At first the smallest shudder,
like an uneven surface, a speed bump in the road
and you forget to slow down,
find a steady pace,
ignore the warning signals
when you’re the only person in the race.
Can you break a touch softer,
tread a little lighter?
Why run over budding flowers
when you could choose to watch them bloom?
The sense of muffled footsteps, then a knock at the door,
gentle but persistent like spring rain,
pots simmering on the stove.
You don’t go,
though your job is thirsty work
and my parched throat, drained of liquid sound
that now trickles through my veins, adding weight
to limbs pinned fast to frozen ground.
Your palm turns the handle, the familiar twist
I check three times before nightfall
in case the ghosts visit,
whispering sweet nothings through the walls.
You all seem the same, at first charming,
lighting flames to torch the halls,
taming the spirits to trust the floor
like they could melt my muscles malleable,
like their words could make me move,
escape the labyrinth for the chance of absolutes
to find you stoking an imaginary fire,
breathing in the smoke of untruths.
It’s like you have always been there,
tucked away in an inside pocket
of the back of my mind,
a fidget item for these hands to find
when my head disconnects,
under anaesthetic from the neck down
though I’d have rather felt the burning sensation
from your quick disintegration,
the pain as you were wiped away.
Now a small dressing covers all that remains
of how you stuck to my skin.
Nurture wins the genetics debate
for I won’t miss your DNA,
my colours never ran in the family.
Demolish the bricks that built me
this attempt at a less than sturdy structure
even the air contained in each bare room
is fractured
words caught in my throat
collapse quietly
disposed of with a single match
as flames crossing deserted wasteland
mostly go unnoticed.
It’s a choice I will make a thousand times
every day afresh, the pull and push,
can I turn to the care
to the love that is staring back?
You are free to leave
find another pulse to crave your heartbeat
but I did not brave World War Three
for an amputation, aborting possibilities
from the spirit glowing inside of me.
Let me treat you to a lifetime
of the softest words, sprinkled over skin,
I will patiently saturate each layer,
wait here till every drop soaks in.
If my mother taught me anything
it was how the weak inherit the dirt
buried beneath the weight
of putting husbands first
and living through your children.
If my mother taught me anything
it was the chains of festering silence
tied to family secrets
the way you and my father screamed after dark
the way you feigned happiness in the morning.
If my mother taught me anything
it was to criticise my body
hate my own bones
till starving showed them through my skin
how you would be proud of me then.
If my mother taught me anything
it was the vicious birth
you called us sacrificial blood
threw money at the graves of those you slaughtered
expecting forgiveness and calling it love.
Uncertain who is holding the other
but one of us forgotten, foraging through our home in desperation to remember
what we did not know so cannot name
nor assure this body it is safe.
Blessed are we whose bravery guards the doors and windows
long past signs of danger, so fierce in our defence
it greets each demon as a stranger,
sounding alarms to activate emergency procedures
when the threat is but a spectre
with unfinished business.
Feeble and listless, these spirits will float
amongst the source of their affliction and our sickness
until they find in us a friend.
