Clocks beat their incessant rhythm;
time told by ticks you hear,
time is the air you breathe,
time is the harder push and kick under water.

I am acutely aware of the struggle,
the weight of water above, suffocating,
and the darkness below.

When I see you turn and stare,
a smile dusted with sugar and sprinkles,
I know it’s too late; the ticking stopped.

I’m pinned to a board for you,
splayed in compromising ways,
all the colours and lines, shapes and textures
of my soul laid bare beneath the glass.

Pinned to a board,
your personal butterfly,
wings open and stabbed through with pins.

This is how love gone wrong makes you feel.
This is what being horribly open makes you realise.
You are on display; kindnesses and sins,
inked like sacred tattoos all over.

You are the expert, judging my form.
You are the clever enthusiast,
reshaping my design, new pins,
new stabs,
as you replace the glass before my eyes again.

Hopelessly trapped in your hands,
quaking like a captured bird,
I can’t even move my arms to cover
the crude scratched markings,
bright red scissor marks across my thighs.

They speak of pain, heart ache,
loneliness, sadness;
emotional rollercoasters,
betrayal, silent tears, self punishment.
Heartbreak mostly.
Over you.

This is how anxiety kills.
The constant glass window you place
me so nicely under
is more toxic than you know.
It keeps me locked under an icy glow.

I’m pinned so I can’t
break your gaze;
you may not think it much but
I’m lost in such a tearful craze.

Please stop hurting me,
please stop viewing me.
I’m open and raw and cut,
lying like a dead specimen;
you took it all from me
when you
said
I love you.

Place me out of sight,
just for a little while.
Let me keep my secrets,
let me keep my shelter;
the safe where I throw all the
torments
because I don’t want you to see them.

If you loved me,
I wouldn’t have to be your
dead butterfly.
I’d be fluttering at your ear,
a sweet brief presence, a coloured blur,
lost in the air, free in seconds.

If you loved me,
let me go.

Hours of staying up, contemplating
you missing me.
Eyes crying blood all over the floor.
My chest grew smaller, an engine room
with the pressure vandalised and turned too high.
Fuzzy vision and lungs not filling; not soaking
themselves with air.
I can’t breathe.
Why is it so cold?

Drunk on sadness;
it permeates my skin
making everything loose and intangible;
my bedsheets become suffocating surf,
rolling and crying and sick
alone on misty rocks.
The next step could be the cliff.

I saw you with a another girl today
How numbing it is to know you are definitely ok,
More than fine,
when all I crave is to know and see
pain and misery bleeding from your wounds too.
It isn’t selfish;
because I need to know if you felt something.
If you had felt anything as you delivered your
sorry, goodbye.

I need to know why I suddenly wasn’t enough.
Maybe I gave too much to you,
and you were’t ready for it.
But maybe it was you.
You pictured a future
together, saying you had never felt this way before,
about anyone;
until you woke trembling, sweating one morning
realising the cruel hoax your heart played on you; as a fool
you listened.

And as a fool you made me crawl along at your knees.
As a fool you blindly made me ****** in the dirt for something
that proved to me you loved me.
Truly and deeply meant the promises you said.
That the words which passed your lips
were sacred, gospel and bathed in love.
But you fooled yourself.
And it was despicable for you to fool me.

I saw you with another girl.
How does it feel, wondering how I know and feel?
Or do you believe I’ve forgotten you?
Snap of the fingers, forged a new grove beside
someone else on the waiting list.

I’ve been with another man.
Though you haven’t seen it.
Perhaps even two.
Come and go in the life you always knew.
I don’t wish to hurt you,
but moving on means I have to.

I have to drive a knife beneath your skin
and watch you contort in pain.
Just like I did then.

It made me want to cry before you; eyes raining a storm and

pleading you to reconsider. I could feel all my sins wash into

a lake at my feet; their ***** colours blending and swirling

in a sordid affair of truths.

The sad loss of words beside me. You just stared at the mess

at my feet; and I could see the weight inside begin to crush you.

I’m so sorry I can see what I have done. I’m so sorry it has been me all

along that would break you.

In love and loss, I knew I would be the witness for both. Deep in a

tormented heart, gnawed and bitten down by myself,

I have to live with what I’ve done.

I have to see us sever; detach and crumble,

together yet painfully separate.

Two howling wolves buried in deep snow.

Come on, let’s get you home – you said to the ground.

I know you still hunt for answers. The words I couldn’t

gift-wrap for you because I lost the fight to voice them.

They are still here. I will keep waiting for you.

Trying to pass on the box of answers you seek;

I just want to take them out of their grave, and finally

let you see the pain in them.

And the love I’ll always preserve for you.

She paints herself, to better blend in;

She pampers and softens,

                                     she plans all the right moves.

She frets, ruffling her dusty feathers,

so battered and dull, the sheen lost

to empty restless nights alone;

alone and growing cold in the night.

She panics, blood rushing in waves,

crashing against her organs,

breath blown like strong wind.

She picks her clothes,

covers herself in shrouds;

she knows you will be looking.

She knows you will map her out;

the rivers and channels that create her landscape.

She paces, wondering if she will be

enough for you.

She only wants to be what you desire.

She wants to be the last thing you see

before you fall into sleep;

the memory you search for in your dreams.

She only yearns to have you coming back;

wishing to see more of her.

Be with her.

Love her.

Is this what we must do?

Morph into another, less wholesome,

creation of ourselves

to secure love and emotion?

How many forms can we take?

Is this just going to be a

battle;

a raging brutal clash of

shape-shifting and anxiety?

Are we just going to tally

the numbers of different self

we can create walking out

of bloodied bedrooms?

The scars of each transformation

hiding on secret patches of skin.

I’m running out of choices…

Restless days,

torturous nights.

Thinking.

Always thinking.

Click, click, click,

always clicking over in my head.

Snap to one image,

snap to the holiday you gave me,

snap to the dinners and treats,

you temptingly placed before me.


Fading hopes,

nightmares rising in the daytime.

Thinking.

Always thinking.

Click, click, click,

I confide in you what happened.

Why I’m always cold when

you reach to touch me.

Why I always patiently wait

for you to want to touch me.

Why I always wish to say

something but I hardly whisper instead.

And how it broke us.


Lasting, loving smiles,

darkening gazes and empty silences.

Thinking.

Always thinking.

Click, click, click,

I shared as much as I could.

I gave you whatever was

left over, still mine, not theirs.

You fell for me, I know you did.

Showered me with silken kisses,

steamy nights,

in all my curves

you found something beautiful.

Me on top, you

lulled me with sweet words.

I was like no other.


Fanciful dreams,

a bruised and aching reality.

Thinking.

Always thinking.

Click, click, click,

You made me want you, so badly,

because you believed I was good.

You handed me golden platters of

worth, passion;

I could finally acknowledge the shape

confidence takes.

It walked beside me.

I was foolish to place this charge in you.


Click, click, click,

Snap.

You promised you would always

be there.

You phrased such blissful melodies.

You wanted to be with me through anything.

You said that.


Why did the tide turn?

How do you go on pretending,

deceiving yourself,

when you said those exact words.

I heard you.

I heard you every night onwards.

I don’t believe you wanted to lie to me,

but you did.


You tore those stitches out,

thread by thread.

When you walked away,

leaving me turning to stone

in the freezing night air.

It whipped me, beat me and still

you didn’t look back.


Only now can I go to sleep,

knowing I don’t have to see you

imprinted

behind my eyelids.

I don’t crave you anymore.

Is it the same for you now?

Do you know what it’s like,

to be the hunted?

The pursued;

the object, the target,

the one stalked like wounded prey

as the lights turn off.


You never called off your

hunting parade.

You took advantage of your skill.

You moved on me;

a soundless shadow creeping

along the walls,

clutching fear and regret in your hands

as weapons to

take

me

down.


Brutal, savage beast you are;

only I can see those jagged teeth,

razor spikes contouring your spine,

as you grab me from behind.

The darkness colours you,

brings out more than daylight ever could.

It suits you, you and the coal and soot

you shed

in my bed.

Warm, sticky blood you open like a tap.

You rip and tear and

reap your rewards

after such a masterful ****.


You left me wounded, dripping blood

like a grimy trail behind me.

Leaving me more vulnerable to

fresh attack

than ever before.

But there was something worse still;

more terrifying than any shot from your gun.


You left more than a scar, more than

a raw wound.

You left something behind that can’t be healed.

It becomes part of my being,

inserting itself into my body,

protruding it’s toxic spikes into

any future I have;

any future that might involve a lover,

any chance at companionship.


You battered me to a ****** pulp;

a ragged mess no one could ever

risk touching,

without the blood covering themselves too.

It would seep into the sheets between us lovers;

it would attack me quietly, viciously;

It would bring out the worst in me,

and every time I would be forced to save him.

Save him from myself.


Look at what you did to me,

foul, disgusting ghost you now are.

You’re the nightmare I hide.

You’re the burn on my skin I keep in the dark.

You’re the voice I try and drown in rapid

loves, fleeting desires.

You’re my brand. You’re the one who

decides my fate from now on.

You pillaged without consent.

You never even knew what you delivered

or what

you

stole.


The hunted.

That is what I am now.

The weak creature, struggling to

heal.

And I can never tell lovers what this

sad, lonely,

aching story means.

What I can offer gets buried in fear.

I can never voice the pain that

rips in waves,

icy and sickly

in my bloodstream.

I can’t voice the remorse,

or the loneliness I shall always greet,

before they flee,

the sound of receding footsteps they beat.

Tentative tendrils of memories

encircle me today.

I eat, bathe and walk with them;

whispering sweet words;

grazing my ears with kisses

of the past.


I can feel myself weaken,

give in to your misty essence.

What place are you going to take me

to this time?

I know what images you please yourself with

are at least real.

Were real.

Not just sickly cravings, fantasies of an

escapist.

But reminiscing can be painful too.


You coalesce at the corners of my vision;

Beautiful, frail beings of floating moments.

My own ghosts;

you don’t haunt or stalk,

but drift alongside me.

Every few minutes I’ll walk through you,

and images will flood me.

Voices, colours, senses,

emotions;

a pocket of the past to relive again.


This one is fresh.

Recently swaddled and placed in storage.

How considerate of you.

To make me remember what the rapid fall

for a new love is like.

The reserved smiles, thinking you can

peek and they wouldn’t see.

The shy touches, always longing for something

heated.

The small toss and throw, between words,

gestures, hands and hearts and lips aching to

be closer.


The world vanished,

****** into its own black hole,

when I laid eyes on you.

I melted.

Seeped into warm, golden streams.

You left me feeling bold, my

desire unchallenged;

you pulled it out of me

like pulling string out of its coil.


Your arms slowly made the journey

around my slender waist;

holding me close.

I could nuzzle and cling

and I never wanted you to pull away.

Ever again.

Wrapped in each other’s warmth below the

map of stars and before

the beacons of the city,

our kiss was slow and long,

sweet,

sugary taste and warming.

A fire at the first spark, rising from ash.


Ghost, why trail me like this?

On those days I have yet to see him,

I still crave him.

You remind me of that lingering pull.

I sit on that bench where we embraced,

but he isn’t there.

All I know is you ghost.

Hovering beside me,

a still, pale presence moulding

into him.

But you are empty.

A white spectre leaving me wanting.


Stop shedding my memories before me

like dead skin.

They were.

Stop reminding me.

I’m still left yearning after your visit

to my mind.

Rooting through the archives,

trudging through my still weeping pieces.


I pull away, and your vision collapses.

Finally you fade into nothing.

I can be at peace without your play.