In the darkness and the snow, the street is emptyand it is just the night, the ice and me.

I cut off all my hair, cut awayat the soft curves of my clothinguntil I have edges once again,using my body like broken glassto slice at the world around me.I have to take something back,because I have nothing more to give.Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani?

In July I thinkabout the idea of being cursed(because it’s not strange to me;when I look in mirrors I’mnot there, blank walls gleamingwith bloody condensation,and my shadow behind memocking me with his persistencewhen I keep telling himto leave just to leave to let me be).

Some people unfold into a thousand wordsand others never speak to me at all,never take the blame at all,never look at me at all – I wonder whyhe never looks at me at all (perhapshe cannot bear to meet my eyes).

I cannot love my neighbour as myselfbecause you bid me do him no harm,and I cannot love my enemiesbecause they keep crawling inside meand tearing out all my emotions:if I am made in your image then youare not somebody I want to seebecause why believe in the broken,why depend on the weak,why seek the lost and bewilderedwhose only answer is “please”?

But you are a god here in brokenness,a bloody Eden born at your feet.

And then, as I got older,I left the woods and lookedat fading stars, dying stars,eternal stars in their heavens,with lips that would kiss and wordsshaped through love songs,a life of journeys to some placefar from home, unfamiliar,(a wild weird western shore)until sunset across limestoneprompts us to make these,our plagiarised prayersto broken stone.

I am still trying and trying to exorcise youbut you cling to me like mud or bloodstains,like a battlefield fought in my imaginationevery day that I raise my pen against the swordyou used to slice my heart into small, bitter pieces.

Her eyes are like bruises, as though 2am punches her in the face every time they meet amid the faded glow of alarm-clock hands and the crumpled sheets of a sleepless night.