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When the time comes to finally strip back the layers You try not to move like you’re the physician peeling back the gauze from a trauma patient And I try not to notice your recoil From the dusty, gangerous flesh of my decaying body. You hold my hands But ignore the crumbling of osteoporotic bones and the hyperthermic fever of my veins. This is not passion, beneath crepe paper skin. This is cauterisation. Your kiss tastes like a crime scene and he claws his way up your throat. But your hands do not feel like his. I tell you my chest is where I house the echoes of a girl who sounds like me. I try to drown out her sonogram screams- I want her removed. She cries too much and I hate how her voice shakes. I stay brave for you now. An offering on an altar of resilience to whichever Gods govern bodies with some reassembly required. This skin is not skin but foundation laid over fingerprints above fractures that roof a hollowed space. In the morgue, when you declare me far too long dead They scalpel my sternum crack open the lever arch file of my ribs, gut me and find in my stomach: My pride, Copper wires, My tongue, chewed a thousand times, Fear of intimacy and some of my teeth.

There are chalk outlines all over this empty house. My glass heart crawls up to the attic of my mouth, So I choke it back down like the tongue I learned to swallow. Though I am no longer your Eden I cannot bear to throw out the bruised and rotten apple core Some days I cannot even help but throw wide open the fridge door and feel the cold air sting my skin Just to feel the way that your hands did before. I like to look at it. Be someone who had an apple, once. Before my heart suicides itself on my kitchen floor.

“Pansies”  you mutter And place flowers on our graves. You don’t ask, but of course we’re afraid Ours is the love of trembling knees. Yours is shock therapy: Thunderclaps At the touch of a palm Darkening skies with their harm Over we Who scan every street Before lips or eyes meet For barbed wire hatred Which ravages the spaces We’ve carved for ourselves In the dancefloors of our skin. You’ve laid down your arms Said you’ll do us no harm, Say the words ANd we’ll tidy up after ourselves. You make weapons of our bodies Wage wars within our mourning Point our fingers while our hands are going cold A new day’s dawning Will we live to see the sunset On our fear? You drink from our bones Call for a toast and raise a glass to your new hottest trend “Hashtag love will mend” The knife wound in our backs? The bullets in our chest? The hole in yours? Your prayer’s sent so sleep at ease Warm milk spilt like blood You’ve made our bed but please Don’t lay us to rest in it. “Be the bigger person” Says you who towers like goliath Who tries to have us Cowering in fear, shrink, Shrink like violets You will hear us whispering “Forget me nots”. Just as we hear you. “Pansies” you mutter. And place dying flowers on our grave.

If I bit the bullet                     rather than my tongue And walked into the lions den                                        how bad would it get? When it was over                    Would you be sorry enough? Would you love me again?

My love      tastes like peaches              and smoke But the wasps came           I ran out of steam                                      And you always preferred strawberry