I adored him 4 years and 5 girlfriends before I gathered the nerve to speak with him.
In the end, it did not matter who loved him the longest.
It’s the pattern of things to end, I now recognise,
to be insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
Day after day, I lived in a daze,
and one morning, I stood in front of the mirror, water dripping down my body, and then I realised my hair had not grown an inch.
I was standing where we last stood together, and there was girlfriend no.7 but my hair had not grown an inch.

Everything was beautiful from my rose-coloured glasses.
Your head glimmering in the sun.
I watched your reflection on the front door glass,
till the sun faded away, till the driver hit the brakes and you lurched from sleep, the last trace of a secret smile disappearing in light of consciousness.
Have you ever seen Autumn leaves through rose-coloured glasses?
Maples and tupelos and whistling trees?
Contrails in the sky, the rose gold loops on your ear, and the way the sun tried to pass through your skin breaking translucent.
Chibs said I needed something interesting to happen to me.
When it did, he wasn’t there.

There was a riot uptown; tyres burning, road blocked, yellow caution tapes.
I found myself cornered in a dead-end street, grasping for common ground,
a jagged incision on my glasses, and a new blood-stained view.
I’m always holding on to forms when unhanded would be a replica mould of my fist.
I traipse through the room like a ghost tied to the scene of my death,
haunting everyone who trespasses,
haunted myself by the restlessness that comes with the passage of time.
I find myself fleeting through spaces like vapour, never quite able to leave a handprint, leaving notes on foggy windows, ‘READ ME’, I beg, ‘STAY WITH ME’.
How can I leave when I’ve been scraped like a barnacle, and my remains scattered all over town?

The sun’s long gone now and I’m still thinking of all the hallmarks of my affection.
I’m wrecking papers, scribbling noteworthy moments and scratching them out. Maybe it was an amalgamation of moments.
On the bus, I ponder the lives of strangers, wondering which I’d end up like.
Maybe it’s the lady with the five Metro shopping bags, struggling to lift them all in. She’s just like me, my mind jokes.
Struggling to carry this bag of bones, always in awe that I’ve been given this Sisyphean task, and no matter what I do, this body’s hurting.

Count my ribs, rub my feet, braid my hair,
When you’re deep asleep at night, reach out and pull me in,
Talk about the girl that left the makeup smudge on my face from when she hugged me, and how it looked like a bruise without my rose-coloured glasses.
The thought of you is the weight of you on my chest, so heavy I can barely sit up. Watch me dress up, lie to me, play a game with me,
I am something, I feel like nothing, and I feel everything, what am I?

Yesterday was an apology and another vow to be better.
A cup full of exhaustion and a tired sleep.
Yesterday was giving up and giving in.
A haunted house with ghosts of unborn futures, whispering that I have run my course; that even in my dreams, your dreams have no place for me.
Today’s a sigh of resignation; a flight away on Halloween.
The plane hits the tarmac and I feel the creation of new tyre marks.
On the outside, it’s a beautiful view from my window seat, and I’m like a scene from a movie.
I send you a picture and you say, ‘I knew you’d love it’.
I don’t, but everyone’s moved on and look at me, I’m the last man standing.

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