fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself
so maybe that's why i
hide
your identity behind a cloud
of prestigious synonyms and
truthful lies because
i'm scared
of you and
scared for you
and if
i'm not scared then i don't feel
anything
at all (when your fingers are
wrapped around mine
or wrapped around my neck) because
i feel like i'm suffocating, your
skin
used to be on mine but now my
vocal cords have been
snapped, strained, broken,
so maybe your lips
are like electromagnets;
they took away my steel strength
when
you pulled them away;
like tectonic plates evoking
an earthquake in my core, in my mantel,
maybe i am a planet
but you made
me inhabitable;
my atmosphere poisonous,
i am impossible to breathe around yet
you
had the audacity
to sheepishly hold up a second hand
gas mask
and say someone else
will one day finish
project "love"
on a tiny planet
who's name
begins with m
and ends with e

I was the tides and you were the moon,
                             you brought me too close all too soon

and just like the tides all I can feel is the cold
                             we suddenly came crashing to a unfortunate halt.

You shouldn't have said you revolve round another
                             my voice sounds so dull when before it was thunder

if these words were lies I would surely paint them white
                             because honestly baby, I just don't wanna fight.

So please won't you stop rubbing salt in my wounds?
                             I wish what we had could again be resumed

however you are the moon and no doubt you'll move on
                             I barely even had you and you're already gone.

So your words are like anchors and I'm helplessly drowning
                            my heart was so strong but you stopped its pounding.

self destruction like burning bridges you know full well you'll drown without
being reckless with your rafts and your lifesavers
and feeling the heat of the fire prickle your forehead,
beads of sweat teasing your skin
and making it impossible to ignore the deep water already lapping at your feet,
clearly prepared to completely engulf you in liquid darkness.

self destruction like inhaling the fumes of a hundred toxic promises,
made to you by old would-be lovers;
sugarcoated words and lies roughly covered in white,
feeling the poison seizing up your struggling lungs,
fingertips flicking through dictionaries with cracked spines:
desperate to find a word that isn't even there.

self destruction like breaking hearts that aren't yours for once,
just to hold the power of corruption and allow it to make you bloodthirsty,
much like slaughtering ants beneath magnifying glasses,
watching them struggle and turn to unrecognisable ashes,
whimpering half hearted apologies whilst trying to convince yourself
that you are not a bad person, but simply a broken soul.

alcohol drowns your sadness
cigarettes cloud your thoughts
cutting enables your demons to seep from beneath your skin
drugs blur your consciousness

there are all these remedies
for sadness
but unfortunately
none of them are permanent

however
if you continue to overdose
and paint fresh lines across your skin
you might just end up dead

When I met you, I was merely an average girl who used her pen to scribble the words that couldn't ever leave her lips.
I hid behind slanted handwriting and poorly structured sentences, rusty metaphors and my pathetic namelessness. I could paint snow-frosted trees and lakes that reflected and distorted your face without even touching a single paintbrush, and make people's hearts feel as alive as if they were ten.
But you didn't fall in love with me, not in the sense I wanted you to.

And so began my obsession with you. I hated you and wrote about how your eyes were bloodshot and how your smile was slanted and how you made my heart physically hurt. I loved you and wrote about your body perfectly slotting into mine. I made you my muse, and created dozens of metaphors and made up various words; to try to describe how you made me scared and nervous and warm and fuzzy.
I hated how I loved you and loved how I  couldn't hate you.

Months later, I'm still smitten over you, unable to get over your sad smiles and witty comments, so I beg you, just let me have a chance to show you how together we could be king and queen of the endless words I can create with my pen, how we could wear upside down crowns and dance along to the beat of my half-broken heart.

You can fix broken bones
and mend glass souvenirs
you bought in various countries;
you can fix broken nails
and patch holes in your clothing;
you can rekindle feelings
and put two broken lovers
back together

but no matter how hard
you try
and no matter
how many plasters
or painkillers
you may have,
you will never, ever,
be capable of fixing a person.

there was once a girl who had a heart made of stone
you might think this is tragic and most unfortunate
but this girl was intoxicated by the smell of a certain boy's cologne

despite the empty promises she had made to herself
about not ever falling in love or anything of the sort
she decided to take into account all the tales of love that sat atop her bookshelf

so she followed the boy with the striking green eyes
and the strong scent of cologne
and to her paranoid and lonely ways she said many goodbyes

she fell desperately and hopelessly in love;
such love that made her insides fuzzy and warm
her heart of stone becoming lighter and lighter, fluttering not much differently than a dove

but as it turns out having a heart of stone is far better than having no heart at all
although she found this out the hard way;
for the boy she had changed her ways for, had a heart so incredibly small.

My dear, if you were to cut me open,
to tear away my measly skin,
you would not find
the contents of an ordinary human being.
You would not find veins
or internal organs,
especially not a human heart.

Instead, you would find a battlefield, with freshly made bomb craters
and you would find discarded bullets,
fashioned from spiteful words,
that were perhaps destined for use on my worst enemies
but were instead aimed at myself.

You would find the remains of a daisy field
with the left over petals
looking vaguely like feathers
that fell from doves
or perhaps even angels.

You would find memories of a tiny village
once colourful and lively
but swept away by multiple hurricanes,
that took all happiness and innocence along with them.

Blood would not pour
from my lifeless body,
but dark cigarette smoke would seep from the wounds,
and if you closely investigated,
you would find that the fumes were made up of
microscopic black moths
that had all my lies and promises
carefully written all over their feeble wings

For I am not a human being, but simply a worn out shell of one.

We go through life
ticking off a metaphorical
list of firsts;
first words
first steps
first school
first friends
first love
first kiss
first heartbreak

so on and we go
ticking off item after item
until all our firsts
become our lasts.

It's ironic how I write about love
when the only love I have experienced
was when I was a young girl
and some of my parent's furniture was older
than myself

I don't know if I am allowed to call it love
because at the time I wasn't so obsessed
with thinking about his smile and the palette of colours
within his eyes
instead I focused only on perfect plastic dolls
and disguising the crumbs that fell
onto my dress when I stole from the cookie jar

It was a love so selfish that when he kissed another girl's cheek
I turned scarlet with anger
and sabotaged the sculptures she had created
out of blue and green plastic blocks

but before the sculpture even hit the carpeted floor
I was already over the so-called heartbreak,
with my eye on another little boy
who laughed at what I had just accomplished.

Nobody has ever been infatuated by me since that day
and my love has never been anything but unrequited
and unwanted
and frustrating
and yet I continue to fabricate feelings of love out of thin air,
writing them down on crumpled sheets of paper
and imagining what it would feel like
if any of the things I wrote about
ever came
true.

Human hearts are full of;
  golden sunflowers
  negative space
  sunken ships
  empty wine glasses
  sleepless nights
  deceased relatives
  cobwebs
  empty promises
  unshared secrets
  regrets

and the fingerprints of those
                                          who
                                            have
                                              broken
                                                *them.