There is not beauty in everything,
a sunset can be spoiled by snow,

yet there is wonder in the
insignificant raindrop,

that hits my window at 4am,
stirring me from a nightmare

into a reckless daydream

call me anything you like

to justify your lies

words are your weapon

but darling,

the truth is mine

Looking in your eyes
fills me with nothing but regret

this meeting of hearts,
bleeding and bruised

beaten and burnt

love is nothing but a memory, now

tainted by time,
I thought I could twist

that first kiss, that first touch

scattered ashes of passion, now spent
fated tragedy, misspent youth

a spiral of sorrow
that will never see tomorrow

I’m fond of you, he said

in the way that small children
are fond of building castles
out of sand

that will slip through
your fingers at
the slightest touch

I was happy, though
to think that someone
could be “fond” of me

giddy, gleeful, grateful

I would trade my
solid stone walls
to live in a castle
made of sand

with a man
who was fond
(but not in love)

slipping through
my fingers
as soon as
we touched

sorrow sees us for who we truly are

our shame, guilt and secrets
can not escape its eyes

we cannot hide

like a burnt leaf falling
from a withered tree
in Autumn

sorrow lays us bare

unafraid to be vulnerable
and timid

it’s lion’s jaw opens in front
of the mouse of

our hearts

and we are consumed, complete
covered and

cocooned

they ripple through me,
the undead, the broken, the cursed,
their voices strong as steel,
harsh as thunder,
dazzling as lightning

they like to think they are
an unbearable onslaught,
a tsunami,
a storm,

but darling,
I am the storm

Autumn hits our hearts
like a wave crashing against
the shore

the dead leaves of love
are falling off the trees

and in the orange canvas
of sorrow we

scatter our secrets
in the soil

to be discovered
in the Spring

They said my vulnerability
would be the death of me

my soft red heart, beating
away in a world of its own

my wild joy and
deep, deep sorrow

my ability to love in the face
of overwhelming odds

but I don’t think so

I feel like it’s the one thing
that makes me feel

alive

I walk amongst the forget-me-nots
pale blue memories strike my core
as I take each step without you
kicking the dead soil of love
off the soles of my shoes

when you wrap your arms
around me

they feel like prison bars

I am confined, tight, to your
body

and there is no way to
break out

there is a heaviness in my chest
as you pull me closer

I am screaming, running around
the bottom of my cage like a

frantic, frightened bird

(must I learn to sing?)

smoking under midnight skies
I build my kingdom out of stars
(in my head)
drinking moonshine until I'm as blind
as if the stars themselves had
blazed into my eyes

all I want is to finish this cigarette
and blow the smoke into the sky,
as the sky blows the solid shape
of my body into stardust

You may stitch my lips together

rip the voice box from my throat

stick white hot pins in my heart

and plant bitter roots in my feet

but you will never silence me

now that I’ve found my voice

tentative, at first, but it grew like a vine

to twist around your spine

I will scream from the rooftops

the injustices you laid on me

create hope with a needle and thread

I am blackened, blue and bruised

but these words carry a thousand knives

to find you

How beautiful the bloom
that blossoms again

wild roses that the winter cannot take

sunflowers refusing to sink into the soil

we look at them, and long

to be

another tulip tempted by the light

but we are weeds

creeping between concrete cracks

waiting to be destroyed
so that beauty

can prevail again

In the smoke of your cigarette

I saw everything that could ever be

and everything that never would

and it took my breath away

bright lights and city streets
where we mapped out our love

I was always too timid to tell you

that I found the streets *****
and the neon lights nauseating

but still, we survived

(somehow)

and now we live
in a quiet little village

far away from the
pushing and shoving

the stench of hot food stands
on a street corner

we have two dogs,
and walk them across the fields

and I have always been too timid
to tell you

that I have found
my heart,
my home,
my life

in your arms

I once tried to love you,
but I have played this game
before, and know well enough
when I’ve lost

walking away would be kinder,
but I’m a glutton for punishment
and getting my heart broken
every day

when I roll over in the morning
and stare into your eyes, and
know you are staring straight
through me

but at least I spent the night
with the moon and stars, and fed
my soul a little, before returning to
this hollow love

gauge out my eyes
never let me dream

of you again

you’ll only fade away
again anyway

The wilderness is wild
and dangerous

but so is my heart

we are children of the moon
but the sun is relentless
and we cannot fight
the light

we quiver under its rays
as we frantically drink moonbeams
trying to reflect the heat
back into the sky

as we anxiously await the night
where we can hide and cool
down our skin

with only the gentle stars as
company

I still think of London
every day

those bright and ***** streets

where we held hands
and kissed

stories concealed in concrete

fairytale end seekers

we were no different

but what’s the point in dreaming
and wanderlusting

over city that is now dead
to me

I love you with
my whole heart

but my heart is
fractured

and these broken
pieces

don’t make a
whole

the storm
shakes my
soul

like the roaring
wind shakes
the oak tree

to its roots

its thunder
steals my
heart

like the
waves of the
wild ocean

engulf the
shore

I have known
terror and
rage

and sat hand
in hand with
misery

yet I would
not trade a
single moment

for a still
heart

I wanted falling in love
to be real

but every kiss is just
a step in a dance

we are the players in and
the writers of

our own tragedy

each morning our hands
curl together

like a flower curling it's petals
inwards

away from the sun

what else is there to do?
but play this game

of never knowing the intent
behind each others words

spoken roughly, then gently,
compassionately or loveless

like a wild roulette wheel
of emotion

we could end it, anytime

but instead we will act
it out until we die

turned away from each other
on a bed

the last words said neither
I love you, or I hate you

just deafening silence,
a blank stare of apathy

You are a lighthouse
leading me to shore

when the ocean tries
to consume me

you reach out your hand
and pull me up above

the waves

we will sit in the sand
building castles like children

a thousand pieces of glass
shattered but rebuilt

into palaces that we
can one day call home

there is nothing here
but ashes

and yet we rise
from the dust

building a home
brick by brick

stone by stone

the foundations of our love
our hearts yet to blossom

in full bloom

buds in waiting
flowers in purgatory

but we will unfurl, soon
we will flourish

In summer,
we wait for the green leaves
to turn brown

the rolling motion
of our lives, trapped
in the changing of
the seasons

we wait, we wait

for the crisp mornings to dawn,
and afternoons with hands
wrapped around steaming
mugs of tea

deep conversations
across kitchen tables
at 3am - waiting for the
world to wake

be certain what you
wish for, is not just the end
of that terrible sensation
of prickling heat
on flesh

in my room,
littered with the wrappers of food
I stole and ate in secret

in my body,
unbrushed hair and puffy cheeks
playing a melody of loathing
on my flesh covered bones

in my heart,
wild with longing for excitement
and adventure. Untouched by
human hands, but not by human
words

I am the bitter root
of shame
the twisting torment
of guilt

and I pray every night,
but God closed his ears to me

long ago.

an incomplete life
can be made whole
by love

but a fractured love
can never be made whole
by a full life

work, drugs, money
are pale substitutes
for a welcoming
heart

bitter medicine
for the feel of another’s arms

I am incomplete
and searching for a love

unlike any I have ever known

a love to make me
whole

to be an un -
pinned butterfly

in a world of
constraints

and chains

is to be more
than free

it is to be
miraculous

I have shattered love
every time is was close enough
to touch

my heart, rented out to anyone
who could fill it

just for a second

just for a minute to not  
feel the emptiness

that lingers in the pit of my stomach

like the last leaf of Autumn,
clings desperately to the branch
of a bare tree

but love left no time to linger

it ran like water
between my fingers

until the puddle of heartbreak
was deep enough to drown in

a flower doesn’t shed its petals
merely to be seen naked

it sheds them
to show the other flowers

that it is okay to be
vulnerable

they say the things you lose
come back to you, one day

but I lost them for a reason,
shed my skin like a snake

and if those things find me, again

I’ll ******* burn those bridges
remorselessly, again

when singing failed

I screamed

and the bars of

my cage finally

shattered

into a million pieces

of freedom

like a starved dog
I will devour you
in an instant

without thought
or feeling

and in that instant
I will consume you
as the air consumes
everything around it

I will dissolve into
that air and become
edge -
less

so that where I end
and you begin
is merely a concept
long buried in
the murky swamp

where creation began

we are stardust
scattered across the night
sky

our love as fickle as
midnight

hearts as cold as the
moon

we are all made of
particles

of memory

that can never
reoccur

as poets,
we carved our hearts
out of pencil and
ink,

every drop of feeling
was a metaphor,

every echo of "I love you"
had been written
before,

how on Earth could we
ever learn how to exist
in reality?

for our passions
to become more
than a dance
on a page,

to feel and not knee-
**** into action
over our laptops
at 4am...

but I loved you,
and not for my page
or pen or protagonist,

but for your pencil -
sketched heart

that I dreamt of
filling in red

It’s dangerous to love you,

a fire burning without end,
a sea rising, threatening to
engulf everything I ever
stood for

I am prey to to the voices
in my head, that whisper
in their dizzy innocence
of “love”

but to find it in you
will cause chaos in my heart,
my soul torn in two
as I choose between
the path of devotion
in the face of overwhelming
odds

or the path of
loneliness

*** is not a destination
there is so much more
to see

love is not our destiny
there is so much more
to be

we are forever
falling back
into the ghosts
of who we
were

wrapping our wounds
in our history, as if
the past can heal
as much as it
can hurt

we are never
moving forwards
merely slipping softly
into the patterns
of yesterday

there are differences between
the sea at sunset and
sunrise

one waves away the
sorrow of my
body

and the other weeps
a fateful goodbye

weak, he called me
never knowing that
my weakness
was him

in a fog of fear
and hatred

I rose like a phoenix
and consumed everything
in fire

after the storm,
the sky grows clearer

and

the ocean waves roll over
to a new beginning

there are parts
of myself that
are still in pain

a white hot
thread pulled tight
through my spine

I speak to them,
sometimes

soothe them with
a kindness they have
never known

but they will
always be
fragments

of my soul

that are forever
untouched

tell me
do you miss me
at 4am
when the stars are screaming
and the moon is cold

tell me
do you think of me
when the ocean rolls
across the sand

tell me
did you love me
with your whole, bleeding
heart

tell me
tell me
I need to know

there was heroism in your eyes

that night

as if you had taken the entire ocean
into your lungs

to be sure I did not drown

that you had breathed fire
from your throat

to keep me warm

that you had decoded the secrets
of the stars

just so we could take our place
amongst them

I loved you

with the waves of the ocean
and the flames of the fire

and my heart swelled to hold your hand
in the starlight

memories linger like
fingerprints on my skin

a reflection in the mirror
echoes back to late nights

spent cradling a whiskey
bottle and twirling a brightly

lit cigarette

they whisper in my dreams
haunting the silence with

screams

every moment shadowed
by the ghost of you

if I believed in us

I would fight you
on that final goodbye

plunge my hands
into your chest
and rip out your heart
and beg

you to change
your mind

but I don’t believe in us

not anymore

we are Icarus
we flew to close to
the sun of love

and got burnt

words are power

like “goodbye”

It’s time that I wasn’t
your possession

a coin in your wallet

a doll for you to dress up
and manipulate

into any position you like

I am restless in your collection
of figurines

I crave independence

and a voice
of my own