This Exploding Girl

I exploded in his flat
banged my head on a mountain bike
a bruise the shape of my country
grew across my cheek. It was funny
but I wish I saw the warning
in that purple stain
he colonized my brain
and I thought we’d be laughing
together, forever.

I’ve exploded since then
in more troubling ways
my heart spews a black toxin
that makes me run along the Piccadilly line
hopping platforms, looking for a sign
but I’m turning my back on that story
so here’s another:

One night I kissed a tuxedoed stranger on the 139
because he told me I was pretty, and in that moment
I felt my body reach its outline – but what happens
in the space between? In between the bus and the club
and that square in Hackney, where I did the exact same thing:
peeking between the lips of strange men, to see if I exist.

I exploded today, again, but this time on purpose
to enlarge myself like a projection, a vision so vast
that I encompass the world. My heart, a maw to the human
race. I am no stranger to love: as I try to walk off
its latest disaster - it will break down my door
like a drunken father
but I can take it all
I can take you and your desperate looking bow-tie
and me, ruined in a twelve year-old’s dress
because one day he will be nothing
but a name, a word, with a built-in echo
and a built-in ache
that fills the gap between my hands
where his body once took place.

And it’s okay, because I created something out of this mess,
something tangible that I can hold up to the light and say
you fucked me up but I made this. I can destroy it.

I will be volatile for a while, I will abandon it all
and jump backwards into a swimming pool in my nicest dress.

With no one to impress
I might stay in the water all day and drown out the sound
of me and him and everything.