finding divinity.

new year's day;

you are starting again, you say.
again.

you wrap your spine in sky and tell me that
you’re not sure you can make it out this year alive.
and that you’re scared.

i try to pull the sunrise closer as i don’t tell you that i
felt like that last year.
and that i nearly didn’t
live. 

i press atmospheres into your lungs
telling you i’m scared too.




















genocide memorial day;

i am your veins, i live in your walls, unseen.

dear father, you scratch,
i am dirt.
leper fingers crawl on my thighs.
i am yours.

i pulse as you cry over the past.
and as you cry over the now.




















valentine's.

you think like a blizzard,
because of him,
because of him, his abortive hands,
you shiver at your cold thoughts

because of him,
you confess, to me and not a priest, to
confessing to crimes you never committed.

you find beauty in wintering skin.




















mothering sunday;

i see pearls of love running from your fingertips,
hope unwinding from your nails.

and i see how much you want to be close
to the woman that didn’t believe you.


you will cry after the door shuts.
clicked locks, grated bolts.
you will cry.

you will curl against memories, you will
imprint a crucifix into your hands,
absorbing divinity through
blacked palms. you will quaver behind a
bathroom door, spilling diamonds from your seams.

and you will never know
i care.




















st swithin’s day;

we counted train carriages instead of stars one night.

you said it was better, all those stars are dead already and not being able to let go is pointless.




“how does it feel to have faith?” you ask, your voice slipping into the hollow air.

“I guess it’d be like being safe. It’s be scary, maybe. Imagine putting believing in something that you weren’t sure exist, it wouldn’t be easy. I don’t know, i’m not exactly the one to ask.” I laugh, sitting up and smiling. but your eyes felt empty, like something was really missing.



we were silent then.


“what does the rain feel like?”
“that’s easy, it feels like being sad. being stuck in downpour is someone stamping on your toes, pulling the feathers from your wings. it’s being picked last, it’s being forgotten. it’s cold, it numbs you so damn much, it’s cruel. it’s singing to the sea and the words getting stuck in your throat. the worst kind of rain is the one that just doesn’t stop, when it washes away your name, so you write all the words you know for permanent into your arm, but even then people look through you.”
“but we need the rain, or else things can’t grow.”



I think I was going to say something, but the next train stole away my words.
the reds and oranges and pinks slipped from the skyline.

“so what does sunshine feel like?” you breathed on my shoulder, making nooses out of grass.

“I guess it’d feel like being happy, if rain feels like being sad. summer feels like being washed in light. it’s something wrapping every little bit of your skin up in harmonies, like violet confetti spilling over everything you touch. the air is clear in sunshine, it’s dry and easy to breathe through. it’s the absence of rain, the lack of sadness. that’s what sunshine is. that’s what happiness is.”


you were still.

the sounds of your mind whirring
were martyr rocks on my chest.




“I think i’d have liked to have never seen the rain.
but now I have, I think that maybe, I wish I’d never seen the sunshine.

Because, maybe, if I’d not known happiness, then being sad wouldn’t hurt so much.
And maybe, maybe I might find faith too.”




















michaelmas.

“do you believe in angels?”
“no.

why?”


you fold away and
change the channel to something about
atheism or something about
endings and i guess
it’s because he had
clefts in his feet and hot,
hot skin, and his name hid all that.





your mother laughed at the
lyrics you loved, telling you
that being broken is

nothing beautiful. 





















bonfire night.
you command fireworks in your
gaze, with a blink, the light
goes. you are phosphor skin, lungs that
fill like eyes. physics in your blood.

tonight, you are a holocaust.



















remembrance day.

you just want to be okay.

i hold your hand in the two minute silence,
feeling out of place against your tired pulse,
at thirteen minutes past eleven, you choke,
“i couldn’t wish to be loved.”
you’re worth more than your wasted saline over divinity.
you’re worth more than wax wings and copper coin forests
and you are worth so much more than ephemeral words and
splintered thoughts and ripped cloth poppies
hiding as roses.