one day my boy will ask me for definitions of a muse, i pray that day never comes or at least does so once i am a better girl. i fear he will assume authority that is woven into my words, that saturates salty rose cheeks. i worry that he will see past deceit, he will take to my brain with a hook and needles and pick out lyricism that is potentially beautiful—but loyal only to past lovers.

god knows i don't dream of bodies i have previously been mangled by in pillowless beds, or strobe fueled clubs, but i cannot stop the wandering of my eyes. and for that, i am no better than any man i have ever condemned. the guilt weighs on my shoulders and solidifies to my tonsils, sooner or later my throat will close over and i cannot hurt you anymore.

in a sickeningly inescapable way, the truth clings to my skin like salt covered ice and burns with an ache more painful than my actions were ever intended to. yet, intention is not equal to consequence—trust me, i know that now.

the way your skin is soft and forgiving, the way my shirt is often pulled up to my collarbone, the way noses run when tears brew and smudge black waterlines. my boy is something i can't have prescribed or plucked off the street if you know the right people, but i'll become an addict if nothing else to consume him everyday.

what proves that this is reality? that you are as committed to this ridiculous ideal as i am? i will take whatever you give me—hold the salt—and it is sinful and blinding, but i cannot keep running. my knees ache, my calves cramp, and who i am if not...

that's the problem, i don't know how to finish that sentence anymore. i am done, i am sorry, but that is all.

i couldn't look at you, not at first. you are truly a beautiful man, honest. a drop of my vodka cranberry slides along the outside of my glass, i'll move my thumb just before it can touch me, but that won't stop its movement—won't change its existence, just makes it none of my concern.

you kiss me in the backyard as mosquitoes pierce through my skin and leave rising bumps that will see through to weeks from now, yet this is my one chance to see and know you. you asked me before you kissed me if you could, no one out of fifty-three has ever done that before. you point to the night sky and ask me if another boy has ever shown me the stars before (they haven't). you illuminate like the pointer stars and tell me that's how you can find the southern cross. i already knew this, but why bother explaining childhood obsessions with planetariums?

constellations of freckles kiss your back underneath reddened skin from my uncut nails. you're ridiculously gentle and i don't know how to love like that anymore, certainly not in this context of sex on twin sized matresses at least. the back of my neck, your collarbone, my inner thigh, just for a notch in a bedpost and a line in a blog post you'll never read and i'll never revisit.

your friends snort mdma in the kitchen, you have a copy of the bell jar for your kris kringle, i caught a familair disappointment but not your number. i don't even like you, but we're eighteen and i'm chronically alone and i can't shake that the whining in my ears are the only rings i'll ever know.

and suddenly, it was as if rock bottom fell from beneath me and now i can never scramble my way back up again. if i know i am right then why is that not enough? phone calls and text messages play tirelessly on loop, the scratching of a broken record fills my head and i cannot move, i cannot even think.

i can only cry and rub at my temples and and clasp my hands together to pray to a god i am not sure is even there. i've thrown away everything i've ever believed in as the minutes turn to hours but not yet days. how long do i have to stay here? i sob and my nose runs as i beg anyone who'll listen to make it stop. god please tell me what to do, tell me where to go. i am not a holy child but wash me clean and please let that be enough.

soon i will be eighteen and i am not certain if that is for better or for worse. i've dreamt of this day for every breath i have ever taken and now i am here and i am so scared i wish i could just go back. paranoia blisters on my skin and covers me dirty, i can feel them looking, i know they're talking.

cruicifixes hang from doorknobs and salt lines the hallway but when can protection come in the form of a void? salt stained sheets and holy water fountains can swallow me whole, and fill my lungs but i just won't drown.

i have been lonely before but nothing like this. i chew at my tongue and wish i could tell my mother. i cannot leave my room but i equally cannot bear to live this out. my baby believes in me and i wish that could be enough.

glazed fern green tiles checkerboard to coat my brother's bathroom walls. the bathwater is steaming and unremarkable, stark from the white tub it resides in. in it, i sip thousand calorie hot chocolate from a pink rimmed mug as sweat beads at the nape of my neck—beneath my swaddled hair.

there is a skylight, it is long and thin as it strips from one corner to another, it exposes the sky that flushes violet and crimson as smooth, melancholy ballads ring out from my speaker. i submerge myself further and dream of cecilia lisbon. 

is loneliness worth the avoidance of humiliation that accompanies talking to him? the bath draws the guilt from my pores but not enough to change my feelings for you. i hang my legs, pale and speckled with sprouting follicles out of the water to drip dry—a soft-launching of bitterness in cool fog.

on weekends, in our ex-boyfriend's hoodies and stolen black thongs, we lounge on annie's couch in a tangle of limbs. the stale smell of alcohol from the night before lingers still and won't be a problem until my mother comes to drive me home. from practice kissing at sleepovers to sex with strangers from bars in alleyways, i've grown up with you and i wouldn't change what we have for the world.

aftermath of nights out drowns me in regret and if i still smoked, the cogulated sound of this cough would worry me. if i hadn't bled today i would do a test tomorrow and pray for a negative. once i told louise that eight-year-old me would pray to god that i would die, some catholic-sick brainwashing that convinced me my sins were bigger than i could manage. she looked at me weird—"what are you on about?"—apparently this feeling wasn't as universal as i had surmised.

still, as i stay haunted by my emotional lottery, i will lick the salt off of pretzels and scrape algae from my hair but it will not be enough. nothing ever will be. perhaps that in itself is substaintial, or perhaps it doesn't even matter. so as i lose my hair, and you lose your hearing, so long as we are entwined in damp sheets each night, i will be forgiven.

what stemmed from stimulating questionings of why i won't let bygones be bygones, to stretch and itch my way out of a dead skin cast that smells of him or at least some estranged memory of what that truly is. maybe i don't wanna feel better, not completely. it is surely far from malicious, in fact if you squint my actions are those of a hendonist—a tireless pursuit of pleasure from chasing those who run far away from my grasp.

i sink as far as possible into my bare matress as my sheets tumble over and over and over again in a dryer that always insists on leaving damp patches on anything that enters. by my bedside, the communist manifesto is sandwiched between some sapphic novel, and a commentary on incel culture as the collection gathers dust and not the bunny kind, rather a thick coating of dread and wasted existentialism.

outside of my bedroom, the waitress with tattooed eyebrows at the sushi train gives me a pitiful look as she examines the eyeliner that has bled down to the downturned corners of my mouth. soy sauce drenched salmon nigiri melts on my tounge before i pick at whatever the available mousse cake is, regardless of flavour it tastes like you...(only sweeter).

as much as i obsessively stalk over your location as future lovers insist i delete your contact, i will not hope to see you by the bus stop, not really. i don't pay for bus fares, yet i'd file bankrupcy if it meant paying for peace of mind. 

can i call you?
yes? ... (not too far-fetched)
will i?
no. but would you like me to?

in twisted dreams i want you to call me brainless like you used to, your harshness grazes over purple scabs—i cannot replicate it with cocaine and performatively philosophical boys, but i will try.

there is no point to this bittersweet ode i am addressing to you, my feelings are truly apathetic to you, and if anything more they are just irritated by your tendency to triple text after six months. a younger me would've cared, would've heard you out. 

i am no longer the girl i was from march to august. october spits curveballs of raspberry vodka saliva, but november considers sobriety.

that is all.

i miss the way you would french inhale before you quit smoking, i thought it made you look so cosmopolitan. it's bizaare that you keep a packet with the remaining seven marlboro golds you never smoked—as if you'll return to old habits, and whilst i wouldn't put it past you to revisit habits and lovers, i am not sure what made you decide tobacco wasn't worth a second chance.

the yellow roses he planted will bloom soon, i am sure of it. they have every summer since he left. is youth an excuse for a lack of appreciation? you must accept you do not know each other now.

there's a certain comfort in the hairs that stray from your braid, and the pieces of chewing gum that range from white to teal that cement to your windowsill. collections riddle your room as the glitter of past yous sticks to floorboards, clinging evermore. a tendency to hold onto broken mirrors— the glass shards in the red hand mirror your nonna gave you in 2011, and the ones from your cousin's certainly expired eyeshadow palette—must've affected your luck. 

...

is this narcissitic? 

when you drink you flush pink like hydrangeas, god knows that is not the worst of your tendencies. yet i am sorry. do you believe that?

in case you were wondering, or if it even matters or concerns me—i don't quite like that girl you hang around, you're always a bit off (like milk) when you come home from there. what do you do all night?

if you lay in the pigface, their pollen will cleanse you—did you know that? did you know you are allowed to let go? were you aware of entitlement to self-forgiveness?

i like the way you understand other people, i know when you are capable of loving, and i do not blame you for your struggle. i do not think the way you recite monologues to him whilst rinsing shampoo from your hair is stupid, articulation is important to you—we both have always agreed so.

do you think you used to be cooler? when your writing was eccentric and absorbing, you were detatched in a cool-girl way—by which i would mean untouchable but...

is evil still fashionable? is this suffering still plausible?

one day i will break from it all and the orchids will sigh in relief, their nectar kisses me sweet and heals my calloused skin. please make me soft, please make me kind, please make me mine.

loneliness lingers in my pores, it seeps out of my glands and lymph nodes whilst i'm in a sea of people i love. it is a different kind of alone—one that haunts and breathes hot air down the nape of your neck, one that feeds on ritalin abuse and the peeling of cuticles.

the abandonment dread resides in my white blood cells, tirelessly running rampant through my body—never leaving, never resting. in chronic sore throats, i swallow trepidation with the uncertainty of a deer marked with a crosshair. 

i don't know who i am chasing, i know who desires me but i cannot bring myself to return the favour once my head hits the pillow i will not move 'til sunlight breaks through the window.

spring has been here for a little now, and in some kind of sadistic way i see your weeping eyes in the dew-coated grass and i can't help my smile, i love my pretty boy. you know you're doing so good for me baby.

i've never known of true forevers but i search for them in any man's eyes despite them never resembling a carved marble smoothness. it's not like a girl glazed in weakness and immorality is worthy of greatness anyway, not then and certainly not now.

your fangs of canines peak through your gums, when they rot i'll keep them in a small wooden box alongside the last two milk teeth i lost and a carved bunny my father gave me. when the apple blossoms rebloom i will accept my time is up and that i am not ones preference—i am only an alternative to liquid dreams of sweet innocence (something i handed away many moons ago).

i write this as i lay in a naked entanglement of myself, that's how i know it's love, i would give a liver for you but i will not stop drinking. i choke on my tears but i have to accept i am not the only sadist here, i will not be selfish i promise.

i feel so empty. please don't leave me.

don't you fucking dare.

there is a beauty in the bitterness of lemon, but only when accompanied with sugar on pancakes that were fried in too much butter. seeds of you wedge themselves in between my canines and although men from nightclubs are desperate with animalistic licking to dislodge any scrap of you, i am not sure its possible.

in fact, i do not even think i want it to be.

in chasings of distraction, i began learning chinese. i thought i could find comfort in complicated characters, but all i discovered was communism and rebellious youth—and for one reason or another, i didn't even hate it. 

i started walking. a lot. arguably it was excessive. in an immersive observation of bark patterns and branch formations i found a peace only the youngest of the young are familair with. at least, once down to earth, this is a safety in heartbreak and i can revisit your hazel eyes frequently amongst the riverside. 

our eyes are identical, you pointed this out in a red-lit room. to this day i'm not sure how or when you noticed, and part of me is fasinated by the perculiar nature of you noticing this before i did—i'm sorry i gave you what you thought you wanted. 

the weather has been odd recently. it's stupid i even mention it but, have you noticed? i still keep tabs on your location and since you don't leave your room often, i surmise this is the only way you'd find out about such a change. i tell my friends i'd derive pleasure from the crunching of your ethmoid but i am such a liar it is sickening and i know you would laugh in my presence.

its been half a year.

i shamelessly miss you, yet my eye twitches at the sound of your name.

i find sadness in the bottom of cheap vodka bottles, there is a strong acidity that accompanies throwaway bodies i meet in the darkness of a loud saturday night.

it is now october, my brother just turned sixteen. i wish i could've told you. we went out for dinner, i haven't eaten normally in months. i wish i could've told you. i reenact memories in the shower and further wonder what memories of me you think of—presuming you do so at all. when i am truthful under the mercy of god, i will admit to accepting the truth that you do not.

a lot of things, akin to people, do not ask for permission to stay—(or leave)—they just do. i gag at the cruelness of my medicine, (in case you were wondering),, (yet i know you weren't).

if you were wondering, the only tangible part of our existence rots in a shoebox near my bed, inside a box of novella-1 (levonorgestrel 1.5mg).

my skin is made of bubblegum and my hair is the sea moss that stretches over shores, you tip toe around me to avoid my touch on your skin. i am a mosiac of everyone i've ever loved and known and my tiles shimmer and glimmer accordingly—yet love is unfamilair to you so my abundance of it was seemingly violent.

i am not certain i know why you walked away, i had sat and thought about it for months, in the end my wondering outlived your loving and that gave me my answer. yet if you asked the two of us, he would blame the xanax and i would blame the full moon.

there is a closeness in nothingness and as i sit in abandoned factories i think of you, but not in the same way i once did. an apple rests in my palm in place of a cigarette and as my blisters heal over my lungs thank me whilst your gums leak quiet sufferings—just something to take the edge off.

to leave the dead at rest and give the dying a peaceful send off i will not think to call you nor will you aimlessly reside in my dreams, you would not be glad to know of your placement there and i will respect your wishes. there can be no more "what about us?", because truly...what about me?

so, in the silence of parting i will peel off my skin and plaster it to each and every surface i can think of—the bottom of a school desk, beside a rubbish bin, the heel of my converses. each time you visit the beach, count your blessings as sea moss drags along the soles of your feet and the palms of your hands just know that each time you chew cinnamon bubblegum, you'll think of me.

i will continue to drink lychee juice in the summer as i sit on hot rocks and you will not remember i don't even like the beach.

when i was a kid i used to love peaches, i relished their soft fuzz and grinned as their juice spilled from the gaps where milk teeth should be and dripped down my chin. your skin was so soft and i could've sworn heaven resided in your pupils.

(i still love you)

my grandmother had a peach tree in her backyard, i would pester my cousins to pick them for me. i would lay in the grass and stare into the clouds—i'm certain if i looked close enough now i'd see your silhouette.

i used to savour the peaches and creams in lolly bags so i could have all my favourites at once, i wish i had've held onto everything you gave me with such dedication. i have cursed myself with a forever of longing stares but so long as i can embrace you occasionally and fall asleep in your sheets i'll be content with something rather than nothing at all.

i used to read stories of princesses and knights, i believed that one day my prince would whisk me away and carry me into peachy sunsets. my dreams now sleep differently yet softly, they smell of you and they taste of peach. 

sometimes when in my lonliest hours i walk through fruit markets and graze my fingertips over peach fuzz. its not identical but if i imagine hard enough it matches the curve of your cheek and sunkissed summer days simulate the warmth of your presence.

does the scent of stoned fruit stop you in your tracks like its effect on me? i suppose i never really told you about that part of me.

if believing my fairytales is synonymous with the magic of your body next to mine in the morning light then i will subscribe to such a lifestyle—in a love that's more peach pit than poetry (which was all due to my pride) i can agree with bitterness and bruises so long as it remains mine all the same.

nothing hurts like you do, i've been cut this deep once before but that was milestones ago now and if i'm completely honest that wound was deeper—but you opened it and sliced through my arteries: this wound may not be as fresh but that's what causes me such pain, you reopened everything i hoped would rot away and never replenish. 

i need to ingest you. i have a hunger that will not be satisfied until i metabolise you. in hopes of making myself digestable for you i will drop my baggage into bubbling brooks, they will swallow even the heaviest of stories. i can leave it all behind for you baby truly i can.

my bedsheets are bloodsoaked and stained but i will not wash them, i can not bare the thought of washing you away, even if you were never truly real, you are not the man you told me you were.  am i alone in thinking it was merciless to make me fall in love with a man who does not exist?—when he succumbs to death's calling there will be no bones left behind—for he is a figment of my dream world.

your barbed wire grip throttles my throat and as blood beads from your touch, i know that struggling will only shred my skin more so i will remain frozen and statuesque. 

how disgustingly gruesome my thoughts turned, do i repulse you baby? if you saw me right now you'd run for the hills, as my skin decays and my brain melts into wishing itself away i'll use my dying strength to follow you all the way there—god help me i swear i will.

a butchery has occured here, the skin of an angel once carassed my torso before gutting it and leaving me behind. i usually withstand torment but i have learnt my lesson this time, i know apathy is my saviour but i will abandon it if it means your sorry lips will kiss mine even just once more.

smoke smoulders from the crown of my skull, my jaw swings freely—if it weren't so gory i'm sure the sight would entertain you, do i still look pretty baby? is my fucked up jaw reminiscent of how you once treated it?

you know you've got everybody fooled, and up until last thursday you had me under your spell too. in all my history of smoke and mirrors i'd never seen a distortion like you. every inch of me knew better than to trust you yet i honestly thought that you wouldn't be so callous.

but i was wrong—what did i do to make you react so viciously? how can you act with such emotional brutality after hearing every inch of my past? i'm not sure i'll ever understand how you could undress my wounds and kiss them so delicately before ripping them to shreds and enbalming me in salt—you were so deliberately cruel and i never would have guessed you would leave in the manner you did. i should've known, all along, i was only another body to take your promises as gospel.

you were a true vision when the light broke through the blinds, you know i've only felt truly holy once i was touched by you. but if this is eden then you are the serpent and i will forever pay for believing that love is unconditional—and that i was lucky enough to experience it.

you never called me when you were sober—likely because that's when you loved me the least—if drunk words are sober thoughts then why did your tongue betray your mind? i wonder where all of this would've led if you were a better boy, i can't accept that i won't approach you in white and become your other half by law—how can you be gone?

if my friends ask me i'd tell them otherwise but if you must know, everything in my heart is hoping you'll come back. what if i can't forget you babe—what will happen to my soul if i'm forever abandoned in limbo? i can't continue to pick up pieces of myself, in fact i'm not sure i want to.

i wish you could've understood that my love was real, i'm not fully sure there's a heart behind your ribcage, i'm not fully sure if i hit you you'd even feel it. 

when we were implicity over and i saw you in the food court you wouldn't even look at me, you kept your head down so all i could see was the bottle blond curls i once had my fingers in.

i cannot stop walking babe, i'm halfway to who knows where, all of my body aches with the anticipation that you'll change your mind and i can sneak over again—i wouldn't even tell a soul. for what even am i when i'm by myself? what if i'm nothing but too much, not enough, what if i can only be one or the other?—i never quite grasped the concept of balance.

all my friends try to convince me that i'm not just dirty laundry collecting dust on the floor, that i'm more than a drunken love affair, that i'm not a physical manifestation of everything evil in the world—but i don't believe them now, and i never will.

i caused no harm babe, so why are all of my bones fractured? i wish i could've had the strength to pull out my eyes from their sockets so i could've avoided witnessesing all this perish so prematurely. so please babe, please, if you ever think leaving was a mistake, i'll be right where you left me.

it was now ritual, crawling through your open window at dusk, then dawn. you had never looked like ruin before, but now that you stand away from me it is clear you are the spitting image wrapped in flesh. 

i stepped over shards of you on my way in. i will not flinch or fight, i will just kept finding reasons to stay even as you crumble at my touch and push me away like i have rejected my past lovers.i never planned on staying around you, and that likely makes it worse. my skin is scarred from wildfires and you were the first to see all of me after the all of everything. every inch of me was prepared to walk away, but all of you called for me to stay. why?

where did that man go?

i know avoidance and that is what i am now greated with, it is a shame i owe so much karma because i truly believe in you.

you decorate your avoidance with tinsel of lies and my starry eyes will only register the twinkle—not the sparks that will soon erupt into destruction—but i have made a career out of crawling into rotten marrow and living in broken bones.

i waited for your sun to rise. it never did. i pulled the blinds back myself just to prove there was still a world outside your silence, but i will not re-enter it. not now, not ever. do you love me or do you just need a witness? do you wish you could've bitten your drunken tongue instead of telling me all that you did?

because baby, my arms are tired from carrying your past like it was my own, and every missile you launch at yourself hits me first, hits me hard. you are not the first man to need fixing, but you will be the last i offer to rebuild, it is you or no one my love and i am still so certain of it.

and i am so so sad that my chest aches. i toss and turn in the middle of my bed whilst i grind and bare my teeth to overpower the weight that will concave my ribs.

and as tears fall from my shallow eyes my throat closes up and i feel a numbness wash over me i have only ever felt crossfaded. i feel as though my tonsils will swell and suffocation will visit to take me away.

my head is dizzy and my eyes cannot focus properly, my breathing is shaken and uncertainty turns my blood blue, i have not willingly bled in years but if i was still encased in glass coffins of addictions i know where i would be once again.

i thought you were oxygen for my deprived soul but as i begin to root to the ground and my flesh hardens to bark and my limbs stiffen i see now you were not made for my consumption and i needed some other inhalant to live, another that is easy for weakness to digest.

and as i peel the skin off my back and my spine is exposed, feathers sprout from muscle and wings will replace my need for legs and i will glow evermore and you will be afraid to touch me.

perhaps that's how it should've been from the start.

emotional barriers are not something i cannot construct, perhaps physical ones must manifest organically.

i have shed my skin so many times but i cannot wash my sheets enough to keep up with my constant metamorphosis—so my cells remain in the air of my bedroom, alive or not. i keep collections of pulses and i could draw out the veins on my wrist without looking, but nothing spills from me anymore. i have outgrown letting myself pour out through my forearms and have turned to inhalation of other forms of coping.

maybe if i drew out all of my nerves i could knit a new girl and i could be ok again, maybe this time you could love me and have me as your bride and i will mother your children.

i am not a smart girl, i do not remember how to do long multiplication (in fact truthfully i even struggled to spell it), a me who existed lightyears ago would be appalled with my current state.

my head constantly spins and each step i take is more uncertain than the last, my hands shake with a consistency i do not know in any other context, how can someone like me know someone like you, and how could GOD be cruel enough to make me exist alongside you when i cannot have you properly? how dare you embroid my skin with silver thread, you know it burns me and i will disintergrate into dust not purity.

please don't say you love me as you drunkingly push me into a fence, you do not mean what you say nor do you understand the gravity of it. 

for i have been so many girls before and been with so many boys that i cannot even count how many lips have been on mine, i'm not sure you'd want to know the true number even if i desired to be honest with you.

in adolescence i would see static in the dark in a wonderfully lonely kind of way, tiny morsels of colour that would dance around my ceiling and when i asked my father if he could see them too he rolled over in bed and his snoring bore on.

i have cried enough tears that if i could've been useful they could've replenished wetlands that are now just land. i don't even know what i am speaking for anymore but all i have known is my voice and since i learnt of diction i have not shut my mouth since.

I DO NOT KNOW WHO I AM. I DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING ABOUT MYSELF I WISH YOU TELL YOU. THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT ME TO KNOW, I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING
I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING
I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING 

I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING

I KNOW NOTHING.

...

the fact of the matter is that i still love you, i always will and even when i denied it i was nothing but a liar.

there is a part of me that will hold on to you forever and fortunately that is a big chunk of my soul. i know that for whatever reason i was meant to know you, meant to hold you—to love you. every star that falls from the sky matches each tear that slides across my face, each twinkling light is a reminder that we both come from stardust and every inch of you shines true.

you are the real thing my baby and i promise that one day i will be everything you deserve—i'm sorry i am so scared to love you.

i was born out of love and until now i wasn't sure that i was meant for it. i have never loved another as i love you—i now know that i was created for purpose. with you on my arm i understand that my heart does not beat for survival but so that i could know you.

my fingertips dance and trace around every inch of your skin, there is not one spot of you i could hate. i want to crawl into your heart, i will take home in the marrow of your bones, please let me look into the deepest part of your soul and love you anyway without hesistation. i will choose you again and again, i promise i will.

with your touch—your body interweaved with mine—i know what perfection feels like. your softness unintentionally showed me why lips and fingers interlock with the ease that they do. when i cannot physically see you i sleep and pray that in my slumber your beauty will manifest once more.

dress me in white baby, even though i am far from pure in their eyes, but for some reason it never mattered to you. i am so fractured and flawed, yet you kissed my bruises and crowned them holy. sleep beside me each night and as dusk turns to dawn let the sun kiss your eyelids—when they open please let it be me that you see first. 

i ache with anticipation to know you forever, it is you or no one my baby and i know that for certain.

there is a unfamiliar sweetness hidden under your tongue and slathered across your bottom lip, i was afraid that the tears and scars i carry with me would cover you in brine and wash you away. 

i cannot cling to your body enough, my nails will break your skin and as blood beads on your back you will not look at me with anger. as my calloused palms snag at your curls you will melt closer to my touch instead of flinching away. even though difficulty is oxygen to my heart you continue to pull me close—even when i push you away, how did you know i wanted you to embrace me once more?

yet i am worried sick one day you will know me too much, i tremble at the notion that you will leave one day. you can weave stories of white dresses and picket fences and a love that you may have for me, but i will believe none of it. i am too timid to let myself fall for promises that may be empty once more.

would you lie to me? would you look at me and kiss me as you slide a razor down my spine? how can i know you are true? i think you are, i believe you will say "i do". kiss me even after you cum, make wishes on my eyelashes, kiss my forehead and do not let it be in vain.

you lay softly beside me, our bodies interlocked as you gaze into my eyes—i am not sure why i love you with the gravity that i do, i really just met you. i never favoured my name but you whisper it like a wedding vow into my ear alongside sweet nothings and maybe i decide that it was created with a tangible softness only you could unveil.

you touch me with intention and a kindness i have never known, my questioning does not anger you and nor does my prescence as you beg me to stay through till morning. i trace over your skin—there is not an inch i could hate and as sunset turns to sunrise i yearn for this moment to never end, sleeping alone is too hard now that i know your warmth—i am naked but so are you and you cradle me with purpose that i was unaware of.

my heart physically aches for you as my mind is enternally consumed by your image and your scent raps around me atmospherically, my stomach churns with butterflies that will burst through my abdomen sooner or later.

and in the end i had never before dreamt of marriage and domestication but you have made a lover out of a fool and i will yearn evermore until my soul is rotted to nothing but an essence of my love for you.

talk to me at a party, just casually—joke with me about how i can't handle the taste of vodka unless i'm drunk enough to loose sensation. creep closer to me, lean into my side as we talk to your friends, interlink your legs with mine when standing becomes to tiring.

pull me aside and kiss me with a hunger i haven't felt in a while—convince me its not lustful as my hands run through your curls and yours cement to my waist, i never liked blonds before. you are a current, you bubble and froth and i cannot keep my head above your waters as you pull me in without failure. keep it true—i'll do anything you want me to, i promise as i sink to my knees and you unzip your jeans.

out of character for me as i lay naked, nauseatingly chalant in your room beside you. i can take long deep swigs from the bottle now and you will hold me tight now without interruption. press your body on my body as we twist and turn, kiss my everything with a tenderness i do not understand. you crash and washover me as if i am sand, and akin to this i melt back alongside you.

i won't spend the night but baby tell me that you want me, please want me back. i yearn for the connection earned in pinkie promises and neck kisses, take my clothes off then just stay for life. 

in a sober morning, light floods through the window i crawled home through and i thirst for your loving instead of being washed in regret—do you feel the same? my morning tide has pulled back, i kneel once more to pray that i will not only see you again by moonlight.

little lamb he called me, little lamb. i was a good lamb, my wool was soft—cotton-like—my eyes were big and brown, and i trot so lightly i was never in your way. 

i spring around the field, i do not trample the wild daisies. i stick by my mother and am kind to my flock. i roll around in the grass beside you, i will not bump you but i will look up at you without ever knowing hatred and tilt my head down for you.

little lamb he called me, little lamb. i am docile, i am sweet, i do not resist the rope around my neck. i fawn at your feet and touch—never questioning your choices. one two, one two, i will trot beside you, keeping up with your pace. you will not have to tie me down as i lay lightly on your altar, i am a well-behaved little lamb—never loud, never angry—my mother would be proud.

i softly sprawl on your table, i was a product of love and you will hold me to it. your hands are rough and dirty my white wool but i will not complain, i am a good lamb. i avoid your gaze but if you saw my pupils you would know that they hold sadness but no accusation.

i will not offer resistance to your axe, in fact i will flinch towards your blade, i will not bleat once—your damage will go on unknown. i choke on the blood of an angel that floods from my neck, but i will do so silently and you will remain unpunishable. do not kneel beside my body, do not dirty me again. little lamb he called me, little lamb.

death came knocking on my door last afternoon, so i invited him in for tea.

an anxious girl with bleeding cuticles, and restless eyes. a moon hanging from one ear, a star from the other. a dolphin, oval locket, and mary are strung along my neck. a black bra strap, a broken belt loop.

a ceramic teapot with floral detailing, a matching milk jug, two cups and saucers (a gift to five-year-old-me). a chai?—sticky not powder, enjoyed on a swinging chair in the backyard. the humidity mirrors the spiced tea, sweat beading on the nape of my neck, but death has a cooling prescence so i will not dream of lakes.

we do not speak. i sit curled up but death's cloak drapes along the seat following his figure, if i touched him i'm sure i could trace out the silhouette of a body. doe eyed looking up, not unlike me at all, but i cannot see whats past the void in his hood—there's nothing but inaudible mumbles.

tip-tap-tip-tap-tip-tap my nails on the stained glass, i avoid his gaze and my chai. biscoff?—allow yourself to be greedy, salivate for manmade goods. the sweetness clings to morning dew and i will lay in bed past midday.

my fringe is too short, it sticks to my forehead, not long enough to touch overplucked brows. freckles on my nose that you noticed far too late (they were always there).

death stayed the night, the first slumber party i've hosted since i was eleven. a patchwork pillow case, a butter yellow duvet, polka dot sheets—a matress on the floor, i do not share beds with strangers anymore. i itch my fingertips, maybe the print will peel away, i don't like sleeping in silence.

he left early the next morning, leaving a tiny bell as a gift—i'll ring it when i need him back, next time i will leave with him for sure.

the fluorescent lights don’t flicker here—they shine steady, sterile, unblinking. where you once would've heard a soft heartbeat now only the hum of refrigeration units are audible. a low drone, drowning out the last words of the dead that were spoken under my breath, the sobbing over a lover that i do not remember. 

a tag is looped around my hallux, if thoughts could still race my brain i would compare it butchered meat—specifically veal—that is awaiting purchase. 'jane doe' is inscribed in a strangers hand, if life still rushed through my veins this would decorate me in goosebumps, but in this state i am content with the coldness of being forgotten as this freezer has me frostbitten already. if i had a lover once i wonder if i ever traced their spine the way the mortician’s fingers now press against mine—clinical, detached, searching for something that no longer resides within me. i imagine they would've whispered my name against my skin—let it melt like sugar on their tongue, but as i try to recall the shape of their mouth, all i taste is formaldehyde and i realise that all sweetness has rotted away. 

my enclosure is cold and this steel highlights my pale skin, i fear i will fade away altogether. a plastic sheet tugs at my flesh, static clinging to strands of hair that will never feel fingers combing through them again. if life still circulated my lungs i would be fearful that i will suffocate. 

they move me around like furniture—as if i am not worth noticing, nor any different than the other cadavers. soon, they will cut me open. my skin will be peeled back and my organs will be weighed, notes will be taken on the pallor of my tissue, the stiffness of my limbs. they will search for cause, but they will not look for meaning. no scalpel can carve out who i once was, no incision can expose the life i once lived. and when they are done, they will sew me shut again, a poor attempt at restoring what has already been lost. if vibrations still blessed my vocal cords i would cry that i was warm once, that blood coursed through my veins, that my hair blew in the wind, that i was really, truly, alive. 

but i have no voice. not any longer. not ever again.

still, if you find this—if by some miracle my words reach you—please say my name. indulge in it for a moment, rub it along your gums, swallow it softly but don't keep me away. remember me, even if its only in passing, even if its only a murmur beneath the hum of the morgue.

at night when everything is quiet, the street lights flicker. the air is glacial and the wind's whispers could be mistaken for death whistling.

i am restless in my grave, six feet deep—nowhere near close enough to the earth's core to be warm. i shift and mumble, my skin is translucent and my blood streams are like icicles. i pry open my coffin, dirt cakes underneath my long nails as i claw my way to the surface. my lungs wheeze and prickle at the sense of oxygen, i feel empathetic for newborn babies who don't know to expect this. 

my bones ache as i fight to walk around the cemetery, my mouth is like cotton and whilst my nose has sunken in i am sure i smell of decay, i've heard its sweet and resembles the cherry flavoured cough medicine i hated in my adolescence. 

christ i am so lonely now, i'd be happier if i craved human brains, it would be reassuring to feel anything but sorrow. yet my teeth have rotted away and maggots slither in my gums so i'm not sure hunger would solve my problems.

i am not sure why this curse is unique to me, this space is liminal and i crave interaction, but it is futile longing for the warmth of an existence that wouldn't recognise you—i am not sure my father could love me now that my eyes are shrunken into my skull, and now that my jaw swings freely.

i tap on the tombstones of the lonely, ones that are overgrown with shrubbery, ones where the names are crusted over with lichen, or ones where they have toppled over altogether. a response will not come but after a while i begin to convince myself that they rasp back—i'll hallucinate the moving of an angel statue's wing, or the pursing of the virgin mary's marble lips.

when walking gets tiring i will sit by the fountain, it bubbles and gushes, and i can look at my skin and imagine my wounds are oozing spring water instead of pus and despair. i once dabbled in caressing the roses yet they wither at my touch, akin to how i curled away from yours.

lurking back at my grave, i brace myself for infinite restlessness. i slip back through the dirt—down, down, down—and i crawl back into my coffin. my eyelids flutter shut yet i will not sleep, the dead never do. no one will visit me, not a soul will mourn my grave, nobody will curse god for taking me so soon, even so i will hold onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, next time i come knocking you will open the door.

my baby's back but he isn't the man i love anymore. of course i love him, but after months of distance he became someone i haven't ever met. he's still here but he moves around my room as a phantom, merely a wispy echo of his former self. 

he tries to shield himself from my view yet the flint sparks—fire illuminates his face and casts a shadow as he burns so brightly, i chase away embers as i know if i let go completely like i once did, he'll burst into flames entirely.

i know there's nothing i can do, not much i can change, but is staying crueler than walking away? no firefighter would walk away from a building caught ablaze, no moral man would leave flames to destroy everything in their path. but how can i extinguish a class d fire with nothing but trembling palms and a cupful of water and once i'm empty it'll only reignite.

my baby's back and not only is he no longer the man i loved, but i knew it was for the best when i initially left, is it harsh to say that i never wanted this back? my skin is a tapestry of molten memories, they're etched deep into my flesh. i am a map of past infernos where skin bubbled and hope blistered away. 

so i'll go. breathing air that isn't asphyxiating smoke burns my lungs but i know its for the better, the wind is cold and my arms are covered in goosebumps from such a stark contrast. when i lay in bed at night—if i'm quiet enough i'll hear the fire crackling still, his voice calling my name through the smog. i'll remind myself that some fires burn out on their own, that the damage is already done, and that bushlands littered with ash regenerate evermore. yet truthfully i know nothing about wildfires, i can't say anything certainly. does the end of a fire mean growth or death?

all i know is that to love me i cannot love you my baby, i am sorry that i am so selfish.

there's a knife in my chest, plunged through ribs, moulded into my heart—a dagger placed there the first time you touched me. your body on mine, each kiss, each closeness—impales me deeper. 

but i know stories of survival, of letting the knife be, as i know if i remove it my blood vessels will be severed and in death i cannot know you anymore. 

my blood clots around your blade, my heart beats vigorously at your sight. i keep myself alive so i'll never lose you but you're afraid of blood and run at the sight of my silhouette, the only difference now between mine and a cadaver's is my veins remain warm.

it was a foolish mistake to leave your knife alone though, as my fractured bones have used it like k-wire scaffolding and my heart has grown accustomed to its sharpness. doctors tell me to remove it, but i'll refuse for eternity, as after all these years i'm not sure my heart can beat any other colours than black or blue—let alone without you.

my angel is the sun, and i am the moon. sure both are dazzling, yet the moon is not the one who enlightens universes. i can't help but wish that she could feel the sting of living in the orbit of a star like her. i love my angel but green eyes creep over my shoulder and poison dripped lips whisper blasphemy into my left ear, i'll swat the monster away but it's already made home in my bones.

we both have brown hair and baby bangs, yet her nose slopes softer than mine, akin to how our eyes resemble one another's yet her heart is a warmer place than mine. everybody wants to love her and i do with the kind of affection only one who's been eclipsed can. i don't blame my angel for her divine rays, even though my burns will develop into melanoma i know that she will hold my cold hands as i approach death.

i keep a lock of my angel's hair in a bottle, i wear its essence on my neck, temples, and wrists, as if it could make me even a fraction of all that she is. i lay basking in her light even though it only heightens my shadows. my angel lives a godhood that isn't set in perfection but rather her ability to bless my imperfections, i hope that one day some of her may spill out and purify me.

my angel promises me eternal friendship as she plaits my hair but even her whispers sound like hymns. i cling to her brilliance whilst she sleeps next to me—but her presence remains untouchable and my palms can't encapsulate her effortless glow. 

i could say that i've seen god, but truthfully i'm talking about you. as baptismal water swallows me whole, i bathe in our immorality, my impurity clings like a second skin—one that i wouldn't dare scrub away even if i could. can't you see that  i would give up everything for you?

there could never be words to describe all you are, and as my head remains filled with thoughts of you not one of them is malicious. it would be sacrilegous to betray you like that and i'll never again delve into sin. yet you'll count on the fact that i won't say stop and by forfeit only you can win, and i would give up everything for you.

you can find me in the pews, knees bruised from endless devotion, my hands clasped at my chest, pray tell if you had the chance would you kill me tonight?—or does your violence end at your bark, only i know its crueler than your bite. and even though i have scars mirroring your dentition i would give everything up for you.

and whilst you're now lightyears away, if there was any doubt you'd left your mark on me just know that once the sun's gone down my room looks the same as when it was just us two. you know i'm going to stay as far as you want me to, and you won't have to give a thing up, because i gave it all up and i'd do it again given the chance.

and yet, every sunday i'm always first through the church doors, preaching until my throat runs raw to anyone who'll listen about how i saw heaven once and that one day, i'll see it again.

at every party you'll go to, there's always one specific girl, and once you know her you'll never see her again. you'll spot her from across the room and she a girl who looks like a dream that you'll regret by daylight as you asphyxiate in her vanilla perfume and get drunk off kissing her.

maybe if you follow these rules you'll see her again - or maybe you can save her from herself.
call her baby, sugar, dollface even, but whatever you do don't ask her name. take her into the bathroom and she'll be willing, she'll even hang off your sleeve the whole night, her hands wrapped around your heart. she's beautiful and all your friends are jealous, you'll joke with them about how you went all the way later in the night.

just don't go back into the bathroom - because she never left it, she's sprawled on the floor, her hands clutching onto herself as if she can stop the breakage from showing, sobbing for the girl she used to be. but she won't be in there forever and sooner or later you'll see her in the yard again with sorrowful, bloodshot eyes that you'll mistake for stoned ones.

so please don't send texts begging for a love that you will not give and one that she cannot absorb. don't let out promises implying you to be her saviour, she didn't ask for that and you're no messiah. and even though her existence is now a scar that you cannot fade, you're but a hangnail in hers.

i'm allergic to weed. i love men who smoke. i am only loved by those who are high.

when i smoke i have reactions that last months with the small reward of but a couple hours of euphoria that turns sour before you know it. i love men who treat me as disposable, men who reek of drugs and lust, ones that will not love me in sobriety. 

i indulge in apathetic encounters with aggressive men, their taste will stick to the back of my throat like smoke from the roach of a joint, and i will inevitably suffocate me in desolation, something that no amount of coughing can chase away. 

perhaps in truth i just miss my baby, he rolled his joints with a precision that felt like love and kissed me with the kind of hunger that hoaxed me into believing in forevers. but his absence has existed longer than we ever did, and in my comedown i knew that.

and so, the way a younger me chased a high, i'll continue her tradition by following these men to the ends of the earth, knowing that they're only still walking to escape me. in my eternal pursuit of self-destruction i grasp onto my control of choice, the last concept of power i have left.

yet when all is said and done, forever means nothing to me. one day i'll stop chasing the smoke or it will stop chasing me. either way my joint has faded into ash, my high has washed away, and slumber is calling my name.

"you think you're important, boy i got bad news, you're mean and you're boring. they'll all forget you" - nessa barrett, pins and needles.

when men think they're important, souls are crushed and women cry.

you're only young my dear, you're but 17 and that boy you met at 15 is not the love of your life. he's not important yet you built a pedestal for him to sit on, and turned your white blood cells into his soldiers. you may deny it, but your calloused palms will reveal truth and let you down. you hold a chip on your shoulder against a man that only fucked you over because you let him. 

a man, who is the man, who is your man thinks he's important. he grew up with a single mother who worshipped the ground that her baby walked on and will continue to do so even in rigor mortis. maybe if you tried a little harder, you could've been just like her and then maybe you would've been a worthy bride. are you serious? you're not fooling anyone.

but you won't be his bride and another woman's babies will flaunt his eyes and share his nose.

and so, you'll search for your man in every other one you meet, but what are you searching for? his laugh, smile, the way he held you after making you cry? so you'll pick up smoking because a joint shares the taste of his mouth and a high shares his warmth, and you'll kill yourself slowly wishing to go back to a past that doesn't want you to come back.

men don't think they're important for no god damn reason but because you altered your celestial mechanics and changed your trajectory towards someone who was never a star and you most certainly were not his world. what else was he supposed to think? unfortunately, you made yourself both the cause and felt the consequence of a falsehood of importance.

however, life won't hold for your broken heart and time moves, but you'll be ok. maybe you'll find a nice man, or you'll date a kind girl and become their own personal hell and whilst you'll both make it out and it will be ok eventually, it's a shame your pain turned cyclical. once rose coloured glasses are removed, and you'll stop calling your dealer, and clarity comes once you can finally breathe. your blood will replenish, your palms will recover, and you will be alright.

manic pixie dream girl has dark brown hair and baby bangs.
manic pixie dream girl will reference niche films and you wont get it.
manic pixie dream girl is so much more underground than you.
manic pixie dream girl can and will leave just as quickly as she came.
manic pixie dream girl will ruin your life,
and you'll love her for it.

you'll meet her at an underground bookstore that used to be a wine cellar or an indie record store. you’ll talk to her for a month and that’ll be your peak. you’ll be at your 90th birthday in a nursing home waiting for her to come around the corner to wish you happy birthday. she’ll take you to ikea and you’ll look at kitchens and test mattresses. she’ll be the best sex you’ve ever had and she’s always ready for you because that’s just how great she is (she bangs like a fairy on acid if you will). you’ll send her loving emails from your dead boring office job and think about her at the photocopier and sketch her mindlessly during meetings. she’ll tell you how her father tragically died when she was 3, or how her mother left to join a travelling circus trope, or how her brother killed himself, and almost for a split second you’ll notice the chip in her tooth or the freckle adorning the centre of her neck — maybe she’ll even look human. your friends hate her, and you narrow it down to them being jealous of your connection. you’ll fall in love with her and she’ll disappear. she’ll leave you at a party and you’ll find her with your friend’s brother’s best friend. why did you love her? — she certainly didn’t love you. you’ll smash plates in your apartment that she labelled kitschy and you’ll kill yourself slowly reminiscing. you’ll pick up smoking her malboro smooths and whisk yourself away into a dark menthol wonderland searching for manic pixie dream girl.

4 years later you’ll run into her, and it’s awful. — but god isn’t this what you wanted? a diamond engagement ring studs her finger and pierces your heart. manic pixie dream girl was never yours and you most certainly were never hers.p