When I was 14 I thought I was in love with a boy.

We went on a school trip together. We kissed on the bus on the way back.

I didn't enjoy it. I regret that.

Now I am 20.

I spend a week with her on an archaeology dig.

We share an airbnb. Two shepherds huts in a field and a wood burning stove.

I am more in love with her than I ever was then.

It is different now.

I love her like poetry and it makes my heart break.

She is beautiful in the firelight.

I sit, trying to sketch the softness of her face.

She plays the songs we used to listen to, back then, and I am full of stars.

We are both melancholy. We always are, thinking about back then.

Her hair is long, she hasn’t cut it since we were 14.

I tell her she looks beautiful, like those women in renaissance paintings. I say it with just enough lighthearted sincerity.

I don't think she believes me.

I don’t know much about art. Or love.

But the firelight makes my heart break.

I don't kiss her that night, or the next. I don't regret that.

On the train back we are muddy and tired and our bags are heavy. We make small talk.

I wonder what it would be like to lean my head against her.

Enveloped by her hair.

I don't. I don't regret that.

We part ways.

I commit her to poetry. I regret that.

Four in a lift. Doors stuck.

Relative strangers. Worked on the same floor. I just about recognised them.

"Just my luck" cursed one.

Asked what was wrong. He wanted to get home.

Two said honestly, she was glad to get a break.

Three pulled up a pack of cards, asked us for a game. We played uno and ate my left over m and m's until maintenance came. We exchanged numbers as we left.

"Rotten luck." said maintenance man, letting us out. ,

"Oh, it wasn't that bad," I said, with a smile. And went home to my empty flat.

Dear Plexi,

My grandparents house sold not that long ago. Last Sunday we were all there, picking it to pieces, taking sofas and paintings off the walls and piling them into vans. leaving only the bare bones.

I felt in my bones the way your poem, 'Grandpa & Grandma’s house sold today' never once mentions the house. It made me think of how, on Sunday, when we gutted each room, it wasn't sad. Because the house was already soulless, already gone, and the sadness is not in the loss of the house, but the loss of everything it contained. The memories of the loss. I ramble, I fear, but your poem stirred up so many feelings.

My grandparents too, were Christian. Are Christian. I don't know how the tenses work when they are meant to still exist in some form up there. I hope that everything they believed is true. I hope both of our grandparents' are up there, somewhere, together, maybe.

It is so wonderful, though the positive words taste wrong in this context, that you were there when they passed. I was not there. My granny passed in her sleep, quietly I suppose, because grandpapa didn't stir. The nurse told him in the morning that he'd been dozing next to a corpse. I'm glad she went peacefully, though in truth she'd gone long before then, succumbing to dementia, forgetting our names.

Grandpapa died of a heart attack. It was quick, a shock. Three days before he'd sat with me and my brother in the garden, drinking tea. He still walked to get the newspaper every morning. He would've been 90 this year. I'm glad he went quickly, but I was angry at the time. He was meant to see me graduate, maybe make it to my eldest brothers wedding, in a wheelchair, in a decade.

Your poem made me remember all this, so fresh again. Your poem is so beautifully, heart wrenchingly written. I would say I'm sorry for your loss but that seems wrong. You gained so much from having them in your life. Maybe not for as long as we would have liked. But to grieve is to love, and be loved. I won't say sorry about that to you, or me.

Your grandparents would be so proud of you. In a way I hope, if they are up there, they can't remember you because if they do they must miss you so, so much. But then again I know they would disagree with me and proclaim that the pain would be worth it to remember how loved they were, and how they loved.

I'll stop myself now, I do go on.

Sending you much love, Plexi.

From,

Rose.

Someone took my body from me sometime last october

When the water meadow first lived up to its name

They lay me in the parody puddles

Floated me cordless off like a doomed toy boat

I hope they put faded flowers in my faded hair

And closed my tired eyes -

In february I walk the circuit

Searching for my self beneath the aching, writhing shadows

And the crocuses that arch their heads

Gulping frantic purple breaths

And the daffodils that learn to dance off beat

To the buffeting baneful broken breeze -

Someone took my body from me sometime last october

I hope that it is waterlogged and bursting with life

Snowdrops creeping out my eyes

Hair flirting with the sunken tendrils of grass and daisy heads

Skin learning the patterns of the water

Face angled towards the grey winter sky -

Sometime soon

When the water meadow is drunken up

Gulped into memory by the rivers and the trees

I think I’ll find my body

Dancing with the bees

She’ll be learning how to walk again

Down by the creek

Playing hopscotch in the shadows

Sitting in a tree

Her skin will be moss green, snowdrops in her eyes

Her feet will have sprouted roots

And she’ll be staring at the blue spring

sky.

Someone took my body from me sometime last october

When the water meadow first lived up to its name

They lay me in the parody puddles

Floated me off like a doomed toy boat

I hope they covered me in flowers

I walk the circuit

Searching for my self

Beneath the shadows and the tendrils

And the crocuses that arch their heads

Gulping frantic purple breaths

And the daffodils that learn to dance off beat

To the buffeting baneful broken breeze

if i had a therapist i would tell them i didnt exist

and backtrack quickly of course, confirming that logically, fundamentally, i was aware of my existence

i would try to explain however

how non existent this existence felt

how sometimes i feel if i think too much i would go insane and so i

scroll on instagram for hours to fill the silence

i would tell them that im scared my friends would leave but more than that

im scared that im not that scared by the prospect

that is to say

id say

im scared that the only feeling i seem to feel is

empty dread

and i would tell them i feel empty

but not in the way i felt when i was so depressed i

couldnt get out of bed

instead

i would try to explain how ive stopped writing my diary

or writing poetry

and when i scroll through pictures on my phone it is like scrolling through someones life

i swear there was a time i felt alive

id say

but i truly cannot say what that felt like

i think i will keep fading

to nothing

without a care

and everyone i claim to love

even as i forget the feeling

will realise i am nothing

but a puppet with no puppeteer.

i lie still and pretend my body is my own

there is rain in my mouth and eyes it is(i am)

parasitical parasocial

it finds its way into the cavity where they

say my heart would be and when

i swear i feel it beat they say that is the rain

that seeps and seeps it is(i am)

unfeeling unyielding

sulphuric suffocating

i lie, still, and pretend my body is my own

the waves do not know me

perhaps they cry for me

drunk friends or mothers

i never felt a need to cry myself so

i lie still and pretend my body is my own

the rain tumbles through my veins

cleans dirt off my face

baptismal cathedral

of water and words

it is(i am)

my home.

i am scared that i

love my friends so much more than

they'll ever love me

and i am scared some

one will love me so much more

than i could love them

LED lights force your face deep into the mirror cracks

Your eyes are so so wide you think you’ll fall

Down down into a pit

Have you always been this fat?

Your skin is sluggish yellow in the bright bright night

And the shadows look like scars gouged by a poison knife

The mirror stares back with so much bad luck

And you feel yourself falling down down into that familiar fate

You are not enough and you

Deserve to fall

Your eyes are so so wide and you are so so flawed

But child, the mirror is cracked, and you are not

The reflection is flawed the reflection is warped

Beauty pours out of those wide wide eyes

And your skin is the colour of an early morning sky

So fly up up into it’s arms

Your soul is as deep as the depths of your eyes and both are full of such bright light

You will always be enough and you

Deserve to fly

Your eyes are so wide and you are beautifully flawed