Clifftops. Bridges. Train platforms. Hotel balconies. Open windows on high floors. Ferry decks at night. The space between saying “I could” and “I will.”

I’ve visited them all.

Most offered a perfectly pleasant view – A few offered something more.

Nothing serious. Just a suggestion. A reminder that every boundary is, technically, crossable. That the body can be interrupted. That a life is held together by an astonishing number of decisions nobody notices making.

I suspect this is normal?

The thought arrives. You acknowledge it. It moves on:

Like hearing the phone ring at midnight and knowing your life may divide into a before and an after.
Like understanding that every city is full of people who once left somewhere else.
Like realizing you could tell the truth.
Like realizing you could lie.
Like wondering whether the person you’ve become was inevitable.
The thought that your entire life could have unfolded differently from a single conversation.

Like standing near an edge and learning, once again,
that you prefer the ground.

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Listen

From the dead moths staccatoing
the sill – I count them still – now
at forty two and rising –

to the bra
black and ripped, on the floor,
beside the bed.

There was nature and there
was fun, this is art of the heart –
dead and gone, preserved, not for long.

I’ll miss you until the cows lay down
predicting rain,
after that, I’ll miss you again –

like trains should miss quaint drunks
on the line
but don’t.

I’ll miss you like a mole missing his
hole, flailing around
on hot concrete, blind, lost and useless.

I’ll miss you
until the pylons stop buzzing,
until the starlings fly when the electricity dies,

till blackout,
till infection,
till the end –

I’ll miss you
as well as I can.

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Listen

“I hate myself and I want to die”

Said Kurdt Cobain.
Now printed on ‘ethically-sourced’ cotton
Tees – £24.99.

Sizes S through XXL
The silent cry –
I hate myself and I want to die.

A candle that smells like pine
It’s called Teen Spirit (Emotionally Alive).
I hate myself and I want to die.

The Spotify playlist – “Hard Rock for Soft Times”
Track three – merely a sigh.
I hate myself and I want to die.

An influencer cries in a bathroom reel.
Ten thousand hearts reply: ‘same.’
I hate myself and I want to die.

My therapist asked if I’m monetizing pain?
Not quite yet. But I’ve drafted a line:
I hate myself and I want to die.

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Listen

This Is the One Thing We Didn’t Want to Happen (notes from End of the Road Festival)

We arrived like pilgrims with plastic ponchos,
trading spreadsheets for mushrooms and sleep-deprivation,
hoping to lose ourselves between the trees
and maybe find something louder than our lives.

By Friday, the woods were singing.
Goat set the sky on fire—
masks on, minds off,
a ritual in distortion and holy noise.

We danced like summoned things,
like the stage was an altar,
like praying was a given.

Later, Sylvie Kreusch floated onstage
like a spell in silk—
half Kate Bush, half séance.
She sang and the air changed its shape.
I forgot my name,
but remembered every person I’d ever loved.

Someone yelled,
“This is the one thing we didn’t want to happen!”
and the sky broke,
and the tents collapsed,
and everyone laughed like it was scripted.
Perhaps it was.

We stumbled into a quiz by mistake—
2 grams deep and full of hubris.
Every answer, no matter the question:
“Roy Orbison.”
A performance art piece.
A disaster.
A moment of joy so dumb it felt divine.

A boy played cello in the folly, and
someone gave me an e for free.
I watched a band I’d never heard of
play the soundtrack to my future breakdown.
Five stars. Would definitely cry again.

The nights were velvet chaos—
lanterns and dope smoke,
a quiet woman painting planets on strangers’ faces
while a techno remix of SOS played somewhere deep in the distance.

When it ended, it didn’t.
We carried it home in our hair,
in the ache of leaving
in the way we now look at strangers
like they may also have been there,
beneath the fairy lights,
watching the world fall apart and then coalesce
ceremoniously.

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Listen

I

it roars fierce yellow
through the cracks –

acts ruderal, its inner
bracts: erect, intact

till pollinated, then
dies the beautiful death;

the Dandy Lion.

II

copious on fields that are
crossed to find drugs and
sex, the buttercup:
hold it close beneath the chin
should you find yourself
in-shake and yellowing, a stuttered
lover, an afternoon gin.

III

spined-caged-headless trunks
are protected from themselves
should they take root and blossom,
then make love to the neighbourhood.

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Listen

Sunburned gas-blue
I think I love you –
you’re cracked
anchored and abandoned

Your surname is sunk
beneath the silt and sand
but ‘Betty’ is aloft
Betty Blue I’ll call you

as dawn gleams
like mercury above you

almost afraid to rise.

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Listen