Coffee, The Sunrise And The Buildings Awash In The Light Of A New Morning All Around Me. How Lovely Is

sunshine lover. body shaped like the word devour and I’m hungry, so hungry. sunshine lover. come lay in the garrets of my heart. let me kiss your wrists. let me love you. let me take all of you for myself. won’t you come linger, love?

winter lover. I’ll never be your snow covered sweetheart, wrapped up in a white sheet. you’ve devoured every aching corner of my heart. winter lover. all my poetry and writing is yours, though I didn’t want them to be. winter lover. cut my wrists. staple them to a cross. I am nothing more than yours.

we found a park bench that fit us perfectly, with our initials etched into it. no kidding. seems like the universe foretold our love before we even knew it existed. and it sounds stupid but what are the chances? anyway, one always tends to romanticise everyday objects when in love.

and it’s beautiful, the way the love I have for you rises and bubbles in my throat, tainting everything with its sweetness. the way that park bench isn’t the same if you’re not there. the way that river by your place reminds me of your whirlpool blue eyes. the way wok noodles don’t taste as good if we’re not eating it together, laughing and sharing the same fork.

in summer, we buy milkshakes and listen to music, lying on each other on the bench. in winter, we cuddle into his big jacket, shivering and sharing a cup of overpriced hot chocolate. a park bench that weathered storms and lifetimes and hundreds of strangers, etched with our love from before we even met. before I fell in love with you. before you first kissed me.

crazy, huh?

what if he loves her the way he refused to love me?

Why didn’t you leave, my mother and my friends and his friends asked me and I wish I could give them all an answer because it’s been months and I’m still not too sure. I can’t really work it out because it’s not like he ever hit me. In fact- maybe it was my fault, the way I swallowed the words that spilled over the floor until I was sick. I carefully clipped admissions of pain into jokes about how love feels like drowning, whispered softly to my friends, “so fucked up” as if this wasn’t the life I was living. I walked around with my jaw clenched because he was safe enough, right? And it’s not like yelling or insults ever killed anyone (it is bad to have this body. it takes up too much space.) I heard someone call me “emotionally delicate” and I would cry but there isn’t really anything to cry about. that’s the joke of it. so what that he said he’d make me do it even if I didn’t want to? so what he’d recoil when I argued and say “you’re so annoying when you panic”. There was nothing beautiful there, nothing soft. No red flags, no warning signs- just an empty carcass and dirt. My heart like a rotten peach (how it is all so unbearable). He has a new girlfriend now and they kiss and hold hands and something inside me breaks (maybe she was soft in ways I never was, maybe it was always me). Is this how love works? Was it always supposed to be this way?

I’m back in a stairwell. blue faced and weak

and weak

and weak.

It isn’t getting easier.

my lover used to blush and shake his head in disagreement whenever I called him handsome. emerald green eyes rolling and skin flushed in embarrassment. I could tell he didn’t quite believe me.

now, 6 months on, whenever I call him handsome he kisses my cheek and smiles. says, thank you, says I love you and squeezes me tight.

lover, breathe with me in between all the seconds. the slow rise and fall of your rib cage, and the quiet hum of your pulse underneath crumpled bedsheets. spill your lifeline between those saccharin lips onto my body. time spent apart and together, sighing in the bathtub with our naked bodies and glasses of wine. kiss me here and here and here darling. turn my body into a love letter, sign your name onto my inner thigh.

Sweet and delicate

Complacency masked by the gentle glove of understanding,

(my friends always did say I was too accommodating).

And you- this poor, poor boy who was caught in the middle of a drama.

(You call it a drama, I call it the thing that makes me feel unsafe in my own skin)

“You cannot expect me to throw away 5 years of friendship”

I said okay, okay.

I did not want the assault to take away my friendships after it took

The deep appreciation I used to have for this body

My smile

My life.

But today I saw you give the man that raped me a big hug. 

You know- those big i-missed-you man hugs?

I felt the anger tear across my palms, two fists ready to meet the drywall. 

How could you. 

You know what he did.

You know what he took from me.

And I realise you didn’t care.

Because it was not your body he turned inside out. 

It was not your tongue he ripped from your throat. 

You give him a hug full of familiarity and love. 

I don't want to forgive you. 

I don’t want to pretend it’s all alright.

I won’t roll over and accept it this time.

just to be clear, you can do this too

trigger warning: self harm

it’s been a year since I last hurt myself, an addiction that took all my willpower to overcome. I know I can fashion words into something beautiful but there was nothing pretty about all that self-hatred, all that anger, loss and pain. all that pain coiled in my stomach, gnawing at me from the inside. there was absolutely nothing beautiful about scarring a body that works so hard to keep going. I can’t make this beautiful or romantic or wistful. but it’s over now. I can breathe. I just want to let that fact be.