#poetry corner

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.

I think of all the things

I have allowed to slip through my fingers:

my mother,

God,

that mouth full of blood.

i.

You hung the moon around my neck,

I’ll put the tides in your eyes.

ii.

I didn’t listen closely enough when we first met, but I am now.

Somewhere along the line I started to get

bits and pieces of you

stuck in my head.

Now I have almost learned you by heart.

Songbird lover, won’t you recite all the melodies your mind has composed just for me?

I want to hear all of the sounds

that occupy your space

when I am not around.

iii.

All of these memories

are silver and

engraved into me.

Count your blessings, people say, so I count the days

I have known you.

iv.

You kiss me until

I’m tissue paper blue.

v.

How can I ever hope to describe the shape of this love, so impossibly infinite?

It’s a match that never burns up,

never blows out.

It’s the flicker of flame all along my windowsill

that lets you know

I’m waiting for you to come home.

vi.

Everywhere you touched me, you planted gardens.

Spring has arrived and all of me is sprouting, blossoming into red roses, a dozen at a time.

You told me once that sometimes you wake up and you don’t know

if you’ll ever feel the sun again, you find

yourself beneath the earth, somewhere too far down for light to go.

Don’t be afraid to cry on my shoulder, darling -

it helps the flowers grow.

If I am angry it is in a place I cannot feel it.

I hurl my hurt up onto the top shelf, somewhere I cannot reach,

let it gather dust, decay

until I forget about all that was said to me, done to me.

I can convince myself

anger is an emotion that does not

apply to me.

/

A friend stabs me in the back,

and a flare of rebellious fury sparks up within me. I

distance myself from it, the

detachment of a scientist,

dissect the act - cut it into little pieces

(as if my rage was not born from me,

my own flesh and blood, my child I slice open to cure the plague)

rationalise it away.

/

You can justify almost any cut

someone makes in you if you don’t want to believe in blood enough,

if you love the knife.

/

But anger is a human right, or at least an inevitability.

It is not a luxury everyone apart from myself can afford.

A rose by any other name

will still prick you with its thorns.

Call a spade a spade,

and use it to dig up

the fury you bury,

before it grows into weeds

that strangle you

even as you deny it.

gasoline boy / setting fire to your veins / setting fire to your life / we used to joke about it / our descent into alcoholism / no one’s laughing anymore / numb boy / threw yourself down the stairs like a bouncy ball / elbowed and punched your way out of two friends’ lives / soon there’ll be no one left / just your vodka lover / oh ashen boy / a bottles’ love can’t dampen the coal in your chest / remember / i’m the one who knows you best / you are most whole / when you empty all your poison down the sink / arsonist boy / i love you / but i won’t stay to watch you burn this city down / i love you / but i don’t know how to exstinguish your violence / i can’t recognise this molten liar / i’ll always love you / but i can’t put myself in your line of fire