I am sure -
certain
that you buried
your head into
the hot sand
and now I am
kissing glass
each night -
running my fingers
through a million
splinters of hair
burned black at
the root -
dead as
the dandelions
you plucked -
when I fold
my hands into
the cotton of
my pillow -
when I scream
with pleasure
or call your
name -
I am only
an ocean,
an island short
of ship -
wrecked

Teach me how to talk with God,

I am ready. Kneeling. Knees shaking on a frozen floor

the imprint of mosaic tiles
shining white

like light

I know how to beg, I say
I have pleaded with

a boy

to stop as he became a man
before my eyes

(between my thighs)

I can howl. I can pray,
the moon simply bait for

my soul.

Teach me how to love through
hymns

a simple progression of chords
that stir

the snake around my heart

I have eaten the apple more than once, more than

anyone

still, I can learn

I can learn

teach me how to talk with God

(I'll learn)

Imagine -

this blackness as if it is something
tangible

that you can hide in your
hand

an apple core you can throw
away

when the flesh has been eaten
away

I fall into a medicated sleep
each night

close my eyes to the world
yet still

it moves around me,
pulses

like the streets of a big city
drowned in neon light

I want to touch this hook that has
gutted me

until only my body remains
the outer shell

of something living, the movement
of a clenched fist

plunged into a ribcage that
shatters and pierces the heart

they call it a dog and I know it
is animal

in nature, ruthless,
with an insatiable hunger

I am the root of the dying
flower

resistant but buried under-
ground

I can only see the sun in the
moon

the sea in a handful of salt
rubbed deep into the

wound

It is morning and he -
wakes, slowly,
at a snails pace

another night conquered
another morning seen

I peel an orange for the smell,
I want my fingertips to be ripe
with flesh

the only skin I can touch
without bruising

I make coffee,
black with two sugars

we drink from chipped photo
mugs, our memories fading
as we wash and wash and
wash

them away

the doctor comes at 4
and checks his eyes

counts his pulse to the tick
of an old Grandfather clock

an antique heart, swollen

he tells me that he is before Lazarus,
and I hold no false hope, just his

gray hand, as I gently fold
back the creases in his skin
as they take the canulla

out

Close your body into -
mine.

It's 4AM and the rain is lashing
down, potholes in the sidewalk
swell from the weight of the
water

endless. The belly of a whale,
guts stripped back, open to the next
punch

why did I pick you? That sounds
like the choice of a gardener, an expert at comparing soil for the rate that a flower spreads

into you. I fell. Heart first and aching,
like the dull ache of a thunder headache, the knowledge that it will
soon clear when the storm comes

we held on hard. Through those
New York winters. We found that the
caverns of our minds were filled
with soft light

that we let flow over us. It is the yellow
seed of a rose that spreads into bloom,
tended by tender hands and allowed to keep its thorns, despite the danger they

hold. For us, careless pickers of hearts. Savage and ruthless, the delicate structure of blood

spills. Out of your mouth in the middle of a kiss. You gag. I scream. We dance out a scene. My pockets hold secrets of death, a small vial the eye refuses to linger

on. And on. It takes thirty minutes to bleed out and I count each one down with a passion you made me hide from
myself

on those nights where you held me down and took me, whispered in my ear with wine stained teeth. As I plotted and waited, waited, held my

breath as if it were made of pure gold. As if air were diamonds. I watched you shudder and take your last shake.

I took the rope from my gown and wrapped it round a tree we'd planted together.

At 4AM I kiss the shallow cheek of Death. A roar from the crowd. "More, more" but there is no

more.

The white flesh of your right arm
covers my bones, warms my
bones until the calcium
cackles, lost between
stations. It is winter
now and we burn
wood in a fire to dry
our rain soaked clothes.
Our umbrellas bent with
the weight of the wind.
A macabre statue
of plastic and metal,
a modern art exhibition.
We eat soups and stews,
vegetables and meat
melting into a ***, The
smell of it turning our lips
upwards into a smile. I
loved you in the autumn,
it's true, but it is only now
that I feel at home in the heat
of your soul.

In the end we are just
two people hanging off
the edge of a cliff,
the edge where your body
meets mine, burnt now,
charred black, like bread
you forgot you were baking,
in the oven of our hearts,
we sit, hand in hand, daring
to hope that our lives are
like a Phoenix, waiting
to rise from ashes,
these are the ashes that
they place in jars and watch
for decades, dusted
back to their stone
root, in these pastel
coloured pots we are
held, hands clasped,
trapped in the moment
before we fell into
the sea

Smiling.

It’s easy enough,
a simple twitch at
the corners of my
mouth

but my mouth still tastes
of you, your rough hands
holding me still

we folded in on ourselves,
a house of cards threatened
by the slam of a fist

on a table, where we
shot daggers at each
other's souls

you knew the right words to say
and my defences were low,
no glass case to protect
my body from

their sting

but my organs rest inside
my ribcage, my lungs are save
from the fire of your tongue

and my heart beats against
their bars, pulsing, pulsing,
pulsing away from

you

Pain dies quicker than love, they say

as I held your hand as your
heart stopped

and took your last breath
into my mouth

my pierced lips clamped over yours,
red meeting blue, blending into purple

colours mixed by artless hands
a shadow on a grainy photograph

the last image of our love
prised from my fist

pain dies quicker than love, they say
and I loved you too much

to care

Exit wounds,
the holes in my hands
that bleed, trickling down

Stigmata,
an offering to God
a rallying call
to arms

I am Adam
biting the apple
the flesh of that fruit
the closest thing
to Hell

(and I am heading, heading there)

they ask me if I meant it
as if meaning means something
more than it does, when words can exist without it

here are the facts of me
(I say)

I have never broken a bone
I don't eat red meat and
I counted out each pill

it would be less ugly
to find me this way
than slit and gaping
in the bath

I was careful (too careful)
the first time

still, you learn by living
from not

dying. Death, I name my
hands

hands that throttled the throats
of a thousand men, the ones
I destroyed with my hips

(that was before)

I knew the taste of thirty Aspirin

this time
this time
this time

I'll survive if they kick me hard enough
if they call my name loud enough
if the doctor writes furiously enough

I am not enough.

By the sun flooded window
a single rose opens like a hand

secrets that we carry like
bombs, detonate

shrapnel finds a home in our
hearts

bruised ribs break like the stem of a flower

in the hands of an impatient child

we walk knowingly into the ocean, collecting water in

our cupped hands. Letting it trickle away from us back into

the sea. We are part of a cycle now, in one simple, selfish act

we take life into our mouths when we kiss

twisting it between our teeth, tonguing it like an ulcer

wet, red lips that beg without
begging

a single rock can start an avalanche and we are

many. Heavy footed in the snow, we take death

into our mouths when we kiss, bite down hard into its

flesh. A peach that sits comfortably in a hand

ripe and ready before rotting. How do we know it's death

we're tasting? When the buds of life remain

unopened

His gutting of me,
fishlike
a hook at the end of his finger
(curling)
& me
bare skinned at
his knees
the nakedness of
a child
innocent lines
& curves of
flesh. My
gapping thighs
withered
beyond the
cure of ***
& tone
death girls
place shells
to their ears
to hear the
roar of the
sea. A mighty
whitewashed
wave crashing
against the
shore
& in that
moment I
am shaking
on the end
of a line
at the
mercy of
the devouring
hands of
a man

Hunger made you sink
to your knees,

sifting through the earth for
red berries that have fallen
from a blackbird's beak,

I bring water to quench
your thirst. How simple
an act and how
magnificent,

to think myself stronger
than famine,

strong enough to tame  
war torn cities into
sleeping dogs,

I am fire, light and air

the very elements of
existence

a supernova, burning up
a planet

I am the begining and
the end

of everything

& I thought
that the pink pills
would slide down
my throat
like ice cream
but I gagged
and choked

& I thought
that a footprint
vanished as
soon as
more snow
fell

& I thought
that a
final prayer
howled from
within the
shaking temple
of my body
would set
me free

& I thought
I thought
I thought
that suicide
would be the
end of me

& yet it
birthed me
back into
the world

& my newly
weaved pink
skin slided
into a time
before into a
a narrative
that was
impossible
before

Their searching eyes devour me

starved, ribs opening the skin

like a dam busting a river

I am lying to myself, lying

when I say 'I love you'

I do not love, no, not like this

bare backed and pushed against a wall

begging, pleading, please,

a warning on my skin

red tape saying that I am

'fragile'

brown paper wrapping my bones

and a yellow hazard sign

hanging from my *******

I take you by the
elbow, hold onto you
like cherry blossom clings
to a tree in spring, only
to shed itself, scatter in
the wind when summer
comes

a light breeze blowing
as we sit next to the
lake, threading dandelions
into necklaces because
that yellow **** is
all we have
to pick

I am sure the face
of that deathly still
water imprinted itself
on your heart that day,
with the sky forget me -
not blue, shining down
on us,

the sun, licking our bare
arms, as if we are
the only reason for its
flames

It was a long time ago, years
(or maybe it wasn't)

time blurs and blends
into the folds of my mind

a trapped moment, a decade
long howl at the moon

I mean to say, it was that day
that we visited the lake

the water reflected the sky
so perfectly in the sunlight

distorted, things are bigger
when we look back at them
(or smaller, maybe)

the wings of a blackbird spreading,
it's muzzled song

I kept a pocket of light in my hand
and held it out to you

you drank from the cusp, deeply
your lips glistened with it

I licked off the sugared
strawberry juice

that gathered at the corners of
your mouth

it dripped down my chin
red, as fire

and twice as hot
(or maybe not)

I am sure I saw you once
before

at a bus stop, your mouth hanging down to the

ground

rain splashing at your feet, puddles growing like

secrets that are kept close for decades, only to burst

open when the dam cracks
when the heart

cracks

open, we are books to be ideally flicked through

numbered pages and squint to see words

words, I think in words now
testing the weight of them

in my mouth. I know the words
that hurt

the words that heal

I am healing myself, a poem blowing through an open

window

late nights hiding with a flashlight, pouring myself

into paragraphs

I am sure I saw you once
before

but the moment passed and
I crept away

sunk myself into the streets like a brick tied

to a body that walks into a
river, eyes closed

drunk on death dreams,
white eyes roll

backwards. Back to the start. Adulthood shedding itself

as the skin wrinkles

I am sure I saw you once
before

but I kept my heart clutched
behind my teeth

and opened wide for
no-one

London, I turn to your fearless  face. A face that remembers fires and plagues. Blazing flames that I now wrap around myself to keep warm. As I walk, hand in hand with the river. I  taste the smoke of my cigarette, blown back into my face. I hold onto your size, your shape moulding into my soul. I take all of you into the cracks of my skin. Streets buzzing like an open wire. A cackle of noise that blurs into the background yet remains coloured. In your neon bright arms, I have built myself a home.

In the depths of the ocean
we have walked in to

I fill my hands with sea water
and hold them out to you

a salt drink, bringing forth salt tears

and in that, a thirst that I
could not ease

a force of nature I could not
contain

we abstain, from kissing with eyes closed

we have memorised the valleys of our flesh, translated

them into Braille beneath our fingertips

to be read in the dark and it is
dark now

your back arched like a cat, sensing danger

strangers, up to their necks, treading water

and wondering if it would really be so bad

to drown

My skin cackles in the heat
black sand, like burning coals
to walk over, an ocean too still
to believe it is alive

This is the long drive home
the memory of a heartbeat on a
television screen, fading,
sits in the passenger seat

This is our nightly entertainment
we take dinner at six, our throats
hoarse from screaming silently
at stars, from asking God to
have mercy, from asking fate
to detour. Take a break, on us, we say,
but we do not pray

Anymore. What is prayer? But the dull rustling of thoughts, the sins of a mother who worked two jobs but couldn't make the rent that week.
What is prayer but the heavy thud
of a heart

a heartbeat. Breaking up over static,
signal failing, reception blurred. This is the end, so they say, 'do not resuscitate', my father signed his name in ink. In blood.

We drive. We do not cry. We walk across the fiery beach and drink from the the salt soaked sea, to feel, to prove,

We are alive.
We are alive.
We are alive.

I want to plant my lips
in your dark curls. Red lips,
like the buckled shoes of
a child. A life at the beginning.
A name still finding it's rhythm
on the tongue.

We are like children.
Testing out words for size.

How big is 'I love you?'
How heavy is 'goodbye?'

The wishes of raindrops
led me to you -

a transparent pearl that
glistens on the petal of

a flower

teetering on the edges of
life, a kiss away from

falling

forgetting, forgotten in the folds
of earth

a ***** away from being dug
up, exposed like

a raw nerve. The calcium in
your bones

spread unevenly through
your spine

so that you must stoop
to touch me

I am a lion's tooth -
a flower blown on the whim of

a wish

At the beginning we were separate entities, two bodies walking home as the sun rose. Dancing till five on cheap cider and rancid wine.

We took breakfast in a ***** cafe, the kind where the coffee is bitter and there's a filthy spoon in the sugar bowl. Where there's an ashtray on every table despite a smoking ban.

You took my hand in yours as we left, and I made myself small enough to fit inside that stern grip, moulded myself like a glove around your long fingers.

When I look back, I remember the smell of tulips, a sweetness hung in the air. I rooted myself into you. I dug down until the core of the Earth shuddered beneath me.

Once planted, you watered me, weeded me. Cut out the diseased leaves that stunted me. I grew at your command. Tall, like a prize winning sunflower. The yellow petals of Spring, awakening.

You'd smoke in the morning and talk softly. A throwaway comment of there being no God. I didn't believe you. For I had held God in my mouth as we kissed, relished the taste of the forbidden fruit on your tongue.

Yes. I believed. In a God that you didn't but I felt when you touched me, softly, the folds of our flesh meeting, our two bodies, our seperate entities becoming

one

I thought I meant it,
thirty pills over three days
spaced out like the margins of
a book, double lined

shaken awake, I stir
like a cat roused from it's sleep,
stretching out the length of my body, arching my back, ready to attack

there is the needle, poking veins, collapsed veins that do not shed their blood easily, willingly

the tightness of a blood pressure band, constricting, heartbeat pulsing, ringing in my ears like titinus

the weight of near death, the long wait, internal quiet, external chaos

it breaks

no

(I didn't mean it.)

My heart is a grey sky
storm clouds forming in
the corners, in the blink of
an eye

I can touch tree tops
with rain drops, watering
green leaves when I am
a naked branch

I sit, solid body,
side by side with Heaven,
a black and white God

I consume stars,
their fire burning in the
pit of my stomach,

a warmth that has
replaced the heat
of your hand

in mine

One acid drop and I...

hallucinate the buildings
into beaches, the pavement
into the ocean

where we swam
naked, under stars,
whispering about
the hungry sky,

taking prisoners
of fire. You spoke
of the hierarchy
of flame, graded
by colour

(white flame is the hottest)

I placed a knife into the
hot white and passed it
onto you,

heard your flesh sizzle,
smelt your hair burn

killing the cells that touched me, plunged into my soft *******, pulled out my heart and stamped all over it

I learnt that night
that no amount
of love could
unbruise my
heart

he held me
as if I
were crystal
but I shattered
anyway

a kaleidoscope
of colours
twisting the
knife that

I plunged
into his
chest when
I said

I'm sorry
rolling away
from his
touch

another romance
blackened by
a memory

that lurks
like a creeper
in the bushes

it was
unexpected

we loved
unexpectedly

& I wonder what they're scanning for,

the grey shadows of my mind projected into pictures,

yet not.

I wait in the small, green room
it's plastic chairs and **** stained floor,

they hand me two pills, one pink like an *****, an ***** failure,

one white like the sheet they wrap around me, turning me into a ghost,

yet not.

They'll write my name on a chart, an ink stain that will never wash off

a tick box. Did you swallow? Are they hiding under your tongue?

dissolving into a metal taste that burns

like the sun

yet not.

I will get walks on Tuesday's, twenty minutes of grass and air

that I will drink, my thirst unquenchable

I'll get in line, shuffle in baggy clothes, watch television with a glassy stare,

eyes white and wide, a girl trapped inside (almost)

yet not.

I was like thunder
roaring for a lover,

a kiss on the base of
my neck, a muzzled
breath.

The room spins,
a gutfull of red wine,
an open window, blinds
billowing in the wind.

You tamed me, my wild
soul, roaming for a
home.

A memory stirs at your
touch, hands slipping
under shirts.

It was hunger that
carried me,

a longing for flesh
and bones grinding,
quilt covers rising.

I am the eye of the storm,
silencing as your mouth
swallows mine and I rise

to meet you, flames
consuming my
heart.

You are standing in the middle of a poppy field,

sweet red petals gathering around your bare feet,

their black roots planting themselves in your heart.

You will remember this, when he kisses your neck,

goodnight. You will hear him say he loved you

that day. Your yellow dress gathering about your knees,

skimming the blue bruises that have built up over time

to colour your skin in the way the sea is coloured on a globe of the Earth.

He will think your body an Atlas, drawing rings around the countries

he has visited. There will always be uncharted territory,

another city to discover. He will tell you that you looked

beautiful that day, with your hair dyed silver blonde and

curled. He will trap you in that moment like a photograph,

and sixty years from now he will whisper a word in your ear,

and you will be the girl, standing in a poppy field

again

I think to myself, keep to myself
the secrets of sea-
water

ninety-nine percent salt
that covers a black-iced road

so that the cars don't slip and sway
like a tree branch, robbed of its leaves

I retain fluid, absorb every ounce, every morsel of memory

I nearly drowned once, my lungs
filled like a petrol tank, ten dollars

a gallon. I swirled down, down
to the ocean floor

a message in a blue bottle passed me,
containing a love plea

I plea, with the sea
let me go

let me walk on the sand again,
let me bury my feet in

glass. The sea answered me.
Spat me out like the pip of an apple

the core that no-one dare eat but the
strange boy who sits alone

in hand me down clothes, with
rope burnt wrists

I walk the sand again,
dragging my heals

burying my face, crying sea-
water

a near miss,
a boy eating an apple core

the sea wall stretching out
like an arm

in the morning. The secrets of sea-
water

buried in the sand

When I was small,
I ran sticks across railings
or else pointed them at strangers, threatening to shoot

I feigned innocence, as if the folds of my lemon dress wrapped themselves tight around me. Unfolding for no one.

Yet, that's not the truth. His cupped hands offering me sweet water, a drink from the cup of purgatory.

I opened for him. Cotton collapsing to the floor. Legs still and steady, breathe sticky with secrets.

He kissed me, a Judas kiss. As if I'd soon be hanging from a tree. A neck snapped, rope burnt and smoking.

I count the scars on his chest as my own crushes, the weight of a whiskey soul, singing me to sleep.

I transcend, a goddess of air, an angel with ***** blonde hair. As his mouth takes mine, acid tongue.

A school bell rings in the distance, cutting time into chunks, religiously.

And I wonder what it's like, to place meaning in these segments of hours. To count down days or name them.

The cold bites me. I shiver in a black coat and bite my blue lips.

Yet the sun would burn me if I let it. I must stick to the dark, bury my roots in the dirt and grow

(up)

He didn't force me, I walked into that house willingly. Eager steps to escape the row of cars, the buzz of people.

I kissed him. Sweet cannabis stained tongue. I took his mouth into mine and held it, like a breath underwater.

I chose my own drinks, paid for them myself. Counted coins and pinned my hopes on you and your fake ID.

I remember it well. No force. No bait. The chatter of strangers in a cramped kitchen as I tried to sleep.

I left the door unlocked. Would anyone? Footsteps on soft carpet, quietly caught me, unawares.

Hands and tongues carve scars into my body. The kind that don't turn silver and fade. A permanent reminder of Hell.

Something changed within me that night. A new found fear. Sudden terror at an innocent touch. The people, too loud. The sun, too bright.

Scrutinising me. Judging me. Burning me down to the bone.

Rain is the language of love
and I am soaked down to my skin,
my dress sticking to me like a second skin,
flesh heart, ripped out and drowned,
a heart that has grown roots
around you

I close my eyes and imagine
filling the ocean between us
with stones

stepping, one by one, over the water

as a child, I would skim pebbles with my left hand

disadvantaged and weak

I am now as I was back then
unable to reach the better half

of me

I kiss you, empty soul
and bruised lips. Blisters
from biting down, tasting blood, swirling it round my teeth.
You are God to me, a heavenly vision. White and clean, like I have never been. I taste your bones as I take you into my mouth. A mercy kiss. Marrows mixing as we grind, holy hip bones. Friction. The clay compound of hearts. I bury each one in my chest. Hold tightly. And pray for a kiss. Unseen by God. A secret. A deadly sin. We are sinners, tongues searching in the dark. I take you, wine soaked breath and heavy sighs. Rouge red and biting, biting down to the core of the forbidden apple. We are temptation. Hungry and Godless. We forge our way with broken, filthy nails. Seeking, seeking, searching...

Rose petals litter the bed

and where you see beauty
I see only the dead flower

ripped from its roots, dirt clinging to its stem

a pink blossom, a ruddyred thorn

piercing my chest as my heart beats, irregularly

a feeble twitch, a caffeine shake

skin pulled tight, scarred, the wrappings of muscle and blood

kohl and red ochre,
like Cleopatra

(undone)

The man beside me talks in his native tongue,
I hear the accent, broken and beaten out of him yet still,
strong
he is talking of crossings and kindness, a welcome mat on the door of another
country
his coffee skin is spooned like sugar, people either take or leave
it
and the sound of waves crashing over a rubber boat
and the cries of children as icy water hits their not yet weather worn faces
pregnant women rummaging in bins for bread and the skin and bones of men,
beaten, broken, seeking comfort from an unkind face
a border, protected and a land that needs purging, a plague of fear and the man, beside me
who I cannot understand except in his heartbeat and in mine, synchronised organs that know nothing of race, fear and hate that breeds and blossoms like cherry trees. Peeling back skin and language, I hold his hand, as the ashes of the world fall on us all.

& I believed in God
as I covered your lips with mine

the thick cloak of incense smothering us, weak kneed from prayer,

sinking into stone,
the redness of our lips

the heavy gloss

washing my teeth with wine
enamel stained and

yellowing

two women, bending into the folds of each other's skin

& maybe we are God, two Eves and temptation, consumed

into the shape

of us

This was the nuts and bolts
of her,

stripped down

tasting metal with her iron tongue

licking, licking the corners of cogs

this is the age of

steel

welding, glass-less

sparks flying into her eyes

and she is

aluminium

light as air and mouldable

I work the shape

of her

with my fingers

mere brass and copper, yet

in the moonlight she is

silver

my mouth moves
yet I am
wordless

My knees weaken when I see you

half smiling lips and wine soaked breath

I am still faithful

a shadow, shadow that walks

without body

without a solid shape

I turned to God once, ideally,
my mouth forming prayers I'd saved

for you

muttering malice into the nothingness

etching memories the way they etch gravestones

a black crayon and blank paper,
pressing hard and hoping

that the colours will somehow
bloom into meaning

Godless, knees shaking

a single handshake and I am
crucified

I am afraid of that which I cannot touch,

the stars that burst and spread out across an infinite sky

the fire that's too hot, blazing black coal in the hearth

the air that carries words, flower petals, blue birds and rain

the heart's pink pulse that dictates life (and death)

the stomach full of swallowed butterflies, beating brown wings against my guts

God

you

A heartbeat that swells
like an ocean, weak and pink
from the sun

I try to breathe, breath in, breath out, in sync with
the beating of this broken
heart

It rattles around, full of brain
pills and memories, and each beat shakes me down to the bone as I

gasp in the filthy air, the taste of aeroplanes and migrating birds, tickling my tongue.

I take it in, with a breath that pulls from the bottom of my cigarette wrecked lungs and I count my

pulse.

I am a part of everything, with this beating, broken heart that persists like a ****

consuming a garden, the dandelion, the yellow root of

the sun

discoveries unfold,
into the folds of
my mind

and I swirled her teeth
and treachery around my mouth
like wine and spat them out

there is nothing left of us but
a quarter bottle of whiskey and
half a pack of tax free cigarettes

we smoke, two at a time,
choking back the cheap chemicals
as if they are our tears

and, my darling, I have cried for you, on stained and ***** sheets that I wrap, like a glove, around my trembling bones

taking the eye of the storm into my mouth, like a ripe plum, yellow flesh that taunts my tongue and I let

all of my other senses dull as I taste a mouthful

of you

They say that you should build memories

sepia photographs and inky fingerprints

a box hidden under a bed, gathering dust

a stash of dried flowers in a bra

I say I am building something stronger

with the way he looks at me as if I am the

sunset

a warm skyscrape of orange and red, a golden glow

that radiates

a rage, that will spread from my pink heart

into the cracks

a burning pit of coals, flames that flicker and

die

I am building...

building

building

hope

Sometimes through the
silence, I hear your voice
whispering my name
a timid cat-call reaching
like a hand, nails clipped
like claws. I want to
respond to your
touch, to crumble
like soft rock beneath
your breath. Yet I
can't forget those
hours you weren't
there. Or the days
of empty whiskey
bottles and *****
coffee spoons. I
used to pray to
God for you to
come back to me.
But I no longer
believe in miracles.
No. Just the awful
edges of a word,
a hand, a memory.

Like a bird of prey he circles me,

cigarette stained fingers grasping at light, loose cotton

his breath, stained with whiskey
and red wine

dripping with blood as he devours me, soul first, a ripe heart for afters

the whistle of the wind through a cracked chimney ***

where they used to send children, where children died

(I envy them)

I collapse into his words and I know I must succumb to my (un) death

to the weight of twenty stones of fat logged arteries

to a man two joints of red meat away from a heart attack

who is forcing feeding me a glass of water laced with sedatives

I pray to a God who is dead to me
that I want to resurrect

I pray for Cyanine and Arsenic,
kept in a jar

under the bed where he
buries me

Like Hercules
we were set tests
of character

building fires
that could warm
ice bitten fingers
that had plunged
through layers of
flesh, gutting out
a heart

hunting wild animals
with nothing but
hope and hunger
&

walking into the
ocean, taking on
one wave at a
time, one breath
of salty air at
a time

knowing the if we
fail, we will be
outcasts

of love