it's hard to find myself in the hours of the a.m. if i look in your arms i won't be there, my place already filled by a prettier girl with your british accent and my straight teeth. shadows in the doorway scare me back to sleep where i dream of our old text messages and how you wanted to kiss me and you were 'just saying' it but never actually got the chance to.

i want to write something sweet about this but nothing about you and us and that bad temptation is sweet and this isn't even a poem don't go thinking this is meant to sound pretty it ******* isn't.

i had a dream, and you were kissing me. and to be quite honest, if you kissed me like that every time i fell asleep i would never want to wake up.

and i’ll tell you a thing you probably do not know about sad girls with grey souls and broken hearts: once you tell them you love them at three a.m. while they are smoking cigarette after cigarette, your words get stuck in their lungs like the smoke they inhale and they invade their blood like a poison, and just like that, you become part of them, part of their infinite sadness forever or until the last drop of the very same blood you invaded with your sweet sweet words flows out of their lifeless body.

the day in the park when you told me you loved me i noticed things that i never noticed before. your hair looked darker than usual and i ran my fingers through it almost absent-mindedly, a quick action that happened before i could process it. my fingertips came back wet.
saturday morning and clearly straight from the shower you smelt of deodorant, that lovely boy smell, of something fresh and clean but with the hint of sweat already from the walk over here which made me wonder why you ever even bothered with showers, when i liked the ***** sweatiness of your skin more than anything.
spring was sprung, flowers everywhere, the council gardeners pruning and weeding every afternoon when i wandered this way after school, but blissfully absent this morning, you and i lone lovers on a lark.
i noticed the dandelions were swaying, how picturesque, us in that strange place between friends and more, and the grass wet and dewy beneath our feet, rose bushes lining the path. but we strayed from that path, we did. you stole my hand and we started running, you raucous and wild, a lion inside a boy, and me, following and cautious but laughing.
there was this lovely weeping willow, the branches dangling gorgeous leaves, sweeping the ground, a curtain of green which you parted and brushed aside like the way you sometimes brush my hair from my face. under that weeping willow things happened.
“i can’t deny it,” you said. you said, as you touched my hair and my face and no other part of me, so intimate and courageous with my heart beating faster than any other saturday morning. “i can’t deny the fact that i love you,” and you were pushing me back as you stepped forward, little nudges in the hip and the shoulder and then maybe just hard enough to leave a bruise you pushed me against the trunk of the tree. as steady as i was weak.
i checked later, at home, safe in my bedroom with the curtains closed, in the almost dark i pulled off my shirt and checked, and yes you did, you did leave a bruise, but it was not as painful nor as potent as when you finally finally finally kissed me, your lips air as i was drowning, against that weeping willow with your hands finally finally finally on my waist and stomach and *******, and the fire you started in my heart as stupid as it sounds that has not and will not burn out, the pain of having to leave you at my doorstep and waiting until the next time you could relinquish my need, and now after we’re broken up the pain of not knowing if i’ll ever feel those lips again.
the bruises on my skin do not even begin to rival the internal bruising of that first kiss.

your birthday out in the meadow up on the cliff - so we’ll be closer to the stars, you said - the picnic rug spread out and covered with two glasses from your parents’ cabinet, a cheap bottle of champagne neither of us ended up liking too much, a pack of cigarettes buddy gave you as a present, a takeaway box of krispy kremes ordered in from the city, and then you and me.

before the first hour was even up you had somehow found a way to close that final gap between us, you manoeuvred yourself on top of me with an agility that could only be matched when you’re playing basketball. and then you were kissing me, everywhere, anywhere.
“logan,” i said, with those quick snatches of breath when your lips weren’t on mine and instead exploring other interesting places - the hollow of my throat, my cheekbones, the creases of the corners of my eyes.
“mmm,” you murmured, maybe with a question mark on the end but i wasn’t sure.
“you’re meant to be watching the stars,” i gasped, as you found a spot on my neck.
“i am watching the stars.”
i could see them above your head, crazy beautiful, you and the stars together, a sight matchless.
“no, you’re not.”
and by then you had moved back to my lips, and i tasted your words as you spoke into my mouth, fizzy like champagne and, of course, the inevitable sweetness of cinnamon. “yes, i am, mary” - your fingers in my hair, do you remember any ******* part of this? - “in the dark like this i can see the stars reflected in your eyes.”

the ocean blue ring of your irises and sleepy eyelids. the prominent hollow between your shoulder blades. the bare strip of stomach revealed when you yawn and stretch your arms above your head. the pale place behind your ears, sensitive to my lips. the skin of your neck always bruised with love. your hands with their long fingers and short nails so boyish and cute. the curves of the backs of your knees where your calf turns into your thigh. skin and blood and bones and breaths.
the places i reach over to touch when i wake up at four a.m. and realise that the other half of my bed is empty with a shape that only you can and will not fill.

drunk text me. text me when the music is loud and there are girls dancing around you and you’re not quite coherent and you’re not quite yourself. drunk text me that you love me or that you miss me or that i’m on your mind. let the alcohol tell me all the things you won’t say sober.

you rid yourself of my company years ago, but i still long to know how you are doing and if you have someone to keep the other half of the bed warm - but most of all, i wonder if my name ever crosses your mind, for yours never left mine.

i write poetry on the back of street signs that read ‘one way only’.

the walls of your bedroom hold the american flag and photographs - none of me, i am too new in your life - and smells of girlfriends past and hours of quiet bedtime whispers and loud nighttime fights. i don’t ever want the sound of my screaming to be locked in this room of yours, we are not permanent but we are not unkind.
i look at you now and the lines of your shoulder blades that i’ve spent the last two weeks and not a day more tracing. we seem okay for now, but this summer will end and i will go back to college where there will be too many pretty boys down the hall tempting me with gentle bumps of their hips and longing glances.
we don’t have to think about goodbye yet, though. we still have tonight to get through.

i have a map of places i can’t go without thinking of you. from the park to the waterfall, to the ******* halls of that ******* high school, even the roads when I’m driving late at night because you made it a habit for me that i can’t even begin to break. these places pinpoint in my mind, glowing stars all individual until they join up to make the constellation that was us.
i live in a ghost town and i want out.

i see the rain dancing across the windowpane as we sit in a small cottage kitchen. a game of scrabble sits before us and tea was never our strong suit so even though we are twenty-eight and still growing up now, we fiddle with our mugs of hot chocolate to keep our hands from shaking.
the blanket around my shoulders reminds me of when we were just kids, seventeen and stupid, curled in your bed. i kept it after all this time in the hopes that i will be able to get your scent back. when i saw you and we hugged and i invited you here, my whole body shivered with desire because the tantalising taste of cinnamon was still there on your skin. i wanted to kiss you like mad on that chilling, teeth-chattering cold street, but as i tried to warm your fingers in mine i told you i had a boyfriend.
this is where we sit, reminiscing in his kitchen while he is out working, and i wonder if i’ll make you leave before he comes home, or if we’ll both leave and be halfway across the country before he realises i have packed up everything i own and my car is no longer in the driveway.
when i close my eyes and think of england i think of that chance i never took.

out in the lobby, standing around, breathing in that familiar smell of cinema popcorn, different to the kind you put in the microwave for two minutes and watch spin around in the heat. we were watching people coming and going, the nighttime inhabitants streaming in for the late-movie - even later than ours - and me just wanting to turn around, disappear with you and go back into that dark and quiet space of cinema four where your hands couldn’t keep off my skin and nothing else existed. it seemed better, then, better than walking out from our date-that-wasn’t-really-a-date and facing the cold, facing our inevitable goodbye where i didn’t know if you were going to kiss me or even if i wanted you to kiss me, facing my friends with all their probing questions, facing my parents when i get home, and then, of course, the long and lonely wait until tomorrow when you’ll pick me up in your car in the morning and i’ll struggle, not knowing if it’s okay to call you my boyfriend and if i myself am now a girlfriend.

the small bumps and hiccups of the rattling carriage startled you awake. the green seats of the train were lined with cheap vinyl and stained with coffee. they held us in the glow of early morning and the glare of midday and the grimness of night. i looked up from my book and locked eyes with you. i wanted to whisper poems of e. e. cummings into your ear but you were so peaceful as you closed your eyes again, sinking into that place where you are both awake and asleep yet neither.
words of poetry could not bring to mind the softness of your skin as you sunk low into your seat, nor could they rival the prettiness of your closed eyelids and the way you curled your hands into paws using the sleeves of your sweater. i wanted to stay like that with you forever.

"i'm so bored with it all," winston churchill said, before slipping into a coma and dying nine days later.

each time you kiss me in unknown and untouched places, like the backs of my knees, the curve in my spine, the flesh behind my ear, the insides of my ankles; each time you run your fingernails down the expanse of my stomach, across my arms and the curves of my thighs; each time your tongue marks dates and times and places and memories onto my fingertips, and cheekbones, and *******; each time you drag a pen over my skin, drawing hearts and flowers and guitars, tattooing phrases and numbers counting down the days and hours to this and that; each time, you add a poem to my body.

yesterday, we were at the art gallery, wandering hand in hand, ducking into corners when rowdy groups of school kids ploughed past, sneaking kisses by the displays.
i had blisters on my toes, a product of them rubbing against the sides of my boots (on the train beforehand you leaned over and whispered into my ear that they were cfm - standing for come **** me - boots and i was astounded and pleased and trying not to make eye contact with you on that crowded standing-room-only train, wondering if other people could read our ***** thoughts) so i'd pulled them off and was slipping and sliding in my socks on the wooden floors.
it was a perfect day, really, but the only piece of art i remember seeing was you.

it was the city we talked about in those long nights when we had nothing to say, lying in your bed and memorising the way the dark painted shadows across our cheekbones and jaws. melbourne, you would whisper.
a city far away and cultured and quaint and brimming with old buildings and trams and coffee houses and american things like seven-elevens and starbucks.
it was different being there with you. much more different being there without you.

you were leaning against the frame of your back door, backlit and beautiful with the setting summer sun casting shadows on your face. i felt so alive in that moment, with the days stretching before us, and the countless days behind us, the ones we'd already blazed a trail through. i could remember the feel of your smile on mine from the night before and wondered if you would do it again. the stars were not on my mind at all; why would they be when you were looking at me like that and your jawline told stories of long nights past and i could smell strawberries in the air?

dew drops and sprinkler smells flood the streets, and us here, in your backyard, naked together and hidden from view, laughing and trying hard not to, keep it down, ssh, ssh, be quiet, do you want them to find us? no, god, no. if they found us touching each other like this, wet against the morning grass… it’s okay, that lawnmower is louder than us, they won’t find us. my head dizzy with your mum’s roses and daffodils and gardenias and tulips and chrysanthemums and the odd sunflower or too, lost in all that colour, dizzy with being so close, so intimate like this, and even though we’re in all this colour, all i want to see is the translucent touch of your pale skin on mine.

fling your favourite book off a tall building. then go find it.

“a pretty flower for someone just as pretty,” you said, placing a sprig of green plant with little purple flowers into my cupped hand. i curled my fingers around it so it disappeared, just like that, gorgeous and then gone.

"do you wanna do something?"
"of course."
"like what?"
"let's start walking and see where our feet take us."
"sounds good."
she slipped on her boots and planted a kiss on my forehead as i tied her laces with a double knot. her hand found it's way to mine and we waited for the click as she closed her apartment door behind us. she wiggled the ****: locked. the keys jingled as she tucked them inside her shoes, creating music with every step.
"come on feet," she said, as we ran down the stairs. we both looked to our shoes. "take us somewhere special."

in your backyard, a summer evening, daylight dropping low behind clouds and trees on the horizon, and light from the kitchen window illuminating a slanted square of freshly cut lawn. you and i, we drew as far back from your house with your parents and the rest of the world as we could, hidden in the far corners where we couldn’t be seen, leaning against the fence and smoking cigarettes amongst your mum’s rosebushes. this is where we liked it. this is where we filled fancy glasses and sipped stolen champagne - or you sipped and i quietly poured most of it into the garden, wondering how much wine it would take before it started killing the plants - and contemplated what we’d do with the rest of our days.
i had some ideas, and they all included you.

flowers
daisies in particular
really colourful nice-smelling flower shops
hot jam doughnuts
licking cinnamon off of your lips and skin and fingertips
going on adventures
the feeling when you are so afraid but honestly don't give a ****
driving in the early morning
driving at night
watching you drive
kissing you at the stoplights
kissing you
kissing
you

you were wearing a suit. it is a known fact that guys look hot in suits, and you were no exception. the way you shrugged on your blazer and slouched with your hands in the pockets of your pants, your dress shoes tapping a rhythm - real or made-up, it doesn’t matter - because the truth of it was you looked so good in your clothes that i wanted to take them off.

i love the moments after getting out of the shower. running fingers over clean, smooth skin, feeling the curve from my hipbone to the smooth plane of my thigh, the swoops and dips from my clavicle to my shoulder to my arm, slipping on a loose shirt and feeling the material settle over my *******, pulling on a pair of your boxers or some nice underwear and walking out into your room, the inhale of breath as you hold me and your fingertips realise i am wearing no bra, and the moments following when you touch me and - forget it being ****** - it just feels so beautiful and so human, and i smile as your fingernails tickle me and you wet my dry lips with your tongue.

and then the moment between the final shot of the movie and the beginning of the credits, the moment where all is dark and quiet, and my heart stops for a second as it does in every movie, until the music, loud and bright, as the credits roll on screen and you are gently touching my shoulder as if to wake me from a sleep.
“mary?” you whisper.
“yes,” i whisper back. i am here. we are here. we made it.
around us people stumble from their seats, groping for belongings, trekking through the popcorn and various other debris on the floor. you hold my hand even tighter than before, as if afraid to lose me in the commotion.
“can we wait here a little longer?” you say suddenly into my ear. i am thinking, why do you want to wait? and i am thinking, i always wait to be the last to leave, too. and i am thinking, you and me equals meant to be. and i am thinking, do you wait for the same reasons i do?
but i murmur, “okay.”
we lapse into silence even though the cinema is still loud, and then you stand and we slowly make our way to the back, tiptoeing past the seats to the aisle and sighing up the stairs. we hang around looking at each other in the darkness with the faint green light from the exit sign drawing out the whites in our eyes, until the very last person has trailed out through the double doors. then you grab me, so fast, so hard, and push me against one of the doors, your body pressed all the way against mine, and i am hoping the cleaners do not try and walk in but then we kiss, of course, because why else would you hang around to the end of the movie credits? and i can’t breathe because you are too good for me, too experienced, but then you pull open the other door and we are out in the light, blinking, laughing, wondering how can it still be daylight, and also, how did we ever find each other?

i remember the 17th of may but i doubt you do. another day driving in your car, this time tom odell playing through the stereo. the sun was melting our skin like honeycomb, sweet and delicious as we kissed at each red light, slowing before them on purpose, even before the traffic lights flashed amber.
i only remember that day specifically because you turned to me and said, “this is what it’s all about.”
“what’s that?” i asked.
and you said, “days like this are what life is all about,” slowly and quietly, but i still heard you because tom was singing even slower and even quieter.
how can i move on?
roads and highways are plagued with these endless thoughts of you.

everything is falling apart and i am no longer a part of anything.

i pressed my hand against the cool glass of the bus window, the print of my palm wiping away the dewy moisture from the freezing winter morning. outside it was fog and frost and cars and traffic blurring their way through the city. inside it was quiet and stranger’s silence and like another dimension; the faint yellow lights down the aisle illuminating the passengers’ tired faces.
outside, the enormous buildings revealing the dark and tantalising history of the city, the gothic structures contrasting with the business men and women with their cardboard coffee cups and briefcases in hand.
inside, itchy navy blue tights and an unlabelled plastic water bottle to sustain me for the rest of the day.
the morning was wonderful in its twisted simplicity, a million people doing a million things, and me on the bus, watching it all.

i’m thinking unhealthy things. i’m starting to think that we’re forever.

there was a florist and i really liked it, all the colours and flowers and tubs and bouquets and it was really just gorgeous, sort of too pretty for words. you know, like stars when the sky is the deepest sort of black; like how sometimes you can smudge paints together to create an image of clouds in front of a setting sun that takes your breath away; like you.
i told you my one rule when it comes to flowers, but it was too late, you had already bought me thirteen pink tulips. i smiled and thanked you and they were really beautiful but it made me a little sad because i would rather a rose bush for my backyard, a strawberry plant, a walk through the botanical gardens. something that wouldn’t wither away within days, something solid and lasting, like i hoped we would be.

“goodnight,” your kiss says, our skin pale and lips red.
“don’t,” i say. “don’t go.”
you smile into my mouth because you don’t want to.
our night-time habits are ******* with our heads. it’s hard to tell now, when we’re still trying to impress each other with magic tricks and hidden knowledge and by tattooing flowers and words onto each other’s skin, but in the morning, when we’re squinting in the too-bright light of the school hallways and sarcasm can only be emitted through minuscule sighs and shakes of the head, it comes creeping back.
we exist only in the night.

good morning kisses
goodnight kisses
kisses to taste the cinnamon on your lips
happy kisses
middle of the night kisses
gentle kisses
kisses because i like you
sleepy kisses
movie theatre kisses
oh god we're in an elevator by ourselves kisses
the stolen kind of kisses
kisses because you're too cute
wake up and see you and think you're the best person ever kisses
kisses just because

we stole things. it was a game we played. just a stupid game between a good girl and a good boy trying too hard to impress one another.
you slipped a packet of tic tacs from the display at the register of the grocery store into my hands, and as a reward i kissed you out in the parking lot, love and laughter falling from my lips. it didn’t matter that i don’t like tic tacs.

i just want a boy who touches me distractedly, like you're sitting watching a movie and he just kind of drags his fingers over your skin while watching and he doesn’t have a motive he’s not trying to tickle you or be ****** with you he’s just touching your skin and feeling the shape of your bones under that skin like it’s physically comforting for him to know that you’re right there under his fingertips.

i don’t want the stereotypical idea of love. i don’t need chocolates and flowers and love letters. okay? I mean, i just look at you and i think of you and i dream of you and i know that is all i need. you. it sounds stupid and crazy but i am crazy, and if this is love, then love is crazy too.
i feel so full sometimes. like, my heart… it keeps growing and growing until i feel so much that i could burst. i have so much inside me that i don’t know what to do with it all. it just consumes me sometimes, until i’m with you… and then you - you consume me.

i just want a disease to sweep through the world and for all the adults to die and then turn into zombies and then the kids will **** all the zombies and live in peace and harmony and then realise there is no such thing and turn against each other until they all die and then little flowers will grow through the cracks in the abandoned pavement and everything will be as it should.

i knew she went for a run every morning at seven am and that she loved red liquorice and that she despised pop culture and that she had an unhealthy habit of smoking cigarettes and that her favourite shoes were those black boots with the really incredibly high chunky heels and that she worked at the information desk at the local art gallery and that she had a college boyfriend whom she loved very much and that she chewed her hair when she was nervous or upset and that she hadn’t cut it for almost two years but i did not know her.

i loved when he held his hands over my ribs spreading his fingers and feeling the bone beneath the skin and the way he’d move his thumbs over my ******* and how he’d rest his chin on my shoulder so i could press my lips over his cheek and cheekbone and the side of his nose and his jawline and his ears and his hairline and the pink corner of his lips.
i loved the way he made me feel beautiful, like an actual human being with an actual body like this, and wow the way he made my ******* beautiful not just parts of my body but life-giving and gorgeous, and how my skin wasn’t just skin, it was me, it was humanity, and my hips were so curvy and they were those of a woman, just like every other woman that had ever walked this earth.
wow.
who knew fingers could feel like this? could make me feel like this?
humanity is so beautiful,
isn’t it?

a song. “400 lux,” you said. “lorde.”
i nodded. i knew it. i loved it.
we’re never done with killing time, can i **** it with you?
first driving so slow, creeping through the dark suburban roads, the car’s headlights sweeping over front lawns and pale bitumen, breaking through the shadows from the trees on the nature strips.
then driving fast, on the highway, on the overtaking lane all the way to the city, where we wander aimlessly street by street for a long time but it’s really only an hour or so.
and then where we crash - a cosy little coffee shop with dim lighting and low seats - open twenty-four hours and the perfect place for you and me and other people like us, because there are others like us, i know it. i see them in the passing windows of crawling cars and across the cafe at two thirty am when i’m sipping my hot chocolate and holding your hand over the coffee table.
“do you ever yell at people ‘i want to *******’ but like in your head?” you asked.
i tilted my head and nodded a little.
you nodded too, leaning back in your seat relieved. “yeah. good. me too.”
and so it goes.