The cement mixer stands in a driveway

Reminding me of you

I don’t want to leave

Holding the perfect ratio

It turns slowly

It gets stuck on your skin

I have no desire to take a chisel to it

I only want to wet it again

Reawaken the same mix

We crafted so carefully. 

We must wait until your heartbeat
Goes past the second hand

She held onto my wrist
I leant into the curve of my womb

I once thought it leant right for you but I have recently found out it tilts forward

There is an island
My friends are flying home to

There is something inside me
I want to pull, but also I want to let go

I'm scared, to not be a tenent
To stop, taking care of anothers 
It never feels like my own, anyway, but should it?

I'm owed but also owe
I'm scared of silence
Unsure, what I'll find in it

Say nothing and move away
To a new place
But you never really get anywhere, do you?

Pull your knees to your chest
Rub you cheeks across your legs
That feels like peace.

You're lieing on embers 
That need stoking 
We converse into nothing. 

I'm abalze adjacent 
In my orange hamock 
It engulfs me and rocks gently 

I've swapped seats with myself, so many times
Replaying the last words, I wont say 
It always easier to walk away

But I'm scared I love you
A homing wood pigeon
In a timber-framed nest

I might make a pocker for the fire
I do not own 
I never can 

But I can make this promise to myself, every night
I make it again
I miss you 

The building blocks
The stone, the mortar 
The pantry, the AGA

My right thumb is swimming back
For signs of love

My left has abandoned ship 
*was abandoned on ship

They have an ethical-non-monogomous relationships
With my remaining digits

Both thumbs have been left, once
Held by something immaterial 

Both are unbitten
For unwordable reason 

I'm smitten by the potential attachment
Fuck, I forgot to attach

So I send a follow up
Swollowing all resonsibility

My pain can be nothing
If you don't feel it... but no worries if not

I’m sleeping in the car like a passenger
Remembering another who held back their hand

My waves are in delta
Between the gap of their chair, and the door

Reach for my calf 
Unhook its head from the fence

It runs to it’s mother
I’m awoken by my own salt water

I’m a-wash with myself 
I’ve not washed for days

I’ve been crouching in the long grass like a Curlew 
Not leaving my nest... and my eggs 

Till I'm faced with it... the danger
But I’d rather run to something good

Instead of running from something...
Screaming!

I’ve realised it is up to me to decide
What does danger looks like?

In a book of Love Poems, my Mum bought for my Dad in her 30’s, she had bookmarked and inscribed the poem Flowers by Wendy Cope, saying how it reminded her of him. 

Reaching a similar age, I have been paper cut by this realisation again. Having been bought a second-hand card game in a flurry, instead of a fragrant bunch of joy, by a recent (albiet fleeting) partner. My read-like-a-book-like face must have said it all, as he expressed to me “he almost bought me flowers“. The game still sits unplayed in my living room cabinate.

You almost bought me flowers,
You almost left to leave

You almost held my hand there,
But you caught onto my sleeve

You almost tried to stay here,
Wanished into the cliff

I almost took your name dear
Your outline it persists 

I stand here
The dog-eared rock
Juts out infront

Who is walking, who?
Who is sailing, along?
Who am I, here?

To save, but the words
From the mouth, o' the River
That have not yet reached 

"Yet", said the Sea
Speaking simply 
"You're still, standing here" 

I stay, trying to move
To run, to return
To a fixed point, that keeps streching out

I am a house, but not a home
If I bend my back and touch my toes
I could look like one

I'll need to make some room and let you in 
To feel like one
So for now

I stand with my back to the town
The amber of its life 
Tries to warm it

"Yet"

It cannot, in the same way, the Sun does
The one I look forward to
Every morning. 



 

We are all monoliths
And our minds are made up

Of so many different stones
Alongside our own

In the past
Some have demanded glass display cases

I care less nowadays
For those in glass display cases, cannot catch stones

Belonging
Is a big question

Confusion searches the shoreline
With chapped hands

For an honest opinion
The running water can always take back

Becoming someone else’s treasure
My pockets are all stretched out, from other peoples pain

I have skimmed some out
But some will always swim back to me

I am unsure what I own anymore
Anyway, I now know

My hands can slip into them
More easily

I wonder now they’ve left
What will grow, in the space I’ve made?