the castle on the hill crumbled for good this time and it’s not my fault

no matter how much you tell yourself it is

nothing is ever invincible, not even us

no matter how much we convinced ourselves nothing could ever break us

no matter how many times we rebuilt what we’d lost just to watch it come crashing back down

sometimes i visit the lake we use to go to when one of us sad or when we wanted an excuse to smoke our lungs black or drown our livers in the alcohol we weren’t old enough to buy yet

i think about all the things we left behind and how a tiny piece of me would give anything to have it back

but darling we have taken this too far to bounce back this time

the castle on the hill came crashing down

and i refuse to go tumbling down with it.

you knew too well how to wear girls down

you’d already had too much practice

so by the time i met you

breaking me was an act you could perform effortlessly

we will be remembered, as we should

the whole of this god forsaken town already knows the story of us

people i’ve never seen before in my life still say your name when they find out mine

does it kill you knowing that they know everything?

because i cannot live with the whispers behind my back anymore

how do you like everyone knowing our secrets? our broken promises? everything we ever whispered behind closed doors when we thought no one could hear us?

did you know it would end like this?

maybe we both knew we’d go up in flames from the start

maybe we chose to ignore it

maybe we both deserve all of this

The happiness slips it’s way in when you’re too busy focusing on not dying

It creeps up on you at the exact moment you thought you’d lost it for good

And something inside you clicks and you don’t want to die anymore

All of a sudden, sad songs are just sad songs

And ghosts still appear every now and then but you’ve learnt that you can just blink them away

You notice things you never noticed before when you were too stuck inside your own head

Like the painting the sun makes when it’s setting but hasn’t fully disappeared yet

Or the way even when the darkness has completely taken over the stars finally get to show their beauty to the sleeping world

The happiness shines through the scars and the pain and shows you beauty you never thought you’d be capable to see

The happiness shines through and it gets better

It gets better and you don’t want to die

You don’t want to die and you’re alive

You’re alive you’re alive you’re alive

Tell me how I’m suppose to move on when you find your way into everything I do

How am I suppose to forget your face when I see your eyes every time I shut mine?

They say with time things get easier and you move on, but you’re still haunting me

Everything you did still haunts me

poems for all the boys i have kissed

1. you kissed like curiosity

the soft kind

the kind of kiss you miss

three years down the line

when you realise how cruel people really are

2. i’m sorry for kissing you

when deep down i knew i didn’t want you

i’m sorry for making you believe

it could ever be more than it was

3. you were my best friend

i still can’t decide whether

i’m thankful for it

or if i hate you

for blurring all the lines

4. every single kiss led to something more

i could write a whole book

about you and the way you taste

but frankly

you don’t deserve it

5. you kissed me like you were hungry

i’m so glad i never gave you anything more

6. i’m sorry

but you fitted into the story all too well

i think i just liked being the mysterious girl

more than i actually liked you

7. it shouldn’t have happened

but you took away the pain

i stopped hurting over him

the second your lips touched mine

and for that reason

i wouldn’t change it

even though every ounce of me

should regret it

8. i felt like i was in a movie that night

all the drink

our best friends kissing in the back seats

your hand on my thigh

as you drove us to the beach

the music

the sea

the sand

and your lips

it was wrong

all of it

the biggest mistake of your life was more mistakes than you can count all merged into one

innocence turned to guilt in two weeks

and guilt turned to a god damn hurricane after a month

thirty days later and you can’t figure out how you could mistake all the red warnings for pretty lights

how you could see the road so clear when there were car crashes left, right and centre

you try to place the blame somewhere where it looks like it fits but you know where it truly should be

the blame belongs here

the blame always belonged here

thank you for the clarification that you don’t hate me, you just don’t particularly want to know me anymore

and i can understand why you hate my friends, but maybe if you hadn’t have done what you did they wouldn’t scream at you in the streets

and yes, i am mentally ill, you guessed correctly

our last conversation wasn’t how i imagined it but it was enough for me to want to let go

it was bad enough for me to delete you

so i guess this is goodbye for good

until the next time the alcohol takes over my blood

because deleting your number means nothing when it’s memorised like the back of my hand

Dear me 6 months ago,

Right now you’re drunk, or maybe you’re sobering up by now. Either way, today was the last day you will spend in this world pure. you will never be as innocent as you are today ever again. embrace it. please.

tomorrow morning you will wake up as one person and go to sleep as another. the choice you will make tomorrow will completely change the way you are. it will change you as a person. 6 months later and you will still be picking up the pieces. 6 months later and the blood will no longer be on his bedsheets, but on your own.

tomorrow you will give everything you have to the blonde boy you want so desperately to want you. you already know all too much about his reputation but at the moment you’re convinced you can change him if only you give him the biggest piece of yourself you have to offer. you can’t. that boy is a taker. he will take everything you have and he will leave you empty. from that moment on you will be his but he won’t care as long as he’s got another girl to mess around with.

right now i know you’re not scared but you should be. you should be fucking petrified. you’re not expecting it to hurt and at first it won’t. but tomorrow night you are going to go home and fall asleep in tears of regret. tomorrow night you are going to be crawling at your skin in attempts to undo what you’ve done

dear me 6 months ago,

it’s too late for me now but it’s not too late for you. turn around and walk away. i am begging you. don’t go to his house and don’t give away everything you have to a boy who has never known how to hold on to anything. that boy is going to kill you and i’m scared for you. i’m so fucking scared for you.

when i saw you that night

when i stumbled round the corner with my friends and a bottle of vodka

i wanted to cry

i wanted to cry until you felt bad enough to try and save me

but i guess my body got bored of crying over you

my brain got tired of missing you

so i walked straight past

and when my friends screamed at you and you screamed at me i wanted to cry

but i couldn’t

when you told me to go home for a while i thought that maybe you still cared a little bit

but when i realised that you just wanted me gone i swear i wanted to cry

when i saw you that night it hurt

it hurt like a knife but it didn’t matter anymore

or maybe it did matter

but it didn’t matter enough for tears anymore

and maybe that’s a start

i like to think that the reason you didn’t let me come back everytime i came running was because you didn’t want to put me through that pain again,

and not because you’re fucking her now,

not because you’ve found someone else to fill the heart shaped hole in your chest so you don’t need me around to do it anymore,

something in me likes to think that somewhere in you there is a boy who regrets the hurt he’s caused and the scars he’s made and not just a boy who wears girls down until they’re just skin and bone and then heartlessly wanders off to the next.

So love ends and I cry and my mother tells me that maybe in a years time you might have learnt to love me back

But in a years time I won’t be as pure as I once was and you’ll be racing to catch up

In a years time you’ll have learned your place and kissed too many girls, whilst I’m fucking a boy that always tells me he’s in love with my body, but never in love with me

In a years time I’ll be in therapy, finally getting better, but in a years time you won’t be as willing to wait around for me to heal

In a years time I’ll start believing in God and you would have lost your connection with him

Because in a years time you’ll be a new person and so will I but we’ll both still be two lost teenagers finding themselves and trying to make it as more than “just friends”

So it’s me, you and the bottle of vodka hidden in my sock drawer,
It’s me drinking too much and crying
It’s you tracing the scars on my wrist and telling me it’s in the past
You you you
It’s you hiding the vodka so I can’t drink anymore
You deleting everything off my phone that you know it kills me to look at
You pulling me into your lap and wrapping me up into the safety of your arms
Your heart beating into my cheek, faster and faster
You, reading my favourite book to me
Me, falling in love with every word that leaves your lips
It’s you caring too much for someone that you shouldn’t care for
It’s us, the most un friendly “just friends” that this world has ever known

I can remember thinking ‘this place doesn’t feel like a home.’ The lobby of the building was barren except for a sleepy security guard who didn’t even acknowledge the slam of the door as it shut behind us and I noticed that despite the space’s expansiveness, there wasn’t any furniture. No uncomfortable sofas or coffee-stained end tables typical for most lobbies belonging to apartment buildings. Not so much as a fake plant in sight. The lighting in the corridors and the strange-smelling lift was so harsh and unforgiving on the eyes that I felt like a fly lying dead in one of those Eazyzap bug traps, still twitching from the shock of the electricity. I was almost sober by the time we got up to their apartment so when I was offered a shot of vodka I accepted it like a dehydrated dog might accept water from a puddle during a walk. It singed my throat on the way down and I had to fight not to retch from the aftertaste. 

I had met these people not even two hours before at a bar; my friends already knew them but I was a neophyte, a stranger to their many charms: Casey’s overbearing presence that infuriated me even more than the sound of his voice, so smooth that I couldn’t help but be entranced by it despite every part of me screaming that it was all a lie. Matthew’s scruffy long hair and wire frame glasses that reminded me of a book character I’d fallen in love with more times than I could even count, his shit-eating grin that made you feel like you were in on some private joke of his. Fraser’s backwards ball cap (because that’s always been a weak spot of mine) and a sadness so whole within him that I could feel it from the other side of the room, a sadness so whole that I could hear it through his contagious laugh.

Their apartment was on the top floor of the block - an alien space that felt more like being stuck in a hidden pocket of time - and one side of the kitchen was all windows that offered us a panoramic view of the London skyline. The alcohol and whatever we had smoked on the way over had gone straight to my head and staring at the view felt more like staring into a giant snow globe I’d found in one of those shitty gift shops in Leicester Square. My head was spinning in a good way and everything had this undeniable realness to it, like someone had taken a pen and given everything a bold outline. Even the floor had a life of its own. I had to sit down. I perched next to Matthew. We gazed out of the window, pointed out Tower Bridge and the London Eye and he gave me a gummy worm that wasn’t just a gummy worm. It tasted like TV static and made the glands in the side of my neck tingle and just by looking at him I knew that our souls were one in the same. 

We had one of those conversations that you can only have while intoxicated, the kind where you discuss parallel universes, protagonist theory and mental illness. Fraser told me that he did cocaine because he was addicted to it. Matthew replied matter-of-factly that he did cocaine to feel like a rockstar, and that pretty much sums up humans, don’t you think? We do things to feel like something else or just anything at all. 

That’s why I was there. Because it felt like something.