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

i want someone to feel my body, to feel its heat and swim in it.
i want someone to taste the pale milk of my skin and announce its sweetness.
i want someone to trace the soft curves of my hips mindlessly, with a gentle hand.
i want someone to look me in my eyes and keep my gaze, hoping neither of us glance away.

I lie on the forest floor
with moss beneath,
delaying my sinking into the dirt.
Water beads on my skin,
capturing the trees and the green in its reflection.
Each breath feels easier than the last,
the ground guides my lungs with its own rising and falling.
Flowers creep along my limbs,
shy at first,
then slowly, they bud and bloom,
tickle the inside of my ear.
They whisper a song,
one whose melody is almost familiar,
and I feel myself erase.
My body breaks down, gives back to the wood,
and there's a certain relief in it,
as I take to the less physical world.
My bones bleach in the sunlight that slips through the leaves of the trees, my brethren.

No one will find my decaying form,
the remnants of a meaningless existence,
instead they'll find a small patch of red and blue and yellow,
of plants they can't quite name,
of petals that are silk to the touch.

In my last moments, I smile.

I've been holding my breath
since the day that you left
and I haven't exhaled
                                     since
                                                .

I sleep with my window open.
My room is cold and sometimes damp with rain,
The condensation like a tear on my cheek.
I curl beneath my quilt,
As small as I once was,
And let the darkness flood me, as it often does.

It's a strange kind of pain, that night,
One I can't help but admire.
And when that inky sky drips in through my open window,
sleep snatches me first.

A time passes.
It is cool when my eyes open,
Decorated with black snowflakes that lie upon my eyelashes.
The sun has begun her own descent,
The sky foreshadowing of her coming.
It is then,
When I'm bruised and shivering,
That the birds still sing.
And I listen to them for hours.

Because I've always seen my life in other people,
Don't worry, the irony makes me choke,
That I can't just reach out and touch them.
My hand slips through them like smoke.

Because I study my life in other people,
But it's getting harder to tell
Whether it's memory or reflection I'm watching,
Either way, it all feels like hell.

Because I hold my life in my hands,
But everything's just that bit numb.
I can't feel if it hurts or I'm breathing,
Either way, I think that I'm done.

Let me collapse down,
dissolving into myself,
replaced; a black hole.

I'm at the point now where even the weight of air on my skin hurts.

And life may be cruel,
her dark branches twisted and gnarled and hard,
her roots turning the earth over in its slumber, cold veins in viridescent sea,
her tree fruitless and barren,
brittle bark that flakes from her obsidian centre,

but underneath her coal shell,
there is nectar and sap and gold,
and it will satiate your hunger,
if you can stay long enough to taste it.

It's a mountain by now.
Plate upon plate upon bowl,
stacked higher than physics should allow,
all stained a slightly different colour of neglect.

Cutlery balance on the rim of ***** mugs
that sour the air around them.
I feel guilty when I add to their misshapen brethren, commit another utensil to its graveyard.

And yet still,
  I watch it build and I wait,
        morbidly,
for it
     to come
  crashing
    down.

I want to flow from my own fingertips,
hang in the air, a final chord.
I want to break apart into a million pieces,
dance away in the nightime's wind.
I want to be held as I split and crack,
try to meld me together one last time.

I want to burst and implode and evaporate.
And I want you to know that I'm sorry.

Because you're smart, right?
Pretty charming, right?
Love the way the wind whispers and the rain cries.
Love things other than what Girls like.

Because you like bare face, right?
They're a carbon copy, right?
But you, you're a gem in the rough, undiscovered.
You, you're a lifeform with all of nature's secrets.
You, you're much better. [Right?]

You, you're different than those other Girls,

Right?

I paint myself blue and yellow and fiery red.
I glow in the dark and echo with each step.

Please look.

I channel the sea's gasp and bloom pansies with my breath.
I carry the sun on my shoulders, feet deep in snow.

Please hold my gaze.

You think me crazy, a child in older skin, a neon sign in a silent night.

You don't understand. I'm just trying to make you stay.

I remember the sky,
the way it bruised that night,
a deep blue and purple and indigo.
You reached up, your smile widened,
and your hand drew back those same shades.
Your fingertips were ink-stained,
a small sky on each finger.

I reached up and grasped only air.

it is not a solution i long for,
it is a friend, a shoulder, a hand to squeeze mine.
and it is not answers i crave,
it is warmth, softness, an anchor to the Earth.

you don't have to understand me,
or the shadows that cling to my silhouette,
just be a light in my darkness,
and that is more than enough.

and it is a quiet kind of love we share,
a ghost of a lifetime between us.
it is solid and soft, a force like the sea,
gentle as summer breeze.
it is careful and measured, an ebbing and flowing, waning and waxing.
it is like breathing, to love you, and I will, long after my lungs give out.

I didn't want you,
I wanted love
and I have realised
that they are not the same thing.

You were a mould
that I poured my insecurities in,
a computer I tried to program.

But you are a sky,
stormy and clear and rainy and warm.

You were so blue when I longed for red.

I didn't want you.
I wanted the thought.

I am made of dead things.
I am composed of the last exhale from cooling lips.
I am the twitch in the still body's toes
and the hardening of its skin.
I am the shake of a uniformed head, a gasp of a mother, a tear of an orphan.
I am built from decay and anger and sorrow.
It takes so much old energy to get me to tomorrow.

How could i tell you?
That the pink that stained your cheek was no longer my favourite colour,
that your laugh sounded out of tune,
that your skin lacked the heat i craved,

that my love dwindled and then fell away all at once.

i'm sorry and i'm not.

i love you, but i don't.

you are game over.
vision behind weary eyes,
when does this love stop?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

We act like adults,
but we are only children
who’re playing dress-up.