tick
tock
ticking eyelid
missing shiny
bright sparks
heart
stumbles after
you chopped its legs off at the knees
it can't stop bleeding

fuck
shock
anaesthetic mockery
rock between
drunkeness and philosophy
raging pain
and ecstacy

sick
sock
he wore on one foot
she wore the other
bright red
impossible to forget
burned into my retina
image of
him
her
happy
together
mismatched feet
tree meetings
fractals
laboured breathing

purple used to be
a favourite
colour,
no more
after his stories
no more

My face broke, the well opened
He asked me if all was okay
The words stuck,
As always
In my throat chakra,
He swore softly, apologised for my hurt
Pour a glass of the finest red
Around
Called it anaesthetic,
Called himself Doctor Rob,
Made his exit swiftly
After the efficient fix he had given,
I drown in the bottom of the glass,
One part hate,
The other grateful for pain relief.

7pm on a Friday evening
Stuck to my keyboard,
Typing through this incessant weeping
Try to get my work done,
The show must go on,
Even through this, this,
Unthinkable this.

I cannot handle it,
I cannot be resilient,
I can only be the love I felt,
Melting.
I do not want to carry this
Nor heal and grow distance from you,
Goddess, goddess,
I miss you so much
I'm Making bargains with the devil,
Take me instead,
It's my head you want, not hers.
She never sinned like me,
Never took from people selfishly,
She is better in every way,
And I am stuck, trying to emulate.
Please take me,
Instead.

Why

Concern behind every question
How are you..?
I think it is a good query,
To question my existence once
Wrapped in yours
I'm weary now and don't know
How I am,
How I am going to be.
I'm running on fumes and I have no energy.
I'm numb to the bone and sick to my stomach.
I'm really fucking depressed
And no, I don't anticipate
Happiness
So do not expect this of me.
I am trying,
To get through each hour without
Crying so hard my eyes explode,
Tear ducts are lost rivers now,
Hidden underground,
Inhabited with shame,
Don't ask me how I am
Because you cannot handle
This pain,
Nor can I.
I can't talk about it anymore
The words don't work,
They're stalling in my throat,
The net always ready to catch my disbelief
Hold your breath,
My death whispers to me,
Stop breathing and you'll be happy,
Stop existing alongside misery
Free yourself.
Inherent in this order
The imprisonment of others,
I am not resilient,
I am not strong,
I am tired, my bones feel a million years old
I need to sleep.
I need to find my weaknesses and crawl inside,
Brain etched with endless questions built from one letter,
Why?

I cannot feel today,
Numb, switched off
Extremities cautious to touch the water,
Ice cold nose running,
Losing. No weight,
Head a concrete chopping block,
The poison fills me.
Get up,
Get out,
Go be productive,
Cog,
Turn turn turn and leave the tears for later,
take a day off but no more,
That should be enough,
Back to the grind.

Sky-woman

I finally felt the warmth on my knees
Saw the sun has risen again
With a vengeance,
Letting eyes lose focus to
Train tracks,
See ibis infest the palm trees
In incongruence,
I look forward to only one thing
These days,
Resting my weary head, my bones lax, spine stretched into sleep,
In a dream foreign to this living one
We can speak again.
I suspect your form in the house
We shared,
Turn away, I don't recognise this
Absence in your eyes,
I'm scared.
I hear bumps in the night,
See your lanky moves in ungraceful ways
But I don't know this
Body-less version of you,
And you don't communicate
Your thoughts as well anymore.
I can't handle you haunting me,
Ghost,
You, omnipresent energy,
You, from which green things grow,
You, sky-woman, of the fractal family,
Of the waxing moon,
Of holy hands and bopping shoes,
You are too big to lose.
You are too much to lose.

I couldn't lose you if I tried,
I am reminded every time I look up,
Of your bloodline,
Your philosophy,
Excruciatingly wise mind,
Behind the most playful of smiles,
I am reminded with each breath
That even the breaking has it's time,
That the rotten stomach,
The dropped rock stutter of pulse,
The angry depression I find the door to,
The empty ache in punched gut
A symptom of this quicksand rut,
This endless hanging question 'why'
These are signposts to the way back to you,
Clouds racing each other to falling,
Tiredness pulling at me,
And a quiet rainbow sitting behind my ribcage,
Just waiting for it's chance.

I'm crying on the train again,
Moving quickly from the scene of the pain,
I can beat myself to the end,
Or along the way,
But friend, sister, lover,
This was never your way,
And I'm ashamed.
You'd laugh at our tears,
Tickle a side or two and say,
Yeh but,
Look at the sky!
Isn't it more beautiful than your wide, planet-spanning grief?
Isn't it divine, how blue and steeped in history,
Imagine all the bodies who have moved through that sky,
Imagine what fun we will have when we die,
Look up kid. It's not over yet,
There's much to be done,
The wet season will pass,
The cold will warm up,
Til then, you've got a family of souls to tend to,
Do they know how much you love them?
Do they smile before sleep, feel held?
Do you give them all the happies you can muster,
Do they keep your energy after you've gone,
Yes, let's meet tonight in the space
Between waking and sleep,
But when the mourning comes,
Get up, curse the cold, weep if you must,
But don't forget to look up.

I want her back
Please
It's been only 24 hours
Surely there's something you can do,
Breathe air back into those lungs
Take one life from me,
Instead,
I've lived many times over,
I can't do this again,
She was better.

I want her back, please,
I need her back,
She spread sunshine with every step
While I suck in toxins,
Blow out dioxide

There remain
Moments of peace,
All of them anonymous, uncounted,
Usually while I'm asleep,
I can't remember that it's all upside down,
That she's on the other side of life
And somehow I stay.
Good one God,
You really thought this one through hey?
Giving us humans our sunshine
Then snatching it back again
Soon as the chill wears off.

The inexorable push towards
Consciousness,
Wakes me,
Falling off a stilted bed,
Floor camouflaged in undone chores,
Stumble toward a stuttering urban waterfall
Hear every ghost within these walls
Say to me,
Sister, you're not the first one to have lived
And she won't be the last one that dies,
But don't worry, they slur,
Through toothpaste and
Smarting eyes,
I hear them hug eachother lightly,
Murmur an om and start rocking
Don't worry, we got her, sis,
Ancestors exist for this very reason,
To carry on communities, to guide,
While you thought we were here to keep them alive,
The truth is that they keep her loved,
Til we get there,
To her new house, probably made from
Clouds and cracked-open skies,
Pieces of dew,
Rainbows from her eyelashes
Mortar made of laughter
And foundations of our grief.

The only time I forget, is when I sleep.
Forehead clear and mouth slack,
I switch off the horror and dream,
Knowing I too have my deaths,
Nightly,
I disappear into my bedroom, sink into a pillow
And I pray.

It'll be winter soon but you could have fooled the trees, Left stark and bare to a careless wind Wearing nothing but their roots, They stood watching time slow as the cold came early this year. A thought sits planted in my minds hand Grasping at a concept Raw insides and organs bereft I remember something of my chemistry, That energy cannot be met with destruction, It changes it's Form but remains, still, Kept, If there is no heaven, I would understand, For heaven was a soul that I met Already, Fear glancing off the bright slivers of sun She leaned out a beat up car window in a yellow cardigan, Yelled hey! Jessie! Swooped in changed life For the better Changed future To worse Changed the past Into best She crept into my bloodstream grinning, taking a tube to swim down on, and splashed singing, Have you seen the moon? Look at the clouds!! Every time I look up I fall out of the sky again Hating such vastness For showing such reality Her beauty uncontained Kaleidoscopic Every day a different shade of shiny, A different blink of bright, Suddenly my sight is saturated with her lessons And her presence, Ever-present. I grapple the edge of reason, Tip into the realm of prayer, 
cast my heart a stone and give up a diamond From the pressure there alone, From between the cracks, the light finally shines, And it hurts. How does the bending heart open, If not through tears, Fissures missing, The fear is gone, of the other space, She now walks among her peers, It's getting cold here. The trees think it's Winter, But it's months too soon, The rose still sits on the windowsill, The scent of summer lifts, And her magic now sits between your fingers, Listen, listen to the lingering beckon, To embody these teachings, Reckonings may come, indeed they most likely will, but for now, look at the sky, have you seen the sunset? Have you seen the moon?

And then the voids were filled with sifted silence,
fissures creeping in through each tiny crack of the vocal chords
each broken beat of a heart that sometimes refuses to
believe this reality
stumbling its way down artery lane
scuffing its toes, and choking out words
like
hold your breath, woman, hold it tight.
In this held breath are the lives of your dearest,
They cannot yet go if you hang onto this oxygen,
and my lungs hate me, straining.