cosmonausea

I didn’t mean to quit.

she dances 

they’re a spotlight,

the headlights

and it’s nights like this

the hiss of pistons

grips your ears.

it’s music.

limbs fly and tyres sing

and she’s painted red

by brake lights

or blood.

head-in-the-mud in the verge.

it’s urgent and the sirens’ chorus

sought applause.

i have this dream.

i’m being sick

and it’s leaves,

then it’s sleet and

the toilet bowl is 

full of seasons.

this is your tshirt,

these are my bones

and it doesn’t sit right.

and the label is itchy.

no. you don’t fit me.

nights are better here,

nights are

re-run comfortable.

un-mundane. 

sofa sleep.

sunken in,

drink, and drunk.

strobelit motes and

stammered names

etched into ashtrays.

you always glamour

your cigarettes to life

with what survived 

of half-alive lighters.

you’re like

a cold-tap cushion

to cotton-mouth kisses.

this is all i need.

you’re smoke and mirrors

to my ashtrays and shrapnel.

i sleep in the chapel and

they’re singing for you,

you vanishing act.

you sleight of grandeur.

these echoes are yours.

it’s such a quiet night.

your cigarette

burns so bright

i swear i can see it

reflected in the sky.

you’re smoking satellites.

the cracks across my garden

match the heart lines on your hands

and flowers only grow there, in the rifts.

spiders sleep in contours

that were crafted on your curves.

paint fades the same shade

as the whites of your eyes.

only yours.

you

are the

can’t-keep-my-food-down days.

you

are mornings

crawling from bathroom to bedlam.

you

are the led-on.

i lose all sense of scale:

streets are hallways,

buildings are rooms,

the sky is a ceiling

and

the air i’m

barely breathing

is

air-con confusing my

fusing-from-lack-of-using lungs.

my heartspill is hung in market displays and the highest bidder takes home the bitterest bits of my memories of days i had the “i don’t want to be saved” conversations with you.

this is the story of your romance. this is the first photograph of you holding hands. these are your children’s names, your joint bank accounts, your spare bedrooms.

your courtship taunts me. your marriage vows swarm my music library, your to-haves-and-to-holds are stuck on repeat. you breathe out ghosts that haunt me. carbon dioxide escapes to the ceiling, kisses the beams and cloaks the paint. this is the story of how your breath rains.

this is chest pain from the beats you claim you cause each other to skip, the heart attack symptoms of conditions contracted from the very first meeting of two pairs of lips. you die together, entwined and constricted, curled and knotted like snakes in a mess of limbs, twisted.

your love’s a mistake but your love shouldn’t break me. take me out of your heart and set me apart because i feel what you feel since we kissed and i crumbled.