Their wings were broken, dark bodies
in constant motion
trying to escape the mesh.
No air, no wind.
Emerged one day to a wall, nothing more.
The sun shone, but they could never get to it.
writer, book reviewer, daydreamer
Their wings were broken, dark bodies
in constant motion
trying to escape the mesh.
No air, no wind.
Emerged one day to a wall, nothing more.
The sun shone, but they could never get to it.
The ice has broken under my feet
I’m not plunging into cold
As I imagined each time I launched this scenario
In my head
I’m not connecting to the ground
To the sea
To the air
I’m an apparition, a wisp of memory
On the breeze
And I’m being carried forward whether I like it or not
When you stand before someone
exactly as you are,
no armour, no shield,
and still have the courage to look into their eyes –
you are strong.
You are raw, and you are real.
And when you let them do the same,
with no judgement,
understanding dawns for both of you.
You might be scared,
but opening chests that have long rusted shut
was never going to be easy.
All you can do is be the net
to catch each other
as your whole spills forth
and slips through your fingers.
I’m still falling.
I see the ground rushing towards me even as it floats away.
My feet
no longer know what it is to stand on solid boundaries;
they pass through
and I am birthed out into a loop
of waking and sleeping
and waking again to find that I’m still sleeping,
and can’t escape.
My breath comes short
but also long,
empty lungs somehow full to bursting.
How can this be real?
How can I be real?
How can I stop myself
from fading away?
You’ve seen them before,
noses pressed up against you,
moist breath on your skin.
One side is right. So is the other.
They ask you to be the judge as they battle it out.
Please stop, you ask.
Your voice doesn’t work.
The lawyers do. Settling the disputes.
Settling the money.
Now, young one:
who would you most like to live with?
I’m falling out of love with the apples
suspended in the air, frozen
on their descent to the ground.
The songbirds too, paused
in mid-flight away from the rain clouds.
I can stand in front of a whole swarm of bees,
rear ends rapier-pointed at my face,
knowing they will never pierce me.
What’s there to like
about a world that does not breathe?
The hand on my face presses down, sliding its fingers into my gills. No oxygen, no screaming, I suppose it thinks. My mouth proves otherwise. I have teeth, I have lungs, I have a voice that belts out an alert to all around me. There is a creature here wanting to crush you. It’s got me. Stay back, else it will get you, too.
What do you do if you have a tube
needing a nozzle,
but is nozzle-less?
And while we’re at it,
perhaps we should consider
how nozzle is close to nuzzle,
close as close, yet far apart,
unless you’re applying filler.
Discuss.
What is in
the nozzle-needing
nozzle-less tube,
anyway?
A hand to hold,
a hug from a friend
undercover as a stranger?
A cart-load of commuters
squashed up in glue?
Ah, the nozzle.
Hiding down the aisle,
white-feather painted.
Now we can use it
to thrust out
liquid staples into the cracks
that have appeared
in your straining cheeks.
It’ll only hurt for a moment.
Promise.
I jumped over a hill today.
One of those great rolling ones
that merge with the ocean
just out of sight.
I did it in one spring.
At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
I don’t want to talk about the chains.
They wrap around my arms,
squeezing
the flesh
so that it bulges.
I used
to point at them,
rattle the links in their faces.
But always
they would claim
they couldn’t see.
Now I stare into the distance,
leaping across fields
and dipping my toes
into the cool water of the lake.
They can’t see the chains;
they can’t see my escape.
The air
might not
be fresh on my journeys.
I don’t mind.
There’s freedom there,
and I claim it.
Naturalist and multi-award winning author
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