oct- nov | 11whitfieldroad

Lily, it’s been a long fuckin’ winter without you.

I laid in your bed and tried to find some reminder of myself in your imprint.

I put on stranger’s clothes and tried to build a new identity;

I learned how to pronounce your name.

Leaky identities, silences that stretch on for one, two three, lengths long.

I shut myself away, hoped you’d come knocking, kissed strangers, tried to find a taste I’d recognize.

Nothing.

I still keep everything in the closet, wove your hair along mine.

I acted out life.

//strange grey morning, everything hurts my eyes.

everything hurts my eyes.

Sirens echo up and down the river, nobody seems awake//

For James, who's broken me twice.

And for Beca, who thinks she can break me to this day.

He made my bed so I couldn’t sleep in it.

He said I had a halo and for once I thought that

someone else had finally seen it

(This is not to say he hung it around my head

because I spent 40 days forging in the sweat and embers, I beat the metal till it cried and claimed I was a witch, I bent it with my bare hands when it was hot enough and I’ve got the burns to show

it’s of my making.)

I let him feed me shit and swallowed it as ignorance,

I let myself be blinded by the press of his lips

to my stomach, and lips and cheek and chin

and forehead neck arms wrist hand knee shin

shoulders hip breast

I thought we had a chance

(When he rolled over in the morning and said

‘this is the best feeling waking up next to you’.)

EPILOGUE

i know this is not my fault. i know he needs to understand what he wants. we know what we want (him & i). he’s unsure. i act like it’s okay. (i act like i’m okay.) i didn’t yell at him and i could’ve. yet the perverted side of me was already kindling forgiveness.

what i mean to say is i want to wake up in the morning next to you.