Despair

The photograph shows a cottage, half-built,

support beams visible before the thatch.

I touch them and feel my bones vibrate,

wounds opening up all over my body.

 

Tears run from them, not blood

 

and from the cottage, through the paper to my ears,

comes the shrill whistle of a kettle.

I remember. She always offered me tea.

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Light fades on the troll bridge

The light was fading as we talked, water

sloshing against the troll bridge that I was going to leap on

even before you said you were expecting me to.

 

I love how you can take my whimsical moments and wrap

them in tissue paper and ribbon, holding them tight

as if I’d gifted them to you.

 

You couldn’t see the path, only the puddles reflecting us

as we strolled along, together.

It’s so typically you – focusing on what is truly clear

and taking the rest, no matter how difficult, as it comes.

A Haunting

I see ghosts of footsteps all over my world,

my mind palace

is haunted by them

and the words spoken with every tread.

Stamped into my core

so I can never forget them.

 

The footsteps are all different sizes

and some voices I refuse to listen to.

But there is one I love to recall,

and it is the same one

which leaves new ghosts everyday

with words more energetic and meandering than the last.

 

Every so often, I will etch

a line it has spoken

into my breath cloud,

a reminder to you that what you say

will always stay with me.