Honest Ink

We create space with a closed door, suddenly

My bedroom floor is free from your bag

There is no toothbrush in the drawer

Your side of the bed yawns like a cat, gaping

While you count miles, listen to a podcast

Pack another bag, board a ship

Sit in close quarters with your lads

It’s been a while, hasn’t it

I do not think I can slip back

Into this quite as easily as I

Left. It’s not for lack of practice

Believe me. Words have found me

Along with so many other, human things

My emotions are no longer shrouded

Like a fog I stumble through, they

Are embraced with every wave and I

Started a business too, truly

It’s small, barely there, but it’s mine

And now looking back, I can taste the

hopelessness in my previous state

The bleak grasping at nothingness

Expressed in ink at midnight.

Can you relate?

Let this be a silver lining message, then.

If you are so deep in the trees that you

Cannot remember the shape of moonlight

Know that it is still there, above you

Waiting for you to leave the woods

The music sways

More than my hips

Smaller than my smile

I stumble a step

But it’s fine

I’ve carved this time

It is precious

Even though the people are kind I

Cannot find the same peace, cannot

Reach the same tranquility in knowing you

Were only in the other room, doing whatever you do

When you’re alone. I am sorry I wrapped myself around you

Orbited too close, slipped into your gravity instead

I think I was looking for something. I found it, for a bit.

I hope you find what you’re looking for

Let you believe you did. But you didn’t

I promise. If you did love me I

Wouldn’t be in this pain. Or maybe I would

Did I love you? That depends on whether

When the urge to scream bubbles up but

I suppress it

When I want to stay out in the sun

Watching flowers sway

Instead of emails and washing up

How could I be expected to raise one?

To promise that the world will be

Good and Kind. Instead of a series of

Things that need to be taken care of.

The best thing to be is a child

How could I be expected

Letting go, to go from

A pair who knows the meaning of each

Eye roll and half sentence to

Strangers. How do I accept

Not to know your world

Or to even watch it from afar

The far more painful option.

I do not want to believe that this life

Will have many more goodbyes

You ever feel like you're

In the fog? you should know

Where you are, where you're going

But it slips away like a

Half remembered dream, sometimes

My words are like that, my

emotions are shrouded. I want

To tell you how I feel but

I'm not sure what

That is and then

My eyes cloud, the

Colours seep out of

My world and

I'm not sure where I am, anymore I

Just wanted to explain why

Sometimes it looks like I'm

Far away, sometimes my eyes

See you, through the mirror

I'm stuck behind, sometimes

I'm more mist than message but

I'll find my way back eventually I

Always do and I will be

Warm to you

How timid I was, how you felt like

Something sturdy. How trusting and

Naïve to believe that this

Moment was supposed to last

But that’s the glory of it I suppose

If we always knew this was a part

To play, would we have tried this hard?

I am glad and,

Ah, in he strolls with

A smile that steals secrets

My thoughts scatter and

Reform into something unknown

This silence we've been wearing is

Only heavy on me

Can't you feel it?

The weight of all the words pushed down

To be more wanted, more keepable

You hand over a necklace and skip

To your own tune, everything is

Take it with the rot

The ills that haven’t got me yet

The ones that I forgot

For I was born lucky

Though sometimes I forget

How to live in gratitude

Instead of harbouring regret

You can have my back molar

And let it set me free

That little tooth is really the

we'll talk tomorrow

I said yesterday

You say today

How many tomorrows

The wind ruptures my sleep as the

Night purrs, murmurs of a wakeful world

Slip past the edge of my dreams

My heart sinks in a wave of rum

And thoughts turn to you