| Things I Should Have Told You |

I wish that I’d paid more attention in Geography,

So that I could map the spaces between your collarbones.

There is a longing in me, a whisper of a memory.

Stormy nights with white curtains whipping out our bodies, naked in the moonlight.

"I'm the Captain, you can be First Mate.

But only if you come out from those covers.

I'm a Prate Queen and while you hide, you're only a cabin boy.

Come up on deck, feel the wind and rain, it's not that cold"

It wasn't that cold, never was with you beside me.

Our dreams turned beds into ships and lies into promises.

I wish I'd paid more attention in History,

So that I could look you in the eye and tell you why even the greatest Kingdoms fall.

We built a house out of pillows and bedsheets and when it tumbled, we never noticed, because I thought you were the only home I needed.

I wish I'd paid more attention in Music,

Your fingers strum your beloved guitar and I wishing you would run them down my back with the same dedication.

To be jealous of an instrument, a body of wood and nylon that you still cradle in your arms now that my flesh is long gone.

I did pay attention in English,

They warn you about fast cars and mysterious men,

dark nights and hidden rooms, but no one tells you that the most dangerous thing of all,

is being left alone with a broken mind.

I've thrown myself down the rabbit hole,

Living life between tangled sheets in the hope that I’ll remember what it felt to love.

Chain smoking cigarettes to cover the memory of your scent on my skin.

I wish I could hate you as much as you hated each toxic drag I took.

Replacing one addiction with another.

I used to despise liars, yet here I am,

forcing myself to go through the motions

Tell me a secret.

Give me something real, that I can grasp in my hands while the rain beats out your heartbeat and the wind sighs your name.

Let me not forget you, or destroy you. Let me learn to trust the slow curve of your fingers across my skin.

When you kiss me, do so with promise. With hope. Handle me carefully, don't let my soul rip apart in your hands.

I'm becoming whole again, filling the cracks in the surface with light. Each step is stronger than the one before and I'm ready to remember what it feels like.

When I was ten, he danced around the dinner table and whispered in my ear 'I love you'. I looked at my plate in silence.

When I was thirteen, he wrote our names in the sand and gave me a purple flower. My friends laughed and I dropped it in the dirt and kicked away the words.

When I was fifteen he brought me strawberries in bed, I opened my heart and then he tore it out for his own dessert. When I was seventeen he held me close, protected me from the world but bid me to be quiet, mailable, a shadow.

When I was eighteen I lost his child and he asked me if it was even his. When I was nineteen I mistook cruelty for kindness and three years later was left broken, again, again, again.  Years pass and time has rubbed salt into the wounds, but when I count love by numbers I look back and wish. 

I've spent my life running, never to something but always away.

The faster you go the easier the past sheds, like feathers from Icarus' back.

Each layer a reminder.

Keep moving. Don’t give them anything of yourself, because if they don't have you they can’t hurt you. But this time feels different.

Four little letters have crawled into my subconscious.

Hope.

We stood naked in his kitchen, as if it were the most natural thing to do. Stirring a pot while he passed me little jars of salt and spice.

What are you most afraid of? He asked between slow drags of rolled tobacco.

Crocodiles. Crocodiles?

... and disappointment.

He looked at me then and I knew that he understood. How it feels to have your stomach wrenched through you chest, when you try so hard but still fall short. When every happiness you're given, you second guess, waiting for it to turn sour.

We moved around each other, two souls in constant orbit. Stopping every now and then to graze each other skin with a soft touch and I lay bare before him. Not in body, for it is so easy to shed some cloth and call it love, but bare in the absence of presumption.

As he left in the morning, I whispered to the empty sheets.

I am afraid. Of Crocodiles. Disappointment.

A man sat beside me on the tram today, but when he smiled all I could think is how it looked nothing like the one you gave me as we lay together on a Sunday morning.

Your eyes hooded with sleep as I kissed your shoulder and watched the pools of brown turn almost black with wanting.

Memories of the night before clutched in my fingers, as I traced the name ‘Adonis’ across your bare chest.

I wonder what would have happened if I had met you before her, before I met him.

You promised your future to another and I am too broken from my past.

But you understood and I remembered that he never gave me that.

In another life we could have been something, and I would have kissed the curve of your cheek without worry of the loneliness tomorrow will bring, the way it always does.

You told me you couldn’t promise me anything, and your voice echoed the fear I have long become accustomed to.

Even if you could, I would not take it – because even those that promise ‘always’ end up leaving.

But this…

For the first time in a year I’ve met someone who can quiet the worries that press against my breast.

For the first time in a year I’ve woken and my mind has been silent, I did not even need to swallow the little white pill that they tell me will keep me whole.

As if a pressed powder can tape together the wounds beneath my skin.

Wounds that finally began to heal when you kissed the breath from my body.

In a parallel universe, in another world, we could have been something…

But I do not have the luxury of dreaming for the future anymore and I cannot tell you why.

Why I always expect people to leave.

Why, when you told me you would – I was relieved instead of scared.

Because never again will I allow my guard to fall when the only promise you can give me is of your departure.

So I shall take that knowledge and fold it away in the box around my heart

It seems that I've spent my whole life apologising. Apologising for being too loud. Apologising for being too quiet. Apologising for being too sad. Apologising for being too happy. Apologising for caring too much, or caring too little.

Apologising for apologising.

People tell me to be myself, that they'll accept me with open arms. And when I told a man who held me all night, that people always wanted me to change. He whispered into my pillow 'please never do'. But when I showed him what lies beneath my mothers eyes and fathers chin, he too closed his mind and stepped away.

I'm too intense, or too distant and I find myself ending every sentence with 'I'm sorry'. I fell in love with a musician who couldn't understand my sadness, and before them, a man who couldn't handle my happiness - and both drew away because no matter how much I tried, I could never change in the way they needed me to.

On your last night, we danced rhythmic promises. Our bodies stripped bare and painted gold. White teeth flashing through stretching smiles as bodies entwine within the dark pool. Surrounded by photographic flashes and unapologetic laughter, you placed a gift on my tongue and kissed the curve of my cheekbone before disappearing once again into the bodies around us.

The day you left, The sky flashed gold and lines of colour streaked the clouds. As we watched you turn and climb the greyhound stairs, the skies turned dark and broke. Raindrops spilt like wine from the heavens, purifying the tears on sunburnt cheeks.

I love and hate myself in equal measure. I guess that's the fine print of our society. Is it so bad that I want some validation? Someone to tell me that every step I've made until now has been towards something, not just away from the places I've left. Some days I can look in the mirror and be content, but the next morning the same mirror will be lying smashed upon the ground and you will know that when I looked forward, all I saw was your reflection behind me.

I scatter photographs at my feet, tender memories marked in sepia tones. But the hardest ones to let go, are the memories I can't hold in my hand or put away in boxes. They are the ones I see when I open my eyes each morning and roll over to remember that you're still not there. They are the memories moulded in the shape of your head on my pillow and your arms around my waist.

My friends show me the tattoos across their bodies and ask me whether one day I'll want one. How can I explain to them that there is no room left on my skin because every inch of it is already covered. The arch of my back is marked with your fingertips, the curve of my neck with the soft print of your lips. Why would I taint that with something else, which could never be as beautiful as the whispers you left.

We walk barefoot through dewy grass. Cigarette butts stubbed out in lipstick stained coffee cups. This is who we are now, seeking pleasure amongst the tides of pain.

Last night she lay in my lap, leaving dark mascara stains across the curve of my wrist. I stroked her hair and wondered, how many times we'd been in this same spot. soaking each other in tears, not because we hurt - but because we are just so damn tired. Tired of trying to prove to people that we are okay, when we can't remember the last time we were. Wanting to get angry, or mad, but all we can feel is an exhaustion that sinks through our skin and nestles so deep in our bones that every movement is weighted beyond relief.

There was a bruise on her arm, matching my own. I pinched myself, she told me, just to see if I could feel. And I understood. For how many times have I stood beside the road, watching traffic pulse by like blood through veins and wondered what would happen if I stepped out.

Don't hold me. Don't whisper my name as if it is the last word you'll ever say. Don't call me beautiful or tell me you love my smile. Don't let me believe, for even a moment, that I am any different from the next girl. Lie to me and let me know that you are lying.

I don't know how to stay unattached anymore. I don't know how to take your hand and forget the way my fingers curled around your palms once you've gone. Kiss me and let me taste the blood on your lips. Don't reveal to me your brokenness, because I will try to take away the hurt.

I grow too quickly in the spaces left behind. If you give me an inch, I'll take a mile and I know that when the dust clears all I'll see is you driving off into the distance. And I'll say I'm okay, I'll pretend the way I always do. But with each goodbye I feel a piece of myself leaving too. How long will it be until I'm left with nothing? Just a blurred reflection in a bathroom mirror.

I've finally found the strength, To close the box on you And bury it below the ranges That surround our home town.

I've stopped trying to romanticise The silence you left behind. There is no song in the whistling trees Only absence - Of self Of yesterday.

I'm no longer frantic, Trying to find sense where there is none.

There is a knife at my neck And as I whisper your name I feel the cool blade tracing my spine Where your hand once sat.

This is my final gift to you. My goodbye. Not from the world, But from your heart.

I'll tie the anchor around my love, And drop it into the sea. Draw the chains tight so that with A false hope it does not leap back up and into my chest.

It no longer belongs there Because without you my heart is absent, And that absence is mine alone to bare.

People hurt so often, that after a while you stop feeling the difference between pleasure and pain

Kiss me, and tear my skin Say you love me, then leave the door swinging

It seems like my life is made up of passing moments and people that never stay long enough to watch the year flick over but, just maybe..

If I asked you to stay, would you shut the door quietly and come sit down beside me

If I asked you to stay, would you stroke the edges, that so many before you have left bruised.