Butter

Joan Crawford said that -
"Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never quite tell." and I don't know him that well.
But he takes me, spoonful by spoonful into his arms, his hands, 
and between his fingers 
they knead me, slowly
into butter.

I hate to admit it, but I am softening.
I feel his nudge, and his touch, it doesn't take very much 
just the pick on his thumb 
and his wrist has begun 
to strum me back into tune
But perhaps I've spoken too soon,

or maybe written, or sung 
his lips 
pushed on this
tongue-tied, 
wide-eyed, 
he oversteps into my wild side
and I freeze
and I clench
I turn silently still
Waiting for the moment 
that he gets his fill 
of me,
gone.

melted.
like butter.

Rose Pink

The sugar is still fizzing in my bloodstream 

It's 4am 

I'm Rose pink

Slow down girl, slow down girl

Pour some water, take a breath

Cool your hands in the kitchen sink

Sit down girl, sit down girl 

I take off my silver shoes 

Lay them in the light of the moon  

Still catching, still refracting 

the things I no longer need from you

I think about the girl I am laying to rest alongside them

How I wish I could pluck pages

From her book 

Before I close her

Like she was written in invisible ink

Darling

I'm fading, I'm fading 

I make arrangements for the funeral 

A trip away, to a man 

who is not her lover

But he has the light

And I have the gasoline

To burn away this sobbing girl 

into a new woman.

The Other Woman

red as a flame 

she burns too

The woman who 

was grilled like a steak

In the burning heat of your hate

In the sweltering grief

The sweet relief you felt

pulling the pearls of innocence 

from around her neck

Watched 

as she scattered 

across the Living Room floor

clattered and rolled 

into the cracks beneath the door

I let them vanish

My sanity too

from rose pink 

into a crushing velvet blue

This Is Not A Love Poem

This is not a poem, so to speak.
This is not a whisper
This is not shriek of a wounded heart
This is just my honesty
Naked, soft and slow
Without any expectation, without a map of where to go.
This isn't going to rhyme.

Love is not chemistry alone.
Love is not the pinning down, the violent orgasm, love is not always suitable.
Love doesn't fit neatly into compatible boxes, remembered birthdays, the promise of time,
Needs kept quiet for fear of being heard
and ignored
and left behind, again.

Love is the declaration of your flaws
And the patience we decide to handle them with.
The aftermath of the party, clearing up the mess we left behind in the living room, that's love.
Love is taking your beliefs, your sneering heart, your book-read judgements
and questioning them,
because this person in front of you is just as real as the experiences that brought you to them.
Perhaps love isn't in the common ground,
or the shared agreements of flowed conversation -
that's just another way of learning to love yourself back home from the empty plains of loss.
Perhaps love is only found in the trying again.
Perhaps love is in you, and love is in me,
and to release the two would be rapture and agony
all at once.

Perhaps the love is in the risk
Perhaps it's trampling the snowdrops
on your way steal a kiss
and land soft into her arms
if only for the moment.

Perhaps tomorrow they won't be here
But my love, perhaps it was worth it.

I had a sudden urge to summit the forest

to plant my legs deeply 

onto a stump of dead tree

which lets me see 

no more than an extra foot of sky 

than I already can.

I had a sudden urge 

to take that plaque

The one you shaped 

that I've tried to hold back

And hammer it 

abandon it

to that cemetery of trees

And let you be. 

Let the rain begin to stain it

let the rust begin to frame it

let it finally breathe the oxygen 

that you were denied

because keeping it at my bedside

won't stop this from turning to dust

eventually

and I think I need to let you go

a little more

because keeping you tucked

up inside my kitchen drawer

after sobbing on the living room floor

doesn't ever really close the door of a heart

or open a window

or let anything in, fresh

and I miss the breeze.

I remind myself

that doors can always be reopened, if only slightly

and old tree stumps can be revisited, and quite rightly

and conversations can always ensue at 6am

after dreaming of you

But I need to lay you down

a little more, now

while the future remains so unsure

and, while my heart remains unsecured

Laying you to rest 

in my head

in my chest

is like taking apart a garden

and picking each flower 

to be pressed

gently

between the sheets of my favourite books

between the pages of the story 

of Us

A Girl Sits Atop A Train

I can feel the words stirring in the back of my mouth.
My throat not yet a desert. The thirst doesn't consume me, yet.
I stand, neck thrown back, eyes peeled open, at scores of book stores
down an insignificant street.
I consider how I have travelled here, how I had hopped
across the tops of trains
without sitting in their worn out seats, without
making eye contact with the other passengers beneath me
staring out of their dusty windows
at the sunrise, perhaps, at nothing more than earth
blurring by in a whirr of time, something to reflect on, later, later
a changing view, nothing new
to me.
I think about the desolate landscapes inbetween the regions of kindness
that Naomi Shihab Nye described
She, too, on that rumbling train. I watched her
with my periscope shaped like a book, a poem
Laying flat against the rooftop of that train. I watched her.

The train approaches the insignificant town. The tracks begin to crumble away,
and so it slows. A voice echos up.
"Exit here for the experience of a lifetime!"
I swallow.
My toes curl inside my cheap, clean shoes.
I have read so little. I have felt so little, and so much
The windows I was supposed to look through on my ticketed seat,
I merely glanced at.
Distracted by my own reflection, distracted
By thoughts of a destination
Before I eventually made my way upon that roof
Charming a hapless guard with a poem,
or a kiss.

The bookshelves swallow me whole with their density,
the desert dust stings my eyes, but I cannot close them.
the words begin to crawl out of the pages,
like thousands of insects desperately scattering
in no particular direction
in my direction
I know I have to consider things seriously.
Re-read the books, as many as I can, before the next train departs
to a chapter of my life that I don't think I'm ready for.
I wonder,
Will I make my way back into the open air of that moving train
Back to the wind rushing past my ears, whistling a tune, a wordless poem
When all the books are read.
Or will I take my seat with the others
The more knowledgeable, perhaps
For a lifetime spent looking through the dusty windows?

A girl sits atop a train.

Getting Out Of Bed (on days like these)

Getting out of bed (on days like these)
295/365

My heart says
Offer your wrists
Upturned and open
Your blood is just ink,
When you don't think
you're coping.

My mind says
Be stoic.
Stand still on your own.
You can bypass the pain
If you just turn
into stone.

My body says
I'm fragile,
Just, please stay in bed
These soft sheets can't hurt you
or your achy head

The sky says
"Come join me"
It begs me to leave
To soak in some blueness
& bear witness the breeze

The birds say
There's music,
just loosen your ears
Come, join in the choir
We've been waiting
for years

The heat says
Spring's here now
There's no need to fear
This coldness will leave you
eventually, dear

I turn to the window
I turn down my head
I turn down this pen
and I get out of bed.

Unavailable

I don't recognise this place but I'm told it's where you live, now.
Your friends fill the room with their black suits and black shoes,
rolling a quiet applause across the floor.
I stay by the door.
I don't like it here - it doesn't feel like you, or your Living Room
with it's blankets thrown and music strewn.
A beautiful piano plays out of tune.
The people with their heads down, they rush by and by,
so I call out your name to the thundering sky.
You do not reply.
"He's unavailable."
"You just missed him."
"He was here just before..."
I turn round, and see your coat disappear out the door.
My hopeful heart crumples and falls to the floor.

It's been nearly a year, now, that we haven't quite met.
My calls ring, unanswered, you can't take them just yet.
I start to wonder if it's something I said...
Did I write far too softly, were my rhymes not quite right?
Did I hold too much heaviness for your arms through the night?
I'm sorry
I tried my best.
I dream of this meeting, and what I would say -
to cocoon back in your body, to ask you to stay.
Just, please, don't go away
again

Unavailable. That word. The sting of the bee.
This "love", meant for others,
just never quite me

I wake into greyness, and look to the Spring
His chest softly falling, his lips poised to sing
lullabies
I rise and tread softly over his floor
searching for shelter, but instead
a trap door
with old faded lettering,
and parts of it torn, and fingerprints still visible
of past lovers, adjourned

Unavailable.

Washing Dishes

There I stood, my mother's daughter
my hands lay soft in soapy water
the light was dancing on the walls
the music running down the halls
something inside me shifts
and falls
to my knees
to my naked bare feet
kissing the earth
somewhere beneath

With dirt on my lips,
I savour the sweetness
a hazy mix of what feels like completeness...
Maybe this is what joy tastes like?
I inhale it, release
My heart swells open, obese
in belief,
and in nothing at all
in this,
feeling, so enormously small

It does not leave my lungs with the air
I suppose this is what I would call a prayer
To pay attention
To notice
Suspend time in midair
Or perhaps just to be here
Washing dishes
Aware

The Spring

The Spring arrived.
With a strong, gentle knock.
Nervously,
I cracked open the door,
Unfastened the lock,
and I let him inside.
There was nowhere to hide
from Him.
Just goosebumps.
And the cold
from the floorboards beneath,
How old
they had grown
As they creaked with the grief
left behind
after Winter's long stay
I wanted to run, but
I could not look away
I could not take my eyes off him.
Spring.
as the birds began to sing
as the bees poised to sting
my lips with his kiss
you know, my tongue
doesn't recognise
this... Honey
He walked through the corridor
as light followed behind
Illuminating my windows,
As they let in the sky
And I watched as the flowers
grew from under each step
that he took
through the hall,
through the rooms
I had wept
His branches grew easy
climbed right to the top
through the concrete
through my walls
as though nothing could stop
him from going right through me
inside
and around
Until my fingertips bloomed flowers
which dropped
to the ground
and into the bedroom
where music would play
as I undressed my heaviness.
As I asked him to stay.

The Storm

"It's a bit like cleaning up the aftermath of the storm
before the storm has even hit."
I stand, calm
looking myself directly in the eye.
I have come to feel physically safe in this world,
even in the darkest of moments
When the most chaotic television static
starts filling up my life
spilling out of my insides
Merging into reality like oil and water
I am still aware there is an "off" switch
(I am reluctant to press it
for fear of missing something)

I always seem to come back to safety, security,
feeling sure of something.
When I'm spectating, I understand it.
How the nature of nature is to change and let go.
It's safer to watch from the edges of the abyss
As the tiny figures dive off the edge so smoothly
into something
I can't comprehend.
But when my turn comes
and I push myself to the edge of the board,
Fingernails twitching
My rationality is sucked away into the vortex
before I'd even time to leap after it
So I stand there, dithering
Like someone who I am
Like someone who I'm not
And so, I retreat.
And then, I repeat.

I hang my head and grieve the man who did not leave
Even when I stood, motionless inside my tornado
Making eye contact with the eye of my storm
Who did not try to save me,
but watched in fascination
as I swept the floor before it arrived
as I did not brace when it hit
as it revealed me with a gust of wind.
Without a piece of me in order
But my confusion still intact
He just tilted his head in curiosity
Smiled,
and winked.