SUNDAY
had a go at hating you, first
found it wouldnt quite fit—well
things like this never did suit us
we're really not the right people for it
not those dark-eyed shark-teeth people
who could craft art from the wreckage
of one another: split each others atoms
open, and maybe find beauty
all the way down
i know we're far too ugly for that
and it occurs to me today
that you likely know it too
so again i'll be the fool, will i?
that's alright; i know you'll get your turn
and i know its always good to have
a little mystery left

MONDAY
i found some old pictures of you
private things, badly-lit:
spent two minutes thinking about
how you almost got there that one time
watching my collarbones twist up into my skin
as i shrugged and said "alright—
do what you like";
spent another one
wondering if youve been there since

TUESDAY
look,
i remember it all just fine
dont tell me a single thing
about how much i did
or didnt eat, and dont you dare try to tell me
how you were always a little drunker
than you let on
ive decided i dont give a ****

WEDNESDAY
i saw your latest ex
just last week—thought you should know
they walked fast like someone with nowhere to be
who does not want anyone to see the aimlessness
of their travels
it reminded me of a bird, i think
or a desperate little moth
or a locust
lost in lieu of an swarm
either way: something with wings
and i wondered for a moment
if in the end theyd believed me after all
and then i went back off on my way
just a bit faster than before

THURSDAY
sometimes i think it wouldve been easier
had you just really made me **** myself
i think you couldve come up with
something really beautiful
if you tried
so at least there is that

FRIDAY
theres a bloodstain on the tracks tonight
a little faded, a little old, not quite enough
im waiting for the last train home
turning myself inside-out
with thoughts of you
and suddenly i am hoping
that wherever you are
you are okay
(i lean my head in against the window
and sleep, all the way
and i dream of you)

SATURDAY [1AM]
i wake up shaking
and i miss my stop
and some other things
and i realise on the long walk home
that you liked my writing before you liked me
and i wonder if youd like this
i wonder if youre winning

SATURDAY [1PM]
you wouldnt touch me like this; sickly
and sweaty and small
paying respects to a watery grave
youd love me but you wouldnt touch me
i left you a message in-between waves
just to ask if you meant what you said the last time
i couldnt even quite remember what it was
something slurred that hit me running
like being passed over by a storm
and then i heaved a dozen flecks
of language up into my hands
watching some illusion of coherency
a quiet, collected existence
drip out through my fingers
and didnt care one bit
yes, im quite sure now
youre winning—no
youve won

SUNDAY**
i thought about it and decided
im starting fresh; it is 10am
and i am trying earnestly
to hate you

Fall in love with a writer
they say and you will never die (quoted)

Fall in love with a writer
they say and you will find yourself
embodied in words

Fall in love with a writer
they say and you will find yourself
stretched over lines and pages

Now,

What if a writer falls in love with you?
What happens is that their untamed mind
becomes an asylum where
words smash themselves
on the walls of their brains
summoning
their hands just
to let them out

What if a writer falls in love with you?
What happens is that their addiction
to falling in love is amplified
and when they love
OH THEY LOVE,
they get a certain high
that numbs their inhibitions to reality
and shuns logic to a very far away land

they  reach a mental state
that lifts you to high enough
just to see a glimpse of their world
just to taste a drop of their
potion
but not all of it

What if a writer falls in love with you?
What happens is that their eye *****
birth and harness flames that burn the coldest
of hearts and warm the strongest
of selves

What if a writer falls in love with you?
What happens is that their mind soaks up
every bit, every breath
every call, every cell
every touch, every talk
just to embroider it
in the quilt of thought
that's weaving endless stories about you
in their mind

What if a writer falls in love with you?
God have mercy on their soul
for their craving becomes dangerously
intensified, wrapping itself
to their muses,
giving them the sole purpose
of existing

For the more they love
the more stories they write
and more they feel
the longer
they
live

my mother always said
"don't fall in love with a poet"
they pretend to love you
but what they really love
is writing about loving you
you are mere words to them
feelings cheapened by a page,
dusty grey typewriters,
and many unfinished drafts
of lovers both old and new,
you are the question mark,
but not the answer,
they are searching for ?
person unidentified: mystery
the page wanderer,
each poem a missing
person poster to cover their
bedroom walls.
they cannot love something
that is in their head
poets are the loneliest of
all people, my mother said.
they write to immortalize
what has long passed.
to live within their words,
but not reality,
lost souls writing suicide notes
and proclaiming it art.

i have this fantasy where:

1.
i leave you, because i can; because you would, if you could. a short story: i have become extraordinarily good at predicting your movements but only during the night when you think i am not awake. it is tuesday, 3.46am, and here is 3.49: you make coffee, you pour it down the sink and graduate to whiskey before you'd even begun, you lay your head down upon the kitchen table, and you cry, oh you cry until you're wasted on every front. it is 3.47 and you are kicking off the bedsheets.

2.
i have *** with another man, right in front of you—it doesn't matter who. he is sober, clean, and loving; he holds me afterwards. you clench your fists and drink yourself a path to apathy. chances are you want to **** him, too. but you don't. i do.

3.
he got my hair, and my bone structure, and you never asked a single question.

4.
i gather all your alcohol and your cigars, and, with every one of us still in it, i burn down the house. in my last moments, i am cleaning ash from the floors, hopeless, helpless, a lamb to the stove and an old queen to the guillotine: i am hoping you will go before me.