2019.9 Imparted

Putting the explanation at the beginning this time as this one made me cry and might make you cry too. For trigger warnings, check the labels at the end, below the text (I should hopefully have set this up so you can’t see the end of the poem if you click on the link, but you may need to scroll down slightly for the tags).


There’s a hole in her heart,
Or maybe just her torso,
A phantom organ that
Squeezes and kicks,
Dances in frustration in the
Soft places between.
She apologises, sometimes,
Knowing it will never see the light.

She hopes it’ll shrink,
As time and hope slope by;
She knows it can’t be filled with
Other things, and busy-ness,
But maybe they can
Crowd it down,
Wear at its hard edges,
Muffle it somewhat.

It wriggles, digs in sharp fingertips,
It has a trigger for every season –
Presents unbought, traditions unshared,
Snowballs unthrown, slopes unsledded.
There is blossom not to fondle, soft and sweet and small,
Birdsong unidentified, wingflight not pointed.
There are beaches not to run on,
Shells not to clatter in sandy, seaweed pockets.
There are conkers uncollected, fireworks uncooed,
Sharp scents of brown leaf missed, and bonfires unlit.

She knows she could only be
Even more tired, even more broke.
She knows photos and friends and
Values and poems and families-of-choice
Can be legacy, can write her love
Into eternity.

She also knows that knowing
Does not soothe the kick and squirm,
Can’t sing it the lullaby she’ll never write,
Won’t rock it, rocks herself instead,
Sweet and bitter and utterly alone.
Just for a moment. A long, long moment.
While near, small voices pipe and skirl, contented,
Through the first warm sunset of the year.






































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Trigger warnings: childlessness and regret

2019.8 Glitch

If your body is a miracle
Then your brain is the next step up.
Combined, they dance through time,
Glory in the stretch of senses,
Caressed by music, soothed by scents,
Blessed with the fine detail in
This palimpsest of... everything –
Picking up the fine Baroque flourishes
Where some only get the broad swish of
Primary colours.

And then there’s the other end
When things only you can discern
Are pinscratch discords across the
Chorus of creation, discolouration
Staining paradise,
A dissonant stink that threatens safety,
And all this a myth to the majority.

Even those who choose to believe you
Wince only with embarrassment’s syncope,
Where others take offence at your
Fist-clench, flinch, rock, tic, and mimicry.
They are only eating,
Only breathing,
Only crackling,
Only drinking,
Only being.

And you, guest attempting to rest on
Fathoms-deep mattresses,
Have no choice but to suffer,
Or dig out the pea,
Or leave, fleeing back into the tempest.
And yet the world will continue
To test you, never call you Princess,
And if only you could sleep,
The details of this ever-present soundscape
Could be a gift again.
Rich and rare as silence.


I’ve here written before about having synaesthesia. Among my other fun neurodiversities (neuroadversities?) are hyperacusis and associated misophonia. Another poet with misophonia reached out today on Facebook while I was deep in Write All The Poems mode, and this, rather unsurprisingly, turned up. I vividly remember my grandmother reading me the story of the Princess and the Pea. I hated it, yet kept coming back to it. It felt wrong on so many levels. We can certainly level a lot of feminist criticism at it, and betrayal of the ancient code of hosting strangers, but the deliberate torture of someone of a sensitive nature in order that she prove her assertion always seemed wrong to me, even if I didn’t have the vocabulary for it at the time.

2019.3 Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrows

She’s been told, over and over:
It’s easier to regret something you have done
Than something you haven’t.
She’s thinking, in particular, today,
Of the near misses.

The declarations of affection a breath away,
The errant gust tucked behind her teeth.
Likewise the cutting insult,
The coup de grâce to a parasitic union,
Forever spiralling on staircases.

She thinks of the last-minute turns
Not taken.
Country lanes still ravelled.
The road that’s more than familiar,
The route engrained in synapses,
Waking and sleeping, unrested,
Until all she can do is visit and
Revisit – shopping list of the
Undone accompanying the miles.

The house unbought, the home unmade,
Its neighbourhood now a maze of gentrification and
Soaring investment potential.
The hand untaken, the
Toe-tucked farewell,
Breaths pluming, backlit for all time in
Green, amber, red, beep, beep, beep…

She is thinking of the monuments unvisited
Today. She should be thinking of
Everything else. Everyone else.
She is thinking, instead, of skin untouched,
Lips untasted, breath unshared,
Knows how Too Late feels in the
Monthly crossing-off, the floodplain tedium.

She is thinking about the
“Actually”s unsung, clutched in her gullet:
Actually, don’t touch that
Actually, that’s not his name
Actually, that’s racist
Actually, she wants you to leave her alone
Actually, I want you to leave me alone
Actually, I want you to leave
Actually, I want you

She is thinking how close
Habit is to fear,
How she inhabits a groove laid out
By so many – too many –
Before her.
Whether or not this is her path,
She’s knee deep in other people’s
Straight and narrow.
It will take a miracle.
It will take a more than careless conflagration.

She finds herself hoping, for once,
The words spilling fresh from her lips,
Hearing them for the first time in years
Of repetition, no longer smooth.
Ave Maria, gratia plena,
Mundus tecum.
Benedicta tua. Benedicta tua.
Benedicta tua.


Fragments of this haunted me all evening. It’s been a funny sort of day.

2018.14 Crossing the Water

I knew she was dark, but not like this,
Didn’t see the stark silhouettes
That leered, card-sharp;
The theatre of her mind
All cameos and tragedies.

I never credited her fascination
For the gravity that dragged at her;
The open maw beckoning with
Sweet, dark songs;
The temptation that thronged in every shade.

I should have listened longer,
Combed through notes,
Read the echoes of her wine-dreg codex
In the way she dodged the mirror’s glare
To gaze on emptiness instead.


Inspired by this.

2018.4 Druth

When I left, they let me.
No-one followed, And I
staff in hand made my own path
Sky-clean and stream-wandering.

I bordered on nothing, nodding
its feather-brush, touching and untouching.
I dark, it follow, wending and
unending. We peer freely, touch
with reverence, the grey is

And I

Forest is sky - the touch untouch
fronds against light and dark speaks.
It is more than maybe but
Not too soon.

If I, feathercloak fly it will be
Taken of taking, touch of untouching.
I gather. Cleave close to edges
Edges speak where the centre stays silent.
S   I   L   E   N   T   C   E      S   I   N   G

I prefer here that is not-there
Ivy shoulders; smoke skin,
Gather the edge dark in my hands
Wait patience as song for them to stop
feathering, gather my arms from mist
so I can eat.

I still eat, though its weight can be
bruising and nor of. Some of the
It’s very light, but quiet is dark so
edges of song drift feather bright

We were leaves once.

And we. We are featherdark light
And I am forgetting where my
old name talked.
It talked and talked, lode and loaded
the words hot and

Yet

Song.

Silencesong is feather soft, leaf edge
against me and we walk,
Darkness and I cry sometimes
Laugh sometimes, edge drift like
the smoke I remember
And quiet is still and I can hear
on the edge of breath

My other heart. A new hearth
For the silent song.

Bound no more. I am.