Badges.

Do you think you broke me first?
Do you not think I’ve been through this before?
At the hands of another man.
(If we can call him that)

Do you think you broke me the hardest?
Do you think this is the worst pain I’ve ever been put through?
No, I was 18 and three quarters.
Naïve heartbreak is always the worst,
the one you don’t see coming.

Do you think you cut the deepest?
Have you not seen my scars?
From those before you
who plunged the knife further than you’d ever go,
down to the bone.

Do you think you hold that badge for me?
First? Hardest? Deepest?
No.
There were others before.

And the worst thing about it? Is that you knew that already.
And you didn’t think to handle my heart more carefully?

Of course not.

But you were the one I expected more from.
That badge?
It’s always been yours.

Lost at sea

I’m lost at sea and don’t know where to find me.
Thought I’d moved on and left it all behind me.
But it creeps up on me in the night,
Not out of mind or out of sight.
It still hits me like a train and still blindsides me.

When do you know that part of you is dead and gone for good?
I’m stumbling, can’t find my feet, nor see the trees for wood.
Will it be hours or months or days?
I have no idea who gets to say.
But right now it feels like it’s still crawling, swimming through my blood.

And when will it stop?
How will I know?
When I thought I’d reached the top of everything that I had ever known.
When can I breathe?
Or let go and scream?
When will this feeling go?
And how will I know?

Sometimes I feel I’ve taken two steps forward and three back.
It’s hard to feel like I am safe when I’m running off the tracks.
What’s next for me – promethazine?
To quell the nausea slowly killing me.
So I’ll keep avoiding manhole covers and all the pavement cracks.

I’ve reached the point I no longer have the patience.
To be polite and maybe not just say this –
You fucked me up, yes you with the beard,
You led me on for all those years.
But is it me that’s left to blame for my complacence?

why are you still crying?

I want to know
is it okay
to still feel this way
after all these years?

When I let go of your hand
at the terminal
oh I knew
that would be the last time
I ever saw you.

And it’s like part of me has died,
like you took the good parts of me with you
when you left
and left me with the messy bits,
the broken bits,
the parts-that-nobody-wants bits.

Oh it still hurts
because you cut me so deep
to parts of me I thought were healed
parts of me I thought were untouchable.

You promised me the world with one hand
and snatched the earth from under my feet
with the other
the very next morning.

And I’m not crying because you broke my heart,
I’ve cried myself dry over that.
I’m crying because
when I left you at the airport
I knew I was leaving part of me too.

I’m crying because
your actions and your words
shrunk me down to a half
no, a third
of who I used to be.

You walked all over me
and got away scott free.

So when I grieve now
It’s no longer for you
but for the old me
rest in peace.

“She burns bridges”

Apparently, I burn bridges
or maybe it was a wayward spark,
from you burning our candle at both ends.
It wouldn’t have taken much, to raze the dilapidated, crumbling scaffolding.
Not the once strong, steady, immovable Pont du Gard.

A bridge is no longer of use, when the destination is a person you no longer recognise.
A faceless friend,
a stranger in a crowd,
an unhappy hostage.

So maybe burning it was my only option.
Save up what little was left of my sanity; cut and run.
You say I no longer light up your sky,
but maybe my light was never yours to possess and claim as your own.
Maybe what burnt that bridge, was a flicker of my fire you could no longer control.

Well, I gathered up all the remaining timber,
anything I could salvage from the blaze,
and I built myself a fucking ladder
to pull myself out of the twisted ravine you left me in.

And now I’m up high, on a cliff top
and the view and the air is clear,
and now it all makes sense.

sorry?

i had to ask for it
i had to spell it out to you
because you’d forgotten, like you do
all the hell you put me through

i had to spell it out
this is what you did to me
and was i supposed to accept that gratefully?
and let you off, so deservedly?

what i lost when i lost you
was so much more than just a relationship
i was a sinking battleship
already losing my grip

no, you didn’t recognise the full impact
that final straw, turned to one almighty blow
i was freefalling, but imperceptibly slow
no parachute, or safety net, into the ground below

does it really count as an apology
if i had to ask for it first?
if you were coerced?
for everything you said sounded performative and rehearsed

you say you’ve changed now
that you don’t do that anymore
don’t go back on words you swore
and isn’t she lucky, the girl you now call yours?

well, i don’t accept your apology
but i’ll pretend i do with grace
i’d rather you’d left me unanswered
but i’ll let you save your face.

a warning

oh, he’ll be there
for the good times
for the falling in love
over a bottle of red wine times

for the holding hands in the woods
and for the wishing on should
we, be
an eternity, a whole,
two bodies, but one soul

oh, he’ll be there

but not for when things turn sour
when minutes feel like hours
across the dining table
the candle light a token gesture
and not a word has been spoken yet

empty promises of, i’ll never leave you
but he won’t be there when it’s needed
punching, kicking, scratching, screaming
he won’t be there when the tears come streaming

he was there for the good version of you
on your best behaviour, you
for the confident, happy, exciting you
but when reality came, like an awesome wave
he couldn’t see it through

after all, i’ve come to learn, i was nothing more than a getaway car
that drove too fast
and eventually took us both tumbling
off the path

yes, i am talking to you.

you unbuckled your seatbelt and leapt
from the impending wreckage
and you ran
without a second glance over your shoulder
to see the flames
that you’d left.

(he won’t be there)

soft / bruises

love bites.
the bruises are lingering
on my chest, my hips, my back
a reminder, of candlelight dwindling
and silk ties
and too much pink wine.

but there are bruises still
on my self-esteem
on my heart
deep in my soul
and love’s keen sting
has left its indefinite mark.

does this mean i’ve remained soft, like i wanted,
through this tempest?
not hardened
still easy to bruise and still tender?

we both sidestep 3 consecutive manhole covers
wish on eyelashes
wish on 11:11
cross our fingers and pinky swear, we’re lovers
and love bites, but
is this it?
and am i finally doing it right?

scared

How can I possibly be scared?

I’ve run out of “scared”.
I’ve done all of the scariest things already.
Saying goodbye to you at the airport.
Leaving you for good.
Even though every fibre of my being didn’t want to let go of you.
Didn’t want to turn around and see you for the final time.
Boarding that plane.
And leaving Thailand, alone.
That was terrifying.

Leaving behind all I knew.
All that I loved.
Everything that I was sure about.
Knowing in that split second that our hands let go of each other, that I’d never hold your hand again.
Never have you to turn to again.
Never share our bed again.
That was terrifying.

That felt like having the earth pulled from beneath me, and realising I didn’t have a parachute anymore.
That was scary.

I came home alone.
Never the way it was meant to be.
But I had to.
There was no other way forward.
And it felt like having my heart broken twice.
That was truly scary.

Surely I’ve ran out of things to be scared of? Surely there’s nothing more to be afraid of, when you already feel like you’ve had it all taken from you?

let me down

in the beginning, there was a time
when we were the talk of the town
a twisted love affair
but, in the end, you let me down

our days filled with conversation
i wore our love like a crown
our nights filled with tenderness
and still, you let me down.

there were months when you
were the only person i wanted to be around
my knight in a plaid shirt and slippers
and yet, you let me down

the cracks began to show
the crown fell to the ground
and you didn’t want to be there to help pick up the pieces,
that’s how you let me down.

and now i look back and i’m angry
that i turned my life upside down
all in the name of what i thought was “love”
and then you went and let me down

was i not worth fixing?
was i worth leaving to drown?
in the blackened waters of my mind?
was it easier to let me down?

i ask because you did it so easily
maybe you were on a huge comedown
of the idea of me
not the reality of me
and that’s how you let me down

what was once our palace
soon became a ghost town
but i will rise up from these ashes
and i won’t let myself down.

little life update

Things got very dark for me in the six months since I returned from living abroad.

I’m coming out the other side now.

I read back through the poems/pieces I wrote back then, and I feel like I’ve put some distance between how I was then, and how I feel now.

I’m healing. Slowly. But slow progress is still progress.

And I don’t want to delete those poems either. Because my feelings were valid at the time. And still are valid now.

But I’m doing better.

Touch wood. Because I still have OCD, don’t I?

(And for any of you wondering, love exists after heart break. And it’s even sweeter for it.)