You’re Eating Me From The Inside.
And not in a good, sexual way.
Every time I think of you, see a picture of you, hear your voice inside my head, I feel sick from uncertainty. Because I talk to you in my head most days, imagine our conversations, project us into the future, my future, where things turn out my right way.
But it’s nothing to the nausea I feel when I actually talk to you, the bipolar juxtaposition of hatred and love for you that comes when we talk in words that mean nothing to either of us. They mean nothing to me, I can assure you of that because I’m me, and some of the time I know what’s going on in my head. And I know they’re meaningless to you, because this is not how we talk. We don’t use these bland phrases, we don’t talk of such nothings as what the holidays have held for us. We talk of such nothings that mean so much to us that we can’t possibly keep them from each other (even though you won’t tell me about your sister. You will, one day.), they just come out naturally, and we know the other will find these nothings interesting, because they are personally important.
There are so many unspoken words, words that run underneath the surface of this mundanity. I hate you for not saying them, for not saying what you feel, for not making it clear how I should proceed. You know what? I don’t care how you feel anymore. I’m not scared. I can deal with the truth. I just wish you could.
And as you disappear off Facebook chat without so much as a goodbye, I know you’ll legitimately blame it on internet signal cutting off. A gulped back tear finds its way from underneath a closed lid.
Untitled
Empty room at sunset,
Kings Of Leon
Spewing loveless lyrics
As her fingernails click
At a glass of G&T. Classy.
The ceiling seeps into her
Imagination as
Life seeps out of her eyes,
Surprise at emotion’s
Reappearance.
Careless fuckery never hurt,
But a curt flick of the wrist
Sent her spinning.
You get the gist.
Eyes shut against
Weak sunlight,
She melts into the mattress,
Feeling the still warm curve
His body left.
Abstract
Cogs click as your
Obsolescence infiltrates
This black hole with sunbeams.
A string of words hangs
From your eyelashes,
But whispers dapple it
And it falls to my palm,
Chuckling at its coarseness.
I pluck said sunbeams
And run them through
Your hair. It’s what you always
Look like to me.
Eels flutter at you eyes
Like crumbling bricks,
Butterflies to the wind.
You vomit up a crumpled rose,
Brown with death.
Originality, please.
The moon looks through
Your eyes, beckoning
With lacy fingers,
And sand pours forth from
Your hand. My hand
Is covered, and pulls out a
Battered book.
Cover slowly opens,
And our children climb
From the pages,
Take seven steps,
Wither and die.
Generations flip the pages
Whilst tarnished silver
Melts up our arms.
The Rain Stole My Words
The soft hum of the rain
Slips into my ears,
Rips into my heart,
Bleeds those words
Kept for you
Onto my grasping hands.
Rain stops, blood clots
Around this aching hole.
But whole words track down
My legs, disintegrate
Into fettered letters and evaporate.
Smoke Streams
They stand under lamp’s pale light,
And talk of what it’s hard to say,
Blow smoke streams across the night
And hold hands; I watch as they stay.
Hooded black silhouettes, bold
Against the wall, no need to hide
From day’s watch. Doomed in the cold,
Two arms around his nocturnal bride.
Write a scene of escalating tension that takes place over breakfast.
He spread tantalising butter on toast, watching me watching him.
As his parents made polite conversation, I stitched my answers together from the fragments of a now forgotten life, pulling fictions of a childhood from the recesses of my mind.
The dog brushed past my foot and I had to stop myself jumping three feet off my chair in anticipation.
“More toast, dear?”
“No thanks, I-“
“I will please, Mum,” he smirked.
He wandered to the window and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it illicitly. I fought from joining him against the sink, instead watched the muscles in his back rear as he dragged, waiting for toast.
At last he was finished, and we went to dress properly.
“You arse. Wanting more toast when you told me it’d be quick!”
“I know. But when I saw you squirming I realised you’d fuck me harder if I made you wait.”
I wanted to refuse, just to spite him. But the way he grabbed my waist and threw me on the bed, I couldn’t stop.
I crawl into bed,
Covering my body with
Dirty thoughts of you.
Obsession, or “Why I don’t write rhyming, scanning poems”.
I saw you in my head,
Right before I woke. You
Caught me in my bed
And I thought, So it’s true.
And whilst brushing my teeth
You were at my shoulder.
I felt you underneath
My tongue. Then an older
Memory jumped at me
When I opened my bag:
I rummaged for my key
But found you, a heart snag.
I looked outside and found
You climbing the cherry
Tree. I blinked, tears abound,
Because I’m a truly
Disillusioned heart with
An imagination
That keeps me in trouble.
Cityscape #1
Every edge in the city stings like a knife’s blade. Above the growling clouds They sit in steely towers and ignore us street crawlers lurking in the depths. Rivers flow beneath Their feet, but the water surrounds us, dragging us down, down. Fluid sluts collect in obsolete doorways to feed the carrion crows snapping at their dirty hems, never enough. We hear their mournful cries as day breaks, black beaks wide in disappointment.
Love’s Blood
Love,
slick as oil,
drips from my
fingertips
and pools
wasted
on the mushroom tiles below.
Plup.
Plup.
Boxed Up
My heart lies in the dark
And beats its lonely sound
Solemnly. I laid it there
Long ago, safe, underground.
First time you smashed it,
I sewed the forlorn pieces
Together and gave you up,
Watching the stars fade.
Somehow you snuck back in,
And ripped each stitch out
One by one. And it hurt
With every beat it took.
I couldn’t mend it this time,
So I gathered the pieces and
Put them in a box. I’ll wait for you
To mend it and bring it back to me.
Tell me you noticed?
Tell me you heard?
For you I’d have run to
The ends of the earth.
—
Scouting For Girls
Why can everyone else but you see that I’m in love with you?
