Red

Golden rays splattered across depleting cloud cover

Dripping through my window.

—

Each rise and fall

Like chest compressions - a celestial cycle

As my heart beat goes on

I wonder if I am guilty.

—

A Theater is watching this prolonged suicide happen

Are they all guilty?

Standing in place during golden hour,

Marvelling at how beautiful innards are

when it’s not us up strung there

projected in agony.

—

It’s always luckier that it’s not us to deal with the consequences of outcome.

That each of the clouds shed tears in their grief

And we didn’t really know them like that

And so we say nothing to them.

Does that luck make us guilty?

Knowing we don’t weep for another’s loss?

—

Does it make me guilty?

When I witnessed you bathed in golden glow

you were already so long gone

And I saw it in your eyes when you looked at me.

Are you guilty?

For letting me believe in you when you held me close and told me you loved me?

Am I guilty that the rhythm of my heart remembers yours?

—

The cloud cover swallows the last essence of their sun

Drenching the land in cold wet nightfall

The Theater disperses

Snapped in the jaws

Falling beneath the swell

Apart of me knew

That this was never what you wanted

But I still wish

That you never held me a week ago

And promised you’d stay

With the sketches of next time

Now scrapped and dissolved

Deep down under the sea

Always dancing,

Always training until failure,

Always wrecking myself on the shores of a drink.

And yet though I know my reasonings and throughout it all,

I reach out and get my fingers slammed in the door of your home

Always an outside dog -

Never allowed to feast as an equal.

At what point,

At what point man?

At what point will I not be able to take it anymore?

Stray dogs turn up dead

What else?

As my family spin stories of our ancestors

My sister will leave, soon. Move far away and she says she’ll never return

We’ll sell this house, my parents say. And move out to the undeveloped suburbs

I don’t think my mum wants to let go of here

Here is home

Here is where we grew and here is where our stories are told

Here is the last place I’ll share with my sister

Here is the last place I did share with my brother

And as I unravel across my deceased grandads old chair

I realise I will never be 18 here again

And I might never be 20 in this home

Bled me dry and fracture my ribs,

starve me feral so I whine for scraps

But before all of this I ate my pick

Maybe I’ll turn my bite

Maybe I’ll fill this empty cold stomach

And maybe I’ll destroy you

I think

As the rations thrown to my feet dwindle

And I am so fucking hungry

I stand in the pasture staring at nothing

And there is nothing to look for out here

As there is nothing looking for me

The pigeons are long gone

And I’m angry I didn’t eat them one by one,

Because on the other end they’re crushed by the foot of the bed.

Wasted life with only dried words spat,

At least grass stains are more visible under my nails.

But still I stand

As seagulls call out to one another

Trying to navigate home.

I stare up at holes in the sky

In paper trials I follow

Lead in circles - piled up in stacks of old compost

There is nothing to suggest greenery

There is everything to suggest the lights are no longer on

But the occasional smoke signal

Shocks me in place

A sign of life is a sign of something- I hope

I hope in a prayer to nobody

Lying in wait for another

So long yet to surface

As sea foam builds and builds and stains our rocky shores

But I’m sure that they’ll come,

As the great Zeus spit our souls in two

As even Aphrodite was once a saintess of war.

Nothing loved left unscathed

As wounds grow deeper,

Harder to recover.

The tarp under starlight feigns safety

And I am swallowed

And ejected as foam too;

As the ones before me were,

I don’t want to be another grain of sand in your shoes

And yet the sea retreats back into itself

As crabs burrow beneath the sand,

And I wonder

And I wonder too many nonsensical things

But each time the waves come crashing down

The joy surges through my being

I remember what it’s like on the other side once more

And it tastes beautiful

But it only lasts when there’s nothing else factored in

And the second luna begins to turn away - I loose you too

And maybe all those nonsensical things begin to untangle

There’s always more grains of sand

There’s always more I could have bargained for

As piercing squeals ring out among shouts and crackling

Reds & yellows paint these streets ablaze

And each child that sinks below deck ran by their fathers work on their way to safety

And each child lost in the maze of inferno

Always circles back to skeletons of home.

Do you think in the hysteria they lay down to sleep next to their mothers?

I want to wake to green meadows too,

And run across unkempt lawns coated in colourful petals

I love you all dearly

As life brings us together

I hope it carries you over each wall to hard to scale alone

I hope the highest of mountains will be yours

And the deepest of trenches become story’s to learn from

I hope you all live a life where you are happiest

Night in night out

That so long as I kneel

Another will kneel across, beside

I pray for lighter shoulders

And a chest not heaving for air

I pray and I talk to her

As my oldest ally

As the planets occasionally join in

The nights are hard

But I long for them so

The time I am heard

Every muscle movement results in loss

I wheeze and tear

Agonising how she sits there vacantly

And wondrous stars light the galaxy

Maybe this subsides, eventually

And god knows that whistling louder

Really does nothing out of normal for me

Wondering if the light fragmenting off ripples meant anything truly

I thought throwing bottles past waves was selfish

Until I heard the sea shells echoing

On such a level

It cuts deeper than the yellow

But even the slightest of grazes makes me guiltily?

Every crab makes a home

As my loses burry themselves in sand

Why are we all so fundamentally different ?

Why are we all so fundamentally exhausting ?

There’s a steady rhythm closer to low tide

As each swipe and light flicker runs me dry

Of reasons too shallow to be pleasant

A swallow sings a tune far off over the horizon

I think it’s calling someone home

And I miss the home long gone in my body

Replaced with dust from songs no longer sang

Wondering if the nothingness was ever meant to be more

But truely in my heart I always knew that it wasn’t

Only there for all those “what could have beens”

Each flower dies on the cliff

Each broken promise sends cracks up the ledge

I want there to be more

I want an answer for every unknown thing

But all thats responds is silence

Air moves around me like it’s advoiding something

But all I react with are tears spilling down my cheeks

I wish there was more

I wish a hand would reach out from the abyss and take me home

To a place that no longer exists in this lifetime