I'll hide away in myself for a while,
and as I try to smile at the good folk
who surround me,
I'll see the concern in their eyes
or the awkward sympathy in the way they don't meet my gaze at all.
Your eyes say it all.
Hello, goodbye, thank you and please,
Excitement, weakness, pleasure and greed
all in the concentric circles between your eyelids.
Globes.
Green, blue, brown, grey
A whole other world at the top of your face.
I could travel the earth in one hour with you.
But I may have to stop hiding away
And dip into my savings account.
There are expenses to pay
If I am to holiday with you.

A mouse is small
and a mouse is brown
but when one appears
big people scream loudly.
I wonder if the small, brown mouse
knows why there's so much noise.
Poor mouse is getting bullied!
Chased by giants!
Giants are slow, though.
Big and loud and slow, you know,
and too preoccupied with other things
to catch every quick little mouse.
I think the mouse will win this one.
But I heard they don't like chilli powder.

I don't want to be a coward.
I want to be strong
but it's hard when I don't know what to say
(everything I can think of feels wrong
and I struggle to picture in my mind a real conversation with you,
because I'm scared.)

I blow air into the balloon in my chest
and look across at you
but as my eyes smile and try their best to be honest
I deflate and it seems I can't get through
the thick, grey doubt
clouding my judgement.

I want to tell you that I care
about you and your smile and the way
it paints a crease on your chin
but sometimes I struggle to say anything
that could even so much as doodle an expression
on those familiar features.

Perhaps you are having thoughts quite similar
when you lie down to sleep.
And when you wake early
to go for a run - while your feet
put distance between us - I wonder
if your thoughts pull me closer.
I don't know.

Honestly, these dramatic words don't feel right to me.
They don't suit you
like I want to suit you.
They don't match the pure, honest truth, which is that
I think you're unique.
You're talented and beautiful and you bring me joy.
You're cute and quiet and strong and bold
and I hope that very soon I'll be able to speak some of this to you properly.
You probably know half of it already, and
it makes me twice the coward, that I haven't been able to speak directly to you what has already been said  in every vague hint and stare and hug and simpering compliment that I've passed your way.
I really want to be strong.

Are you happy?
Your second-hand smile wears thin like old jeans,
and once-glinting eyes drop to the floor to stare dully at my cigarette ****.
My trainers are filthy and yours are clean, protecting soft feet from the cold that we both feel inside us.
It's the start of November but it's been winter for a while.

How long have you been silent? How long will you be silent?

How do you buy new jeans when all your currency has been spent?

Maybe I could be your personal shopper... I'm really not qualified; I was fired from my last position but I think I'd enjoy working here!

I'm sorry this doesn't make sense.
Some of it is missing and some of it almost definitely isn't me.
That's the trouble with painting your face. You do it every day and you forget how you used to look under all those layers, each mask set upon the last.
But I suppose the Mona Lisa took a few attempts, and so can we.

So alone in a room, with my back against a mirror, I put pencil to paper and start to scratch my itch.

I forgot to look at the sky,
bright, cold blue with shreds of white hanging
above and beyond the grey city
whose tall, misty pillars of different shapes and sizes stand
full of people who are full of frowns.
Who,
like me,
probably forget to look at the sky.

In the foreground, ***** trees sprawl low and wide and leafless in the winter chill.
Dark roots curled under the wet grass of the hill which holds me and you

I feel lost and perhaps a little homesick.
This isn't my city.
The buildings aren't mine and the trees aren't mine
but a little part of the sky is mine
as I breathe it in
and out
and it refreshes my skin.

I don't realise what I have

I could lie in bed
through the whole, long morning
but as the gentle, Welsh sun peeks through the crack between my curtains,
I stretch my legs

I have a basil plant
with some lovely, emerald leaves
crowning 3 strong, thick columns
in an off-white, ceramic ***.

Decorated with delicate foliage, hand-painted
in rust and green,
how it glows in the sunshine
on the tiled kitchen window sill.