Small Talk

‘How was your day?’

Don’t ask me that, don’t ask me about things you don’t care about. 

Ask me how I feel, ask me what I’ve been thinking, ask me anything but ‘How was your day?’.

‘Did you have a nice summer?’

Don’t ask me that, don’t ask me about things you don’t care about.

Ask me about my dreams, ask me about my regrets, ask me anything but ‘Did you have a nice summer?’

Don’t ask me and I won’t ask you.

The false assassin

Lingering, it permeates the room of dead and dying. Hospital smell.

Invisible to the sense, only an echo treads softly on the path to Hades’ room. Dripping needle.

Turn back it says, save yourself, save your tears for someone else. Yellow Bandage.

Melancholic arrows make their way to you, pierce your side and lift you up. Oozing wound.

But they are false, false as the assassin who loosed them on your weeping frame. Masked assistant.

He’s dead, they whisper, we lied, they laugh, we are the false assassin. Painkillers.

They call us hope. 

 

Slice

I am a scalpel, the pain I cause is delayed like the monday morning trains.

You beg me to hold you in the grasp of mortality and yet before you realise it, you are bled.

I am the shard of glass you don’t see, walking happily to the beach of your dreams, I am there to ruin your day.

You love me but I will bleed you dry, to leave you an empty husk on the battlefield of love.

I am a scalpel, when I slice, your emotions run forth like the aorta’s rushing red river.

Post-dream Blues

I stared at the bus, but no face was visible. I knew it was there, behind the tinted panes, a one way mirror.

I imagined I could see those eyes, those atlas spheres of green and blue, the map of your mind projecting wonder onto mine.

I felt like Gatsby looking out across the bay, but I can’t see the green light. All I have is a memory now.

Where we parted there lies a scar, not on my skin but on my soul, it feels adrift, ripped in two. I want it back.

My world is now Monochrome, colour emanating only from those things that remind me of our time, a book, a smell, a laugh.

Now I wait, tracing the map of your skin in my mind, a map that is all at once so hard to read and yet I never err from the path.

It was a dream, turned into a nightmare when I awoke, to find you gone.