Merry Christmas,

you’re an alcoholic.

brag about it,

after flirting with all of the female neighbours next

door while praising me at the same time

you leaned so heavily on me, I half

carried you home, brought you to bed, undressed

your drunk body and put you in your

PJs

does that sound like a grown man

I do not care as long as you keep streaming

down the hollow of my spine

like always, you mumbled

nonsense close to reality, flotsam phantom, close

to the truth, you missed your wife, forty-year-old

widow that you were, a brilliant ghost

like all your exes—remarkable

women: artists, marine

biologists, literature professors, and

two had even died

you were always in love with everyone

all of us beebs; a permanent crush

on a friend whose teeth were—was it crack

or crystal? anyways,

her smile was rotten and she dated

horribly stupid men, she liked

to read, was blond and despite

the drugs and her age: a girl, somehow

I could never keep up, I wasn’t meant to

a driftwooden dream – that’s what I’ve been to your shores

a waif on the seaside of slumber

that’s where my sunset gun misfired, the days

a mix of TV, liqueur, jealousy and you showing off

your DJing skills to me—I was your audience, I

always am, but the audience is

a fickle mistress on the way to Tesco

don’t worry, I’ll destroy you later

your mind a wreck whose planks I used to cover

a bursting ship I carry far from home

you kept stalking me for years after, writing

MY FULL NAME on the internet all the

time, romanticising our past

relationship, basking in the glow of my

halo, because you

deemed me special, and we know

you prove your worth to the world by the

partners you adorned your CV with; their

education, looks, and laurels

it’s a cliché, but so are you

see I was happy when we stumbled

into adventures; you always had to

spoil it by judging my behaviour as weird & once

you gave me the feeling I was sadistic for

photographing a field full of dead bunnies, maybe

no one could be as good as you

thought you were

I won’t deny how alluring and complex——but imagine