I tried to talk

 It began with my fingernails.

The wrong colour, 

too yellow. Why is that?

The fake tan smelled strange. 

Stained the sheets.

Didn't matter

about the melanoma that took him away

We should fix that.

"A rose surrounded by weeds" he said

"and I am helping to trim them"

Yes,

I felt every cut.

I looked prettier with my hair tied back, 

he said. I told him

it made me feel unfamiliar to myself

brought back memories of 

seeing my reflection, patchy

unlovable

I couldn't tell whether feeling unlovable

was still part of the process

Maybe 

I should get used to the feeling

I expressed concern over my boundaries

the breaches crashed like waves, 

constant, overwhelming.

Said I was too friendly, that I wouldn't

be respected if I kept that up

But I don't think silence suits me

any more than the ponytail.

The house needed to be rearranged

My furniture was wrong, the layout 

inefficient. There was no room for him

The cat took up too much of the bed

I tried to talk

I tried to talk

I tried to talk

about all this. 

I say no too much, he says. 

I say yes too much, he says.

I am stubborn, unmoving, unwilling 

but I subjugate, step back, shrink

away, I don't

grow towards his light

"Can't you see this is what you need?

That this is what will help?

I can't make you love me.

You don't trust me."

I tried to talk.

The cat died. I cried 

quietly on the bed.

A day later, it was too much

An overreaction, grief expelled incorrectly

A cork thrown at my head

While I fell asleep, exhausted

I sank into the blue.

The energy to fight left the room

but still, I tried to talk.

We tried again. 

I tried again.

I tried and tried to talk.

So now,

when I close the door,

when I choose to walk

I will be know in my heart,

that I tried to talk.

A Summer's Dream

I am wearing a white dress
and running through the garden

there are
no wedding bells, the silence is filled
with joy

you watch on
you know this is no more than a dream
dispersing and transient like all other dreams
you reach out to touch it anyway

I reach out to hold you back
golden light surrounds our bodies
simple, sweet

It is only a dream
of mine,
of yours
a summer in the garden
me, in a white dress
you, there
watching
like watching was all that was left
for us
to live for

(I bought the white dress,
but you were gone
before it arrived
I never went back to the garden
you were gone
before summer came
I still reach out sometimes
to touch you
anyway
it is only a dream
of mine
and I am still watching
like watching is all that is left
to live for)

grieving with those who have not grieved

This is not a performance

To be witnessed

I must go

To those who understand, the flowers 

Sit with me patiently, strewing 

Their scents and offering up

Their stained blush cheeks

For gentle stroking

I, too, need to be caressed 

Kept company

Not be questioned, I do not want to analyse 

or understand

My only wish to unpetal

And sit, empty

Alone with all the others.

White Cat, Green Eyes

The day you left, the world turned white
like you, like snow
it comes,
you go
and so do I.
Best friend.
My ankles are so cold.
I was told
that letting go
it was the kindest thing to do
but it didn't come close
to loving you
and your green eyes
and your furry thighs
and my heart sighs

I miss you.

A couple of years ago I was neck-deep in a really special time of my life, and I was incredibly aware of it... I would be brought to tears most days with how precious and fleeting this time in particular was, knowing soon it would be gone, along with someone I cared for very much.

I was living each day through some sort of nostalgic lens, as though I had been given an opportunity to go back in time to really notice everything and pay attention; knowing that one day I'd give everything to be able experience it all again.

One thing I always got totally swept away by was the sounds of sirens coming and fading outside my window. No matter what I was doing, I would stop, put down my things and totally lose myself in them.

For a long time since that time ended, I've heard sirens and felt nothing... A few minutes ago, some went past, and my heart just broke out into something, not sure what yet, but I was listening to this song while it happened, and just felt rather overcome and just wanted to tell about it. 🖐️

It reminded me of this life advice from Mary Oliver.

“If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind, and much can never be redeemed. But still, life has some possibility left. Give into it. Joy is not made to be a crumb."

Magpie on a Blue Sky

I saw a magpie, stoic
on a bare branch against a blue canvas
watching the world move beneath him

he did not flinch
and nor did I
at the thought of loss he might
be hiding in his dark beak

one, for sorrow

I couldn't help but feel the breeze
and the gentle weightlessness of fear
lift

it does not hold me,
anymore



26.1.18

This year is the hardest year of your whole life.
So hard you cannot see a future most days. The pain is bigger than anything else.  Takes up the whole horizon no matter where you are.   You feel unsafe. You feel unsaved. Your past so present you can feel your baby teeth. Sitting on the couch, you swear your feet don’t reach the floor. You keep remembering the first time  you saw a bird’s nest held together by an old shoe lace  and the scraps of a plastic bag. You knew the home of a person  could be built like that. A lot of things you’d rather throw away.    You keep worrying you’re taking up too much space. I wish you’d let yourself be the Milky Way.   Remember when I told you  I was gonna become a full-time poet, and you paid my rent for three years? Best Friend, angel of the get-through, all living is storm chasing. Every good heart has lost its roof. Let all the walls collapse at your feet. Scream Timber when they ask you  how you are.  FINE is the suckiest answer. It is the opposite of HERE. Here is the only place left on the map. Here is where you learn laughter can go extinct and come back. I am already building a museum for every treasure you unearth in the rock  bottom.  Holy vulnerable cliff. God mason, heart heavier than all the bricks. Say, this is what the pain made of you: an open open open road.  An avalanche of feel it all. Don’t let anyone ever tell you you are too much. Or  it has been too long. Whatever guards the feet on the bridge of the song, you are made of that thing. That unbreakable note. That photograph  of you at five-years old. The year you ran away from school because you wanted to go home. You are almost there. You are the same compass you have always been. You are the same friend who never left my side  during my worst year. You caught every tantrum I threw with your bare hands, chucked it back  at the blood moon, said, It’s ok.  Everyone’s survival  looks a little bit like death sometimes.  I wrote a poem called “Say Yes”  while I was cursing your name  for not letting me go.  Best friend, this is what we do.  We gather each other up.  We say, The cup is half  yours and half mine. We say,  Alone is the last place you will ever be.  We say, Tonight let’s stay inside  reading Pema Chödrön while everyone else is out on the town. Pema will say, “Only to the degree that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” You’ll say, Pema is so wise. And I’ll say, Yes she is, And we are too. Angels of the get-through.  

- Andrea Gibson

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.

Learning Self Love

Self love isn't blocking pain from entering you
It isn't hissing at the enemy, or drowning in self pity
Or promising yourself to love less, next time
To care less, to allow less to hurt you
Self love is not becoming hard, strong
Self love is allowing yourself to stay soft
Self love is allowing things to come and go as they will
And being peaceful in the knowledge that you will want to restore yourself
Should you become damaged in the process.
Self love is not self protection.
It is self preservation, it is the commitment of gardening and nourishing your own soul
Learning the ability to hold yourself at your weakest
And acknowledging that this is very hard to do.
So, next time your self love involves a wall
or an arrow
or a knife
or a tub of ice cream
Look at the wall, brick by brick, and take it down with care, not because you don't need walls
but because you prefer the view behind it
Try using a different target, and take an archery class instead
Take the knife out of your own back, and use it to cut dead branches from the trees of the things that no longer serve you, or you them
And enjoy the ice cream.
You really, really, can't go wrong with ice cream.

Every Bee Sting Was A Kiss

After you left,
Every bee sting was a kiss
Sweet on my lips, honey, that sugar,
That abyss.
I ran with my tongue and savoured the taste
of the blood from the wound
of your hand on my face
On those soft, birdsong mornings when you'd rise and you'd fall
On those days made of grey when you weren't there at all
I saw you, I kept you, I longed for the sting
To feel something, just not nothing
As I forgot how to sing.
Your skin like your wings,
softer than paper
They couldn't fly far but you wouldn't escape her
and by her, I mean me - your watcher, your keeper
your lover, and griever, your hopeless believer in love
and the sting, whether sharp, whether small
to feel it defies there was nothing at all
So I follow the bees
wherever they find me
Seek the sting of your kiss
Even if just to remind me
That you lived,
That we Were
That we do not just "cease"
And when I swell and my lips are obese with the grief
Then I take my dark body, forgotten by gold
And I thank it, for the love and the pain it can hold
And lose myself to the world, that old tender friend
Follow sweetness, and laughter, round some new river-bend
I think of you often as I wander through trees
Of how lucky I am
to be stung by the bees.

Prepare for Loss

All our lives we are told
You must prepare for loss.
You must prepare for the day
when your world crumbles,
when friends leave, when summer ends
and the leaves turn brown
then to dust.

You must prepare yourself, they say
for the day your Great Love goes silent
when the cat is no longer there to be stroked
when the world is just you.
All our lives we are told
We must prepare for loss.

But we are not told to prepare
for all the Other Days.
The days our love lies next to us in bed
still and breathing heavy
All those car journeys and endless days
When the cat is here to be held,
we don't prepare for that

And even when the leaves are brown, we don't notice
that golden amber hue, the lingering magic
Perhaps not on the trees, but still
right beneath our feet
in front of our noses
As we press our hands and eyes against the glass
Breathing in on a world we are preparing to lose
But never preparing
to lose ourselves to