love

The Executioner

poetry 
There is a space the length
of a small child's pinky;
a space that is harder to cross
than the harshest of rapids,
or the coldest of winters.

Unless you have needed to cross it,
unless you have tried to squeeze
the two sides together like 
a pair of two clashing magnets, 
it does not exist.

This space is the purgatory of being;
where you are stuck between
what you want,
and what your mind, your body,
allows you to do.

This space is the inch of room
between a guillotines blade and the 
wisps of hair on your head. 
One side a release, and one
a reminder of what is normal,
what is expected.

For this space is only rented to
the melancholic;
to those who have felt 
the cold and nimble hands of apathy,
the wry smile of despair.

Those hands and smiles
lead you to the gallows; 
to the inch of death rope,
the space of an empty pill bottle,
or to the space between your skin
and the green veins 
you wish so desperately to slit.






When Two Gazes Meet

poetry 

A fire burns strongly
in the night,
feeding off  the
oxygen that leaves
my body every time
his gaze meets mine.

I see his eyes’ warmth flicker
on and off
like the filament
of a lightbulb,
turning a shade darker 
when scanning the mass
then
burning brightly when
the orbs align with mine.

Nerve fibres 
catch on fire, kindling 
to my sweaty palms and
the shaky breath
that rattles in my chest.

A fire has started that
we cannot control,
a conflagration
that burns the room 
around us,
scorching the bodies of 
the occupants within.

These people are oblivious
To the blaze that 
creeps up the walls, 
fed by the tug of heartstrings
pulled taught with separation.

They are oblivious
to the heat
to the burn
to the pain
of two people locking eyes
across a crowded room.

Thimble

poetry 
She holds regret between her teeth 
like a red thread of punishment
she can’t fit through a needle -
every time she tries to get rid of it,
his face pricks the corner of her thoughts
and she starts all over again.
 
She sits there, 
a reproachful patchwork of emotions
picking at the loose threads that lay 
between him and her,
like a vulture who picks 
at bones already clean of meat.
She was threadbare, 
hanging like broken seams
cut from blue muslin squares 
and bleached in the sun.
 
Smells of mothballs 
and old fabric clippings
rushed the insides of her nostrils, 
while she unspun a new spool of black thread, 
replacing the red one -
frayed and covered in her saliva.
The remnants of desperate attempts 
to force a broken thing into working.
 
When she pulls the black thread through -
when she no longer feels 
a familiar tug on the sinews 
connecting her heart to her ribcage -
she allows herself to take in the colours
of the world she knew before:
ochres, indigos, mauves, even pewters -
thimbles to the needle 
memories that pricked her mind. 
 
Weaving the needle in and out -
through loops woven from moments
stitched into her skin and mind,
she embroiders
the story of letting go.

Prompt: “1. … find a passage [of your writing] dominated by your attention to imagery and the way your language sounds… Transfer it onto a page and begin making a poem from this skeleton.” from Nancy Pagh’s Write Moves, pg 44.

Photo

Love Came Around

poetry

Love came around on a Sunday afternoon.

A time when trees whispered sweet nothings to the wind

and her heart sung to the tune of another’s voice.

A time when faint lines danced across his face,

chasing the laughter and the smiles in criss-cross patterns of happiness,

when butterflies stormed in her belly after

having been  awakened by the vibrant thumpthumpthump of his heart.

But heartbreak always comes with Monday morning.

A time when the muscles between her ribs ached for

a breath of relief from the constant holding of air.

A time where his lungs wished to be pushed into the deep

so that they may only feel the water and not the emptiness,

when the butterflies sunk down to her toes under the weight

of the splintered remains of his broken heart.

So love came around on a Sunday afternoon,

and suffocated on a Saturday morning.

Photo