you love each other
you really do
but here's the tragedy
its not enough

He was bored so you created me.

It was painful for both of us,
When you clawed at his ribs
Searching.
Your fingernails tearing out the calcium in his bones.

And his bones became my muscles,
And the muscles became my skin,

And i was naked,
and he and you were pleased.

He and i were on ambivalent terms,
But we knew we were there because you
Wanted us to be.
And we knew that was why
The fruit and animals existed;
And these were good things, we
Enjoyed them.

Later I'd blame the snake.
He reeked of knowledge;
I was interested,
I didn't know they'd use my story as an excuse
To pound curiosity out of woman.

I ate the apple
Its juice dribbled down my chin,

I realised things.

He ate the apple too; you were angry at us.
And i committed the original sin.
I realised that even though you had made the world
And me as a plaything,

My body would be a vessel for a new species.
And they would take
This earth from you.

teeth bared in defiance / a match lit, a match dropped / hands clenched into fists / words tearing down walls / jaws turning from loose to tight/ a knowledge that there has to be more / cricked fingers hanging from holes in fences/ kicking up sand / a shirt that reveals a bony collarbone / a low-hanging light jacket / long shadows cast by a long flames / strained abstract chains bound to wrists / a scattering over the night sky falling to earth / boundaryless blue over faded white / paths run into the earth / a dented green dance / a hole torn into metal / twisted rusted wires / a sandy red yard / window bars casting shadows / a broken wooden crate / footprints pressed into cement/ shattered window/ a cloud of sand

'You're a heap of flesh and guts and blood in a wax museum.
The only thing real. Sickeningly real.
Crimson and warm where the others are pale and cold. Revoltingly red, nauseatingly alive.
You're a child in a graveyard.

i. I wasn't always a house on fire, but I've always been full of light.

ii. Constellations get named after either heroes or griefs. Wild heroes. Wild griefs. The outpour of emotions within me is ancient, bronze-tipped, earth-changing.

iii. Someday I will return to the salt and the sea. Someday to the sun.

i. there is old blood crusting under your nails like rusting metal and you don't know if it is yours or someone else's but he looks at you like you are something holy and you forget about the sins crawling in your bones.

ii. he finds you in an overflowing bathtub - head between your knees, nails carving ****** moons into your skin; later you tell him yes, sometimes shower water against porcelain sounds like gunshots raining on your skin.

iii. your name is a whispered prayer that spills from his mouth and he repeats it over and over like a mantra; he breathes words you recognise from a dream and they condense in the frosty air between his lips and yours.

iv. he tells you that your bruises look like galaxies and holds you like the world has cheated him of you for far too long. tonight, you run out of names before he runs out of kisses.

v. hazy-gold sunlight sieves through the moth-eaten curtains and frames his face and you can't stop holding his cheeks in your palms because he is here, he is here, he is here, and you've long grown tired of wondering why he hasn't left yet.