i can't look at you without flinching
you're like the smell of burnt plastic
or blood running down the kitchen wall
love letters written in eyeliner
scared i'll soon forget
smudged feelings
hearts beating
praying you'll stick it out
till the morning

i keep forgetting you, every day. how we used to play house and invite all our little friends over, teddy bears and dolls in pretty dresses. i'd get out my best china, tiny little cups not meant for adult hands, checkered tablecloth and flowers stolen from someone's garden in the middle of the night. and you'd lace the tea, dancing, shouting, and wide-eyed teddy bears with their stuffing pouring out over our wooden floors.

I've made you up. I'm waiting for someone to mend my broken bones, someone who won't love me back. My expectations are making disappointment impossible, but in reality even my expectations of heartbreaks and funfairs are ridiculously vain, possibly even ideas shamelessly stolen from greater men. I'm waiting for someone not to return my calls, and if they ever do I pretend I'm not there. All I ever wanted was for someone to rip my heart out and tear it to shreds, but as it is I'm watching you go by, one by one by one

i don't know what to say so i let my hands run over your back, feeling your muscles moving between my fingers, lungs rising, falling, rising. you don't look at me anymore, you look past me, at something else, someone else. i don't believe in destiny, i said, and you nodded, laughed, hoped. we held hands and walked away. you said nothing and i listened to your rushed breath, against my neck, against my thigh, against my wall. you don't look at me anymore, you can't see me, i'm hiding behind these trees. i can't let you love me with all my flaws, all my faults, all my shortcomings. i can't let you cos that would mean having to acknowledge them and that hurts entirely too much to keep it together.

If I ever forget you, you're here, in my childish handwriting, in faded photographs squinting at the sun, eyes blinking as the shutter clicks, looking away, your ice cream dripping onto your jeans. If I ever forget you, you're here to remind me, always nineteen, always with your short boyish hair, a summer spent on trains, listening to strange languages, losing my shoes in the streets, kissing dark-haired boys, keeping our passports under our pillows, dreaming, dreaming. If I ever forget you, you're here to tell me that there is no such thing as responsibility, we'll catch the next train out of here, sleep under the starry sky, drink wine heated by the sun, get lost in fields. There is no such thing as responsibility, reality, and yet you will never return to tell the tale

i tie ribbons around my arms, tangling up, forever not letting go. you told me i could never, would never -

this is not the truth. these are smiles and gestures put together for you, for show, for my mother and the rest of them, hiding behind stages whispering loudly, mouthing the wrong words. she told me i could never, would never. could never. would never. this debris is more than i ever asked for.

i keep writing my name down so as to not forget who i am. i want to exist when i'm not here. i want someone to think of me the most. it doesn't even have to be you, i will keep running in circles trying to catch the last person i slept with, the last person to look at me in a crowded room. look at me again. look at me again and again and again. and i will keep asking, never stopping for one moment to hear the answer. i am the girl with a jar full of coppers and a laugh not fuelled by drugs. i am the girl i left crying in the street at 5am. i am the girl who can't decide where she should be and thus can never be the first to leave. i am the girl you will remember when she's gone. look at me. white knuckles adorning the glass. repeat. repeat. repeat.

You lie next to me in this tiny bed. Our arms tangled up, pulsating with the same beat. One two, one two. My lungs next to yours, breathing. Still. One two, one two. I keep my eyes closed, listening to nothing, telling myself that you're real. You're here. One two, two one, in out. In.

I wanted to remember this forever, you, us. I wanted to remember this and I was scared I wouldn’t, so I took a knife and I carved you into my arm and at night I’d put it under my head to keep you close. Your heartbeat next to mine, your name against my eyes. I carved you into my skin so you’d never leave and now I can’t get rid of you no matter how hard I try.