The painful places, you always try to hold

It’s

Such

A

muted relief,

You have to convince yourself

That

It’s

Working.

I spread

Each

One

Of

My

Fingers

over

Each

One

Of

My

Ribs

So my hands

Can wear them

Like

Gloves-

-they stay there so long,

when

i

look

down

i think they’ve burst through the skin.

it reduces

Or increases?

the pain to a

Dull Ache

and I forget about the pain the way...

Tiny traumas to the chest wall,

That’s what causes it-

So every

Time

You

Cough,

Or

Curse,

Your body remembers

when you forget.

We aren’t bothered

If the things

We do

Are

Detrimental,

We just have to see the

Smoke

Enter

The

Air

To Know

We

Can

Breathe.

Smoking might kill you

But it might show you you’re

Alive!

Tiny traumas,

Like the batting

Of

Butterfly

Wings

In your chest,

If you get en...

The echoes of my hallowed bones and that ringing of old aches. I felt death coming, it felt a lot like euphoria; everything you wanted comes all at once. The room for resurrection gets smaller and smaller; the space between you and the end grows close. When it happens, it’s bare feet and the cold. The way life wains thin and gaunt. When blackbirds fly above you, you think they are flecks of a fire...

A girl I’m half in love with said she can’t get out of herself. She swigs cherry coke and turns to me - ‘it’s like my flesh is walls, you know, like it’s inescapable - but profound, you know?’ I begin to think it isn’t cherry in the Coke.

I understood what she meant though so I said, ‘yeah that feeling when your skin feels like it’s shrinking and it’s like you’re watching the world happen to you ...

I still have the ballerina body; that harrowed silhouette with all the bruises, like cigarette burns in a carpet when the ash drops off.

Carrie bit into a strawberry the size of her palm and didn’t pull away until her teeth had bitten right into the vein of it. At the centre, she ripped away and i almost expected blood, but it was clean. As her hand grew stickier she threw the carcass of it onto...

The veil of a life we were living,

Had begun to fall away.

Though you wanted me no longer,

I wanted you to stay.

Quickening

Rhythms

Of heartbeats and

Memories,

I wonder how long it will take

You

To forget

Me.

Like tombstones and memorials

I’ll carve your name

Into my life,

Maybe I can make you stay.

Leave me alone

You say and

So of course I go

Because where once there was a

Softness,

Now a...

i

think

she’s

scared

of

me.

you know?

those thick smiles

pulsing with teeth

eager and

willing.

too much?

she uses

my toothbrush

it’s nice

to share

my

mouth

wash

oozed

into the

cut in

her lip

from my

teeth.

by the

bed

i lay

a

ring o’ roses

and let you

sleep

where i

lay.

you woke

mid - night

laboured eyes

and body dripping

out of the bed

you stretched

and exorcised

some

...

‘I’m becoming a building’, she said, and turned to me as though it would make sense in my mouth.

The words echoed in the distance between us. She pulled away, slowly, moulding to the air behind her. I wondered if my hands were holding a pair of strings rather than a spine.

‘I’m sorry?’

This all felt very slow, sort of like lofi pop in a dusky foggy nightmarish room you can’t pull yourself out...