Your smell stayed like a red hand print
Trying to grow in spaces that do not fit
I join you, though I am not you
Lingering in the periphery
Feeling a hard pain in the bones of my chest
Knocking like persistent woodpecker
a wick of red against gray
Tag: #author
The magic fairground
I scratch my head, the mixture of henna and indigo dyeing my
finger nails black
thinking of the red pill and the blue
Alice and her little vial
Drink Me
Pandora’s Box
Athena’s head exploding, a rebuttal to Zeus
yellowing wallpaper closing women’s mouths
Radcliffe shouts in her lesbian manifest
those following her down the well of loneliness
high waisted and limber of spine.
I want to nibble upon you morning, noon and night
but I do what is right and keep my fantasies in check
behind the lines of notepads and in the ink of pens
I suck till my tongue turns blue-black
your lips remind me of a pomegranate even without rouge
they look edible, lush, full like an excuse never to apologize
we are girls of violet, our pin in the concentration camps was
a pink V
last night I watched When Hitler Stole White Rabbit
at the Jewish Film Festival, chewed the inside of my mouth
in frustration at the abhorrence of others
when I was a child I did not have a pink rabbit
you left your hair brush and your rose water and your
tattered lace-edged simple night gown
I don’t think you ever wore one again, in the 1970s
nude was in vogue
women coming and going
from my father’s room
with dimpled bottoms and breasts like Claire Bretécher
I learned my likings on photography books, under the section
‘erotica’ and other arts, believing archly
pornography an expression, when now, thinking back
they had such sorrowful eyes
like deer who stare into
the lights of an oncoming truck
is it bravery or hypnosis? Perhaps
it is fatalism, the French, myself
moving to countries who do not condone
indolence, expecting different results
when escape has no good set of keys
just jangles from your pocket like a taunt.
It’s not cute when you’re over thirty, to
long for the purple balloon in the supermarket
or lie, cat-like on the carpet and me-ow when your lover
is mad
it is not seemly, to be childish when you have
your first crows-feet, or need a push-up bra
unless you leave your glasses to the side
dive in, deep and thick
the molasses of not giving a fuck
where 80 year olds, excel and laugh
like they did at eight without front teeth
much the same, much the same.
The magic fairground, everyone remembers names,
I recall songs and colors of girls eyes
how they look sleeping, with their hands flung
like emotions above their heads, bent at the wrist
bangles on the floor, hidden beneath cascading sheets
elegance in angles, the way eyebrows furrow
in thought, how that line shapes over time into
a question mark, the parchment of skin, in
darkness, tracing braille, for the day none of us
will see, more than the outline of certainty.
You said: “Maybe you won’t love me when my
breasts sag, when I stop working out and the
lines of years begin to encroach. Don’t you like my
firm arms, they do not hang like bats, my mother’s did
I am mortally afraid of skin that hisses when you look
at it.”
Perhaps men had done this to you, torn down
your childhood gauze, made you feel the need to
apologize for things to come. I have read
Dreams Of Young Girls, I know how the photographer
can project a fantasy upon a real girl, even
when she is young, begin to pick her apart
as she unfurls like a Christmas amaryllis, not
caring the pickpockets of their distain
leave her in rags. Or maybe it was another
woman and her cruelty or her hatred? Tight
in an ill-fitting jar, straining to propagate.
“After all, you are so perfect,” you said,
smiling at my narrow hips (like a boy)
my unmarked skin (sun-screen)
the thickness of my hair (good shampoo)
how taut my calves look in leggings (optical illusion)
girls with girls tend to compare
it is not always favorable
though we find in our mixing bowl of humility
a little easement
the tasty wick of joy
burning low into auburn night
going over
those fears
with soft fingertips
and gentle reproaching …
Oh softening
Motioning
Nightfall
In whisper find blessed felicity
A body untouched, lain emptied of worth
brought to life, my Lazarus, spinning moon beneath our chins
rounding music fluting her velvet want to stay beautiful physically
for you to hold your breath as you touch, yes I understand
and still, beauty retains a deeper chord
dancing on raw feet to Erik Sate, trying to impress.
No, love, no, age is wine
spreading in the roof of your oval mouth
each place it has visited will transport you back, among the
grapes, tanned beneath reliable sun till just ripe, rolling in barrels
aged over centuries, buried with
secrets, the taste of fruit and toil, lustily on its wood
roots reaching deeply into history, for every year lived
another branch uncoils, the leaves, a brilliant green, bearing fruit
then flowers, finally sheltering, those beneath
such is a woman, such as you are
lying in my arms, the sweat of sleep, hot on your neck
cheeks pushed against my shoulder blades
causing you to look like you are pursing your lips
in effort to dream
finding ways always
to hold you closer,
closer
closer
closer.
We weep with everything but tears
Go in good faith
down that charred road
where holy mist
cusps day in feathered glove
the porcelain eyes of hills pay obedience to mauve cloud
trees taller than sound break through
smudges of dream wave in memoriam, shuttering day
and O
je ne sais pas aimer sans toi. Je ne sais pas comment me passer de toi.
We speak in furled tongues our inner most thoughts
leaving confessionals on mossy rocks and the lay of light rain
full with sleep, the direction lost in tug of war with blackening ice
they slip beneath against hush of snow
covering our tracks with blanched fingers of ice.
We weep with everything but tears.
Encroachment
You saw your disintegration
In the shrouded reflection of a store window
Already losing custom
And for years prior
Women adjusted hose and children’s grubby faces wiped
In that smeared glass
It held
Decades
Like high cheekbones
Will shore up time in a beautiful face
I saw my eyes fail me
In the encroachment
Of some uninvited color
As if the sun
Greedy for attention
Had left a permanent marker
The doctor
With his accentless voice
And starched finger tips
Probing my retina
For answers like a tarot card reader
Will shuffle and cut her deck
Declared me blemished
Stained by time
Imperfect
Possibly going blind, wrapped in news print
And I laughed
The same laugh my grandma had
When terrible news was delivered
Along with cold dishes and
Empty seats where once our ancestors sat
Filling the roost of our quaking bones
Marking time and Advent
She would raise a thin lipped glass
Of “this n’ that”
To Gods and Monsters
To Plato, Communism and Woody Allen (before we knew we was a paedophile)
There should be a preface to every memory
She said; toasting velvetine shadows
Swilling away the horror
Like a rinsed mouth will always be
More kissable
And come New Year’s Eve
We’ll forget our enemies and join shoulders
Kicking our long legs into space to the chime of twelve
Not yet knowing
What will become if those flung into the future
To forge ahead alone
Unsupported in ancestry
Just the sound of voices
A snatch of tune
The smell of half finished dinner, paused forks suspended in song
Stewing pears over cheap white wine
Her hands red like mine
From scrubbing too hard
That blemish
It won’t come out
So it sinks
Orange streaks of sunlight beneath green orbit
And a stranger in a bar once remarked;
You have gorgeous eyes like they came from the depth of sea
All green and lost
And I think of loss
A stray button, a missed appointment
Maybe I won’t return
To the doctor who found my stigmata
Bleeding like a fish cut on rocks
Into the very bones of earth
See? I don’t anymore, my eyes look inward
In the old days we toasted with pink cut glass
It was all anyone could afford
And I remind my American friends of this
Poverty after the war
A tendency to never feel
Safe
Like city foxes
Scour
Empty streets
For scraps
And squint
At the harsh glare of street lamps
Attracting insects
Bleached yellow
By the piercing quality
Of their intent
Goodbye for now
In the New Year I am going to do something drastic. I’m going to close all my social media down and take the majority of my books/work offline/out of bookstores. The work that will remain is what I’m most proud of; SMITTEN This Is What Love Looks Like (an anthology, 2019), We Will Not Be Silenced (one of 4 editors/contributors, 2018) and Pinch the Lock (Finishing Line Press, 2016).
When I began, I really believed I could contribute something valuable to the world through the medium of writing. I saw many other people trying but I did not know how many and since 2015 I have seen that there is a glut of people all self-publishing, indie publishing, small press publishing, all with the same ‘dream’ of being a legit writer. Mostly wasting hours on social media futilely. I realize 99.9 percent will never be. The only ones who can do it are those on disability, who get a cheque without needing to work, or supported by husband/wife/family or you’re a retiree. If you DO have to work for a living then it’s rare you can put in enough work to even get to the indie publishing stage.
There are exceptions. One of my real friends whom I did meet on social media works full time and is one of the hardest workers I know. She will succeed I have no doubt about it. She goes home from a hard days work and produces consistently some of the best work I’ve read online. People like her are rare. They are one in a million. Others have the talent to do it but it will depend upon if they have the time to make it happen (you know who you are) but the vast majority have neither the talent, nor the ability to make it happen.
When I began writing I thought I was a pretty good writer. When you read some of the stuff online it’s easy to see why I thought that, a lot of it is really poor quality. On the other hand you need to be either absolutely brilliant or someone who is in the know, to get a really big publisher. I am neither absolutely brilliant nor ever going to be someone who is in the know/networked up to the hilt. Even those who everyone talks about as having a ‘good publisher’ actually don’t. They just secretly vanity press pay or exaggerate how much they actually earn. To earn a living wage as a writer unless you are an editor, it’s the 1 percent of the 1 percent.
I don’t want to be an editor. It’s a thankless job and underpaid. I have qualifications and I am going to use those and return to my previous career, hard as it is, it can earn me what I will need to take care of myself in the future. Maybe no job will be different, maybe I will always be taken for granted and used but I want to do it on my own terms. I have always supported myself from the age of 18 and I always will until I cannot any longer. I have never had any help.
Lastly, most of you don’t know but I was recently diagnosed with a very serious eye-condition that means I am losing my sight. I realize I have to adjust NOW rather than when it is completely gone. I doubt I will still want to live if I go completely blind and I have decided if that day comes I will elect for euthanasia as I am not someone who wishes to live as a completely blind person. Especially as I have no family who will care for me. However, if that day doesn’t come or it gives me 20 more years, (which is unlikely) I still need to change my life to ensure my eyes do not worsen.
As some of you know I had battled a serious illness in 2017 which radically changed my life. It was caused by a virus and I am still sick with it but I have learned to live with it and am high functioning despite it not having completely gone. I believe it will one day completely go but it is a long painful battle. I thought that was enough to deal with but in addition to this my mother told me she no longer wanted me in her life ever again. She and I have had our ups and downs but naively I thought as she aged we would get closer. I have always loved her very much even though she was not in my life that much. When she told me this during my illness, effectively kicking me when I was down, it was the last straw. She knew she’d hurt me as badly as she could ever hope for. She succeeded. To protect myself I accepted what she said and have tried to get on with my life knowing she will not be part of it. It has hardened me and I am bitter about it but I will never be as cruel to someone else as that. I will never succumb to cruelty to deal with my own pain.
On a positive note, I am stronger for all of this. But having the eye sight issue on TOP of all of the above, was just too much. I do have it in me to change my life. I have decided to once more change my life. I am not going to carry around the rejection, fear and grief of her hate of me or anything else, anymore. When I began my blog/writing in 2015 I felt it was a chance to try my hand at writing. I don’t regret doing that but I see now realistically I have to move on.
If you know me, truly know me, and have my number and my address and we talk, then I am bound to call you real friend and will keep in touch. When you get sick you realize who your friends are and it is a good clarity. For those of you I call friends thank you for your friendship and I hope we keep in touch. We may not as we may no longer have anything in common but I wish you all much success.
SMITTEN will be my last personal project in the publishing world for the foreseeable future, although I have also been involved in YOU DON’T LOOK SICK and hope Indie Blu(e) recognizes me for that when it is published next year. SMITTEN is a wonderful ending to this chapter in my life. It is a testimony to the talent of women when they come together. Just because we are minorities doesn’t mean we support each other and lift each other up. I hope projects like SMITTEN help future women do JUST THAT because THAT is what is needed. We need to be good to one another! To support one another!
I want to personally thank the following whom I have met on WP for their loyalty, friendship, goodness and inspiration. I think you are incredible human beings; Mark. Eric. Derrick. Bob. Crystal. Erik. Jane. Karen. Raili, Rita. Susi. Anthony. Laurie, Tony. Nicole. Tara. Helena. Philip. Sarah. Tremaine & Monique. Thank you to Christine and Kindra for letting me work for Indie Blu(e) I really hope all the work I did helped and you succeed. Rita.
RIP Natalie Scarberry you are loved.
Thank you to anyone who read anything of mine. I appreciate you. I wish you only the best.
Candice Louisa Daquin
Her own thirsty heart
But I am divided. In a way that is hard to shape into words.
For women who love women are often the rarest night birds.
Theirs is a love that does not come easily and for this reason, it takes a great deal to stay
Sure and certain on the rainbow path.
Sometimes I understand my bisexual sisters, who having had their love affair with the curves and softness of a woman
Return to their husbands in droves or pick out that wedding dress and let the man
carry them over the threshold.
For a woman to be loved by a woman may feel natural but many times it is a struggle
we have no rule book, we may both want to have the other carry us or hold us when
fear besets
and men are so good at being heroes
and women are taught to be saved and rescued.
I understand then, the desire for a woman and the longing for less strife
where if you have children it is sometimes impossible to find a way to describe
why you leave daddy for a second mommy and how
fractures in emotions are not easily translated for young minds.
Had I children, who is to say I would have been brave enough? Equally it is part why
I never did.
My sacrifice came because I saw no other way
for it was never as it felt in the arms of someone of the same gender
and in that I am unusual and possibly 1 or 2 percent of the entire world
though it will seem more during Gay Pride and other events
where everyone holds a rainbow and joins in.
Only the days when we are not celebrating, we may be struggling
to fit in with even each other, strange as we may be, these women who
in various guise and costume
fall in love with other women.
I don’t get on well I admit, with those who believe the only true lesbian
is one who shaves her head and dons mens clothes.
It is not that I cannot see their point, or how many years before
it may have been the only choice
but I did not fight this hard to dress as a man and love a woman
who is also dressed as a man.
I would rather pick a full cheeked feminine boy with long hair
and pretend he had nothing between his legs than sell out my own idea
that love of a woman is as feminine as it gets
and we shall share each others’ dresses.
Our history has been unkind and as such, we do not trust very easily
if at all and when we do, we are liable to judge or leave out and exclude many of our tribe
just as women have done for millennia in their pursuit of men
hated other women for existing and challenging that thin mesh of safety.
It saddens me then, to be ostracized when I walk into a gay bar
and do not fit in, or feel judged by my sisters whom I want to
take into my arms and feel less lonely by.
This is but one aspect of the kalidoscope of being the L in the LGBTQ and
few of your G’s and B’s and T’s and Q’s will rush to your defense
we are co-opted in a group who really knows little of the other
for we are as disparate and different as it gets and often we walk
alone, despite our legal rights and our social acceptance (some of the time).
Alone because we cannot befriend a straight woman for she may
wonder if we would fall in love with her (and quite possibly might)
nor a gay woman for her girlfriend will begrudge us, nor a gay man
as they have often hated women and especially those who forsake
men, there is nothing in common there, and straight men will
try to tell us we just need a good f**king and we’ll soon change our
ways so who is left? In the great wide world to be close to and share?
Those fears and our desires, the very stories of our lives
for whom 98 percent of the world cares not, they have their
1.5 children and ideas of normalcy and we don’t fit well enough.
Sometimes, how much I want to tell someone
of the love I have for a woman and the stillness of night
when we move together and how I catch my breath as
she turns like a thimble in my hands, silver against moonlight.
So quiet instead we are, often falling in love and unable
to share this or speak of it, for it is forbidden. No one will
listen, or be interested, they do not understand our strange ways.
Still in this day and this time we are shadows within
light and light within shadows picking our way through
mostly eaten strawberry fields, dreaming of a girl
who may like ourselves be wandering, looking for
a girl like herself who has only ever wanted to be
held tightly and hear the slow beat of a girls heart feel
the rise and fall of her soft breasts and know
she is where she belongs and needed every bit
as much as her own thirsty heart longs
in the early hours and late at night like the lonely
wolf who by himself will climb to highest point
in futile search of another’s call.
Preparation for our dissolution (3)
Down the drain
Watch. Watch carefully. See. See clearly
The comforting sound of water retreating in circles
I used to say that water turned to milk
I used to think when cream mixed with transparency
Pearls swirled and ebbed like fire flies in dark.
Kept warm beneath tiny radiators stuck on walls like beige moths
Glowing against a 40 watt bulb
Don’t open the window it’s stuck, it’s stuck on being underground
We breathe in soot, we turn ebony in our effort to
Rise.
She couldn’t lift the baby carriage, in those days it weighed
More than she did and the stairs, sticky with linoleum were
Narrow like her little arms attempting to heft us toward
Light.
We mired in dark. We stayed still as stalagmite in caves
Children’s books. Detective novels. Smite the key in the lock
Green plants fitfully reaching. Reaching. Reaching
Your arm is never long enough.
Recall the smell of boar hair brush. Of Clinique blue bottles
Is it magic? How does it glow? Mouthwatering
How they had a misted outside, I ran my finger down and traced outlines
Someone in NYC designed this shape. The shape of places far and lettered.
She had wool, it got wet washing her hair, the edges frayed
It smelt like grandma’s farm with damp goat fur at 5am
Nobody had anything then. We opened our hands to emptiness
Paper lotus. Needle. Oh Lord. Darn a way out.
Everything is so different now. I did not learn how
To cooperate
How to join. How to thrive. What if you are
Born only of coal?
The heavy weight of circular plates laid over paving stones
A funeral of sorts, bury the mother, bury any off-spring
Only blood. Only letters after names. Knights and paupers
The history of war. Victors write. The rest rot beneath daisies.
She grew insufficiently, facing away from sun
Her skin parchment, knees knocked
The pain in her. Oh the pain in her! No words.
She closes her eyes. Turquoise like the stones found in New Mexico
When she was told that, she said; Yes I will buy a ticket
Board the plane, swallow the dream, take the red pill or
The blue.
It was so savage. The quiet. The silence.
When she left there was nothing but the brush and the bottles
Gathering dust, follicles left spinning in air
Are some of those skin cells, still her?
Reconstruct
Is it any wonder she knows best, people of vacillation
And change? She knows the feeling exactly when told one thing
Tomorrow another truth hangs primly in
Your narrow closet.
Her ear lobes are detached, she read once in a woman’s magazine
Attached ear lobes are a sign of beauty
She has larger knee caps than her shins
The skin barely covers her climb
Trees of white, pearl, honey, comb, hair brush, blue
Bottles.
They didn’t fix the streets they remain
On fire
And they ate coal in preparation
For their dissolution
“Il y a dans le coeur humain une génération perpétuelle de passions, en sorte que la ruine de l’une est presque toujours l’établissement d’une autre.” Rochefoucauld.
Pleasure dome
I’m 24
Funny shaped tap drips without end,
birds no longer sing in this city
I tell myself, I cannot survive much longer
If my view is a saffron robed Pakistani man, hawking up phlegm at 8am, into his dying rhododendron
Despair like me, at these four walls and dirty pipes protruding from beneath singleton sink
Who ever made sinks this size? Sometimes you throw up in them. Other nights you heft your hiney and pee long and shameful
The golden shower of malcontent. I don’t like to share bathrooms with strangers or friends
Poverty and her gifts, laying each day another absence, a reminder, you are in the meat grinder of the city, she waxes her legs on your sharp disappointment
As a kid you thought you’d wrangle diamonds from street corners, the fizz and pop of bright lights luring you to the center, like a Christmas nectarine
Is always spoilt.
In the petting evening, wet lipped men come to the spindly girl upstairs
She has thin shoulders and jagged hips, her eyes are always transparent and high on pyramid crystals
These men grind their dirt into her pretend cries of ecstasy and she gets crisp and filthy notes left on her childhood dresser afterward
I fantasize about asking her, if it has to be men she admits into her sanctum
But I’ve never paid for it and I don’t want to step in their cooling semen
If she knocked on my door and offered a damson breast I may
Break that rule and risk, even in the AIDS era, even as a feminist, even if I can’t afford the powder, her hungry nostrils crave
Just to feel the rub of her emaciated hips and hard thighs against my parched skin
I’d fucking inject it if I could, to take away the feeling of savage loneliness in the big city
That sick feeling, you’re stuck, among landlords and low paying jobs, even at 24
Massaging an ancient electric meter with dirty coins, for a little light showing more dirt
The temptation to let it fade out and lie, door open, legs open, coins in your mouth until blood freezes in your veins.
Come in and pay for me then, what am I worth? What can you fill me with, I haven’t already drunk?
Strange people’s scarfs on universal banisters, the smudge of sex in screwed up foil and old bus tickets
Lift up my hips, ram it in, pay your due, switch poison for love and love for death, welcome to the pleasure dome.
The man in 4b puts his hands down his granddaughters dress but the abuse hotline just rings and rings and rings
There’s a gypsy in 5a, cries for his lost lover til dawn. There’s a 13 year old boy who turns tricks in the street, who asks for bus money and new socks
The flashing lights of the strip club opposite are flamenco pink and penetrate through my squalid curtains, wailing their synthetic dreams
How far will you travel to see the sky again? To touch sand and sea and gulp with fevered breath, the pollen of forgotten worlds, lost in your lust for noise
I think of the Pakistani man and his phlegm, growing flowers from spit
As the Eastern eyed girl sells her small fruit for a ransom and a cry
Breasts like pinches, thin ribs beneath wool, taut ride of her skirt showing little pursed mouths of bruises
Her feet are always bare andlacquered, mine are unwashed and leave imprints of desire outside her door in ring-a-rosies
She wears her tips without a bra, nipples hurting in their push, smoking cheap cigarettes before light, smell of burnt coffee and sex on her chewed neon fingernails
They pay her to keep them hard, I beg her to stay soft
The city is a searching arbor of need and want and ingratitude
At 3am people wander the street for drugs and pain and death in little sealed packets
She leans in the doorway, exhaustion a shroud, touching her bottom lip with a haloed question
I open my mouth and let her in.
To her, and all the men she brings, to 24 years and not a minute more, to the nialism and thready vibrant flowers growing from scorn
Her body is a violated temple, a bingo hall, an arcade game, with multiple slots for change
Her mouth tastes like ashtrays and night clubs and old men, skinny throat a pin cushion of bite marks
I make her sing
As light wakes the rest of the world, all the lost birds hear her call
The Pakistani man admires his flowers and thinks
How beautiful this little piece of color is, here in this metropolis where all are brushed beneath concrete
I brush my hands across her small deflated breasts
Seeing sunlight find its way in between crowded houses filled with sore tenants
Touch her violet tinged skin in patterns, warming her before she awakes.
I’m 24 and she’s 22 and an entire life time, of fag butts and misery, washed down on lines of coke and old men groping for their last fuck
Later on I’ll take her to the coffee shop with the little bell above the door, and we’ll clasp hands beneath the sticky table cloth
Blue rinse ladies in the adjacent seat will remark, on our bright eyes and shining hair
As if we too were born
From the cracks of despair
By one who feels
for indifference is the sharpest
knife of the set
worse than anger which requires some care
and love that turns on her heel constantly
like a feathered Cuban girl in 1930s Havana
smiling, til her cheeks ache with sheer
marvelous spectacle
it’s been some years since I danced for you
from shadows to light and back again
fooling myself into beauty, rendering
moments stamped in both our minds
for the joy of the unbound
my feet hennaed like an Indian wedding bride
your fingers possessed of music and silver rings
we wove our limbs together as plaited bread
baked in the glory of that unbroken hour
before ochre sun’s urgent assent and chime
of other people began lowing in impatient light
there is something about darkness I have always
felt contained magic and even if others do not see
I taste it on my tongue
I run my hands along
its quiet shining surface
much like a lake swallowing
a stone when thrown
with all the violence known
by one who feels
everything
First & last
“Everybody’s talkin bout it
Only the echoes of their mind I’m going where the sun keeps shining. Through the pouring rain” Nilsson (from the incredible film, Midnight Cowboy)
The ghosts
in blue mountain mist
when early morning
without mask of sleep
hiking the trail
moss, lichen, turning with seasons
from brown to red
snails leave their silver lines
bugs shed wings and legs
all becomes humus and is recycled
air remains still, days elongated
the stone in the field
is in the memories of many
who use it as their gravitation
where they first kissed, sitting atop the world
thinking themselves the only ones
when it is the stone, smooth with wear
coarse with textures varied
who gives them their fantasies
pearlescent when wet, like the moon
nestled in long grass
its reflection held against sky
I hear birds waking
crying to an unforgiving bird god
their beaked woes and delights
and the worm waits for false patter
to rise and be consumed
a ritual, as anything
the dust of ceremony, rising and falling
jewels encrusted in boulders
black earth laying deep and gaping
as open-mouthed children
stare at bewitching cloud formation
and wish to inherit the future
as their parents
dream of retracing
the lowing
of their former lots
…
The ghosts
in blue mountain mist
when early morning
without mask of sleep
I feel your absence like
blunt knife run along my spine
in the fallow chapbook of my heart
quivering her spent arrows
as I strain my neck in search
of ways to forget
the goats and sheep remain
black and white finger paint against
yellowed grass coarse as raw silk
a sharp outline of grief blurs
the edges of what I see
where you have all
gone
your lives full
and mine empty with echo
I think if I can ever reach the feeling
maybe I’ll join you
where it glitters and preens
like a girl catching herself
in shining mirror of
first times
TheFeatheredSleep 