Moving On
The last plate broke today. It was nothing special.
Cheap, temporary junk that fills a flat,
a home, a life. I’ve always had a fear of losing
things before their time. I kept every card she wrote
even as her handwriting deteriorated and
she could no longer remember my name.
She downsized and downsized and downsized until
her whole life became impossibly small.
When your very mind turns against you
even a room of ones own becomes a trap.
She moved into the hospital and we moved her life into a skip.
I washed my hands and moved away. But
I kept her plates until life smashed them one by one.
I broke her last plate today. I’ve already packed the broom
so I pick up the pieces with my bare hands. Despite my caution
I started losing things before our time. I became too old
to climb onto her lap, she became too sick for Christmas.
When I did visit she had to ask for my name.
Before I even noticed it I had broken all her plates.
My hands are full of broken shards now and
I can no longer remember the way she’d
press her palms to my cheeks and watch me smile.
To Grow
The plant was a promise of things to grow
now rootbound and starved it refuses to grow
His Dad loved his lawn. Cut the grass every spring.
He taught him to love is to cut. You can’t let it grow.
Locked in a dark room a plant still dreams of the sun
though twisted and warped, towards the light it will grow.
I rehearsed for our dates by gripping hot stoves
all for a gash on my palm where the skin won’t regrow.
The sunrise colours my room in shades of pink and hope,
only not on the left behind plant that can’t grow.
On our last fight he played dumb, um ah ing as he cried,
yet to the smallest crack of sunlight, I made myself grow.
The Overlook
If these walls could talk, they’d bitch.
When I first came here I scattered breadcrumbs
as I went. Now I just go forward.
The only way out of the maze is through.
Silence is neither peaceful nor quiet.
I have dreams of dying that feel
like memories. If I died
would you remember?
He doesn’t answer, he’s spotting
ghosts through the lens of his bottle,
arguing with his memories.
They fight back with their teeth.
I don’t think I ever lived anywhere else,
my memories of otherwise are only dreams.
I wake up here every time.