i've learned how to paint my face, how to earn my keep.

my knees are bruised from falling - i’m running away from you, from your need to be indifferent. there are glimpses, thoughts that perhaps i am endearing, etching myself a little bit into you. but then i think, would you help me if i couldn’t get up?
i don’t know the answer, and it makes me feel sick.

the corners of the ceiling are cloudy, smoky candles choking the air out under the door. the lightbulb blew, leaving me in yellowed darkness, sitting in an old woollen jumper. this is the part where i am stuck, i’m thinking of you, thinking if you were here right now…
you know what we are? we are a bunch of maybes, of flowers never picked. maybe it wouldn’t work, me and you, that treasured term “us”. but you never know until you try. of course, you would be the one to say you can’t miss what you never had.

i cover my face with my hands, look at you through my fingers. i can see your eyes smiling. but this is as far as we get, all we ever seem to do.

it’s been a year now, did you know? you probably don’t. you remember me but you don’t like to remember how you felt.

for you i am masks, mostly. but then there is that smile, it’s bare and it’s yours because i can’t help it. i have never been very good at acting, there is that slip and you see me, the bruises that you leave. i think that’s what makes you wary.

i have tried to write you out of my skin, out of my eyes and the spaces between my bones. but it hasn’t worked, you’ve taken up residence somewhere that i can’t find. and now there is that feeling - a deep, endless ocean feeling - that you might never get out.