pleasing being
Stop teasing feeling
From an inner drought
That only dried to be that way
Because you gave all your kindness out
Instead of spending it on yourself.
I stop as your eyes unstuck from mine
You swig from the bottle of wine
And I muster up the courage to say
I don’t want to be just tonight
I’ve said it before and let it be denied
And you laugh with a cocksure sigh
And hit me with another line like
Why can’t you just be a girl for a good time?
And it’s the just that juts
And ricochets
And it slaps stuck
To my ongoing conflict with myself
I reach for a souvenir placed on your shelf
Throw it between my palms
Imagine what false comfort I’d find within your arms
And put it back
I give learning from lessons a crack
I stop myself from telling you that you’re such a twat
When you text me the next morning
To say my excuse as a woman is appalling
For leaving in a rush
It was sticky in your apartment
And it was there that I realised
I was bored of being stuck
As a girl whose muchness amounted to just
The night.
He is unsmoked cigarettes
And lukewarm tea
A morning routine
(He’s) not consumed by me
A craving that will fade
Left unfinished in the sink
Until my wine-stained lips
Call the next round of drinks
I’ll wake up in the morning
Next to someone new
But I still fell asleep
Hoping that someone would be you.
Find the contented without the contention of giving away half of yourself
And see that letting go isn’t giving in
But a spiritual commodity of wealth
My best teachers were disguised as lovers
Unmasked when I untangled their mesh of kisses
And smothered myself instead with the notion that they were knowledgeable near misses
And Mr Brave
The future without the listless lustful nights
Replaced with a silhouette of love
That was bred from moulding a mistreated wrong into its rightful right.
Your body became so familiar
I touched your skin the same way I’d fumble down the side of the TV in the dark and know the difference between the
<off switch> and the <volume button>
Each line and freckle a constellation on your torso
I could read backwards like an anatomical astrologist.
We intertwine and I sigh softly
a shared unspoken bedtime language that
screamed
to the gods for just
five
more
minutes
Time stopped to matter and the matter of us across your old mattress pulled apart until your stars dimmed down to flickering filaments and I chose to switch them off.
It is what it is until it isn’t
Quite it anymore
Makes perfect logical sense, sure
But in eleven short words I don’t think you swirl the score
Of what I’m on about
I could mutter an uttering of offers
Words that cling to syllables as tightly as otters
In love
Did you know they never let go once they’ve found a mate?
Did you know that my slithering of truth wasn’t yours to emanate
Dissipate, dissolve upon your lips
As my truth became a movement and your hands became my hips
In a haze of a few Sundays
Of what I thought was it
But didn’t know that it could be something just one of us could quit
And that’s quite exactly it
It was what it wasn’t
Instead of a smattering of emails that will one day be forgotten
Instead of a flattering string of inhales that sung kindly until coughed out rotten.
Again these are all just words
Silly sold sentiments aren’t that tough
I could rhyme anything together and it’d still be enough
For you to know what I’m wittering on about is love
It is what it is until it isn’t
Quite it anymore
It’s tracing your finger on a back
That will soon traipse out the door
It’s wine on a Saturday and lies that you learn as foreplay
It’s lust in its golden hour
It’s kissing goosebumped in the shower
It’s handing over innocence to a dastardly power
Of frightening fragile fragments that someone can stack in their own tower
No choice in whether it cements a building for their ego or a fence around a field of flourishing flowers
All grown for you
It is what it is until it isn’t quite it anymore
Until you become loathsome for the quibbling quirks of comfort
And