here and beautiful

what happens now my fears are manifest? the sky fell and I am still here: digging graves and folding on the floor. the moon laughs through my bedroom windows. I am still here, limbs coiled up on my side of a bed in which we shared ourselves. you held me and we gave each other everything. you were here and we were beautiful. I am still here in the dark.

passenger seat witness

before another day I dream. driven by a former friend I am passenger seat witness to one crash after another. I wake into the dark and quiet of my room, mouth dry and sweating through one side of the bed. not so long ago you would have asked how I’d slept and if I’d dreamt. I did but you don’t and so dreams pass as clouds: aimless, unremarkable, washed away with soap and yesterday’s growth into the sink. I miss hearing yours. I still miss you all the time.

flowers

another round of play pretend to ward off foul reflections. an unexpected friend brings flowers in a paper bag. for lack of a vase I use the glass you drank from, still sitting on the desk from right before you left. I haven't had the heart to move it. what proof I have of you wanes further with the passing days and dreams. I don't want to wash it clean. at least it serves a purpose now.

nettles in the river

making face in dressing room mirror. I wear blue stockings under green pantaloons and a jester's hat with bells. a fool for a play within another play. onstage I only skirt the story, garnish used as needed to make a greater case for others. from the wings I listen to the disgraced prince break his lover's heart. she will take this wound as sentence to a death too soon, lying with the daisies and the nettles in the river. a little like the song you love. soon after I will bring a spade to dig her grave as someone else. this someone else will sing and laugh, knowing death is just a door we bide our lifetime queueing for. I wonder if he'd make you laugh. I remember when you said you'd love to help me learn his lines.

eye gazing

mystic in the kitchen home from women's circle 10:50pm. I have just moisturised my face. kettle boiling she talks about eye gazing how it shook and changed her spirit. tonight she fell into the eyes of strangers one after the other five minutes at a time. each pair held a universe she might have never known. the eyes are windows / rivers / passages to what and who and how we are. in those of another we have nowhere to hide. to share gaze is to surrender / be seen / let another hold your heart.

last time I opened was for you. in the last rays of September on my bed you asked how I was feeling, having just made your decision. without the words to answer we were held by silence, willing you to stay a little longer. your eyes sky blue clouded with apology, mine unguarded like a wound or candle. I remember opening for you too soon, glowing in your room to see that you had done the same. lightning through our skulls straight to the heart. whatever this was you felt it too. at the end we used words to be clean. "I understand" and "this is what I need". we used words to make some sense. we did our best but we know better. our eyes can't help divulging how much more this really means.

Vesuvius

returning ink to paper

blood in black on lilac shard of tree

your name

a date

the words I had and hid

to fill a page and however many days 

a clean cut

and the silence since your knee jerk

with your ghost

by our castle in the park

fear of feeling or captivity

blue sky eyes recoil

one strike: "too real"

just enough to wake a monster I forgot

Vesuvius in tears

into pillow

into dream

a spring I never knew I harboured in a heart you willed awake

glowing in my claws

in the rapids

in the dark

want and need and what you asked of me

"never close"

before you chose to change my colours stayed the same

you remember

doing what you need to

willing closed a tomb you opened

can you sing a ghost to sleep?

I will listen

say my name

to end the page I've spilled myself for

eulogising present tense

ink and tears

folded on the other side

still there

singing on my bedroom floor

cradling the lyre

on your knees

in my pyjamas

I can hear your voice

rain into a stream

to lay me down and flood my lungs

come back and curse another hymn

you can sing me anything.

ants on my arms

lying on the grass reading in the park I let the ants march up and down my arms. birds whistle from the branches of one tree to another, an invisible and foreign language. my thoughts feel the gaps between the sounds and sense. sun follows sports games on the field children climbing up the playground a mother and the baby in her arms. I look at the blue from the trunk of the gum. a glimpse of two birds dancing between branches. leaves in constant motion just like water just like you.

I read the one about the boy that was a monster that was red. he loved and ached and loved and ached and learnt to use his wings. the poem brings me solace that I wish I didn’t need. I don’t know if you’d like it. the birds keep dancing in the wind.