Fire in my veins, blood in my mouth
Her mind was shattered, while mine travelled south
Did he cut himself on your pieces? Or did you learn to put yourself back together?
I hope you grew out of finding beauty in sadness, that you understood the possibility of happiness without depression.
I hope you learned never to fall in love with a broken mirror.

you asked once why everything
i write sounds like regret - and i
remember lying through my teeth, wanting so ******* hard to sound like as if i’ve never given a **** in my life and wasn’t about to start.

i mean, it worked with everyone else, didn’t it?

i was fuming. how dare you? deconstruct
me like that, and for that i mustered all of my boyish pride - and pretended I never knew you.

and that is why everything i
write sounds like regret.

It was 5 in the afternoon
We hid from the world behind a closed door
The smell of flowers stuck under our noses
Your pale lips shook me to my core

of course i dreamt about then
insidious, hazy but now all i smell is
vanilla and it reminds me of a heart
twinge the way it envelops my
sense of self. the hill i would die on is
the hill i ran from, the spiral
downward familiar i
wish you would see me burn

my dreams have been wanting, as of late
it's a shame you cannot wake up dead
i dream of the shiny hook in my throat
of blue skin and bodies that just won't bloat

are we fishing for words here?
or do we want them to disappear?

my mouth is a graveyard, filled with everything I could never say. the musings, the ravings, they lose sense as soon as daylight graces them and they unravel and unravel and unravel into a giant headache, the kind only opiates can help with and even then


even then the yelling does not subside

i will ruin myself before others do

is the body not a temple?

to desecrate. mar it beyond recognition

is our entirety our physicality?

i would tear it all down

the tight ball of nerves sitting in my gut
has not left
only you, everything else is white noise

trembling hands
they are trying to let you go
but you keep ending up here
still you remain

promised that you'd stay
i wish you wouldn't keep your word
you tried to leave, i know
still you remain

idly i searched for you with you

they say you lose the voice first
the way she sounds, the way her laugh makes your toes curl
i think you lose everything in a night
when you stay up late wondering how the two of you died

So out of it - it’s a shame you had to learn to write their names down on skin, because paper was left for better things, for obituaries and weddings
way past using, we’ve regressed into abusive but you don’t believe me when i say
**** helps, sober i overthink the bigger picture, sober i don’t stop to smell the flowers

******* hurt me, *******.

just ******* do it.

when your world’s been throbbing grey for the better part of a decade you’d settle for the sharpness of red as well.


just let me ******* feel something

most normal nights it's about something stupid or other, like my mother's tendency to cry when I visit her

like my inability to find something I could stick with for all of adulthood other than writing terrible anecdotes on existentialism

like the look of abject disappointment on my father's face when he found out I was getting dropped from school again

like the whole of 2015, where I spent all year convalescing behind a bar counter, convinced I could save peanuts for a degree

like when I watch motes of dust wrestle in dim light and tell myself it's just a phase


it's just a phase

Stubborn as all hell, I am
When you say you just want to be friends
But what happens when I kiss someone else
And want you on the receiving end?

As I pull off her dress,
Wishing it was us making a mess
Feel fire rolling off her tongue, in full heat
But my heart still plays your beat

She shudders and moans the way you used to,
But still
Still she’s not you

I vaguely remember us on the edge of a canal
Fists clenched, holding the night sky
Standing, screaming that we were alive
Back then it wouldn't have been a lie

And on barstools as well, faint guitar riffs
Echoing through smoky pub air
Heads lain flat on damp tables
Wish we'd known then the difference between having purpose and simply breathing

Also our beds, with the lights dimmed
Asking questions neither could answer
Just two ignorant kids waxing philosophy
Just two ignorant kids already forgetting how to live

"I'm not afraid to die," I said
If I was sure money wouldn't be wasted on a funeral
I'd **** myself anyway

Inconsequential, any of us
Why does it even matter, when all we are is dust?
"You inject meaning, and that's how you live how you do"
I reject that completely, what I've done is just not done.

i sleep.
and dream of lives i i would have given myself over to if they were more than dreams.

but i wake up to less, and less might be more but the more i sleep

the less i dream

regret
[ri-gret]
/rɪˈɡrɛt/
noun. the lump in your throat that arrived when she left

I felt like a thief, undeserving of the air around me
Every breath stolen from the lungs of someone less unworthy
Even then I couldn't stop breaking hearts
Despoiling souls, taking them apart
It filled me with completion
Causing another's destruction
Reducing them to shattered nerves,
Trembling hands and ****** curves
It made me feel significant, that I existed
Just only with the toll of self-hate

I ***** stanzas -
I spew literary clutter
My poetry is aimless
The words all muddled

I write unsharpened
The point pressed pointless
A fire smoldering with no tinder
The universe questions its existence

I remember when we sat on a park bench at night, and your head lay nestled in the hollow of my shoulder.
My arm circled around your waist, reaching to meet its twin’s wrist.
I looked at you, and you blushed, and told me that staring was rude.
I spelled ‘M-I-N-E’ in the space between your collarbones and your brow with kisses, and breathed words I never dared to speak.
You were flowers in May, the sea spray in July, and the cold wind of November.
I was obsessed, and I knew I would never be good enough.
Two days later, we broke up.
Every kiss since then has left me lonelier.