#escapril2019

She was empty space. She was a screw up. She had

a cheap

consciousness: surfacing, falling, no way to

focus, there out in the

emptiness, filled with nothing but herself and uneasy sleep.

my best friend called me up to tell me her lecturer

gave her a daffodil dipped

in liquid nitrogen, so she could watch it shatter. i still haven’t told her

what you did.

you are an easter egg, as sweet on the outside as you are

hollow on the inside.

what’s the german word for the way my throat constricts

when my mother asks how you are?

the problem is when i was five my dad left me in a hot car for longer than he should have

and i did not once try to get out.

the problem is you’re an escape room that’s become a little too homely

and for once i want to know what it is to be

a chemical that corrodes, instead of shards of frozen flowers trodden under foot.

i. maybe all poetry

should begin with a cottage by the sea. it takes a decade for memories to mature.

this one: ripe enough to squeeze, to drench

in nostalgia. the house we rented was called erin.

i wanted to

have begun there,

tried to fill my suitcase with pebbles and sand so i could take it home with me. but before i

forget, and trust me, i will,

let us recall all those little scratches: my feet torn up like a patio from running around

shoeless, my skin the colour of poison apples

from the heatwave that kept me up at night tossing and turning like

a child buried alive, my sister reading my diary

aloud while i jumped up at her like a chihuahua; crying, trying to snatch back my secrets,

the mouthfuls of waves

punching my throat like fistfuls of death.

see?

not everything is the way

i would rather remember.

ii. maybe no one should write poetry about an april day in glasgow,

unless they lived one the way we did.

one year ago, back when we were new at this. when you span me around your city

like a spool of thread. remember when

you still cared to unravel me? anyway,

the icecream was sweet and your hand in mine was sweeter still.

three natural wonders of the world in one day:

that second hand bookshop,

right next to the vegetarian café with the lentil soup we loved,

and your smile when i was the reason.

but before i am further seduced by my mistress nostalgia

there was

that yellow typewriter i should’ve bought, and how our best friend told us he was moving back

home instead of in with me

and the way you wouldn’t stop talking about your ex girlfriend. still,

it was a good day.

we used to have a lot of those.

iii. none of my poems will begin or end

with you anymore.

i am nostalgic for who i was last week. my sincerest condolences to

the version of myself who believed you

would never hurt me.

i am nostalgic for the person i thought you were,

i’ll always miss the girl who only kissed me.