We fell in love in a house fire;
a blaze that did not **** us,
but rather starve us of oxygen.
Left Breathless. Choked.

I was incessantly used to being
the inflammable result of too many
fractured stars in my "decadent"
bloodstream. I know I was hard to love.

I set you ablaze,
left wanting approval from the smoke
inside your lungs in shades of
charred throats.
You left me feeling like a
faulty fire escape.

Do not come to me when things
get too hot. I will burn,
singe, scald and scar,
until you are finally the ashes
someone forgot to love.

Dean Eastmond

I whisper poison to myself in ways only poets can,
wondering why you never asked me for the antidote.
Sat in the middle of my warzone, decomposing symphonies
formed in your ears when my poetry held you tighter than I could.
It is better to recognise your blood stains for what they are.
I blame myself. I blame myself. I blame myself.

I blame myself, when you still arrive unannounced at my door
with ****** knees and elbows. Shirt sleeves and split jeans.
Again, I have another hole to make whole again.
To stitch up your stars into rearranged constellations
that match the traced freckles on your back,
that do not form to spell my name,
that aren't metaphors; but the truth.

Dean Eastmond.

Let me tell you,
how I have loved and I have loved
and I have been loved
and I have not been loved
and, ****, do I know what heartbreak feels like.

Let me tell you,
how it scares me how my legs
are stronger than my heart.
I am so tired from running from him,
so I stand and take it now.

My blood no longer tastes of him,
but my coffee does,
so I let it go cold. Cold.

I let the ice seep in as a reminder
as to what he used to keep away.

Let me tell you,
how I've learnt to fly with fractured wings.
Fear me.
Run.

Dean Eastmond.