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heather mckenzie Apr 2018
i’d rather write about the freckles on your back than think about all of the ways in which you quite possibly don’t love me.

i feel sick at the very thought of you picking me apart the way you did; fingers grabbing and stroking in a catastrophic symphony of skin and vulnerability.

let’s read between each other’s lines; share my sentences and punctuate my paragraphs with your mouth; because i can breathe easier on the mornings where i wake up wrapped around you.

because my moods change like the ******* seasons and the spinning in my head doesn’t want to stop.
                                         you tell me that i should probably get a therapist because no one that thinks about all the ways in which they could **** themselves has an ounce of mental stability.
                                          i tell you that i have been to four.
                                          names faded into a blur with hazy snippets of conversation remaining.
20mg.
                    30mg.
you tell me that trust issues and scars aren’t endearing and i tell you that neither is counting up the potential number of pills needed to dissolve your body into the living room carpet.

let me sink inside your skin and make a home in your flesh;
i tell you about the nights where i lay awake in the bath turning the water red.
                       tragic, isn’t it.

you tell me that this isn’t how my head should work and i tell you that i already know. everything you could possibly tell me i already know.
i know that 400 calories a day isn’t normal, and my hands shouldn’t shake all the time.
                                             i know.
please let me stitch myself into you, even just for a while; until i no longer feel dizzy and my world stops spinning.
i don’t need you to tell me that it will be okay, because honestly i don’t think it will be and, that in itself, is okay.
                                                                ­                 let me stitch myself into you, because my own skin can’t take it anymore.

let me call you back when my voice stops wobbling and my vision straightens out, but honestly, i’m terrified that it never will. what if this is it. headaches and tears and shaking and blood.
                                             and the debilitating, gut-wrenching feeling of pure and euphoric emptiness.

                                              tragic, isn’t it.
heather mckenzie Mar 2018
// i’m terrified that next year i might hate winter; that the glow of the lights will remind me so deeply of you eyes that i’ll get that agonising ache in my chest again.

it’s always been my least favourite season, but for a while my dear, you changed that.

there was always something about the weight of the air,

thick and heavy with coldness and fog.

you made me realise that it’s the only time of year that everything tastes ever so slightly of cinnamon and ginger; you tasted like cigarettes and bubblemint gum.

after you left i took up smoking for a week purely because it tasted like you, maybe also because the burning in my chest was the closest feeling to being in love with you.

in my mind there is just us and you aren’t here to leave.

you whisper into my skin and i don’t cough up your words in the shower the next morning.

in my mind you don’t kiss me to forget and i don’t shake when you touch me.

the lights don’t stay off anymore,

you look me in the eyes as you **** me.

warm bedsheets tangled in a heap of exhausted limbs.

                                                 
his bookshelf was splitting at the seams;

bukowski

plath

keats and frost.

he asked me what i thought about love and i told him; it’s the bits of us that we give away with no sense of expectation or consequences. when you feel this empty you’ll do anything to fill the void in your ribcage.

we feel more pain than we know what to do with

so, we paint, draw, write and sing.

anything really, anything that helps us cling to the edges of humanity.

that was the thing, you always knew that you could count on me to get down on my knees for you babe, didn’t you? //
heather mckenzie Mar 2018
it feels like you have my heart poised, perfectly, between your thumb and forefinger; rubbing and squeezing and pulsating until blood is drawn and the warm fluid slides down your wrist.

whilst you aren’t texting back, i’m emptying the remaining pieces of myself into a cup of coffee. each swirl of the teaspoon is another uneasy breath expelled; i pour milk into my stained mug in the same vain that i pour what remains of me into your open mouth.

i don’t know if you want it; maybe you like your coffee black but i've never given you that option. pouring and pouring and pouring. pouring myself into you without permission, without self-awareness or a need for reciprocation. i try to water you like a plant whose roots are already swimming in water.

i think your mug might be full already but i can't stop, i want to but I can't withdraw. i'm going to pour and pour and pour until you never touch another cup of coffee for the remainder of your days, till the smell makes you gag and cafes' become scorched ground.

at this point coffee is the only thing that it feels like i know; my organs floating amongst pools of sharp, bitter liquid. i push it longer and longer and longer, the hours between meals stretch into days stretching into lightheaded bouts of fainting. but it’s okay because i feel like i'm floating. so empty and sparse that i could keep pouring myself into you for an eternity and you would never get too full, your cup would never overflow from too much of me.

but i'm tired. tired of guessing and crying and starving and giving myself to you. i am not a watering can and you are not a wild garden. you are beautiful and I am hollow, the lifeless impression of what could have been lying in the freshly seeded soil. you are the budding head of the snowdrops in the spring, i am decay, rot and debasement.

you didn’t ask for it, you didn’t ask for any of this; you wanted me to stop. to stop trying to embed myself into you like dirt under your nails. but that is the crux of it all my dear; i can't and i don’t know how to. so i keep going, i kiss your bruises and clean your wounds; pouring and pouring and pouring.
heather mckenzie Mar 2018
// she falls in love the same way that she falls apart; quickly and all at once.

tumbling into his outstretched palms with a startling intensity, his fists clench and she cries.

she wants him to hurt her, leave smouldering bruises around her neck. Force your fingers down her throat and make her beg. maybe this love; choking sounds and blood.

it’s almost funny, the fact that she still hasn’t learned yet; make him your everything and you will be left with nothing.

and it feels like hell, almost romantic.

her lips part in the dimly lit room, gasping for air.

that’s the thing, there is nothing he could do to her that she wouldn’t do to herself. hold a knife to her neck and watch her soul drip from her mouth

one rib at a time you snapped them all like twigs and complained that she made too much noise. too much,

too loud.

lungs swimming in fluid yet she breathes out flowers, because that’s what pretty girls do; that’s what you wanted isn’t it babe? beauty. perfection.

don’t let him inside your head, keep him between your thighs or else everything around you will become white noise; fading into the background.

go on, romanticise it. i dare you.

force its unwilling bones into a metaphor or a simile.

pretend that we fall apart into beautiful, tragic spectacles and simply glue the broken fragments back together

she sat in the dark with a cup of tea between her shaking hands, resisting the urge to split her veins over the white walls and string her organs from the ceiling like fairy lights.

wanting to die in the most violent of ways is a lot less convenient than it seems; an unholy addiction of the rawest degree.

darling, i’m sorry he made you feel like you are hard to love,

because loving you is the easiest thing in the world //

— The End —