i was born at dusk \ & some nights i still live there \ some nights \ it’s my body in the river \ & my hand reaching up to the moon \ keeping the sky together. \ but honey wants fragile, \ wants sweet. \ he wants something with its mouth wide open \ and its throat bared \ wants something that suffers whisky without flinching \ & says it likes the taste \ & says it likes how it makes him feel \ like his body is a fiction \ like he’s anywhere but here. \ & honey can pull the stars apart, fraying at the seams \ but he wants something he can hold down steady \ while leaves raze through autumn outside \ sun cutting the room \ and bodies, together \ wild & warm \ proving that on the other side of light \ is something other than light \ proving that the only way out \ is straight through. \ & by the time i’m sixteen \ i know how to put the fires out \ i know that ruin is what honey does \ as well as what he does it unto \ that love is both the wound \ and what he used to make it. \ so deep into dark \ that night is thick enough to swallow \ it knows how much violence \ can be brought upon a thing \ that doesn’t know how to leave \ that wouldn’t know where to go. \ on the other side of dark \ it just finds more dark\ heavy-handed with silence & rage \ bruised from thumb to fingertip \ & snapping in the mouth like a wishbone.

Yves Olade is a history student who lives in the south of England. He’s been featured
in Kingdoms in the Wild, and published by The Rising Phoenix Review, Bombus Press, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, the Half Mystic journal and L’Ephemere Review. Last year he self-published a micro-chapbook called Bloodsport and is currently working on its follow-up, CAVE. An avid documentary fan, Yves loves mobile games, evenings, and lemonade. More of his poetry can be found at yvesolade.tumblr.com or on twitter @yvesolade.