Unleashed

I sent you the above as an Instagram DM

then said that’s a poem title & wrote it down just now

& my laptop immediately crashed

if that means anything

maybe that I, like you, was born in the wrong generation

& would thrive in a more analogue atmosphere

but if this was the fifties you would be famous & I

would be even more doomed by the narrative, or already dead

but I am not dead & neither is God

which I know because you smoke cigarettes & wear cunty little tank tops

& have arms that I stare at through my phone screen sometimes like a nightcap

& a typewriter & the Kerouac x Steve Allen jazz collab on vinyl

I know God isn’t dead because I went to have non-committal sex with my Instagram follower

& found a Beat instead

now I tape all the pages together

published in Dog Teeth Issue 3 2025

no more life made of absences // no more waiting

no more trying to find truth in a silence // instead a better kind of quiet

I can hear you in the waves // in the air // like electricity // I can feel you close

can I stick around // just a little longer // I’m sorry // I cannot stay

can I slide into your dms like it’s easy // like it’s casual

like I don’t overthink // every letter // of your name

can I love you quietly // or am I doomed to be the storm

blowing your body away from home // we do so love to be alone

but here I am // trying to cue the interaction // instead of doing it

have you ever just had so much to say // you can’t speak

my eyes full of stars & my mouth full of dust // writing poetry in the ink of my shame

in my name // how it sparkles // do you see it // can you read me

or do I have to hurl myself into honesty // without a page to hide behind

do I have to stop watching the seconds tick by // & live inside them

how do I tell you how I feel from far away // how do I not miss you

I want to hard-launch you into the atmosphere of sincerity

I want to choke us both with my lovergirl grip

I want to imprint us into the stars & gaze at it for days

our constellation needs a name

I want to get up on stage & be like

HERE IS

ANOTHER FUCKING

LOVE POEM

& everyone will sigh dramatically & be like

here she goes again

like I need to be returned to

the Lover Institution

bitch I am the fucking president

of the Lover Institution

I am the Jack Nicholson of the Lover Institution

I am a threat to all cynics

I am downright cringe

call it in!

when they see us

holding hands on the bus or whatever

your head in my lap at Loosies

we are so all over each other it’s

almost offensive

but sorry I’ve had a

deficit & I’m

catching up!

I am Captain, oh Captain

of the romantics

I am orating the story

of how we met

when anybody asks us

we look at each other & laugh

let me tell it, you missed the best bit!

haha just kidding you don’t miss shit

you, looking at me,

looking at you,

can we stay here in our hall of mirrors forever

everywhere my own reflection

looking beautiful

everywhere, you

on & on like a beginning on loop.

My recent publication in Bus Talk Lit, full sneak peak from their inaugural issue available here: https://bustalklit.wixsite.com/home/post/issue-one-sneak-peek

My poem ‘CONTACT ME’ published in Antler Velvet Mag

I wrote an essay on the cinematic event of the century! Read here: https://www.eratomagazine.com/post/notes-on-the-barbaissance

Wrote my first ever fan fic! It’s about Skyrim & I had an excellent time writing it 💕

Resurrect your darlings!

Give that which you love life again!

Throw yourself into your greatest excesses!

Turn your back on the dead & depressing!

Embrace your ambition with the kind of

manic hope they’d call delusion!

Fuck those dreary days & blank-eyed cynicism!

Sift through your own history for

everything beautiful &

make sure it is not lost

you are never empty,

At the end of the day I only ever loved you better

loved you steadier, with clearer resilience

every fucked up thing you ever said

just an echo in my head when I see you full-volume

with your eyes like that & your smile like that

& the way you stand so shy like that

loving you is easy from far away

when our romance is dead we still live

we still flourish, even

I see you here under my city of old & think

thank god our hearts survived this

thank god I still see gold in you

with the rose-tint gone it’s just the real you

golden, but not the kind you can pry from the tarnish

when the love stopped being high & low it just got

…still, & always here somewhere

when I sit down & choose to look at it instead of

swept up in a storm

distance is our blessing darling when we don’t

burn each other to ash

just a little warmth, a little flickering, a little moment of remembering

remember when I saw you (I still see you)

remember when we kept coming back even though it killed us

remember when we kissed our daggers before digging them in

shit! we were fucking shakespearean

but now there’s a calm after the tragedy

like if Romeo & Juliet didn’t die

but walked away separately from the scene of their double suicide

maybe in a thousand years in some other legend

we’d be grown & weathered enough to be together

when the two flames kiss instead of eating each other alive

but I see you when the smoke has cleared &

god, you’re still my twin

more than my friend or my favourite enemy

the other side of me

an intimacy even though our lips barely touched

outlasting what we unmade when I wasn’t quite your lover

we were so many things to each other I couldn’t choose just one

but to tell it through metaphor we traded blood

& there’ll always be a bit of me in you & you in me

there’ll always be a meeting between our two kindred souls