loss

Dear You

 

Dear

 

about to start my second draft

and I need to talk to you

it’s uncharted territory

big stuff

expectations. hopes. ideas

we must discuss

what others have said, articles read

I’m scared

but weirdly prepared. Like, I can do this.

can I do this?

where are you?

think I might know

while having no fucking clue

about

something you never got to do

can that be right

feels untrue

selfish, me. Just wish you were here-

and I’m still listening to Taylor Swift. I know

it’s sad

… you preferred me as a goth boy

maybe I did too

never got to send the lyrics I speared

and I’ve been meaning to tell you

how I volunteered?

parts of my life

already different and remade

paths being erased, fazed

and where are you anyway?

I ran today

pulled out my phone

to send a g’day

you’re not there

who would check

we really need to chat

It’s just not fair

you went away

and

how is it

that I stay

 

Photo: Claire Doble

Nightbird

 

a nightbird calls outside my window

I am sick, so sick in the dark

it’s 4.24 on the morning of your funeral

life makes no sense, there is only love

 

you talk to everyone at the party

buy them gifts, exchange views

share laughs, drinks, stories

my only conversation is with you

 

grab my phone to check messages

that remain forever unread

missed your call, I miss you: indelible

a nightbird’s sick joke you’re dead

 

Photo: Sierra Narvaeth on Unsplash

 

 

Felled

 

Someone ripped out all the trees

between my house and next door

and

although we never did gardening together

or talked horticulture

it must be for you

because

the uprooted mess

of destroyed earth and leaves

is like how my heart feels

it makes no sense

why

won’t we ever talk again?

or laugh about

unsolicited plant-vandalism

there was so much more

I wanted to say

I need your input

on this thing

and what about a new tattoo

of a dead tree with roots akimbo

just won’t be the same

it’s all broken

there’s a hole

in my ground

without you

 

Photo: Claire Doble

 

Lost times

windchimes and fingernails

I miss you

do you know?

the pain

of never-enough

and not-the-right-time

a hole

old and bitter

defeat

must be brave

afraid, what sits

on the other side,

lying and lies

lost moments

and cry

over far-away fingernails

and the corner

of your eye

 

 

Photo: Claire Doble

Oh my word, GloPoWriMo  – global poetry month – starts today! I checked the website yesterday and it’s a miraculous Covid-free zone. WTAF? Awesome. Not sure I’ll manage a daily poem this April but I’ll definitely do a few!

Lost summer

Never been so sad to smell the blossoms of spring

and I ache as the blue-white light of morning gapes across the sky

stretching, yawning, already weary and soft-boiled eggshell cracked

thinking of long hot days to come, the fatigue of grass

that steam of green in the stalks and the buzz

the singing, ringing zing of high season and deepest cornflower blue horizons

my cheeks cool in the 7am, useless, yearning for the summer I’ll miss

a loss, pre-thought onslaught of grief, mess of relief

hard to believe those blooms will burst and shine and shrivel

music washing, bright splashes sloshing of chlorine, kids scream

not me, I won’t be here this time, my life splintering

and the perfect pale of latent April air swirls round

faint scent of airline fuel inches consciousness to stay

promise me, please – desperate bargain I’ll betray

dreams stillborn, nascent, can’t beg more time, it’s racing

sands have slipped beneath and the sun will snap and break

my heart, my heart, what depths of sorrow exist in bright never-tomorrows

shimmer perfect, absent-death preserves a chimera of not to be

 

Today’s GloPoWriMo prompt to write an elegy, one in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract words, but physical detail. 

Recording: https://soundcloud.com/user-808707280/lost-summer