Smiling, helping everyone

Sulking, no homework done

Always cheerful, and seen hanging out

Insecure and really lonely at heart

Laughing and joking along

Crying when she’s home alone

Being there for people

when they’re feeling down

Screaming into the void

when she really needs someone.

. . .

“Do you need someone to talk to?”

“Please save me, I feel hopeless.”

“Don’t worry, it’ll get better!”

“Why am I so useless?”

“Love yourself!”

“I hate myself...”

“I’ll be here for you”

“Don’t I need someone too?”

. . .

Split personalities,

one contrasting the other.

Masking herself,

While inside, she suffers.

Regretting the past,

She puts up walls.

Dwelling on mistakes, but alas,

When will she move on?

You cocky man

strutting your wares

you think I’ll endure

whatever games

you play

You arrogant man

I’m sick and tired

of all your cheating

don’t want your lies

so close your mouth

You swaggering man

I want you to know

I tell no tales

I do not care

you’re no longer there

You vain man

I’ve made up my mind

– it took a while

so now I smile

just movin' on

not coming back

You egotistic man

I roar like a train

going down the track

to new adventures

and new guys.

You pompous man

The future beckons

your memory fades

and is erased

just movin' on.

flat

final fantasy for

a vacuum packed chap

doing sand circles on the map

thought I saw

in sepia tone

my own movie

face placed against your window

could see us bounce like electrons off protons

could see us grow

but it was just a mirage

and the land worm pirouettes

waiting for another false step

this desert heckles my heart

arid

airless

and stifling

nothing but memories to survive on

the heat wobbles like b movie barracudas

or those blow up wavey arm things

on the forecourt of a cheap car showroom

dazed

i think it’s been a few days

dehydrated

dried out like tropical mix

had a snapshot vision of a place where my hands once touched your face

but then my crumbling eyelids opened to

this

the light smacks my face

and highlights all my past mistakes

it’s so hot

think i’ll unzip this skin

set it down

see if it gets sucked in

i’m so tired

let’s call it a night

maybe see you on the other side?

Want to forget about you

Throw you into my past

But you keep coming back

Keep intruding into my thoughts

Want to delete everything about you

Forget I ever met you

Forget we ever talked, but no

Fool that I am

Want to move on

Live my life, laugh out loud

Dance with joy at being free

Yet, I keep going back to you

Want to get over you

But I can’t move on

Because I keep on remembering

Everything that I love about you

fall

crash

break

dash

pick the pieces up and drop a few along the way

stumble

hit

fall

split

feel the bruises blossom as you keep on moving on

flinch

swear

break

repair

try to find the spark between the flint and the stone

rumble

rise

grip

prise

hold on to your anchor as life just bobs and sways

punch

jab

duck

stab

throw your heart into it - you just might fight another day

When you left, there was a hole that wasn't there before, and I wasn't entirely sure how to make it go away again. Every day was the same as the last day, and I kept waking up, not sure how I'd make it through the day. I would go through the motions, praying that no one would notice that I wasn't okay. I couldn't help but feel alone, even though I knew I wasn't. I knew I had my friends and family by my side, but I couldn't not feel as if I was alone. There is nothing like the feeling of being lonely in a room of crowded people. That feeling is miserable and hateful, and you made me feel like that. You made me as if I was no longer good enough for you. I went through the motions of my life because of what you did to me.

You don't get to show up now. You don't get to walk back into my life like you didn't completely devastate me. You gave up the right to call me yours when you walked away without a glance back. This doesn't work like that. Life doesn't work like that. Love isn't something you can flip on and off depending on what you feel like on a certain day. I loved you and I believed that you loved me back because you said so. I took you for granted, and lost my heart and my mental health because of it. So I'm sorry, but no. You don't get a second chance. You don't get to know me again; I've moved on.

Am I healed? Not even close. But that doesn't mean I don't want to get there. You want to know how I plan to heal? Without you. I plan to find myself again, and I plan to rebuild myself in the person I want to be, without you. Does that mean I want someone else? I don't know yet. But I want to find out. I want someone to be there when I find myself. But I don't know how it will end. The one thing I do know, however, is that I want you as far from me as possible when it does end. You broke me, and I will fix myself. But you won't get to break me again. I won't give you the chance to. Because love, love is something I can't pick or choose. But I know damn well I will never choose you again.

Black lips sipped on plastic straws

From cream skimmed figures crated, awaiting an hour

Figures of dire fates in a freudian fantasy presume an alluring eye that might hear a Siren and see sirens flashing a future of assumption concluded in a dreams mistake.

Black lips drip white with activated intolerances and lactates

shameful little monkey mans fear of swine and mothers milk.

Refrigerated in corners and capped in silver, red and gold

They gave us free milk at school and it made us sick.

Haunting our ambitions to be on the gravy dripping trip

whitening a way to heaven as blue eyes peer down

upon our inner loathings as we peel the

sweated sheets of white fears off our conscious thoughts.

We roll on beds of agitation and stomachs churn with bile

We are caught between day dreams and grandurs behond the pale.

Across tracks made for iron or chains to pull carriage

shunted life along lines of state roll on rails of ghetto spied fate

Machines can opportunities too menial and tinned for the ignorant of plight.

Beginnings in prisons of want and aspiration skew worths contorting right.

I see me looking back at questions I am not standing in or over.

Seeing that path ahead curves off around a bending nowhere.

Cascading dreams flitter off without focus on directions.

Into traps smeared and sprung cages hold progresses motion captive.

Pressurising pains of failed rewards for tolerance endured

like carbons contained to inevitabilities of crystallised resplendence.

Refracted pain screams unheard entombed in glass for value graded purity

of colour as skin peels within veins like worming shafts.

Casts, cast no differences against backdrops of gloom.

Camouflage conceals a home for shades below where shaded graves protect from suns that rise upon no hope to thrive and flourish.

Savannahs stand abandoned where beasts not hunted graze

as black eyes stalk a coin and swallow meals of white disdain

Rented appendages sap strength and till rewardless lands

As they drag behind us leaving scars and dusty tracks

Gray slaves shuffle after trains long missed to destinations

where energy seeps out of weeping wounds of puss and sin

Understanding sighs a note, the cadence lulls and soothes

that sense which breaks a revolution long before its vision comes.

Meanwhile, in pities pit, those above the them beneath,

perfume onerous stenches as they go about their days smelling not their blames. They see not beneath the soles red painted vanity.

Trending paths lined with good intentions directed on a waypost

where eternally nowhere is the terminus in sight

And where knowing no longer need take purchase.

I remember mucus covered lips of bovine cream

blackness longing not to swallow not to take the whiteness

not to drown in whitened rivers or fall from buttered mounds and mountains that the grateful would show awe for should they know.

I will remember to remind myself of what not to remember.

You can't leave!

You are the only reason I come to school!

I'll miss you so much!

I can't imagine school without you!

All my best friends are leaving me, not you too!

Please don't go!

But I need to . . .

Why don't you take easy classes next year?

You won't even come for the cheap college credit?

Have a half year schedule!

No one understands . . .

What are you going to do?

Where are you going to college?

What are you planning on studying?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I don't know!!

I'm not graduating early to go to college early

I'm not graduating to get on with my life

I like school

I just can't do this anymore

The stress is too much

I'm not leaving you

I'm leaving the situation

I can't stay to help others anymore

I need to put my oxygen mask on first

I need to destress, take a year off

Learn how to enjoy life again

Wait, you have anxiety?

You always look so put together!

There's no way you are that stressed.

Ohhh but I am.

I wear my mask of confidence very well

I've trained myself over the years.

But I can't hold it up much longer.

I need to go.

Well, I'll miss you!

I'll miss you too!

But even for you, I can't stay

I'm sorry