the wind was fierce all through my sleepless night, blowing, raging through my fractured dreams; in every one spinning wild and lost, carried helpless as an autumn leaf. and I wondered who I’d call for as I was carried out to sea, as I tumbled, dizzy, storm-tossed, I wondered who would call for me. my heart is fierce as dawn shows her sleepy eyes, aching, pulling at its ragged seams; I’ll not be a little leaf that’s lost, at the mercy of this vicious grief. and I know that I am fighting to reach the place I’m meant to be; since that day I found myself lost, the day that no one called for me.
All posts by anna maughan
Bones and Feathers
A calendar prompt to think of love today and so I sit and try, but soon I find love’s little birds are mired in fog and grey; can barely fly, so sluggish in my mind. The elemental love that shaped my heart I believed to be a songbird singing pure; but it was a deft manipulator’s art, so everything’s in flux that once was sure. The bedrocks of my life have turned to sand laying bare the hidden histories beneath; The little bird that perched on my young hand is only bones and feathers, loss and grief. Love’s blindness sadly kept the truth unknown, that little bird died long before I’d grown.
one and many
I was born a shapeshifter; a no-one, a really-could-be-anyone, slipping easily as liquid through the pages of a catalogue of universal dreams. it’s in our blood, inconstancy – I don’t know how to stay the same, don’t even know which one of us (if any) is me. I’m trying to fight the twisting, trying so hard not to turn; I want to live as something real – but I was born a shapeshifter fickle as a shadow that changes with the sun.
salvation
every time I sank, stone heavy drowning in all my shattered selves you would pull me from the wreckage a deadweight, laughing far too loud, the desperate hysteria of a hollow soul. then you’d clean me up, put me back together collect the splintered pieces I had strewn across our life. and I was sorry and I’d never do it again then I did it again and again and again. after a fall too far, a fall too many over all these years you said you couldn’t be my conscience, you were being slowly crushed by ghosts, my half-shed skins. you said I should search my darkness for a little flame to build that tiny fire in me until I was burning brightly on my own, not needing someone else to shine and in my own light I’d see I was worth saving and with my own fire I could save myself.
control
keep those plates spinning faster faster faster faces all around watch for a slip to see a smash show them how it’s done how easy see you in control your smile too tight trembles forcing bright hurts you are so tired arms burn plates spin spin spin can’t watch can’t look something rattling loose inside your brain your chest folds in around jackhammer heart cannot must not stop or you come crashing down.
Red Lipstick
I wore red lipstick yesterday, not something I normally do with this big mouth of mine. But I’d found a shade that suited me; I applied it carefully, blotted it with tissue, added a little gloss. I tried smiling in the mirror, a sad smile. Still, I thought the lipstick looked okay; striking, certainly. Different. I left the bathroom mirror and stood self-consciously in front of you. “I’m ready— shall we go?” you glanced up, said “yes” and we left the apartment walking together but not close enough to touch.
I will tell you when you’re grown
I tried to drown this dark thing, drown it in whisky, in wine, thinking that something so heavy as heavy as it is as heavy as it feels would surely sink, but it stayed afloat; even as the tide rose through my veins to flood my head, even as I slurred it stayed buoyant. I tried to numb it with the pills they gave me and their promises of calm, but all that came were tremors and fog that deadened thought, yet didn’t kill the dark thing; still growling through my brain, still burning darkly bright, rolling my past on its tongue, and kicking at an unexploded future. now morning finds me with no fight left, barely awake, barely anything at all. you creep into my bed, kiss my face, my opening eyes and heart fill with the love beaming from you. how can you be mine you are everything pure and good and beautiful, love washes through clean and golden and puts out the darkness, lifts the weight, for a moment.
Stars and Voids
I do not pause to think before I write or hesitate to put the pen to page; I could be read in hope or read in rage, my lines may settle soft or hammer cold. I don’t hold words back however they may bite or stir up some unease inside your mind, or make you long for love you’ll never find, those pages torn, those stories left untold. If I tell you of my pain I hope you ache, I’ll show you every hidden scar and bruise, unfold myself with every word I use and show you all the world my heart can hold. So I thread these stars and voids onto a string, these little beads of heaven and of hell, and I don’t think of any other thing than telling you my soul, and telling well.