trembling hands
they are trying to let you go
but you keep ending up here
still you remain

promised that you'd stay
i wish you wouldn't keep your word
you tried to leave, i know
still you remain

idly i searched for you with you

they say you lose the voice first
the way she sounds, the way her laugh makes your toes curl
i think you lose everything in a night
when you stay up late wondering how the two of you died

So out of it - it’s a shame you had to learn to write their names down on skin, because paper was left for better things, for obituaries and weddings
way past using, we’ve regressed into abusive but you don’t believe me when i say
**** helps, sober i overthink the bigger picture, sober i don’t stop to smell the flowers

******* hurt me, *******.

just ******* do it.

when your world’s been throbbing grey for the better part of a decade you’d settle for the sharpness of red as well.


just let me ******* feel something

most normal nights it's about something stupid or other, like my mother's tendency to cry when I visit her

like my inability to find something I could stick with for all of adulthood other than writing terrible anecdotes on existentialism

like the look of abject disappointment on my father's face when he found out I was getting dropped from school again

like the whole of 2015, where I spent all year convalescing behind a bar counter, convinced I could save peanuts for a degree

like when I watch motes of dust wrestle in dim light and tell myself it's just a phase


it's just a phase

Be silent, I wish you could just listen
For once, at least to my honest admission
I found stars in your eyes, and fire in your gaze-
IT'S ALL WRONG
I will never ever get it
I wanted to write about you
But it's making me feel tragic
You are the fuel, and the flame
It burns well, but ******* all the same

I hope this gets to you like you got to me
I am up to my ears in unwritten words
I hope to god you understand why I could never breathe
I am up to my ears in unsung verses

you tell me about
love, and say I know nothing. But I know enough.

you tell me love is your parents grown
old, together, both
each other's pillar.

you tell me love is your man
walking you home and
leaving you giddy on the doorstep

but i know love.

love is my father yelling YOU ******* ***** when my mother tries to sneak in
in the dead of night

love is me, sitting outside the cold apartment, waiting for her to come visit her four children

love is my mother's boyfriend, and his clothes hangers on my
back, from being too noisy playing
Wheel of Fortune on the old white computer

love is me, smoking my weight in
chemicals

love is me, hiding my noose in the corner
of my cupboard, worried what my siblings would think

That is love.

before any of this i never
would have questioned the stars.

i knew enough to know that i knew nothing, and it was never contentment i felt but resignation - far be it from me to think i deserve understanding.

but i’ve seen brighter things now, brash and clad in flannel, impulsive - and it was hard to tear my eyes away and force them skyward, but the stars never blinded me.

Fire in my veins, blood in my mouth
Her mind was shattered, while mine travelled south
Did he cut himself on your pieces? Or did you learn to put yourself back together?
I hope you grew out of finding beauty in sadness, that you understood the possibility of happiness without depression.
I hope you learned never to fall in love with a broken mirror.

It ached. I remembered you, and it ached.
I walked where our feet treaded, my sneakers in sync with the prints we had left in my memory.
I held her hand, and thought about how warm yours felt that first night our lips touched.
The smell of strawberries coming from her hair suffused the chill night air, and I couldn’t help but compare how similar it was to the flowery aroma of yours.
Almost angrily I pulled her chin up, and stared deep into brown eyes that looked so much like yours;

I kissed her,

And it didn’t ache anymore.

I vaguely remember us on the edge of a canal
Fists clenched, holding the night sky
Standing, screaming that we were alive
Back then it wouldn't have been a lie

And on barstools as well, faint guitar riffs
Echoing through smoky pub air
Heads lain flat on damp tables
Wish we'd known then the difference between having purpose and simply breathing

Also our beds, with the lights dimmed
Asking questions neither could answer
Just two ignorant kids waxing philosophy
Just two ignorant kids already forgetting how to live

You have to understand. I know it was my fault, but you need to accept the fact that you chose me. The cynic. You chose the one who would break up with you, and you chose wrong. You believed in huge romantic gestures, the kind you so often see in your Hollywood productions. You believed that love was real, as if it was something you could hold in your hand. And if it was, then I am sorry, but it was crushed in my palm and the smoke breathed in to coat my heart with yet another shell.

She felt like fire,
leaving scorch marks across
the inside of my chest

It burned everything I was
and I was left like residue
from a catalyst used wrong

I felt like ice
running from her flames
melting under her smoldering skin
I felt fluid and chill
but I was burning up too fast and


I feel like air.
Quiet.

some nights
i am there, flying over words, my brain voiding out the blank worlds it skipped in its impatient race to catch another glimpse of what i saw that night, you knee deep in the water with your eyes lost beyond the horizon when you said this should be enough but it never would be

other nights i am here, crawling over words, trying to get to there.

its maddening.
trying to force the words, any words! out.
god ive never met anyone more deserving.
even still, anything i write? i doubt.

you asked once why everything
i write sounds like regret - and i
remember lying through my teeth, wanting so ******* hard to sound like as if i’ve never given a **** in my life and wasn’t about to start.

i mean, it worked with everyone else, didn’t it?

i was fuming. how dare you? deconstruct
me like that, and for that i mustered all of my boyish pride - and pretended I never knew you.

and that is why everything i
write sounds like regret.

Must've known you in a previous life
You were the sun, and I was grass worshipping the sky
Must've known you in a previous life
You were the sea, and I was a cliff worn away by your tide
Must've known you in a previous life
You were a flower, and I was a bee heartbroken by your side

Would've known you in our current lives
Intertwined like vines but never really seeing eye-to eye

I felt like a thief, undeserving of the air around me
Every breath stolen from the lungs of someone less unworthy
Even then I couldn't stop breaking hearts
Despoiling souls, taking them apart
It filled me with completion
Causing another's destruction
Reducing them to shattered nerves,
Trembling hands and ****** curves
It made me feel significant, that I existed
Just only with the toll of self-hate

I ***** stanzas -
I spew literary clutter
My poetry is aimless
The words all muddled

I write unsharpened
The point pressed pointless
A fire smoldering with no tinder
The universe questions its existence

I remember when we sat on a park bench at night, and your head lay nestled in the hollow of my shoulder.
My arm circled around your waist, reaching to meet its twin’s wrist.
I looked at you, and you blushed, and told me that staring was rude.
I spelled ‘M-I-N-E’ in the space between your collarbones and your brow with kisses, and breathed words I never dared to speak.
You were flowers in May, the sea spray in July, and the cold wind of November.
I was obsessed, and I knew I would never be good enough.
Two days later, we broke up.
Every kiss since then has left me lonelier.