She Must Be Mad: the bestselling poetry debut of 2018

Call the next round of drinks

I’ll wake up in the morning

Next to someone new

But I still fell asleep

Hoping that someone would be you.

mesh of kisses (#ulink_4ae02df8-c12c-598b-b56f-034243565534)

Find the contented without the contention of giving away half of yourself

And see that letting go isn’t giving in

But a spiritual commodity of wealth

My best teachers were disguised as lovers

Unmasked when I untangled their mesh of kisses

And smothered myself instead with the notion that they were knowledgeable near misses

And Mr Brave

The future without the listless lustful nights

Replaced with a silhouette of love

That was bred from moulding a mistreated wrong into its rightful right.

anatomical astrologist (#ulink_df00be90-eabe-58df-b8b7-78341a2d35e9)

Your body became so familiar

I touched your skin the same way I’d fumble down the side of the TV in the dark and know the difference between the

<off switch> and the <volume button>

Each line and freckle a constellation on your torso

I could read backwards like an anatomical astrologist.

We intertwine and I sigh softly

a shared unspoken bedtime language that

screamed

to the gods for just

five

more

minutes

Time stopped to matter and the matter of us across your old mattress pulled apart until your stars dimmed down to flickering filaments and I chose to switch them off.

otters (#ulink_94a2f0d2-4b34-5e4b-8b9d-6dd1eacc480e)

It is what it is until it isn’t

Quite it anymore

Makes perfect logical sense, sure

But in eleven short words I don’t think you swirl the score

Of what I’m on about

I could mutter an uttering of offers

Words that cling to syllables as tightly as otters

In love

Did you know they never let go once they’ve found a mate?

Did you know that my slithering of truth wasn’t yours to emanate

Dissipate, dissolve upon your lips

As my truth became a movement and your hands became my hips

In a haze of a few Sundays

Of what I thought was it

But didn’t know that it could be something just one of us could quit

And that’s quite exactly it

It was what it wasn’t

Instead of a smattering of emails that will one day be forgotten

Instead of a flattering string of inhales that sung kindly until coughed out rotten.