under a sky the colour of asphyxia wet heat tugs at my limbs minutes are hours wanting gnaws away at flesh like jewel wasp larvae, iridescent abominations. if you were here with me, we could lie spreadeagled under the benevolence of a creaking fan and make up stories of how it all turned out...
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Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? Hamlet, Act II, Scene 1 I wish someone had given me this advice in my youth. Instead I have aged with desire and it has eaten holes in my viscera until there is little left but a labyrinth for worms to...
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When I was a child, my grandmother taught me the world was a kind place. And I believed her, because children believe. As I grew older, I discovered that this wasn’t always so. Still, I carried on living as if it were true. What was the point, I asked myself, in pursuing an experience...
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Pungent dried petals crushed and crumbled into my skin. My palm flat against my chest grinding the blossoms into my skin. Sharp buds to score the flesh until I’ve plowed the essence of you into my skin. Let me bleed, lavender scented and crimson, against the blinding white of your shirt and into your...
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On the cracked benches of dusty railway stations, in the populated sterility of airport lounges, termini or sanctuary, in motion or static, you are always with me, love. In the secret crevices of time that wind the hours fast or slow, in the geometry of the metropolis, on flood plains and seared tarmac. Nestled...
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Ghostly shadow mice nibble away at the edges of my perception. Their scurrying sounds bitten off consonants of words once important now so much detritus used for bedding. Gradually the picture window of my world becomes a narrowing view framed in tiny teeth marks. Like a man going slowly blind. Tweet
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Supine beneath the onslaught of your shower’s cool benevolence, the floor hard and frigid below my back, sharp against the ridge of my spine. Eager goosebumps rise across my chilling skin until I am a landscape of moist texture. Nipples as tight as Gordian knots, breathing laboured against the storm. The droplets bead and...
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This is the third drink. Perhaps the fourth. I’m not sure. This is the twentieth cigarette I’m grinding out with nervous fingers in an overflowing ashtray. This is the fifth time I’ve put on and eaten off my lipstick, blotting it in the mirror between times. The thirty-eighth time I’ve checked my phone for...
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Flames dance at his fingertips, little blue blossoms, stinging thorns of heat. How can something so beautiful burn with such agony? My incandescent lover, my heart of the sun, leaves seared skin, in the wake of his touch, then tenderly wreaks devastation with that first, sure thrust. I burn from the inside, a reactor...
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This is what I want you to do: Stand naked in front of the mirror and, with the sluttiest, reddest lipstick you own, draw a thick crimson circle around your navel. Don’t look down. Use the mirror. Place your flattened palm there, over the garish circle at your belly, and slowly – but not...
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