I would recognise your walk anywhere.
Sometimes passers by remind me of you.
And I still check bus windows as they drive by, 
just in case you are there in the back seat.

Time has moved on,
but you still hide in the corners of my mind,
like a tattoo in a place I can’t see.

You set me free to find someone who could give me the things you didn’t want to.
The things I wanted from you.
I have them now, and I feel how you should have made me feel.
I resent that you were right.
I resent that you knew how I should have been treated and couldn’t.
Even in my happiness, happiness that I wouldn’t change, I am bitter for the time and love wasted.
Even now it saddens me, and I still don’t understand.
I don’t understand why it wasn’t, it can’t and won’t ever again, be you.

I measure the time by how long my nails have grown, not by days or by weeks or by hours.
I measure the time by cigarettes burnt, sleepless nights and hot salty tears.
I measure the time by my clothes hanging looser, and how the dust settles on my room.
I measure the time by the change of my face, the spread of my eyebrows beyond their usual shape.

I measure the time by the pile of laundry, how many dishes are stacked, not by days or by nights.
I measure the time by how many bruises I have, the new marks on my skin, the scratches and scars.
I measure the time by the smell of my sheets, and the knots in my hair.
I measure the time by the collection of abandoned pills by my bed.

I measure the time by how the oranges rot, and how the milk has curdled, not by the days on the calender.
I measure the time by the rain and the sun and how I sleep through it all.
I measure the time by the phases of hunger, the waves of sickness, the empty weight of pain.
I measure the time by how dull the ache is, or by how crippling the thoughts.

I measure the time by how I remember your voice, or the way your skin felt, not by how long since I saw you last.
I measure the time by how far the cracks spread, how I crumble with memories, the lack of air in my lungs.
I measure the time by breaking, and bending, and caving and hiding.
I measure the time by withdrawal, the withdrawal from you.

If you could go back would you change anything?
Would you still change it if it meant we would never meet?

Do you see me as something better that came along,
or something that just took the pain away for a little while?

I fear that when you think of me you associate me with what could have been, not what is or what might be.

There are so many things about you that make me painfully happy.
I wonder if there are things that I do that make you feel this way…

For a start, your eyes. How they shine when you look at me, how they are so dark yet so bright at the same time.
Your eyelashes, I think they are my favourite thing. How can someone’s eyelashes be the most beautiful thing I see on a daily basis?
Your skin. Your hands, and how you play with my fingertips when we sit together.
Your smile. It changes your whole face, transforms you into something that can build and break my heart all at once every time I see it.
Your hair. How you smell when you rest your head on my shoulder.
The way you call me baby girl, or Bubsy Malone, or the apple of your eye.
Things that are just ours.
It makes me happy watching your skinny legs rush around in the morning when you get ready for work.
When you sing to yourself, when you disappear off into your imaginary land for a while.
The way you open up to me after a drink or 5, and tell me things that make me feel as if I am floating.
The way you kiss me.
The way just being close to you calms me, and makes me feel at home.
You are my home, wherever we might be, if you are there it’s home.

I guess what I am asking is if this is real.
I want to know if we are on the same page, or reading different books.

I wish I knew without asking.
An answer is never as honest, nor reassuring, as an unprovoked revelation.

My body hurts, aches.
I can feel the presence of you resting on my lungs.
Persistently, constantly, relentlessly.
I can’t breathe anymore.
I just can’t.
Everything is spinning, blacking out.
I’m starved.
Of air, of you.
Of feeling.
Everything is crashing down around me,
Whilst I am suspended in time.
This can’t last forever.
It is only a matter of time before I suffocate.
Before I shut down all together.
It’s only a matter of time before this ends.

Prisoner of War

There is only so much pretending a human being can take before the cracks start to show and the broken voice inside begins to seep out.
Whispering words of insecurity, loss, pain and despair.

There are two sides of me and each day is a constant struggle for power.
A battle of light and dark.
Shadows are creeping over everything.
I am stuck in this shell, confused as to which side I am fighting for.

Things seem grey and unclear.
The good cleans the bad and the bad stains the good.
I am trapped inside my mind with the weight of it all.
I endure the constant screaming, the torn discussions my voice has with itself.
I have lost sight of who I am underneath all this.
I don’t have much fight left in me.
Especially when I don’t have anything to fight for.

But I will go on, as I can conquer this.
I can chase out the dark.
I will try and win this war, or at least go down fighting.

I wish you could understand.

I don't know if it's you I want or the idea of being one half of an 'us'.
It's been so long since I have felt part of something.
I'm torturing myself by forcing my poor square heart into a round hole.
You are so high up on this pedestal of mine that I can't even see who you are.
I don't think that matters.
I don't think it matters to me that I know we can never work.
This is just a challenge.
I need to see if I can make you want me.
I need you to want me.
I want you to need me.
I need this.

How to love me

Hold me close. 

Need me. 

Trace words on my skin with your fingertips. 

Tell me that I am safe with you. 

Make me feel secure. 

Make me feel wanted. 

Don't let go of my hand.

Look me in the eyes as you kiss me. 

Protect me. 

Treasure me. 

Tell the world I am yours. 

Tell me that you are mine. 

Gain my trust.

Never break it. 

Let me know I am enough for you. 

Learn me.

Teach me. 

Inspire me. 

Challenge me. 

Give me room to grow. 

Help me.

Be patient. 

Be kind. 

Never give up on me. 

Stay with me. 

Endure me.

Love me.

Your smile lights a fire deep in my chest.
Your kisses leave me weak. 
Memories of you feel like waves under my skin. 
Your touch is the moon controlling the tides of my body. 
Just one taste of you and now I'm drowning. 
You've left me wanting so much more. 
More than the oceans and more than the flames. 
I want the moments when you whispered 'kiss me' or when you laced your fingers with mine. 
Count my freckles with your lips and I will draw a curved line under yours to create a smile.
All I'm asking is that you give me a chance. 
A chance to show you how it could be. 

Rebirth

If I could tear it off I would.
I would rip, gouge and split my skin apart until I have shed it all.
Without it would I be more myself?
What do you do when the person inside doesn’t match the skin you were given?

a i r

Even on the happiest of days, it is never easy.
It feels like everything inside me is constricting, restricting, twisting and screaming.
I am never going to be good enough.
I am never ever going to be free of this.
Even on the happiest of days.

Breathing burns, my lungs turned to stone.
And the weight of every tear shed holds me down.

I can't do this every day for the rest of my life.
I will wear too thin, and there are only so many times something that is broken can be mended.

Living in my head is harder than anything I have ever faced.

I am never going to let myself be happy.
Even on the happiest of days.

Possibility is a cruel thing.
It sits there, inside of you telling you that these things you so desperately want to be could be, but only if fortune decides to favour the naive.
Wanting something and knowing that it will never be hurts more than having it and it being taken away.

Everything I dream for myself, every wish ever made, will always be brighter than the reality.
Seeing the potential makes life hard when finding that elusive ideal is unachievable.

I sit here, with this longing inside of me.
Right now it is to be good enough, right now it is to be good enough for you.

I want life to sweep me off my feet just once.
I want you to sweep me off my feet.

I know this will never be.

a u r a

When the moon has risen and the sun is at rest,
I sit wondering what will become of me.
You have such an air of possibility around you.
An aura of 'what if's and 'maybe's.
I want you to take me with you,
Wherever you go.
But deep down I know I'm a wrecking ball waiting to swing,
And I can't justify destroying something so beautiful for my own selfish gain.

Lighting cigarettes from tealights as the ice wind whispers at my neck.
Numb hands holding on to the edge.
Clutching at straws.

I don't know how much longer I can wear this mask, when inside I am crumbling like the cliffs into the sea.
An inevitable death, constant continual destruction, in silence, so slow that no one can see what is gradually slipping away.
When I am alone, the tears flow, burning my face, trying to get out after being locked away for so long.

Hiding this will break me.

This is called a compromise.
My brave face saves your guilt. 
Your subtlety saves my pain.
Hold up your end of the deal.
None of it is real.

And I miss you
Like the moon misses the stars on a cloudy night.
When the blanketed sky separates
Two things which so clearly belong together.

If I could control the elements,
I would part the sea for you.
I would melt the ice surrounding you and light a fire in your soul.

But even if I could control the earth on which you walk,
I will never be able to control your heart. 

I am drawn to you, like a creature to the light.

Magnetism won’t let me pull away, no matter how hard I try.

Like a moth to the flame, I know I will get burnt by you.
But the fire in me burns so brightly that it takes hold and I can’t release myself from its grasp.

Twisting and turning like a knife in the gut. You have hurt me.
I shouldn’t forgive you, and I can’t let you back in.

But all I want is you, and it is tearing me apart piece by piece, so slowly that no one can even notice.
Why did you take so much of me? You didn’t take what I was willing to offer.
You didn’t take the love and the kindness.

Instead you stripped me of worth and value like a coin with no crown.

Why can’t I forget you? When keeping you in my heart is breaking it.
This is self destruction at its finest.

Time stops when you're here.

But now the clock hands move again.

When I'm with you, silence falls like snow.

Settling on my skin,

Delicately numbing me to everything except us.

But now the clock hands move again.

I am left cold, in a loud crowded place.

I don't know how to call you back to me.

The clock hands move again.

Demise

I could liken this to wading into the sea with a fear of drowning.
I can’t be sure if the end is inevitable, but it’s anticipated.

That fear alone ties my insides together into impenetrable knots. 
Visceral emotions, sinking, just like I am sinking into you. 
Everything is quick sand.

But for all that, I can guarantee that it will touch my skin with such effortless sentiment.
Waves of satin and folds of silk.

Surround me, embrace me, fill me.
It is all or nothing.

The knots of anxiety and doubt are conquered by the comfort the water brings each time it touches my skin.
The fear cannot hold me back from diving in, drinking it in, breathing it in.
Let it fill my lungs.

It would be a bitter sweet destruction.
For drowning in this...
For drowning in you,
Is the best downfall I could dream of.

Ára Bátur

Meteors and starlight,
A feeling of floating.
A crescendo and weightlessness.
Sunlight through a cloud,
Waves crashing on the palest of sands.
A gravitational pull.
Magnetism.
All of it, drawing me to you.

Where no light can be reflected, no shine to be seen,

Anonymous and invisible against a backdrop of endless grains of sand.

Enclosed and contained, unreachable and fading,

No heartbeat, no warmth, only hurt locked within.

Only more pain could reanimate what is left behind.

Pain to reveal that there is life left after all.

Running across bridges just to feel alive.

I tell myself that the tears that burn are from the wind in my eyes. 

Lips against lips with no consequences.
Numb from the cold, central origins, spreading outwards.

The tears turn to ice and shatter, fallen to the ground.

Trying to lose myself to feel alive,

Trying to break myself to feel alive.

To have no heart, to have no direction.
Before all I have is turned to dust.

And age turns everything grey.

Tonight I feel hollow, glass-like.

Fragile and delicate and just waiting to be broken.

I am finding so much hard to understand right now.

I am angry at the world for taking away people that should have lived on.

I am angry that life is only that, life. No matter how great you make it, it still ends.

I guess this makes me feel as if there is no point?

Why try and be something you are not? Why not just be you and love every minute.

Or should I strive to change, to be better? Is it worth it?

What would you tell me to do?

I don’t understand how one minute you were here full of such energy,

And the next you were broken.

I pray to god you weren’t scared.

I hope you didn’t know what was coming.

I hope you didn’t feel pain and I hope you had no regrets.

Right now words are nothing to me but shapes.

I cannot be comforted.

It's strange, feeling you've lost something you never had.
Everything seems so mundane and mediocre, even though it's nothing worse than you had before.