Trying out her wings

Pain killers did not play a part in my death

You

Featured, light fizuring definition, as star

You captured my appetite in a jar

Left it to pickle sour

We dissected my heart and ate slivers

Outside, like a fevered tongue

Merrymakers ran and dragged

Confetti and plastic cups of eels

Young girls with birthing stretch marks, shaking double chins

If they had three lifetimes it would still not be enough

To celebrate their unfolding life of cards

Queen of Hearts, she sat watching oragami crowds

Easier to be cloud cover, sensing rain in the air

The quiet of needing to say nothing, emptied of small talk

She didn’t need to ever attend a party again

That was another version of her out there in time

Straining to be a light bulb

Her long dangling line

Fishing for fragments of who she had been

How did a wizz, bang, bang, pop, crack, fizzle girl

Turn into a wig combing mannequin?

From dancing drizzled with pink champagne, the uppers in her blood churning red

To planting rows of onions and dragonflies, obscured by garden net

Oh she would

Knit herself a ship

Sailing on and on

Paint herself a sea

Rounding over water with butter knife

A transfer from disco ball, to stay and burrow in

Flying overhead, a stray kite, looping the void

Things of nonsense and flight, once she was weightless, then heavy with seed

When it spilt like a tearing river, a part of her she no longer needed

Tore away, a feeble arc of motion, the arrythmia of nameless distress

Catching the air, lifting, cavorting above caucophany

Trying out her wings

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Seeking wholeness

My core may seem

Tired

The flame dimly lit

My eyes may be glazed with

A heaviness that will not lift

And yet

I am also

A firebird

And yet

I am also a child of this Earth

You can

Force me to surrender

But I remain

A little defiant

I used to fight back

I forgot the art of war

In adherence to well trodden rules

I bent into something lost

But I am not

Broken

It is my nature to dissolve

When four rivers convene

It is in the terror I see

What must be done

For when we wish most to end

So we have

Begun

And it is time to take that journey

To light 

The far tower

That it be bright enough

To bring back

All that was 

Whole

Out of time (2)

I’ll save you a place

On those days

Where waking it takes all

To muster gratitude

Yet we do

You and l

Find the fox path through thicket and dence bramble

Where light footed children before us ran

Soft in tow, elongated against shadow

Spilling their amusement like hay seeds

And stubborn burr, clinging to wool coat

Just in case it should grow cold

Then from our tree house

We’d forage for kindling

And brighten the alcoves of elm and foxglove

Just like when you were gone

Sealed in a room like you’d boarded a ship and steamed

Through hectered expanse, combed wild with distance

So far I could no longer hear your metronome

When windows flung like outstretched hands, you played Eric Satie

Able to conjur emotion without perfumed love letter

When all I had was a supple back and trained muscles

Dry with chalk, head bowed, waiting to mount and vault

Gymnast or star catcher, seems likely both

Such peacefulness in throwing out fears

With a twist of wrist, a spring and leap

When you do not hold back, that’s when you see

This world’s underpinning like a great silk train

All the seasons following in ivy headdress

Who knows the mood, a temperature of pick pockets

Punished or saved, sometimes hard to tell

We are like an indigo building storm

When weather is calm you can never tell

Invisibly, out of sight, burgeoning swell

Blowing cracked cheeks, gathering momento

If you keen into white noise, leapfrogging over din

Whispers on wind, gentle turns to fierce

We are so like our Creator, twisting at whim

Or by design

Either has the thickness of a stranger’s hide

Not our timid hearts, cowering at first lighting strike

Out of time, urging forward despite ourselves