as though, if I moved, I would crack. I would crumble to the ground like shattered pottery - as hollow as I felt.

I was once art that you had crafted with your bare hands. Now I am just the membrance of our destruction.

I thought I would cry.

I didn't.

I couldn't. I just stood there, helpless. What could I do? I wanted to scream, to rage, to curse the sun and its stars for this horrid crime. I wanted to yell about how unjust this was, how unfair.

But I didn't. I just stood there, wishing I could turn back time.

Lily X May 2018

cat + mouse

I knew it was over
when every good thing you did felt like a trap.

Lily X May 2018

what i remember of you

fingertips and freckles and frosty smiles.
how you would whisper your secrets even though it was just you and I.
do you whisper to yourself now?
or do you whisper to somebody else?

the patterns you’d trace on my spine,
fingers walking marathons.
you always could make me breathless.
the way you looped your ‘l’s and your run-on sentences that always made me giggle.

your pout and your warm breath and your insecurities.
you paid more attention to them than me.
you were an artist but I was not your muse.
life was and I guess I was just a background painting.

I think of you sometimes.
when I taste kiwi or when that song comes on that you liked but I never remembered the name to.
or when it’s windy and raining and I don’t have your coat to shield me.

I hope you’re happy and that one day, I can be too.