it's not a pretty thing always living in the future, waiting on other moments to come as if now is not worthy enough so it's something precious when you're in a moment and you don't want it to end, there is that very special feeling where each second is an infinity sooner or later about to snap

there will be days when it’s only eight o’ clock but you’ve had enough and you can’t eat, you can’t talk, you can’t concentrate enough to do homework or read or sing or watch a movie or even move. you’ll be sitting on your bedroom floor staring at the wall making lists in your head of how fat and ugly and stupid and worthless and pathetic you are, how you’ll never amount to anything. your mind will play back and forth between all the bad memories, the sad times, when you felt the lowest you could possibly feel. you’ll hate yourself so much you want to die. you’ll be there for hours.
there will be nights like this, and on one of them your dad will walk in and see you sad and bring his guitar and sit on your bed and serenade you for hours until you fall asleep on the ground. you will be bored and angry and want him to leave, want to cry, but you’ll wipe away the tears when you realise he loves you. he ******* loves you and even though he’s never told you that before, he does, you can see it in his actions. because if sitting with someone when they are sad isn’t love, then what is?
there will be a night with a storm so fierce you think to yourself that finally the earth is as loud and angry as you are. walk outside in that storm. let the rain wash over you and let your hair and clothes get soaking wet and look up at that sky, watch as the lightning scatters across the darkness, turning everything white and light as day. you’ll be so overwhelmed because there is more. so much more than all the badness. everything, the world, life, is so much bigger than you. there is a whole world, towns, cities, states and countries waiting for you. places you’ve never dreamed of, incomprehensible experiences and happiness. listen to the thunder screaming, and you’ll realise it is not angry, just as you are not angry. it is just noise. all that hate and bitterness, the darkness inside of you, it is not rage, it is just so loud. scream with the storm, i dare you. just like nature, you can’t hold it forever. a release of all that negative energy is one of the most beautiful things in the world. like that storm, you can be fierce and incredible too.
there will be days where you are so **** tired and have had enough of all the back-and-forth ******* from people that say they’re your friends. someone will hit you, someone will push you around, someone will call you a name, someone will joke with you but it won’t seem like a joke. everything will be so bad, and then something will happen, you’ll look at the colours of the sky, feel the wind on your skin, a stranger will smile at you, you’ll ace a test you didn’t study for, the person you like will send you a lovely message you, your favourite song will be on the radio, someone will make a daisy chain for you and say you look ‘pretty’ but you’ll feel beautiful. there are days like this. you have to wait for them. they will come. i promise you.
the thing you have to understand is this is only a moment in your life. a day, a week, a month, a year that *****. there is more to this. there is ******* more to your existence then the sadness and pain. you’ll open the window even if it’s two freaking degrees outside and the cold air will hit you in the face and you’ll look out into the dark night and feel something. something good for once. something that might be hope.
i know, because i’ve been there. i’ve been there, and i survived.

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.

i can't stop thinking about you and how warm your back was from the sun when i put my hands on your shoulder blades and i walked into my kitchen earlier and i smelt you which was strange because you've never been in my house and also because i can't believe how close my lips came to your neck today and i can't stop thinking about you.

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.

your mother hates me because i am the reason you fall asleep whispering ‘i love you’ into the dark at 2am when you have school in a few hours, all because i bought a plane ticket for milan but didn’t tell you until a week before lift-off. ‘i need to see you one last time,’ you said and what were we thinking sharing our first kiss when we knew we didn’t want it to be our last, it can’t be our last. you could fly to me instead of buying a car, but they were always your first love, so which would you rather ride? me or your baby?

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 want: my lips on your collar bones, my fingers digging into your shoulder blades, to breathe in the sweet scent of your neck, my legs around your waist, your body steady while mine is not.
i want: my shirt off, your fingers working the clasp of my bra, thumbs caressing, your tongue working magic in places untouched, to see you smiling, smiling because it is lovely and you love it and i love it and we’ve been waiting and wanting for so long.
you want: things i don’t know about. things i can’t give.
you want: a girl, any girl, just a girl.
i want: you.

your collar bones make me want to shove you onto a bed and sit on top of you and lay kisses on every inch of your body, and your skin, pale and glowing and unlike every other italian boy i've ever seen, you're different to them
and it's not because you think i am deserving of love and not just ***, and you think i'm beautiful and not just ****
it's the way you look into my eyes and wait for my smile because you think it's the most perfect thing in the world, and how you can't help but touch me every time i bite my lip because i'm so '****** ****' and you want my body but before that you made sure you wanted my heart

i can't write about you anymore. when i hear your name i don't feel anything; don't imagine your lips on all the bruises of my skin; don't find myself replaying the recordings of your voice in my mind; don't shudder as my heart alights and my fingers tap the rhythm of your pulse and my veins remember the way you felt inside of them. i don't write about you anymore. i can't feel anything.

the words rarely break your lips, unlike those times when we spent weeks composing letters, weaving our souls into words for the other to pore their eyes over, pens bleeding into paper which we'd press to our chests or even to our faces in the hopes of a whiff of a scent of something familiar, when we were oceans apart,
but now we're only separated by minimal layers of clothing and it's when we're lying heart to heart, that dreamy look in your eyes while you stare into mine, the dark freckles on your pale skin clusters of constellations i can't wait to name, and that gorgeous grin of yours so large i feel embarrassed, 'what?' i always laugh and blush and say, and you pull me closer, arms enclosing me so tight i can't breathe, as if i'll leave - i never will - and that's when i know,
that's how you say it:

our voices cross oceans and continents; each sigh and breath dancing all the way from your bedroom to mine. i press the phone closer to my ear, close my eyes and listen, like maybe it can help me picture you there, within touching distance, a smile drawn across your face, eyelids droopy with sleep, fingers tracing the lines of my body.
after each sentence i pause, listen to your breathing and make sure you're still there, hung on my every word, like i am yours.
hours of this. you, shy and quiet, laughing gently and beautifully. me, carrying conversation, telling you stories and weaving lines of poetry into your day, crossing time zones, while i should be asleep.
after minutes and minutes of both of us saying goodbye but neither of us hanging up, i love you is what i softly whisper. you don't hear me and i don't mind, because you murmur it to me without thinking, quiet too, almost like it was never there, like i imagined it all.
of course you hang up first, of course i lie there for hours after, with the phone still pressed tightly to my ear, trying to burn the entire conversation into my brain to replay over and over when you are the one asleep, while i am still awake.

'i hope she's as crazy about you as you are about her'

how can i write about love when you admitted you loved me but were never in love with me?

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.

“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.

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.

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.

the problem is i ******* hate you. i ******* hate you so much because i ******* love you so much, and i don’t want to. you’re just some stupid boy with a gorgeous face and a lovely voice who knows how to make me smile. and i wish that was enough. but it’s not. it never has been.

sometimes i think it's all in my head and we were never actually in love at all. i hate myself because i'm even crazier than that girl you kissed (kelsie, i never said her name out loud) when you were drunk and missing me. and you saw all the warnings, you used to call me a pyscho then say 'i love you' when you should have been turning your ******* back on me. i'm not a game to get your adrenaline going, trust me it'll be no fun waking up beside a dead girl

you are beautiful
okay, deal
i just love talking to you
at least i was joking
always
you’re the most amazing person i’ve ever met
i ******* love you, okay
the film is great
you could be a model
ti amo
i don’t know, it’s seven a.m. and i’m tired
you’re perfect for me, too
i’m not ******* lying!
of course i will
i will wait for you because i love you
sorry for everything

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?

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

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 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’m so ******* sad because a boy kissed me in his bed in a london hotel room, late last sunday morning, and i couldn’t say no because there was something delicious in the way he’d bite my lips and filled my mouth with the taste of toothpaste - i walked in on him while he was still in the bathroom. there’s no embarrassment in the way i banged my head against the wall in an effort to madly kiss him, it’s been a while since i had a boy’s tongue playing with my own and he undressed me even though i told him not to, because it’s so easy for a seventeen year old to work his way around my clothes, touching me in places i don’t normally let see the glaring light of day. ‘kiss me more’ he said, every time i stopped to think about my boyfriend patiently waiting for me back home.

when he speaks to me all i wish is that the words were coming from your mouth.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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