liar liar

call me t.

[goldinyourveins]

knowing

a small candle burns in my chest

now, every time i see ink, it threatens to become a wildfire

good things have always just fallen into my lap

just so i could ruin them.

when i hear you play the piano

i wonder if i could ever truly be free of the things that weigh me down,

if i could feel the way your music makes me feel –

and i act like if i write it down it will last forever

[goldinyourveins]

this is a story about a werewolf, keeping her secret. she was in love with a boy who wanted to give her the world, but she could not convince herself that he truly loved her unless he knew what she was. but to tell him would be to push him away – how could he love her, knowing she was a monster? it was a catch-22, an impossible conundrum, inescapable. she was doomed to unhappiness either way, she realised, so she hid from him every full moon, avoiding his questions, lying through her fangs, lying in the grass under the light of that white disc in the sky alone, weighed down with guilt at the things she had done. you see, she had tasted blood, and relished in it, but once the sun rose again, she realised what a horrible thing she had done. the worst part of it was she knew she would do it again, and she would love it, because she was a monster, and she would likely always be. what was there to be done, she would ask the sky, howling as her bones tore through her skin and her body deformed. what could she do, but lie? she never once considered that perhaps he would still love her, after everything. nobody loves a monster, she told herself, and so she told him she did not want to be with him anymore. after all, he never truly loved her, by her logic. it was no loss to her.

weeks later, he found her in the grass under the full moon, screaming as her spine snapped in half, turning her into something he should have hated. and he did hate her, for the people she’d hurt, for the things she allowed herself to indulge in, for enjoying it. but he also loved her still. this was something she had not conceived of as a possibility, that perhaps he did truly love her. by the time she became herself again, the sun just starting to peek over the horizon, he was gone, never to be seen again. you see, love was enough to allow him to look past her fangs, her hot breath, her fur, matted with blood and viscera, but he could never love a liar. a monster was one thing, but dishonesty? that’s a sin. above all else.

[goldinyourveins]

i leave you in the best way, the best way, leave you

and wait for better days. watch you watching me

leaving, waiting for better days, watch you watching me

disappear up the street, bare feet, i leave you

with uncertainty, with insecurity, we try to stay content.

we act like this can be as good as it gets.

i leave you with love. i leave you with the knowledge that

we love each other, that there is nobody above this,

that on a list of things that bring me joy there is nobody above

you, there couldn’t be – who else raises me up like this,

like holding up an orange leaf to the sun,

who else sees through me only the beauty of filtered light?

who else sees through me and still thinks i’m beautiful?

who else could love me and still feel happy,

still feel good, still feel full? you stand immortalised

at the bottom of your street, my brain is a sieve but

some memories are forever, perhaps some things

can only be forever

[goldinyourveins]

summer turns to winter

this is not about love, it is about owning.

i do what you tell me – never immediately and never without

a fight, but always eventually.

when you tell me to take off my clothes, i do.

when you tell me to bend over, i do.

when you tell me to trust you,

i do.

this is not about love, it is about owning, but

sometimes they feel like the same thing.

you told me to be yours forever, so i agreed.

i was a fool then, and i am a fool now; i knew that forever

wasn’t real, wasn’t something you could count,

but as always, i relented.

you said not to worry, that the future was as far away and

as bright as the sun and I’m not going to leave you in the lurch

but that is where i am. i lived in limbo for months,

lived in a state of freefall,

and now the ground is reaching up with tentative fingers to

meet me.

it is softer than it looks, this i know.

i am falling in the same way i fell for you,

unwilling, and screaming, and with the knowledge that

perhaps this was the best thing that could happen to me.

i see my hands in the context of your hands,

see only the way my fingers slide between your

tentative ones. i have always been all or nothing.

i don’t know which i am supposed to be anymore.

[goldinyourveins]

what it always feels like

i try to hold things together. i try.

i cradle these moments like baby birds,

like it could make a difference.

like they won’t shatter in my hands.

it feels like that minute just before the sun rises,

when the first ray of sunlight strikes the bed of snow

and the roofs of the houses across the street

haven’t quite turned pink under the trembling dawn.

it’s so infinitely fragile, on the brink of the most

beautiful change but clinging to the cusp of night nonetheless,

not knowing better. it feels like a mind racing, a body

heaving trying to keep up and finding that my brain

has spun out of control before i could even understand

what it was speeding towards. it feels like tension,

like feeling like a rubber band, always a millimetre away from

snapping. it feels like i am the sea, so greedy,

dragging on the shore everything into myself and

putting it back once it gets too heavy for me to bear.

my greed and i are best friends. we steal everything we see.

we covet, we envy, we take, just because we can.

with our polluted hands, we take things, we sully what was once

clean, and then toss it back into the world for someone else to find.

we take everything and destroy it. i want to be a good person so badly,

i do. i am tired of running from my mistakes,

but like the tide in the night i retreat, counting my prizes,

just to do it all over again in the morning.

[goldinyourveins]

some days i sit in a field of grass and look at the fall leaves

and i think about you.

the light is different here.

the leaves glow different, the flowers, dripping with morning dew

look different, i look at them and think about

blazes in the arctic

some days i look at the stars through hazy vision

i ask you why the sky looks different here

why everything looks different here

i wonder why the flowers drip like morning dew

why the flowers drape themselves across buildings

like they’re reclaiming their rightful territory

some days

i stand in clouds of smoke

and i look at the stars

and i think of you and

how you love space and how you told me

"if you love looking at sunsets,

you're gonna love looking at sundeaths"

when two natural phenomenons crash into one another

what happens?

[goldinyourveins]

there is no spring

on summer nights we

spill

into the streets

not like a flood, more

a trickle, a steady drip drip

onto the tarmac

on summer nights

we sweat in the basement among

wooden beams

and spiderwebs

on summer nights

word spreads like a virus

it is fall now

we are lepers

it is fall now

the leaves get stuck in my hair

i come alive as the world around me starts to die

i shiver as the sun goes to sleep

winter approaches

we do not leave our houses anymore

i am hoping nobody remembers my name

[goldinyourveins]

some nights you make me feel like i'm the sun rising, other nights you make me feel like you are the sun, burning my skin the longer i lie next to you but i wear it well, this post-love glow, i wear it like an easy smile, a lazy wave, i wear your love proudly like a tight skirt on a good day, i call for attention: look at me, look how i love him, look. i wish i could put on your life like i put on your clothes, sliding into the spaces between the niches you've already carved out for yourself so i can feel like i belong here too. i don't know if i do yet - while you are settling into new habits, new routines, i am waiting for you to remember i'm still here. i know where i fit, even as you forget to make room for me, even as i crawl across country borders to be with you and you forget about me, as i set aside my days for you and you forget about me, as i fall asleep next to photos of you and you forget about me

[goldinyourveins]

we talk about nothing in my head we are talking about everything. how you stare at the sun, how i stare at you like you’re the sun; how i love you desperately, knowing simultaneously i love you in a way i have never loved anybody and you love me in the same way almost everybody has ever loved me – from a distance and distance is the worst feeling. i could be away from you for months but if i knew you loved me like i loved you it would feel like nothing. but you love me with distance, from a distance, your loving is distance and i only know how to love you by knowing every single thing you’re thinking for god’s sake i just want to know you and i thought maybe if i loved you hard enough and long enough you’d learn to love me back but what if you never do and i’m back at square one, writing poetry for a boy who will never understand it? because no matter what i’m writing about, i am writing about how i love you and you’ve never cared for poetry, and maybe in that vein, you’ll never understand what it means to be loved by someone who sees you in everything – the crashing of waves, the bending of willow trees, the way the sun blinds

but we greet it every morning anyway.

[goldinyourveins]

pre departure

in this starbucks we are in love and we are holding hands we promise to write letters like star crossed lovers picked out of a cheesy romance movie but this is not a movie and we are not star crossed, just stupid. this isn't a movie. we chose this fate for ourselves, consciously and knowingly. we chose this fate for each other the day you came to me asking me to be yours and instead of fleeing forever i fled for just a while in this starbucks we press our heads together and pretend we are the only ones who exist in this world. i hate starbucks. you are drinking earl grey tea. it's just leaf water, i say, and you say, coffee is just bean water. i know you're right but i always hate to admit it. you were right when you said we were better off ending it when you left. but here's the thing about cheesy romance movies - they always end up together in the end. we act like we have control over how the story goes. i pretend if i say everything will be okay, it will. but this is not our story, not really. it is mine and yours and the ways they intersect and diverge and maybe they will not always run in tandem but i loathe to imagine it because your lips are the most beautiful lips and your hands are the most beautiful hands and so help me god your laugh is the most beautiful laugh i wish i didn't have to leave you, you say and in my chest, i feel sadness knocking on my ribs reminding me that she is there, as she has always been and she is waiting for me sadness knocks on my ribs and plays me like a xylophone and in the same way you know someone is looking at you even when your back is turned i know she is smiling

[goldinyourveins]

10 MAY 2017 – RED BEACH, SANTORINI

here is the sea. and here is me, feet feet from the waves, ouzo in hand, sand everywhere, between my toes, i chose this. i remember. the process, the planning, the temper, the struggle of compromise. the struggle of choice. the struggle of having too much,  not a struggle at all – i  complain too much. i want a perfect life, to be the girl that gets good things.

i ask for a lot, this i know. i carry your photo with me, like a promise. like a  premonition. like if i say  “one day” it will really be someday. but that is not how life works. wanting is not enough – but how then, do we fall in love, if not through desire? how then, do we forge a lifetime, if not through fire, how do we test a relationship if not through howling wind, acting as if there is a beginning, a middle, and end to the doubt, acting like watching blue waters hand in hand will be the cure, the absolution, like we can be sure love is forever, like we can ever be sure, like the ocean is a sign, like everything could ever really be fine.

[goldinyourveins]

after verb

we were just two dumb poets in love. you – writing about other people; i – always writing about you; you – writing after you’d dealt with it; me – writing to process. baby i held your name in my mouth like a dirty word and when i sobbed in front of you holding my apologies like sand slipping through my fingers you held my hands like you could tell.

for god’s sake we were just two dumb kids in love and we didn’t deserve what happened to us.

i want to say it was somebody’s fault, but some pieces just weren’t meant to fit together and maybe we were the same colour but our edges never matched up and we both knew it.

the thing is i saw the world in black and white, but i saw you through rose-tinted glasses, and all the red flags are just flags after all – and what are flags, really just pieces of fucking cloth flapping tiredly in the wind like they’d already given up but you were always so alive and now i live a life without you and what kind of fucking life is that.

[goldinyourveins]

WHEN YOU KISSED ME MY MOUTH USED TO BLEED IT DOESN’T BLEED ANYMORE BUT I STILL THINK ABOUT YOU KISSING ME SO HARD I WOULD STOP BREATHING I THINK ABOUT YOU KISSING ME IN FRONT OF GIRLS WHO HAVE KISSED YOU AND I THINK ABOUT THE FIRST TIME YOU WILL DO THAT TO ME

[goldinyourveins]

islands

the last time i realised i was in love on a trip, it was when i was having a panic attack. i was in a resort in maldives. i had run from my friends to sit alone by the shore and stare at the waves lapping at the rocks. i watched the water edge forward like a shy child, and then retreat, just to come towards me again. i thought about how water eroded giant rock formations to turn them into different things entirely – about how time could change so much.

this time it was while i was high, and perhaps it is not love, but it is something. i realised it when looking at my phone hurt my eyes too much, when it looked like my screen didn’t belong in the physical world, but i looked at it anyway just to respond to his messages. i was laughing at everything, but he made me laugh the hardest. i was watching my friends being obviously in love, and i thought of him and the way the smell of him helped me fall asleep at night. i forgot about the other ones, the ones i didn’t trust. i was high, and everything fell away, and i just wanted him.

[goldinyourveins]

I STARED INTO THE SUN AND DIDN'T FLINCH

sometimes it is so hard to tell people what it felt like to lose you. i tell them we were so inseparable that at some point you became an extension of me – losing you was like losing a limb. i say losing you felt like being dragged over razor blades, slithering across the singing metal one inch at a time, leaving a trail of blood that somehow spelled your name. i tell them losing you was like staring into the sun for so long my vision failed me. i tell them my love for you was the sun and i thought i could kill it by starving it of oxygen; so i lost my breath in the mouths of too many people. i say losing you meant kissing in the dark, fumbling for belt buckles, awkward bumping of hands and heads, having to relearn the steps of a dance i’d memorised with you and now was trying to forget. losing you was like having to sell my soul to the devil because it wasn’t good enough for god. 

but when i lost you suddenly i was lighter. my lungs deflated and reinflated. i gave up dancing. i forgot the feel of your name in my mouth. i stared into the sun

and i didn’t flinch

[goldinyourveins]

on your roof

you tell me –

i was hurt once. and you tell me i will earn your trust.  and then you ask me are you hurt? and i say – yes. immensely.

you ask me: why? and i show you, in the things i have written in the middle of the night, the words that drowned me as i tried to sleep. i listen to your breathing, head on your chest, as your lips mouth the words i have refused to say aloud to anyone, that i have only been able to tap into a keyboard.

i’m sorry, you say finally, and i say, it is alright.

later in bed your hands creep under my shirt, tug at my shorts. i wonder if you understand the enormity of the things you are trying to do. when you hike up the hem of my top and your mouth travels towards my navel, i wonder if you could ever understand. i can still taste the milk and kahlua on my lips. rum and ginger ale and bile rise in my throat. i tell myself, he will earn my trust.

but i have met boys like you and i know you won’t. honeyed tongues are nothing. instant cameras and escapades are nothing. my life is a fever dream – too fast and too bizarre and too real to be real and you are the fever using dream logic, telling me you want to smell the roses, but speeding ahead like a bullet train.

on your roof you hold my hand and smoke drifts from between our lips. you tell me, this year will be a good year. i wonder for who.

[goldinyourveins]

everybody thinks they own me or a part of me – everybody wants to own me everybody wants to get a piece of the pie i am not to be devoured. i am not to be ravished. i am not to be taken selfishly and treated like a fucking prize i am a person. i am a person. i am my broken heart and my broken fingers and when i hold your hand and smile i am faking it when i kiss you on the top of the playground i am faking it if i moan when you touch the skin on my neck i am fucking faking it because it hurts. everything hurts. every nerve snaps, every breath reminds me my lungs were empty. when i hold your hand i think of him. when you kiss me under flashing lights i think of him. i think of him kissing me so hard my back breaks. fuck you for wanting to own me, fuck you for wanting to fuck me when his palm prints are still burned into my waist. some day i’ll have skin that his skin has never touched but until then i suffer. i wear the scars like banners. i wear the long faded bruises like handcuffs. i wear the fucking broken bones like i’m happy about them because better he destroy me than anyone. better he destroy me than anything.