I hadn’t thought much about the sky in a while,
pretend planets up past the clouds,
we played house there
and it felt familiar.
I trace Pluto,
burning up there in the cold, all alone.
I used to run laps around her,
touch her skin.
We used to meet in that cratered ice,
you and I.
How lost in the dark you felt to me there,
how perfectly blind to a meteor,
the only blink of white close enough to feel.
Take me back to tan in that blistering heat.
In the light,
I could have sworn I was home.
My stomach forms a line that knots and knots.
You wallow in my dreams,
in shaded corners, under my jumper.
I want to kiss you back
and promise everything all over again.
Sometimes the people I’ve lost
don’t even seem to exist to me anymore,
roam my world like strangers
I wouldn’t recognise even
if they said my name, like they used to be
anything more than
dead to me.
All these tears are mine,
all these shaking wrists and this red skin.
Reminds me that sadness doesn’t live in you,
it’s all you’ve ever been.
It’s all you can see
through some clouded pool of vomit.
It’s all I can offer now,
and it’s not your fault I promise,
we were simply born to rust.
And I still think about that turtle you ran over,
weeds growing through her shell.
First nights sober sting less each time.
I sleep better alone, besides
my brain bickering like children.
He was smoke in my mouth,
as hard as I clench my teeth,
my lungs collapse ‘til he’s out.
Scrape him off my tongue, eyes well.
It might hurt to try.
I remember light, hot rain,
when the gravel would sink into my skin.
I hear music now in quiet spells,
licking at the lips of summer,
and wishing away the sun.
You sink into the reality of alone,
realise how much of you is somebody else,
how much of your heart.
How my heart
beats
in time
with the
thum-
ping of
his chest.
He floated between stomach fluid backwash islands
and tried not to come back up
with any other kind of dread
I’d come to expect from day-old wine.
I woke to skeletons
watching from my wardrobe.
They beckon,
tell me I look pretty without
all that flesh,
warm and soft.
I want to go outside
and rip my skin off.
As the sun drains movement from my home,
spinning top sphere.
I hear the hum of one million droplets
battering earth,
blue light and chlorophyll,
and collecting in my mouth.
You could choke on that sorrow;
The lumps in my throat balloon and blossom
into miserable tumours,
bouncing and bellowing
in the chasm of my mouth.
If I was a better person,
If you were-
I’m pretty sure I love you
as much as the first time,
as much as I always will.
It just,
changes.