Starla tastes of strawberries

Everyone follows with covered eyes

I sit at his feet and swallow the Gita

Clouded vision and cobra-choked

Breathing exhaled prayers and smoke

He fails to see that I am not his Sati

This blind belief of silent truths

I watch as his throat turns blue

And give myself as I've been told

Third eye opened to behold

Another thing I can no longer do

I fell for his words

poor spelling and forgotten punctuation

soft brown skin and crooked teeth

indifferent political views

I curled into the warmth

of his terrible mathematics

the green flickers in his eyes

the fact he never wears shoes

and has never read a book

school was a chore

and we couldn't be more different

if we tried with every fibre

every tendon

every breath

he wants to build his own house

or live in a van

I can't have children and he wants an army

we fight everyday

and make love twice

too lost in each other to remember why

our dreams are made of bright colours

strobe lighting and lust

coated in whisky

and dropped into white water

he draws on my skin

with eye-liner pencils

and permanent marker

words that are senseless

and pictures of nothing

I wash them away every morning

words than run along my body

and vanish into sewers

I fell for his words

child-like handwriting

soft kisses and promises

I fell

I found myself thumbing through the yellowing pages of life, ignoring the obligatory small print and choking on my daily doses of ennui and bullshit. The blank space where I used to stand stares back at me with the silent accusation of my weakness. I find it impossible to explain why I let it happen. Why it continues to happen. All the time aware that in the morning we will pretend that everything is fine. I'm the girl screaming at the strobing images of idiots who put themselves into this position and never escape. I call them fools and roll my eyes at their sob-story realities, safe in the knowledge that my own is competition for any of theirs.

Leave Him

It seems stupid to have this high opinion of a system that would allow a woman to walk the streets with a shiner and a bloodied lip. Yet here I am clutching a towel the colour of burnished metal with copper drying in my knotted hair. Sat in a room full of people and the only thing I can hear is my pulse trying to keep my brain alive, keeping me from expiration. I'm clinging to a limestone skeleton that dissolves beneath my acid fingertips and I am a mockery to myself as I try to remember why I bother to hold on.

Like watching TV and crying over the death of a soap character. Detached realism. Something to be pitied from a far. Empathised. I nod and smile and the world functions around me to prove my worthlessness. I am the faux proud, waiting to die or to fall but not wanting everones awareness. I sit here chewing fingernails until they bleed and nobody notices my faultering breaths or gently trembling movements. I'm thinking about whisky in a tumbler filled with ice while watching my cornflakes absorb the milk from my cereal bowl and I'm wondering what it is about me that makes men want to crush me. Perhaps I look better when I cry. Or perahps the strength I portray is so transparent that they love to scratch away the surface and see the broken girl.

 I read these words and I fill with bitter tasting bile and a sickness that I could never explain or wash away. I read these words and have no idea how my fingers can work without my heart. I know the truth. I know that he asked me to leave. He asked me to leave but I lied and said I was happy. Now I don't know where to go and I'm not sure that I care anymore. Life is much easier when someone else is in control and all I have to do is stop when the light turns red.

 All I have to do is stop waiting for it to turn green.

watching you sleep in my kingsized bed

I realise with growing satisfaction

that with a single shotgun blast to your head

I could alter my life and bedroom

which is fine I love the colour red

and I would soon forget the skull fragments

imbedded into the wallpaper

she begs me

push a little deeper

move closed

taste her skin

slide down

breathe

perfect heaving breasts

gasping for air

flick my tongue

pelvis tilt

deeper still

middle finger slide

camera light green

she never breaks eye contact

ever the actress

I never break rhythm

perform to the crowd

bitter-sweet

skin to skin

interlocked

delicate kiss

teeth on my thigh

push deeper

I can remember the taste of sugar

The smell of motor oil strong on my skin.

He smiled and told me I was fine

everything would be fine

and I rember thinking

you don't tell people how they feel

you ask them.

He gave me a sweater.

Too big, too heavy.

He stroked my hair

told me I was beautiful.

I looked at my shoes

scuffed toes and dust

and thought about birds

flying south for the winter.

He said he would drive me home.

I said I could walk

and I collected my things

and showed myself to the door

while he washed me from his skin

so nobody would ever know

I was here.

I walked until it was dark.

Wind pulling at my dress

fingers knotted in my hair.

He told me I was beautiful.

Its hard to wash that smell from your skin.

If I smoked, I would lean across the table right now,

(one soft brown arm decorated with bangles)

to push my cigarette into the almost overflowing ashtray

and so that you could get a good view down the front of my shirt.

Surely a fish only knows he is wet if he has something to compare it to.

Being dry, for example.

But a dry fish is a dead fish

which is not a good thing

for the fish.

So, based on this thing

(the thing with fish not knowing they are wet)

How on Earth can I be sure that I'm alive?

I eat cereal three times a day

Then stare at my stomach

With NutCrunch stuck between my teeth

Sit in the sun in my underpants

A beer warming between my knees

I watch my skin turn pink

Snow melting on the mountains

River roaring in my ears

I erase all my poetry

Before anyone else reads it

Because the words mean nothing

And because its all shit

I beg for someone who can hold my interest

Maybe someone who can teach me to juggle

Cartwheel

Play the Double Bass

Lose some weight

Pick up all the scraps of paper

Leaking biros

Pencils sharpened to useless nubs

Cornflakes

I could ask all day

Wait in the haze

But I could never afford a Double Bass