sadness

Only You, No One Else

poetry

I saw the future in our hands,

tied up in string.

The knots came loose,

couldn’t recognize a thing.

I thought I knew which thread went where,

but I had no clue,

no thimbles to spare.

I wish I knew if you knew

where the thread had gone;

or did I imagine it?

Embroidered artwork

a madwoman’s mirage?

What do I do now,

with the tangled mess we made?

This art was made for you,

the string now worn and frayed.

You there, keep some pieces,

I don’t really mind.

They were always yours anyway,

too tangled in me, too intertwined.

I can’t make another mess,

I can’t remember how.

I can’t care for anyone,

I won’t kiss another mouth.

A Lovely Madness

poetry

It’s lovely to think

that the mind has been healed,

that it works like everyone else’s,

until you realize

that you can never be healed

because your body opens new wounds

of its own accord

and applies half-hearted bandages

in a patchwork attempt

to seem normal.

It is lovely to think that

madness is beautiful,

craziness is kind,

until it turns painful

when it shatters your mind.

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.

An Open Letter to a Lost Friend

poetry 

I am writing this 
in response to the 
overwhelming hole I caused 
within my own heart.

A heart that was 
blackened by darkness,
 shrunken and shrivelled 
by the overhwhelming urge 
to cast love away.

You see, 
the first thing that books 
never tell you about 
depression
is not the loneliness 
you feel inside,
(lord knows I know enough of that)
but the loneliness 
it creates around you.

(The very same loneliness that made
me push you away,
afraid of exposing the darkness within.)

You may ask why I kept silent,
but what you 
may never understand
is that opening up about the darkness
is far more treacherous
than keeping it hidden.

(You can wrap a cold
heart in silence
until the broken beats
disappear from fuzzy ears.)

And it is for this reason
I never told you, friend,
and for that reason
I guess our friendship
has come to an end.

I am no better now
than I was then -
my heart is barely healed,
wrapped in patchwork fabrics of
silence, loneliness, lethargy.

There are days when I wake up
without feeling awake at all.
I am constantly 
drifting in a sleepy conscious,
tip toeing a line between 
the light and this darkness,
wondering if anyone 
would try to stop me
from plunging into the deep.

The place where
my blackened heart lay, friend,
is the place where our
friendship is buried today -
wrapped in patchwork fabrics of
my silence, regret, and anger.

I am sorry friend
for the unanswered 
calls and texts,
the cancelled plans,
 and the friendship 
I traded for rest. 

There's a lump in my throat 
when I talk to you -
a painful lump that is there
because I don’t know how
to speak to you 
without wanting to burst out 
in apologies
and explanations.

But what you may never know
is how you still kept 
the darkness at bay
even though I never 
gave you a chance
to know that it existed.

So thank you
for healing my heart
without knowing its 
terminal illness.

Photo

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.

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