untitled

I tried. You tried. It didn’t work.
We went our separate ways, and no one died.
No one died, I suppose. No one died.
And now we’re years apart, and that is fine.
But no one is you. I know that, and it chills me through and through.
I know it and it wakes me up at night.
I know it in a way that bumps the hairs up on my skin.
I don't know you anymore. That’s alright.
In my dream, you say you have been waiting.
You are dressed in the jacket that you left in.
I still look the same; twenty-two, a small fire.
You press your cold lips to my skin.
We still have our northern accents.
I lay you down on the floor.
We smell like musk in the woods after the rain.
We don’t yet know what we will know.

kin

You grow up in a place where people fight.
People come out of the bathroom ready for war.
People come to the table with knives up their sleeves.
Nobody cares how they skin each other.
You grow up in a place where people say what they think they need to, to win the hour. You grow up in a place where everyone stops growing. It’s devastating; rude, hereditary. You grow up, or you don’t grow up. You stay in a place where people help themselves to the last of the things they think they need, fall apart in the kitchen, take bloody hostages and kill each other slowly, where people snip their sentences into angles, where people leave, but not quickly enough, where people die in agony on the linoleum floor. You forget how to grow and it’s almost forever. You move out, to a place where no one comes around on a Sunday.  You eat alone in your room and never for fun. You grow complicated, with awful, awful potential. Watch out, catch yourself falling. Apart. Mostly in the mornings.

the biggest tortoise in the world

“They found the biggest tortoise
in the world in South America today,”
you said, massaging the tender knot at the back of my neck
with one hand
removing your boots
with the other.
“They had to get a lorry or something
to remove it, imagine that.”
I said nothing, thinking of all of the things you understand
and all of the things you don’t
like how I will love you forever but
probably from afar
not in the way you want and
how you’ll find somebody new to be with. It’s only fair.
Maybe your new love will have
tightness in the neck
a passion for useless facts
the power to stick around
and really, I miss you already.

when it is but it aint

Some of us love badly. Sometimes the love is the type of love that implodes. Folds in on itself. Eats its insides. Turns wine to poison. Behaves poorly in restaurants. Drinks. Kisses other people. Comes back to your bed at four am smelling like everything outside. Asks about your ex. Is jealous of your ex. Thinks everyone a rival. Some of us love others badly, love ourselves worse. Some of us love horrid, love beastly, love sick, love anti light. Sometimes the love can’t go home at night, can’t sleep with itself, cannot contain itself, catches fire, destroys the belly, strips buildings, goes missing. Punches. Smashes heirlooms. Tells lies. The best lies. Fucks around. Writes poems, impresses people. Chases lovers into corners. Leaves them longing. Seasick. Says yes. Means anything but. Tricks the body. Kills the body. Dances wild and walks away, smiling.

the three per cent

That awful three percent in you
thinks sadness is romantic.
Is aroused by unsavoury things.
Wants the very worst thing to happen.  
Wants everyone to want you but doesn’t know how to be loved.
Needs want.
Wants, needs.
Makes up stories and sticks with them. Can’t be happy for your friends.
That horrible three per cent in you thinks you’ll be left behind.
Fears new things, old things,
intimacy, loneliness,
children, childlessness, conflict, boredom, isolation,
silence, news.
That terrible three percent of you
is the reason it might fall through.