it's too late to call you, but i stare at your number anyway.
with a picture that no longer looks like you staring back at the dark,
clouded by a fuzzy head and wet eyes.
as i desperately try to tell myself that it's okay to be strangers sometimes.

but i'm lying.

i can't live as a stranger to you. i don't know who that leaves me to be.

i want you to look me in the eye and see me down to my soul so i don't have to embarrass myself by telling you,
because i always sound pathetic out loud.
i want you to know me so i don't have to know myself
i want you to love me so i never have to look my reflection in the eye and feel my insides turn at the sight.

every time that i tap into the sadness it threatens to pour out of me at once.
and i cannot touch the wave that crashes inside my chest for fear that i will splinter,
and everything will fall until it is broken.
and i have nowhere left to hide.
and you will see me.

as i am, anything other than as i am.
i feel like i have been waiting for something for my entire life.
i have been waiting for an okay that will never last
for something to break
something to give
to fix
feel
wait.


                 breathe.


i will be okay.

in some hour of tomorrow who feels so impossibly far from now.
and i will be okay until i am not.
again and again until the cycle comes to me like water
the hardest part of getting better is realising that 'better' is a lie, and working towards it anyway.
but there are times when i want to be alive so much it makes my lungs ache.
so i will carry on for the me who lives in those moments, fleeting as they may feel.


it will pass.

i had always thought that love would feel like fire.
not in its rage or destruction,
but the heat, the light that flickers across her face
when it's all that i can see.

i would watch her smile as it slipped through the cracks.
she laughs like sunlight, even now
but i am hopeless and hollow and beyond all divinity,
i wished i was good enough to give her to someone better.

she looks at me like candlelight through glass
as if the fluorescents could never wash me out,
as if we lived somewhere that never existed,
like she would love me if i let her.

but there is no her.
she is the construction of a poet in despair.
she lives in my chest, hollowed out and filled with kerosene
and her fingers graze the matchstick in my hand

i think of her hair under moonlight
i think of her eyes closed in a midday heat that only dreams have
i think of rain, a rain that pours for weeks without relief
the match is lit and i swallow it whole.

it's been nearly three years.
i hate myself when i remember because it means i forgot.
and i swore i wouldn't.

knowing never made it any easier.
the moment you texted me, words messy with tears that fell on the other side of a screen.
a terrible, quiet voice in me spoke its name already.

i never knew why, of our little group, you told me. they knew you better.
i don't even know what you look like.
maybe you're still out there after all.
i would never forgive you.

you told me about the boys.
about the names they spat as they held you down.
you told me how the poison dripped into your ears to rot you from the inside out.
he said you felt like a girl.
i sat. i listened. and i spent the rest of the night retching into the toilet until my lungs hurt.

i spent an hour looking up animal facts when you told me you wanted to be distracted.
i didn't put my phone on silent for three months in case you needed me.
i wouldn't chase you if you disappeared because you said you needed space.

but it had been three months and i wake up to a message from someone else inside your username.
who told me because i was the only one that had asked where you were.
i missed you by a few weeks.

i spared the details.
your friend told me about your parents, and how they cried.
because they didn't know what you said to me until they searched your phone.
before that, he said, they couldn't understand at all.
until they did.

all my useless miles away, i know there was nothing i could do.
but i knew it was coming
and knowing never makes it easier.

and i'm an adult now, in name if nothing else,
lying awake at night still crying for a fourteen-year-old boy who hasn't finished rotting yet.
from the inside out.

My body holds in it the bones of a goddess whose worship was murdered by Time,
When fatal religion of midnight's mistresses comes alive again for tonight.
The veins of this country spread out from under me and carry the weight of our lives,
As distance between us is bridged for the evening and your years collide into mine.
Under the same Moon that looked down over you, I cross the river to the dead,
Who wander the road laid down so long ago that trees have sprung from where they tread.
You followed too readily gods dead and buried and traced in their footsteps the path.
Breathe your life into me, speak to me freely, let not my plea echo the dark,

Children of Morrigan now will we call upon as the Earth ceases to grow.
Seek now your answer and through the Arcana give justification to know.
- With my tongue asking thee, my soul commanding thee: accept my hand through the veil,
And if I am heard; spirit spare not a word and reveal then what secrets you may.

in the great arching web where all souls reside, and knowledge is shared like starlight. each one takes its turn to be human, to see the world more than as a mess of highways glittering white. and we each bring with it a piece of that knowledge we share as one.

there is a collective of human experience, in the great prehistoric brain we all share, and each little life we live, taking turns to experience each wrinkle of our planet, is simply one step in getting the bigger picture.

you and i are the same. it is my turn to be me, and soon it will be yours. and then you will write my words and i will sit in your chair and we will connect again through opposite sides.

there is a part of my soul that did not enter this body with me. all my life i have searched for it. i am still young, and maybe one day we will meet. for now, i am immortal. but when again i fade into the spiderweb of all things, i hope i shall find again the piece of me that stayed behind with you.

Abandoned factories reach up to god.
Outside them lay a forest undisturbed,
Choked by smog it struggled still to grow,
Like armies camped around enemy walls,
Waited for the weight of years to fall.
And as I passed within its maze I asked
Out into the silent afternoon:
Who will stand victorious in time,
And which of these shall be the first to go?
How soon will they then be discarded if
A suitable replacement can be found?
If that philosophy stands too for me,
Have I already seen the tree from which
The wood that will hold me forever comes?

heavendrunk i stand at the edge of space
waiting for the Great     [    NOTHING    ]     to swallow me whole

me and my body stitched of ugly thoughts,
i wait for the spirit of life to fill my mouth with beautiful words.
but the rain doesn't come.
i will never be enough for you, will i?