Sunset

I cannot fall in love

with what will not last

but my love is a sunset

which gives me no

choice, so do I love you

while you last or refuse

and live in the dark.

Years in the Making

This is a love poem for the days that I don’t want to

love you.

This is a poem to remind me that for

fourteen years

we have put up with one another and that for

every day

of those many, many years, I have wanted to see

your face.

This is to remind me that for every time you hurt

my feelings,

that you made me feel wanted and loved one

thousand times

over and that those feelings are invaluable, they are jewels,

a diamond

in the rough, edges washed smooth by the ocean, you are

the tides

that never fall short, every wave landing exactly where

it must.

This is the poem that will remind me that there is no space in

this heart

where I don’t want to love you, and thank you, my darling, for always

loving me.

Independence Day

Today

my country lost the chance

to be the only ever

peacetime independence,

a country born from

bravery today stood in

cowardice,

today,

I am ashamed.

Today, I watched

world leaders belittle my

nation into no more than

an extension of England

as my own people cheered,

pale blue skin and

freckled faces, for the first

time in the history of

logic,

chose to stand by our

invaders of 1296,

tell me your logic as the

people of Tibet immolate

for their right to sovereignty,

the people of the Palestine,

Kurdistan, bombs fall

and children die, and

Scotland rejects

independence.

2:04

Mind games and
self blame
are not favourites of
mine, listen instead
to bands you know
I love, take their words
and trust that
all I wanna hear you
say is R U mine?

2

Two hours sleep
is what today
(because it is
already today)
will be run on,
TWO feet to run
and TWO eyes to
see and TWO hands
to feel and TWO
stars are out two-
night to watch me
not sleep, how
funny words are
that two can be
spelt two ways,
two and too, which
is two too many
to me.

4:03

You know, I am watching the sun rising.

 

The grey of my windowpanes turn murky

before being engulfed in the sort of

flames that nature seems to enjoy, you

are flames in the morning sky and

you are murmurs at night.

 

You are every ocean that separates

and every raindrop when it’s stormy,

you are every fragment of the glass

tether to which I cling and every

word that I write on pale arms. Hot

tea and cold coffee and snowflakes

and hairbands on wrists, you are

everything I like because you forget

that I love everything, do not forget

this, that when the stars are the only

things we can share, that they are me.

You can be hurricanes and sea breezes

but I’ll light the nights when you

can’t sleep, the moon in the sky,

I might disappear sometimes but know

that I am all too caught in your

gravity, I’ll never be gone for long.

 

You know, the sun has risen now, and

I watched it all night because I can’t

sleep without you.

Where your heart is

Face in neck, lips to shoulder,
I comprehend through nothing
but sound and the movements
of my favourite arms, felt through
fingertips hypersensitive to the
electric pulses in the muscles
below, fear is diffused into the
tendons and you seem able to
endlessly absorb, to understand
and to explain, I know my own
emotions better when they are
experienced through you.

Home is where the heart is, home
is almost always forty kilometres
away, I form constellations from the
stars on your cheeks so that I can
remember them better in the days
we spend apart and I wish that I
could gaze out at this new universe
forever but summer is here and the
nights are short — I so hope that
winter is coming.

I wanted a word to describe the
sensation of stumbling into someone
who was a fragment of a past that I
so loved but the only one that came
to me was “funny” and neither of
us was satisfied with such mediocrity
so you left me to think and the
word that came to me was serendipity.

an unexpected, yet fortunate, occurrence
and let me tell you my love that you were
unexpected, yet fortunate, face-first into
arms twice as big as I remember and a
chest much higher off the ground than I
could recall, but banter just as awkward
and eyes just as quietly expressive as the
last time I had seen them, fast-forward a
year and I know you better than your mother,
I laugh as we reminisce because the whole
thing is awfully funny. You knew me when
I was weird looking and you still thought I
was cute, I suppose the same logic applies
to puppies when their feet are too big for
their bodies, but I grew into the hands that
you hold, fingers still just as long but
I hardly notice when they’re entwined
with yours, you make this body beautiful
just with your touch.

I know that no matter what, in a year
from now you’ll be exactly the radius of
the earth away from me, but I rest with the
knowledge that you walked into my life once,

twice,

I have faith in the third, and it’s third time
lucky.

That bitch

Before you tell me

that my body is something I have to cover,

on the behalf of boys that

I will never speak to,

 

Let me tell you to FUCK OFF

because maybe I was born exactly like this

and my body is something I have

spent seventeen years coming to terms

with, and let me tell you right now that I

don’t have that kind of time to show you

how I did it, that each cell in this body once

reverberated with utter self-loathing

and some days it still does, sometimes

I am no more than a fucking tuning fork

because I shake so hard to the tune of

“I hate my body” and “my boobs don’t fit

this” and “I can’t buy skirts long enough”

because in a country of petite, I am long

legs, big boobs and hair that can’t be

tamed, I don’t need you to remind me.

 

I don’t need your dismissal, I don’t need

to hear how the needs of perverts and the

means that you use to control them come

above the fact that I needed to move today,

no one tells the ocean tide to stop when it’s

waves distract the shore, do not put my body

in the confines of “sexual” or “on display”,

I’ll have you know that I’m wearing clothes.

 

I wear clothes that empower, smooth legs and

skirts that fall above my knees remind me that

I am a woman and that I am powerful, that

no matter how many boys, men and teachers

say to me, “honey this is physics, are you lost?”,

that I have passed every test, that I study twice

as hard, not because I have to but because I can,

I took my maths two years early do not look

down at me under the façade of dismissal, I know

you just want to see down my top. But you know

what, I got my breasts from my mother and she

is the most powerful woman I know, I see you

trying to hide yours under baggy shirts and high-

necked 80’s wear, no one takes you any more

seriously just because you hate yourself as much

as they hate you, wear what you like, this is all

that will ever belong to you in this world where

women do almost seventy percent of the work and

own less than one percent of the land, do not think

you are superior because your tits are smaller than

mine.

 

Do not tell me what to wear when others tell me what

to think, others tell me what to feel, others tell me what

I will learn and where I will go, who I will be, and

God fucking knows that I do not need you to tell me

what will protect the only thing that will ever be mine.

Song

Give me a dirt path to follow,

I am so out of place on concrete

roads, I have always known that

human chemicals were not the

kind that I was ever interested in,

give me adrenaline. Make me walk

for days through snow and blinding

sunlight – I do not have to see to

know where I am going, the freckles

on the backs of my eyelids are

enough for me, different colours speak

the minds of those who follow in my

steps and that is enough, I do not

always need words to speak. I learned

yesterday that my back can tell stories,

that as I bend forward, someone else

will bend back and the curvature of

their spine speaks music in my head

and trust is the only lyric, I sing the

single word with all the notes that the

Himalayan sunshine could play and

with every different tone that red hair

and snow could teach, a song that

brings tears to my eyes and nostalgia

to my heart, I miss the home that I so

despised.

Strongly

1868 kilometres isn’t far when I think about the
9565 kilometres that usually reside between myself
And my home land or the 5313 worth of ocean
That separates me from my best friend, but let me
Say without doubt nor agenda that every single
Metre that makes up the distance between you and I
May as well be the moon, or an asteroid belt because
Each molecule of space feels closer to me than you.

You glimmer in the distance, soon, soon you say,
I repeat it back like a child learning its first words
I say “soon” and I grasp the concept but remain
Unsatisfied why would I want a word that promises
What I want eventually but keeps me waiting, always
Waiting, I don’t want you soon I want you now.
Patience is a virtue but there are so many others
That I would rather have to share with you so I don’t
Even mind lacking in this one, if I get to show you
Kindness, bravery, love? — I’ll make up to you my lack
Of patience if you release me from this prison cell
Of “soon”.