When You Called

When You Called

on that grey day of rain and sorrow, I found you hollowed-out, paper-thin, echoing with sadness that whispered through your veins. The hurt tore through you in shudders and jags, you crumpled, waterlogged, pulped, too soaked to stand and I was afraid that you were lost to the relentless torrent but today I hear that the sun broke through and you are slowly warming, drying out — a new shape, no longer smooth, tracks and scars from the flood’s path, but still beautiful, and still here — more pages to be written after all.

Little Suns

Little Suns

I remember thinking of all the bodies before me on the plastic-wrapped mattress, sobbing or still, raging or silent, all aching with the weight of a broken mind. I remember asking for daffodils to put beside the bed, next to a picture of my children, to try to make the cold room feel like home. I remember how the flowers opened overnight, going from tight buds to full suns, shining on the faces in the photograph. And I remember realising that I wasn’t going to give up, seeing those little suns, so bright, the promise of a future that held more than just darkness, a future I had to stay around to see.

I will tell you when you’re grown

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.