I feel more comfortable in this vessel of mine than I ever have before
and I suppose I have you to thank for that

because now I can walk without seeming like a question mark
and trying to blend into the wall

I can walk without looking down like an apology
so this is me saying thank you

but now I realize that I don’t need you nor do I want you

and I am happy with the sense of freedom that comes with that

you weren’t special until I made you so
and I didn’t realize my worth until we were walking away from each other

and once, back when you were good
and I still believed in you

we climbed the roof of a school and took pictures
and I didn't want to jump off  

and I scraped my leg before we started doing graffiti

and we heard the sirens from two miles away
so we dropped the spray paint and ran

and I guess they were warning us in more ways than one

Hurry now
"Something wicked this way comes"

I let my phone die so I could experience something

and I can’t tell If its 9 am or 12 in the afternoon
and I’m looking at the light coming from under my black curtains

and I’m squinting my eyes and watching the whole world blur
which is just how I’ve always liked it
so today is no different

I’m writing myself sick and drawing pictures of the hole in your lip
and the freckles on the back of your ears

and I didn’t mean to make this poem about you
but I wasn’t in the mood to tell you I love you either

and I ******* hate sunsets they make me far too sad

and I’m kind of wishing
I could just let the sun burn out my vision once and for all

then all I would have left is the simplicity of dreams

and I still wish you broke all of your bones

when they tell me that I am a star
and when they tell me that I’m bigger on the inside, that I remind them of the universe
my eyes are planets and my skin is stardust
I’m a home
I’m the adventure
I’m spine to the book
I’m the book itself
I am made of something else entirely, but I am never human.

bright green ocean eyes, I look back at you, when you look at me
desperately, are there galaxies on my tongue, when we kiss?
beneath the sand paper shell on my lips, too much coffee, too many drunken cigarettes. is it that which keeps the cosmic dust under my eyes like dark rings
orbiting nothing?
resting where I’m bruised from a lack of sleep and an overdose of citalopram?
is there a solar system sitting in the space behind the back of my knee
when I’m lying face down in the bath, empty and hardly warm at all,
staying up until 4 am screaming whilst I reorganise myself, the universe of chaos that I am
dusting the stars of the sorrows they burden as you point up to exclaim how beautiful they are.

I have been given too much responsibility here
the stars light the night sky, but see
who’s filling the space in between? tiny and distant, too small to properly distinguish, I must be drowning in the blackness
but in the morning when I am gone I can no longer see, my use is diminished and you cannot see me, anymore
this is when I close my eyes and I see the darkness I’m supposed to avoid, the darkness you ignore, and I try to whisper to the other stars
“be the night”
but they are tired, too.
they are awake at 4 am weeping into the emptiness and their mother, far away, hums quietly like a motorway
but her voice, calm, she says to us “be the abyss,
be that which engulfs,
make them uncomfortable with how big you are, how loud, how infinite.
fill the spaces they told you not to fill, the spaces which one cannot ignore.”
and then there is a light. but not a starlight.

I am not extraterrestial
I am the space in between your words
I am not the keys by the door
or the opening of eyelids
I am the wind that carries the balloon and the static in-between fingertips
I am neither stars nor hurricanes, I do not sit amongst satellites
but I am the stillness that carries them, and the storm, and i let it ride.
I am not bad, but I sure as hell am not good, and
I am not made of stars.
I am the darkness.
and when you have been gazing up at me, you have misjudged in which place to look
because you see a tiny part of what I am, and then you tell me that I am beautiful.

I am sickly and real like the foolishness of life and I don’t scratch at the surface of the jar like I was a caged butterfly
but I smash the jar to pieces from above so my palms are as rough as yours
I am dangerous and boring in equal measure and you overcomplicate me so you have something to look at
because I am not a science, I am not your prose, I am not an equation and I certainly
am not for you to work out at all
and, my love, neither are the stars.
for you still cannot dictate to a universe no matter how many times you insist it startles you
because eventually it will **** you and as you have told me before 
nothing which is beautiful does that which is ugly.

I am made of skin and bone and blood I will one day rot away, but for now I am warm
and that is fair, and my skin is thick, and my hair is soft
and I am kind.
but I am also ******, my thoughts often black, my hands red, I bruise blue.
I am callous and violent and though I am dangerous I do not hold my sword to fight you in battle. I hold the sword for myself. 

and that much is true of the stars and I
that we burn bright. colossal, dangerous, lovely, lonely.
and you cannot tell a star how to shine
and you cannot tell me how to sit, softly
so merely we, the stars and I, are friends.
I am not it, it not me, and
I am not a metaphor, I am not a poem, I am not the universe at all
I am a woman.
and that is plenty enough.

I woke up in someone’s backyard under the stars
with a cracked iPhone and a handful of pills that weren’t mine
but I took them anyway

and you were laying half under me with white residue under your nose
and a black eye from where you punched zack trying to get away

because he’s on the run and we needed somewhere to stay
and he broke your brand new **** in half

I woke up in the backseat of your car under a blanket and you
from too much drunken *** in the middle of the woods

and I got out of the car and tucked your **** back into your ***** pants and watched the rest of the flames turn to embers

as our friends smoked the last of the ****
and I could have sworn Kyle was drinking the **** water
which was straight from the river

and you stole $14 from me that night
and you were bleeding from your brain
but that’s okay

because my heart is still the only thing harder than the
rock you cracked your skull on

I would kiss
the ground she walks on,
but she always takes flight,
is so ethereal
& such a mystery,
I can't seem to
find any of
her footprints.

So instead,
I kiss the air she breathes,
hoping she inhales me.