in this house

we flush our problems down the toilet

so that suffering and grief is only ever the gurgle of water/ wondrous/

thirsty/ as it swallows whatever we need to get rid of.

this is how we did away with my goldfish

& they say,

too, that this is how my mama did away with my baby sister/ coathanger and toilet/

felt like wet paint. said it was all dark

/and warm red.

in this house we break teeth not bones;

here we are taught: love is not gentle or pretty.

love is mutilation, soft /soft hurt,

feeding me your bits of rotten meat/ and tender fatigue/

and praying

that when god forgets you

& you become nothing less/ or more

than carrion amongst carrion in still water,

she will give you a (new) body

so much greater

than this.

#poetry #fiction

i.

girl that likes kissing girls, with a soft arched back and plump thighs and sheer blouse and nude panties and thick curled hair– a goddess in slant eyes, with a heavy lilting crackling voice like spinning vinyl, who can’t help but feel like a great big thing going nowhere fast. come here, to a place full of people hungry for you and spin for me i am envious of your beauty. come here. i will eat you up. i will love you.

ii.

girl that once was a boy, who hates her thick thighs because they remind her of wanting to be better, whose face isn’t round enough, who needs to be singularly and wholly woman because tugging at the pinches of her skin is dysphoria and cold dark places and crescents of pinked indents. come here, come in i am a house with wood floors and old brown couches let’s sit together and share warmth like lovers share breaths. i will give you a place to rest your head.

iii.

girl that is breaking, who cuts her skin with plastic knives and tears the seams of her dresses so she doesn’t have to wear them, who practises every night in front of the mirror her reasons not to wear a swimsuit but knows her words will only stutter and fall, who is scared of people because they all do the same, are the same, walk the same, talk the same and scream and hurt and hate the same. come here, i will give you bandages and help you hide things that you don’t want to be seen until you learn to love yourself. take it slow. i will hold you i promise i’ll be gentle.

iv.

girl that needs soft nice things. that needs to hear the word darling. that needs to be held. that needs a place to rest her soul. that needs love. that needs someone who will cry for her. that needs someone to tell her things are alright. that needs someone to accept her. that needs to hide things. that needs to take a breath. come here, i will be your world.

v.

i’ll be there for you.

#poetry

we'd meet in the swimming pool with blue-green square tiled walls and no water

every tuesday at 2am

and we'd lie down spreadeagled on the floor of the pool

wondering what it would feel like

if we were lying flat under 15,000 litres of water

and then you'd laugh

and i'd laugh too but only because you laughed

and i love the way your eyes crinkle

and you'd say that it's nice somehow

to dream about being trapped but actually being free

because you usually stay awake at night

thinking of things the other way round,

trying to run away from life

and i would say me too

and then we'd be still and silent for a little while

just being happy with eachother and forgetting about all there is to think and care about.

one day you pulled me closer

and i rolled to your side

and you pressed your mouth to my ear and whispered

my momma found out about us last tuesday

and she told me not to come here anymore

and this might probably be the last time we can be like this so

please, Even,

can i give you a kiss?

your kiss would be our very first and last kiss

that i had dreamt about for many nights

so i said yes, of course, i love you

and i wanted to close my eyes but i didn't because i had to see you.

it tasted like the cheap mint chewing gum

that you get from the corner store near your house

and that i would start to get

every friday onwards

because i never wanted to forget the taste of you.

and then we would stop staring into the night sky through the metal wire

chain-link fence beside the pool

and we'd climb out

and we'd hug because we were tired of waiting till tuesdays to hold eachother

and then we would start making our ways home,

out of the alley, you and i walking half of the highway

then splitting up down two smaller streets

then turning and turning farther away from where we remember seeing the other

until i wouldn't be able to chase after you and find you

even if i tried

because you'd be too far gone

and that's how things were.

that's how things were supposed to be.

i could never find you and you could never find me.

we could only ever find the street sign where our lives intersected

and trust in the other to be there too

and pretend for a night

that we would never lose eachother

and that we'd always be kids

and that we'd always live where we did

and that we could always come to this street sign at 2am on tuesdays when we needed a friend

and that our parents would never find out

and that we could hold eachother for as long as we ever wanted or needed to

and that we loved eachother

because

didn't we?

didn't we love eachother so, so much?

didn't our love transcend the two small worlds we each lived in?

wasn't our love an infinity

that would never, ever die?

#verylongpost #poetry #congratsifyougotthroughthat #sweetyounglovethatneverlasts

i. tomorrow is never promised

so don't leave anything unsaid

ii. tell your friends i love you

every day

because who knows if you're the only one in their lives

that is willing to say that

iii. and goddammit everyone deserves to love

and be loved

at least once in their lifetime

#justrandomthoughtsforgivemeitsbad #poetry

1. forget about all the yourselfs you've lost in empty hotel rooms that nobody paid for,

forget they even existed.

you are the only yourself that the world will ever need.

2. if you wake up in the middle of a sleepless night

sitting cross-legged

on the edge of your bed,

gun pressed to your head,

fingers clenching like the blinking stars of our hands

when we were five and sang twinkle twinkle little star,

know that i love you

and please remind yourself

which side of the gun

you should be on.

3. your arms around me

are enough.

they always will be.

4. if you can feel a panic attack

coming,

please don't lock yourself in your room

and turn the music up

just a little bit

and check, frantically,

that the curtains are closed

and press your eyelids shut

as if they were hands pressed together in prayer.

breathe slowly and ground yourself:

find five different things you can see,

four things you can feel,

three things you can hear,

two things you can smell

and one thing you can taste.

take a deep breath with each thing you find.

5. i know it's never nice to lose yourself,

but sometimes it happens

so you can become stronger.

6. your favourite flower

is the yellow chrysanthemum.

7. you matter.

8. in the end,

you are your own hero.

you don't need wings

or a cape

or a wish

to fly.

9. don't be scared.

10. i love you, i will always love you, i have always loved you. now and forever.

11. i'm sorry.

#poetry #fiction

did you call her your sunflower

and in the creases of her skin

spell out love

like a liability,

the hum of two bodies pressed together

not knowing the name of the other,

with a taste like the word please

and thank you?

did you make her a bath

and drown her,

all of her,

slick skin

and bruised hips

and wet hair

and broken heart

and pendulum eyes

her?

did you soak your soal

in vodka

and wash out the taste of her,

the colour she dyed your hands

and mind

and the woodwork of your bedroom,

the promises

that made you warm

on such a cold, stormy night?

when you set the room on fire,

tell me,

was it you

or your love

that burnt down first?

#poetry

she sits cross legged on the hotel bed

in the middle of a room for two.

she hasn't smiled for months;

her friends say she has forgotten

just how to.

it's unexpected, how difficult it is

to relearn something so

instinctive.

pull your lips back,

tilt your head,

bare your teeth.

(to a cruel world,

why should she?)

from the back-blue world outside her windowsill,

from the lies that her parents told her

that

the sky will always be baby blue,

like your eyes,

from what little light remains

you can see the rusted scissors in her left hand

and the jagged lines of wet, wavy hair

that fall into the creases of her lap

and catch on the ribbed indents

of her body.

she breathes in.

the shower is still running.

on the fogged glass,

as a dying testament

to the promise she made to her therapist

about self improvement,

(fake it 'till you make it,)

reads in her shaky handwriting

'i am okay.'

it still disappears, slowly.

whatever happened to being in the centre of the universe

and stopping the moon

and the stars

when she breathed in?

whatever happened to stopping the running of the world-

the mothers crying,

the people dying,

- so somebody could come save her first?

whatever happened to the superhero stories

her parents read her?

to their arms and warm embrace?

to her friends,

a shoulder to cry on?

whatever happened

to the promises made at childhood,

that you'll never be alone

because you'll have at least the moon

following you,

right by your side,

ready to catch you if you fall?

she cries, shoulders heaving.

there are dots in her eyes

that follow her around

until she thinks that they are cracks in her world

and that, behind all this life,

there are rainbows.

an escape.

what's the harm

in a little running away?

she turns on the bedroom light

because that’s what her mother would do.

she is trying to help herself.

under a yellow electric light

spilling static into the air,

her scissors glint.

and so she falls in love

that night

with tracing thin white lines,

with ruining

and saving

herself.

#poetry #pt.1

it is cold and i stand on the verge of maybe,

feet curling over the edge.

before me lies the sea

and behind me stone.

before me it is dark and the waves move endlessly.

before me beckons,

because whether the fall kills me or not

i can trust in the water to bring me home.

before me is so wide and distant and alone;

i think it needs a friend.

behind me is the graveyard

where we used to talk through the night,

huddled in the wings of an angel statue-

when we were young

and didn’t yet know the name of fear.

behind me is my childhood,

the weathervane in the shape of a flying dove

that i painted when we were seven,

the braids i tied in your hair when we were eight,

the flower crown of wildflowers i made

when we were nine.

i’ve been here some five thousand times

and i’ve never been able to take the step.

make the jump.

leave the rock and stone behind

for the embrace of the water.

now it’s the last time and i look to the night sky.

all the things that i am stuck in-between –

the water, the rock,

my childhood, my possibilities –

they stare up into the same apologetic sky.

there are no stars,

no moons,

no suns.

maybe it has made space for me.

maybe it is waiting for me.

maybe it doesn’t care about the water or the rock.

maybe it won’t tell me how to love.

maybe it’ll teach me how to dream.

i step off the verge of maybe,

my arms reaching out as if to fly.

for a moment the air catches me with outstretched hands,

as if it was holding me

one last time.

then i fall

and

the water becomes my world entire.

it is cold and i feel infinite.

#poetry

and i'm spinning, arms grasping at the sky, body rocking forwards and backwards,

turning and turning

only because i don't know how to stop anymore.

i'm tired of dreaming with my eyes open.

they say god sits with his legs hanging out

of the hood of my car,

singing at the top of his lungs

as his toes dig lines into the asphalt road

like sticks in sand.

i say it's true

because the man that sits there

smokes colour

until it fills the sky each morning-

but it's only ever blue-

maybe god needs a friend.

so do i.

and now i'm running, a kid in the dark,

chased around a tree

by a shadow

and i can smell him

and he smells like flowers

and teeth.

people tell me:

you are young

so please enjoy it.

don't be reckless.

be careful.

and i will, i will, i will,

i am spinning round myself,

i am a dying flame

and i will.

#streamofconsciousness #poetry

he doesn't know how to love

but he's been trying for twenty years.

it is a cold winter night and he sits, legs hanging out the window of his third-floor apartment room. what if this is the end? what if he slips off the ledge and breaks something and they find him, cheeks flushed, body splayed as if making snow angels on the hard grounds? 

he sighs, retracting his arms and legs until he is perched on the windowsill. there is no space in his small world for another dead body. it will have to wait.

the apartment is rather big and his family lives there. 

a father. a sister. him. 

in the slow ticking of the two clocks, like an insufferable, mocking applause from an audience of one (may it be god), he finds his animus.

it becomes the reason he wakes.

the reason he eats.

the reason he sleeps.

the reason he dreams.

the reason he loves.

he walks to the kitchen and sets aside half of the takeaway for his father when he is sober. his sister is at a friend's house, living out her childhood. he begins to clean the house. is this called love?

upon finishing he sits down to eat by himself. palms pressed against each other, he says a prayer the way he was taught to since youth. he's since forgotten the name of the god he prays to. is this called love?

at two am he checks the kitchen to find the food gone. he stands outside on the balcony and makes five wishes, one for each friend he's ever lost, a sixth one for mother. is this called love?

he goes to sleep to a silent house.

maybe love

is the faint blue empty space

behind his eyelids

where he loses himself

during sleep.

maybe love

is nothing much.

maybe love 

won't fix his life-

but nobody's willing to tell him.

so he goes on, trying,

in a world that's long lost hope.