precious precarious

One day
I will not be transformed by a kiss
Or a gentle word
Or gesture
Or caress

Into this
Simpering, needy thing

Who dances so hard
To make sure I make the right foot
Prints to spell out love in your language

Who reels and twirls
But summons the wind to hold me
Just so I can look steady in your gaze

Who knows I am not steady so
Who gushes waterfalls of words
Hoping that somewhere in them
You will hear what you need to

One day I will be fierce
Drinking black label in my blue leopard print jeans

Red lips for the fire in my skin
Converse so I am always run-ready

in this fierceness I will be calm
Collected in myself

Allow you to want me or not
Not hang my whole precarious
Precious
Existence round your neck

I will have grown my spine up
tall, spiky, like tree in my garden

Strong enough to hold me on my limp days
Spiky enough to warn people
Before they try to envelop me

Then you can love me like sunshine
you can leave me like mist
I will not crumble, feel I cannot breathe without you

I will smile, star teeth
stick my tongue out- mine
Into the night

Until you sing

Mourn, child
You were not born for this
Not born to be on the other side of
Fists, slaps, choking hands
A dick that does not know who you are.

I know this will make you strong,
But the truth is that it will make you weak, also
It will make you scared
Want to hide,
More likely to slip into puddles
You would have been able to jump over before

So mourn, child
You were not built for this
To be whittled away at like stone
When he does not see the statue inside
He just wants to make you small

Mourn, child,
Because you loved him
You love him still
He is still something your huge heart can wrap around
His shape inside you

Mourn, child,
Because that love was not broken when he hit you
That love was not broken when he threatened you
That love was not broken when he nearly killed you
That love was not broken when he raped you
That love was not broken when you sensed that,
somewhere down the line, your life would be in danger.

Mourn, child
Weep
For your self, and your soul, and for his too.

You do not have to be strong through this
You will survive, of course
Survival is always a puzzle-game
How many pieces you can put back together

Mourn, child
Let us weep
Let us weep loudly
Let us weep loudly enough that we find each other
That we may hold each other

Let us weep so loudly that we do not have to
try and be strong

Strength will come from weeping, eventually
Because we are not made for weeping either
But if we do not weep ourselves empty
We cannot see what puzzle pieces we will find
to rebuild ourselves
If we do not weep ourselves empty
We will never be light enough to jump over the puddles again

Mourn, child
We were not made for this
We were made for singing
And for fire battles

Let us weep until we sing

Yellow brick road

I must mourn you
As if you were dead
You are never coming back.

I sift through the remnants of you
In my spring clean
My heart trying to hold you still

With you I was sliced open,
As bloody and delicious as
a December watermelon
You spitting out my pips

With you I was as in love as a
13 year old with a boy band
As an 85 year old at her partners
Funeral

I worked harder with you than
I thought possible
To the horizon and over it
Into the dark

I felt safe with you in warm moments
Of half sleep

I felt brave with you often
Until my knees gave way

I was awed by you
Floored
Amazed by your dimensions

I was terrified by you
Feared for my life,
My sanity and
My future

I was so hopeful in you
For our future
The future worlds you hold

I was enraged by you
Tears hot down my face
I wished I could make them weapons
Find some way to escape you

We found each other in gentle moments occasionally,
Secretly

I was broadened
Stretched by you
Through you
To trying to survive you

We will not walk together again
I turn to see you
yellow brick road burning in my heart

I put all the love and rage
Hope and desperation
In a letter on our last brick
I turn to face the sun

crazy #decemberpoetrychallenge

Crazy

Used to be a thing that was sexy
When I was 16
Be crazy!
Be unusual, think out of the box
Dress weird – but sexy
Drink.
Get crazy!
Kiss boys – but not too many.
Make sure the crazy drunk
Helps you kiss
But forget the nights things went too far.

They never mentioned
When I was 16
That crazy was something I should grow out of
Not into

That when I was 30 drink would be a crutch
Crazy would be a label stuck on my head
Making me undesirable
For anything long term

Or would make me tie myself to
Be dragged along behind
Other types of crazy that would
Tear me to shreds

Crazy is sexy on a night out
Crazy is scary in the tears the next morning

Crazy is me blowing out my cheeks and saying no
When there doesn’t seem an option
Crazy is me shrinking back from a yes that would
Trace me into less than

Crazy is not a choice.
It is not a pair of jeans I can step into and out of.
It is a lifetime of bright and dark and pain in my chest.
Of learning to pick my way with broken glass in my feet.
Of feeling more than.
Of seeing.
Not choosing.
Just being.

Slow (#decemberpoetrychallenge)

Today I say a slow prayer
Slow enough to hold all the wounds in my mouth
My tongue peeling them in

Each breath grows my prayer

My country
Ah
My country

I slow the prayer down even more
Each letter creeping
If I hold it in my mouth long enough it will
Reach the sky sooner

Ghosts settle slowly on my shoulders
They roll my tongue back into my mouth

Swallow your prayers
They say
Turn your eyes up

No slowness of speech
Will calm the burning

Climb into the flames
Either you will sleep
Or you will soar

Either is better than
Your tongue drying in your mouth
Trying to pray hard enough
Climb into the flames

Look up

nothing (#decemberpoetrychallenge)

I am lonely for nothing
I am lonely for a revolution
I am lonely for a world that will not come

I am lonely for a lover
I am lonely for love
I am lonely for a war that will destroy me

I am lonely for an echo
I am lonely for a sound I know
I am lonely for a mountain to throw the echo into

I am lonely for my best friend
I am lonely for a hand in my chest
I am lonely for a dream that only exists as ghost


I am lonely for comrades
I am lonely for lovers
I am lonely for politics that do not hurt

I am lonely for dark
I am lonely for death
I am lonely for a piece of a peace of sunset

I am lonely for nothing.

Toothbrush (#decemberpoetrychallenge)

Tiny toothbrush
Blue sparkly Colgate
The one that squeezed out in star shape
To try and trick smalls into being excited
About brushing their teeth

I hold the brush solemnly
Meticulously
Aware of the weight of my duty

I hold her tiny had in mine, firmly
She bares her tiny teeth, trustingly

We are there in that moment simple
Big and small

One trusted, one trusting
Each able to fill the role
Holding small sweaty hands

In my tangles 30 years later
I try to remember when a role came
That easily
One that felt so easy to fulfill

When I have ever been as useful
As I was to my baby sister
teaching her to brush her teeth