The basement still smells like lavender washing soap, and I still think I’ll find you when I reach the bottom of the stairs. But the tile floor is a few degrees colder, and I miss the warm feel of carpet under my feet. 
You tell me we built this out of love; I think we built it out of bitter nostalgia. We came just to exist once again in the spaces between tightly shut doors, re-create lives we lived here in the years before I could say my own name. 
We built this so we could stand on the same lands, look out onto the same dark waters, call ourselves the same names, and pretend we are the same people who left these quiet parts to make something out of ourselves. But abandoned homes and abandoned hearts often look the same, and I can scarcely tell one from the other when I look up at the remains of the white walls they tore down only to see traces of the names I will one day utter in silent atonement.

The Basement

Red Balloon on Blue Waters

Feisty little thing, 
ebb and flow of lives lived 
on rocky shores. I sit on the edge 
and remember 
the things we forgot. There 
are myriad memories that swirl 
in the blue waters. 
Leaves of dainty passions that come to
be only in death, green leaves 
of summer yellowing on the surface of 
the swell. You left 
just as suddenly and I sat 
and watched the remains of nature turn 
into signposts for the end of time. 
The water remembers, even if we 
forget how we were 
taught to pull ponytails 
through Disney caps so they don’t 
fly away. 
Things were easier to anchor
back then. I set down 
roots on the borders of nations 
that don’t seem to know about me,
but the waters flow in 
both directions. And the words 
I gave to the waves will
find their way back like 
the heart-shaped
balloon that fell from the upper deck
two days ago. 

Words by F

Red Balloon On Blue Waters

Coconut Skin

There is something of childhood in this place. A vague, indeterminate scent of coconut water and the careless dreams of a young girl of nine abandoned at the foot of a cold stairwell. 
I try not to lose my self in alleyways that begin to resemble nostalgia, but there is no forgiveness for those who have forgotten the gentle scents of their youth. There is only the grave requiem of souls trying to find their way back to the bodies that housed them. 
And we lost our souls long ago, back when the glint of a summer smile took away the innocence of skin that had still not forgiven itself for the soft, dark hairs of its frail arms. We lost our souls when subtlety became a synonym for seduction, when we discovered how to decipher the textures of our bodies before we had ever learnt the mechanisms of our souls. 
Now we kneel before mountains of white waters to wash away the remains of who we have chosen to be. We drown decadence in feigned purity so that the gentle scent of coconut returns, ever so slightly, to homes built only for redemption. .
.
Words by F

Coconut Skin

64

It takes 64 days to get over you. I stop counting on a cold inebriated night, the dark forest hanging over my heart and my footsteps echoing in the shrill silence of a wet hill.
It takes 64 nights to get over you, 64 blue evenings, 64 indigo skies with no stars, 64 uneven sleeps, disjointed sleeps, and 64 colourless dreams of parting. 
I count 64 nights, three G&Ts, one brisk walk under the pelting rain, and my own soul standing two steps beside my body, not saying your name.

Words by F

Lima Oscar Victor Echo

It’s in vogue now,
splaying out words in fragments
so we can pretend we don’t
understand how they
will scar the chambers of our
tilted hearts. But hearts can't read, so
we write down the thoughts that 
form faintly like 
cirrus clouds, 
like cigarette smoke lingering
in the cold humidity of 
winter nights, 
a rising phantom 
without shape intent on meaning
more to the thin walls of my lungs
than it ought. 
I’ll cough out the words, bloody
and a little betrayed, their letters
scrambled on the page; they 
keep trying to spell 
out your name, but 
they can’t. Because there aren’t 
enough letters in the 
alphabet. Because
your name doesn’t 
sound like 
love.

Words by F

Lima Oscar Victor Echo

Read to 'Never Going Back' by Rotana

It plays in your head like a short film. My figure moves to your slow rhythms, your eyes tracing the curves of a waist too frail for your experienced hands as I silently slip away into opaque darkness. It plays in slow motion; It plays on repeat. Your body trails behind mine, your eyes on hands wrapped around fragile glasses filled to the brim with elixirs of tender seduction. You watch as I move across a scattered floor of beaded sweat and your clamorous whispers of untimely adoration. You watch my dark dress pirouetting in widening circles, momentum rising like your eager heartbeat in my gently defiled hands.

Words by F

Possessed

Mortal 
Listen to: Lord Huron - The Night We Met

It is eternal; shapeshifting hearts have no 
place amongst us here. I will only feed
your ego if you promise to return mine
to me unscathed by your indelicacies. 
But I will make no such promise. Leave me
now; this one-sided exchange will return 
my flame to its dying embers. I must
ground my heart beneath your 
feet, for I can only dance to the
beat of your lies, your whispers no
longer heard, and some odd terror 
rising in your eyes. 
No. This is no ordinary ghost 
story. I am not haunted by an absence. 
Tonight, I am visited only by your 
tangible body. I will touch it, and 
it will begin to writhe in 
my hands. It will return for
a moment, only to reach for a phantasy
it created long ago. I am the ghost
of your story, and you are the mortal
of mine.

Words by F

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