By profession,
I am good at
waiting

I am used to
the cruelty
of human upon
human

wounds of wars
and words

delicate deceits that
brush lips with skin
and skin with finger -
prints

like him, I look at bodies
and see stories
I see bruises and scars
that conceal secrets

I can read crimes
as clearly as if
they were written
in blood across
the scene

this game should be
beneath us

he is cruel
and offers a
chance, smaller
than anything
I’ve seen on a
microscope slide

but still, breathing
existing, taunting

leaving me breathless
and broken

it squeezes my
heart as if the
blood inside is
a poison that
needs extracting

my once logical
mind quivers
under his kiss

and empties

he is the ****
that grows beneath a flower
until it is too wild
to ****

A hospital roof
top – the world swelling
like a broken limb
beneath him

breathing

the air tastes
of car fumes,
***** – people
with their feet
covered in
the dust of
life

for a moment
my heart imagines
he is going to
jump

jump
away from the plan

I trust myself
enough not to
trust him

a gun -
shot wound
to the heart

breathe - just
******* breathe

he won't lie
still, and the
red pool reaches
nearer

reaching like a
hand towards
me

at my feet

I stare at it
and remember
laughing

we didn't laugh often

I'm not like
that

but we would succumb
occasionally

I remember the feel
of his hair - the
way the roots
felt as I brushed
from them with
my fingers

my fingers remember
the touch of his
coat

the scratchy,
uncomfortable
fabric

why did he wear
the ******* thing?

the scarlet stain
has reached my toes
now

I fight the urge
to place my hand
in his

I need to focus
He needs to -

focus

please, just listen
to my voice

put your heartbeat
into it

into me

control

control

control

he is becoming
heart -
less

why has he
chosen me
to save him?

twice now

he says I matter
the most but it's
*******

he doesn't want me
he wants my
skills

to find a body
and fake
it

to wait years
no - two years
in silence so heavy
I feel like my lungs
have collapsed

and now to pull him
through - back through
the cavity in his chest

to force the blood
back into his breaking
body

whilst my hands
shake with fear

night terrors

and the shape of
his face as I
drag him

(back to life)

by the roots of
his hair

After the rain fell
I fell sunshine trickle through my body

it’s yellow mouth swallowing me
whole

I became -

reckless

with secrets, with the hearts that
beat inside an other

I was released from the suffering
of a slow death my drowning

and I didn’t care who
felt the blunt
of it

I wake up to an
itch - ripples on
the surface of
my skin come
in waves,
beating against
the shell
of me

in the night
you are
no kinder

slipping between
the sheets like
a limb, a veil

I scratch, my
bitten nails

my body,
the coarse
strip, my finger
the match

striking

the

flame

Spending cold winter days indoors,
I boil milk on a stove
to warm my stomachs
my hands clutched tight
around a hot mug

a restless urge to wander
and I find myself in the
snow covered garden

where I eat berrie,s recklessly
with little care as if
they are poisonous

self destruction is
inherent in me,
I go of on a whim
sometimes, a wild
wind of despair

I do not want to be
this cold, but there are
no flames hot enough
to thaw out the ice

that runs like
a spike through
my heart

I take tea in the afternoon
as I wait to hear his foot -
falls approaching

I am on
edge until they
kiss my ears in their
heavy booted sound

I add sugar cubes
distractedly, as my
mouth adjusts to
the taste of him

a heaviness on my
lips, upon my neck,
the scratch of a scarf
that looks softer

I imagine the scratch
of a vampire fang to be
worse, and breathe in and
out my prayers that at
least he is by my side
before nightfall

he is a thing of
paleness and impatience,
I am a woman who works
the dead into shapes
that speak

we both seek answers
but know they will not
be found in the arms of
each other

yet still,
our hearts beat
as one

Before they coma,
silence was a virtue
we never indulged in

we would talk
until our throats
bled, our tonsils
burning as if
speaking words were
as warming as
eating raw chilli

we'd tuned our vocal
chords finely, semi -
tones were for
mornings as much as
black coffees

our bodies were
strings and ***
was just another
chord

a tangle of
limbs wrapped in
copper wire

after the car hit
you, we stopped.

the silence that took you
was big enough
for two

I wanted seven seconds
of silence, the stillness
of unturned pages and
leaves that are yet to
be crunched, underfoot

we ate with plastic knifes
and forks, food blending
into to the taste of it

no time exists here

at seventeen, we were
running, full of *****
we'd bought and wine
that we'd stolen from
cheap supermarkets

now we're here

where the days chase
us down like hungry
wolves and the air is
too heavy to smoke
through

we smoked a lot

and dragged the ash
from our dog ends
across your parents
new patio

into the shapes of
our names

I wanted you to call
for me in the morning
and sneak into my room
at night

I wanted us to be lovers,
the way that bare hands
feel under fesh sheets
and the taste of your
sweat on my lips

I wanted our bodies
to burst

to know fire and
tame it

your car hit something
solid as you fiddled,
one handed, between
the ribs of me

my wasp heart
tapping at the sides
of it's jar

I tasted blood for the
first time

beating against you

You unhook me like
a fish, still shaking
and terrified of being
eaten

as you let me go
I feel the weight
of you

against me

my face turned
seeking not to
see you

I am the flesh
and bones of
you

the carcass that
lies motionless and
rotting

outside in

I have lingered on
the edges of this
lake, like a flower

or the decapitated head
of a child's doll,
no longer interested
in playing

I have known
ravenous hunger
that bread does not satisfy
and thirst that water
does not quench

there is only you
waiting with your mouth
opening like a spring flower
about to blossom

the yellow stem of you
pushing dirt back into
the ground where your
brown roots have taken
hold and tied their knots

so that you may always
be tethered, like ropes wrapped
around the wrists of a black
slave child

you seek escape but it
is not within my power
to grant such a thing

there is only me
mouth dry, belly empty
and raw

I became
untethered -
a wild wanderer
treading sand barefoot,
eager and constant
a butterfly unpinned,
unhinged -
storms rolling across
my skin like water
only divine intervention
could tame me,
and I stood fearless
in the face of
God

We pick at
the stitches of
time, as if they
will come lose
in our fingers
if we just pull
hard enough,
but there is
strength in
wounded souls
that shatters
glass as if it
is made of
sugar paper

Gracious
they called me
as I raised
my silver
clutching
hand
and toasted
your life
grimacing with
yellow stained teeth
ashes rise and
down she
goes

Scar tissue is
ageless
but my skin
has seen a
thousand
sunsets
when sleep
eludes me
and the monsters
that fester
underneath
the silver slithers
of time
burst free

They say that to heal
you must pray to
God

but I am a lesser
form, a shattered
skeleton of a
girl

and all I know
is pain

the taste of the edges
of the wound

where the blood starts
to turn brown from the

air that I can never

breathe

You were out wandering the
hills and valleys of my
heart

and I said you couldn’t stay, no
you had to go, I can’t bare to
see the pity in your eyes

we were driving through the woods as if God had chosen us,
with no fear in our souls for they

were already sold to the devil
in his handsome navy suit,
not a pitchfork tail in sight

and I learnt what they meant
about disguise, that night

I said leave me now, please
five miles away from home
I said, I can walk it, there are
no holes in my shoes

but you clung to me like a
long forgotten whisper, and
I knew I had no choice but

to love you

The moment when the rocks
turn to sand beneath your feet,
is the moment when you hear
that bird song, captured in the air
between it’s beak and your ear,
so only you can hear it

only you who can turn
sand back into glass,
to build a window in
your house where
you can only see the tress,
their branches unleashed and
threatening

but you have heard the birds sing,
and sound is the last sense

to go

I hunt for death,

teethe bared like a wild dog
catching the scent of blood meat

I am half animal, feral
and free. Yet half human,
closed up and shy

This uncomfortable juxtaposition is full of flaws to hide in

My rage is scarlet and pulsing, like a blood vessel about to burst

But is that the wild dog in me, outhunted, or the wallflower wilting

I hear his footsteps
Feel his breath on my neck
Hear him whisper in my ear
He is beauty and magic
and glitter.
But this is just fiction,
this is just hopeful longing,
this is me
not knowing what
I did wrong,
or how to fix it.

It’s the little things you do;
like holding a door

that irritates the Hell out of me.

I am not your rose fed goose, or a blonde haired nymph,

I never wanted that weekend in Paris, that forced upon me anxious insanity

yes, insane, that is what
they’ll call me.
The doctors and nurses, shrinks and quacks

but I am not
and never was

I just wanted to be a girl ,
a little more than I wanted
to be

a woman

Dreaming
With eyes wide
Open

Is the same
As running
Blind

A risk
Worth taking
Instead

Of the chocking
Confinements
Of this

God
****
Cage

Your mouth opening as it takes in
the bitter sweetness of an orange's
flesh

peel littering the worktops that
your grandmother spent hours
scrubbing down

scrubbing until the very eye of
the oak starred back at her

we don't have time for such
arduous chores, we don't look
at wood in the same way

we do not respect it, until
the sky spits out a spark

and the trees that held the
oranges, burn down

what are we now?

Love at first sight they called it -
love

as if it could be built in a second, hot blooded and wild

reckless of the heart, now clear of the cage of ribs

rippling back to it's ancestors,
who would tell it to slow down,
to wait

but there is not patience in sight. Hungry to see more skin,
soft as cashmere

if you call it love, beware.
semantics have stolen the hearts
of lesser men

you are the shadowed echo of a shapeshifter that once pulled at  the shackles of my sanity

the seasons change around us, autumn arrives, barely breathing. Those inclined to pray, pray pointlessly. We gather red leaves and pile them on top of a coffin of colour

I plan to travel. I get a wall map and some red pins, piercing every place I want to visit. This is the closest I have come to violence; the closest that most of us would

but I am not you, no, nor your passive peers. I take the throat of the Earth and shake it

oceans rise, sand swept, country boundaries knocking together like knees. I am asking for peace, don't get me wrong

but who can have that power and relinquish it, go back to stacking fruit and canned peas

I was the ground, air and water, but there was never any fire in me. I was terrified of the flames.

Fire burns and reduces things to ashes, ashes that I am forced to bathe in

the wind blows them into my eyes and I know I am no longer a friend of the overwhelming elements

just an oracle card floating on top of the sea

You, there!
with three dogs wrapping
around you ankles

tell me. Do you see me?
Do you hear by
song? Silently sending
melodies. That reach out
like tendrils to the
heart  

strings. pulling,
pulling, the desperate tug
of a girl with
a day left to
live

Sugar has grown on me,
what once sat untouched in delicate china, is now heaped
spoonful after spoonful,
into my tea

the sticky poison clamping
my tongue to the roof of
my mouth

why?

I guess I stopped feeling 'sweet enough', I felt like I'd lost my audience, who would clammer and chant my name until

nothing

silence piercing my ears with needles, where the **** were the cheers? The applause?

I am a broken bird, fallen from my perch to the dusty floor of my cage. I utter not the slightest moan,

sugar,

I crave.

A suspicion grew in my mind,
not about my lover, as he slept
beside me, statue like, with his fingers in my hair.

No, it is the world that plants
seeds of doubt, what once I
thought safe is suddenly
the open mouth of a fearsome
dragon

He turned the streets I was raised in, into a battleground. Soldiers firing shots, unpinned grenades.

Another theft, a function vital to my survival. To be in the prison of poisoned, toxic bubble of solitary confinement.

We are a world that lets these monsters lure innocent girls and women to their graves, to die without dying, to ****** without killing...

To clamber through fog, walk blindly through a forrest, all pleasure and peace erased by a single act.

I may breathe still, my heart undoubtedly beats, I am the not dead, ******, in a haze of soul aimed gunfire.

Blasted, I crawl like a dog, licking my wounds, dreaming of revenge.

I am my mother's daughter,
counting coins, making piles
of nickels and dimes
we think in green, adorned
paper. Made out of trees
whose roots are planted into
our hearts, as crucial
as the valves, veins
and arteries of our ancestors.
I do not remember ever
shedding a single leave,
yet autumn comes to us
all, diseased and old,
young and healthy,
we are two ends of a
spectrum that collapses
at the sheer mass of
miracles it births,
Oak, silver birch, willow
ash... we are two women,
making ends meet, feeding
our men before ourselves.
We do not feel the weight
of wealth, saving every cent,
but our hearts are full and
their strings can be pulled
as tightly as our purses

I find myself
at sixteen
twirling daisies
between my scarlet
painted fingers

with my lips
matching, fearful
of smudging, of
taking a glass
of water

that you desperately
need. Your dehydrated
mind playing tricks
with the lights

you do not see
your father, belt
wrapped around
his hand

his pants slowly
caving in to
gravity

and so do you
collapsing to
the bed, sheets
already ruffled

you are oblivious
to his weight and
yet you know, deep
down

that there is nothing sweet
about sixteen

we we taught as children how to dress, to walk, to smile

we were trained to be products, to be put out there for mass consumption

for men to pick, the pick of the bunch, they are after

a pretty smile, golden hair

in this fairytale, I am a rejected doll, tossed off a converbelt

I long to be made pretty,
dresses and curls

but men do not want a thing
to fix, they are not courting
challenges

I have searched, travelled oceans,
watched pink blossom fall from
a tree, sensing a way out

I pick my stitches out,
expose my seams, my cotton
heart

fall to the floor, in bits,
ready to be sown and made

new again

Without sunlight you cannot grow a seed

yet I stand here, feet planted firmly on the ground

grass underfoot, unweeded and beautiful because of it

I do not need to lean towards some far flung favour of yellow

paint, precisely drawn across the sky

when I can feel the roots of ancient trees beneath my feet

the rejected apples that turn wasps wild with drink

I can eat rotten fruit until my mouth turns sour

bitter, bitterness, so often mistaken as a flaw in character

yet it is the only leg I have to stand on

and I shall not sink to my knees, quivering, for anyone

again

Ashes remember the fires
they once were,

the way that you remember
the taste of her black hair,
the casually complicated way
she parted her lips.

Fires do not think of themselves
extinct

they believe they'll glow and burn forever

but you know they don't
and she knew, she knew this

about you

You have planted your feet
into the ground, as if the roots
of oak and willow trees
will bend and grow
around you

But the land is cruel
and unremorseful, it will
flood or famine or even
walk. The flowers full
of pollen, singing as
they sting

Yet you will tend them
tenderly, unaware of
the rage of a buried
thing. You will water
them and name them,
talk to them, sometimes

Your feet are in the ground,
now, and you cannot run
away, fight or flight, stuck
in time, in land, vegetables
surfacing, ivy climbing, as
you are forced to eat the
orange petals, that rebelled
against your claim of
ownership

I want to pour my soul into
your mouth, until you gag

it is my shame that stops me,
I am ashamed of my own longing

the still pink part of my heart
that beats for you

my water- logged lungs,
the legs that have trended water
for so long, kicked from under me

and I do not know the difference,
between riding out the waves,
or drowning

anymore

I have heard stories
of gas lights and
cobble streets

their glare glowing,
amber dreams,
holding tight,
screaming

as we slip into a
stupor, rattling
windows

the hunted and the
haunted, stumbling
across these *****
stones

shoes creek, old
and broken,
and no one.
No one.

No one

hopes for the rays
of an orange sun,
the smell of
Spring rain

or victory

Low tide -
oysters scattered across
the sand that cacoons
our feet

black hot -
we are nothing more
than a forty a day
bad habit

dying -
smoke filled lungs
desperate to swollow

air -
when all there is,
is dust

The girl that wept beside you
still cries out into the darkness

steel tears that cling to her cheeks

as if shedding them will somehow lessen the weight of her heart

beating now. against a barrier of bones

grieving, howling beneath
a full moon

for what she had with you

I burnt down the metal cage
that confined me

I have broken up with God
and I am blossoming

without his hand pushing
my head down

I eat blackberries straight from
the bush

tasting the dirt where they grew
the tightest bud bursting

into fruit that nurtures me
that sustains me

I am Godless and cageless
I am a woman of

flames, starting fires
wherever I go

burning, burning, turning
into ash

into the very dirt I courted
with my purple stained

lips

I have heard of people
tasting stars

and I wonder how their mouths
never filled with ash

I have cradled dying stars and
rocked them

as if they came from
my body

dipping my toe into the
waters of the universe

I am a child of flames
no cooler than the

sun

but I cannot taste myself
without surrending to

becoming that ash

Through all your niceties
I see the devil that you
hide

I have felt it
inside of
me

moving to a beat
beyond my range
of hearing

sweat soaked skin
that crawled on
top of me

tattooed with Japanese
as if you were
a native

of any land
but fear

I feel like we've been walking
these streets forever. My hand
in yours, my heart beating like a
****** clock, the smell of ***,
Marlboro and Mayfair
kissing my collar

I inhale the perfume,
the chemical reactions of
our flesh touching, feel the
electricity shoot through my
body

Exhale slowly, letting the breath
linger on my lips for a second
the air between our mouths
glows red with hunger

But we're not giving it up

Your words
like corsets
tighten around
my chest

Please stay.
you say

But the pulse
of the street
outside beats
through my veins and

I can't