Promise

The good you saw in me was what got my attention.

I saw you look into my eyes when I spilled words,

and watched your jaw clench when I struggled to smile.

But we had become an endless cycle of love & hurt,

it tore me apart, entirely.

I slept too little, and wore little badges of worry

to work each day.

You slept too much, leaving the smallest amount of daylight

to deal with.

We spoke about how things would get better,

my heart broke so many times I couldn't believe I

was still able to feel the pain.

I hated knowing that were never doing ourselves justice,

never giving in to the only two we would be.

I changed it all though, in an instant.

I was the one that made it all too real.

I thought I knew the best form of suicide;

to kill myself so well there was nothing to left to recognise.

So I hurt myself stupidly running away from you, 

and yet you laid me down to gently dress my wounds.

I'm not sure that I will be able to forgive myself,

and I know I will die inside if I ever have to see

someone else's hand in yours.

I guess there was more damage beneath than we realised,

and we might both have to take the blame for that.

But forever, my eyes will see nothing but where you should be standing,

and my lungs will only open up once you're in my air.

I never wanted out of the me & you,

I want in for always,
for everything,
for good.

Crept.

All of a sudden i'm soaked
through and through
and the truth you told turned
everything else into lie.

Lucifer.

What's constant here is my slipping away.
The canyon in my mind deepens every day,

taking my bones away and threatening
the gaps in my breath.
I haven't stopped listening to the static on the radio,
reading the fine print in the newspapers;
I know it's in there somewhere.
But,
if it isnt,
if I can't save from falling,
it was loving you, more than words can say,
that made me want to see the sunrise
of just one more beautiful day. 

Capture.

I saw others in your eyes
and felt that familiar tug
of floor out from beneath
and warmth of bathroom tiles.

A.

Because it's this year and this now,
because I'd like to think I could be the type of person not to blame you for their mistakes,
because illogically I'm darkest at the surface.
I have a list of reasons that I could use,
and pretend that in them somewhere, lies the perfect explanation of why I am
more of a picture than a person.
But when I look at you I realise
I just don't know.

Low.

Every now and then
I look over see you as a stranger,
thinking about things you've said
and wondering if this will
turn into an ache I won't forget.

You know you can tear me up,
turn me into scraps of old newspaper.
I think this time I cared too much,
wanting more from every letter
that you spoke.

Now I guess we'll never know
just what could have been hiding
in our corners,
and when I listen to the radio
songs are playing that I never really noticed.

Ink.

I stopped growing when I was nineteen,
I marked it on my bedroom wall with fat black line.
That same year I spoke to my father,
the first and only time.
He sounded so dirty, like the floor of a biker bar.
The gravel in his unfamiliar voice tore a layer off my skin.
When I hung up the phone, I was all shiny and new. Like I stepped out
of a scalding bath.

Late at night, when I can't sleep, un-missed lovers tessellate on my walls,
painting portraits of oh my god.
Late at night, when I can't sleep,
I find it comforting to imagine I can slowly take my flesh off
my bones,
that I can rearrange my body into something worthy.
Sleep is so very peaceful when it is filled with dreams of a beautiful,
mutilated me.

I can curse the history books for teaching me
lessons I never learnt my self,
but I will forever bless the boys who locked me up
in concrete cellars
for the light (of my life) at dawn and my methylated spirit.