oily marks appear on walls, where pleasure moments hung before

There’ll be those marks upon the walls, to remind me of what once was, of what we were, what we had. I want to be reading letters, not writing them. Taking pictures of anyone...

I sometimes feel scared that I’m not the best person I can be. I want him to point at me at say ‘that’s her.’ I want to be the girl that you’ve never met anyone else like before.

this is the ransom; it was for her broken heart
that he would pin up on his wall
dearly-bought for his luckless darling
she taped up her mouth with newspaper word cut outs

i don’t believe you
but still loved you with all the pieces
you swallowed your words
spoke no feeling
i’ll rip up the imaginary love-letters
because you packed up your love in boxes
and left.

my heart is part of the furniture
not much else but something you left behind
the dust will settle soon
on my suddenly still life

[this insensible life
you’d rather forget.]
as for the girl,
well, what did she say?
nothing but oily marks on walls
hmm what did she say?
just murmurs of days before the takeover
you won’t find her waiting
and asking

no, you won’t catch her around here.


This life has become all quiet. There’s this silence, this stillness. Without you my world has become a frozen piece of time, motionless and inanimate. You put up my heart up for display. It’s part of the furniture now, just a dusty object left among the mismatched array of things you left behind when you were gone in a hurry. I am nothing to you now but a memory, an object from the past, kept high upon your shelf. I’m part of the composition. I’m useless and desperate and I’m as still and lifeless as the scattered belongings that you left behind. I’m just a piece, but you didn’t put me in your suitcase. You left me with all the other memories you’d rather forget.


as I wrote a letter to my love but on the way I dropped it. Sometimes she’d turn all dark and shut herself in her room for days. She’d say she had no appetite. She’d stare at the ceiling and talk to herself. And talk back. And then she’d complain of lethargy and feelings of emptiness, saying her arms felt strangely heavy, and although she was sad she could not cry. Sometimes she would lie on the floor. When she eventually became bored of this she’d arrange her bookshelf in alphabetical order. And then lie down on the floor again. When it got dark she would not turn on the light. She said she hated artificial light anyway and preferred the dark. It was comforting somehow. We’d come over to visit her when she was like this. She wouldn’t take advice. She’d pull at her sleeves when she got nervous. The best thing we could do for her was to tell nonsense stories and read to her from Jane Eyre. She loved that.

The easiest way to my heart is with a knife, but the second easiest is by writing me a song and singing it off-key outside my bedroom window.

Still. Life? Is there still life? Stillness of life could come around when you don’t know where to go. When you’ve lost someone. When you feel empty and everything is a mess. Still life is ironic. A tree is still but living, so it is still life. I am still but living, frozen and hurt and choked up, but my heart still beats...technically, life.

I’m going to frame words, mess upon walls, play hide and seek.