my love

on the 6am train the men smell like my father; red bull, cigarettes, dried cement - they wake up like my father        i feel safe in this carriage, these men are my father, any man with a van and one arm out the window, sunburnt from the elbow down - the infamous builder’s tan - seats so dusty i can’t breathe and i have lungs like my father, full of second-hand smoke and concrete, a touch of asbestos, i should weep for my father        but  my pockets are healthy i am told by my father whose hands shake as he brings another beer to his lips at 10am on a saturday morning, this is coping for my father        these men cope - cope like my father - with the asbestos lungs, uneven tans, shaking hands, muscles in constant pain, water on the brain, the ever encroaching grasp of old age; with substances up the nose they unwind like my father         this kind of masculinity doesn’t last forever, you know...

 I can only write when I am thinking about God and sometimes God is God and he loves me, most of the time he does not the hand that feeds me overpowered by teeth that bite he visits me at night like a shark smells blood he smells lust,  guilt, and greed brought to my knees, voice hushed he picks apart my greed and my lust promising to forgive, to forget he will make me repent and regret, any pain or pleasure at his expense provided in selfless restoration a gift of his affections exchanged for endless loyalty  God is not always God, sometimes he is my lover he tells me he loves me,  most of the time he does not I can only write when I am thinking about God

my body is a place of worship  regularly desecrated, a basket of ripe fruit  circled by the starving, a lamb in the woods  smelled by the wolves, built to sacrifice to eat  to devour  until there is nothing left but bones lay me on the altar as abraham did to isaac  tell me this is gods work  that the knife you brought is heavy with the desires of your creator  who is this to satisfy? is your blood hot as you pray  would you look in my eyes, or at the sky  when the moment arrives, who is to blame?  my father, on earth  my father, in heaven my lover,  hands around my throat  so he may control my life and death  and play both  neither answer my cries nor feed me when hungry but i must be grateful because they love me so much  that they’ll punish my sins  and correct my foolish mistakes as though they are an extension of their own  as i am an extension of them  grateful even in death for the...

  and when i meet god   i will ask him why he punished me on earth by denying me the pleasure of being known by anyone other than him intentionally, innately, irrevocably known in a way i could have remained silent forever   whilst always being heard  i will ask him why the world kept spinning as i screamed and spiralled into the sins he’d laid out for me  for me to fumble in my guilt on my knees, raw from repentance and retribution who is to beg for forgiveness now? and i will apologise to my mother  for carrying her burdens in my womb  it was her first time too, on earth longing for something she’d never known  please tell me i did it right, that i made you proud  please tell me i lived how you wanted me to give birth to me again and i’ll try harder would it heal you to see me leave, or would it hurt because you never did  will i see your face one day in the mirror and touch it to feel your skin and i will ask you if you could not love...

1. when i walked out the door that final time my suitcase scraped the steps   as i dragged it reluctantly to the car i wonder if it left any marks  neither of us are there anymore  there is nobody to check  if the wheels dug themselves into the stone  the same way i dug myself into you  in one last ditch attempt to stay 2.  there’s god in sunlight and water  and the sharing of citrus fruits on a beach, on the riverbank  but i’ve never felt love like hearing you laugh  after a few glasses of wine  pink on your cheeks  and joy in your eyes i’d pray to the sound of your voice if it meant you would say my name one more time  3.  good times follow bad times and even worse times come after the most beautiful times but i could never have held enough of you in my hands to get through these truly terrible times and the lack of something is also the presence of something else so the absence of your lips on mine feels like a fir...

 it’s wine in the fridge and empty cupboards and stomachs  dead flowers in the vase  you can never go back!  nothing fits the same  it’s permanently the last week of august, everything is ending yet beginning and you must be ready for it  none of it will matter in the long run  your future depends on it you’re in the back of a cab in the middle of the night  head out of the window as you cross the bridge  it’s the last time you’ll make the trip under the circumstances  the air will always smell the same  he will follow you  one, two, three clementines for dinner  the peel stays in your room for a week  they keep the spiders away  the wine is empty and you use the bottle for fresh flowers but the dead ones are still in the vase  let’s go out tonight new city, old friends  your skirt and her top, her bag and your shoes  transferring from your savings again he’ll notice you but you’ll pretend not to s...