a letter, in two parts

August 2021

what has heaven got that you couldn’t give me in a moment alone together in july with the windows open and the sun taking over the sky and nothing but a stream of thoughts floating in my mind like fresh water that can never find the opening at my mouth,

the problem is you’re close to me but not close enough this silence is loud enough for me to come to my own conclusions because you’re here but you’re not here and i’m looking at you but you’re not seeing me and how in my eyes you are golden and in yours im just plain yellow,

i am aware i am catastrophically aware of myself and how this will end and how ill say sorry like a little girl i’m sorry let me be better next time if you’ll give me a next time but now it’s august and i’m scared there will never be a next time

and now autumns here to break the spell of summer and i’m scared you’ll be gone with it like a leaf beneath my feet and i’ll carry you with me on my boots until the winter but god right now it’s still warm enough to pretend you still think i’m as perfect as you did in the spring

December 2022

winter arrived, as it always does

to kill and to consume

to leave the earth dry and empty

ready for the spring to bloom

i tried to carry you on my boots

to drag you further and further with me

until the weather warmed again

for a third time

but we could only make it for two

it turns out you are the sunshine

the biggest brightest star

but in this winter you departed

just that little bit too far

now my evenings are cold and empty

befitting of january’s child

forced to watch you from a distance

live free and bright and wild

to fall in love is a painful thing

even more so when you’re not loved back

but i’d have done it for so much longer

if you’d given me just one more chance

to see if we could have seen another march

Comments

to the daughters of builders who drive white vans

on the 6am train the men smell like my father; red bull, cigarettes, dried cement - they wake up like my father i feel safe in this carriage, these men are my father, any man with a van and one arm out the window, sunburnt from the elbow down - the infamous builder’s tan - seats so dusty i can’t breathe and i have lungs like my father, full of second-hand smoke and concrete, a touch of asbestos, i should weep for my father but my pockets are healthy i am told by my father whose hands shake as he brings another beer to his lips at 10am on a saturday morning, this is coping for my father these men cope - cope like my father - with the asbestos lungs, uneven tans, shaking hands, muscles in constant pain, water on the brain, the ever encroaching grasp of old age; with substances up the nose they unwind like my father this kind of masculinity doesn’t last forever, you know...

i can only write when i am thinking about God

I can only write when I am thinking about God and sometimes God is God and he loves me, most of the time he does not the hand that feeds me overpowered by teeth that bite he visits me at night like a shark smells blood he smells lust, guilt, and greed brought to my knees, voice hushed he picks apart my greed and my lust promising to forgive, to forget he will make me repent and regret, any pain or pleasure at his expense provided in selfless restoration a gift of his affections exchanged for endless loyalty God is not always God, sometimes he is my lover he tells me he loves me, most of the time he does not I can only write when I am thinking about God

crisis of faith

and when i meet god i will ask him why he punished me on earth by denying me the pleasure of being known by anyone other than him intentionally, innately, irrevocably known in a way i could have remained silent forever whilst always being heard i will ask him why the world kept spinning as i screamed and spiralled into the sins he’d laid out for me for me to fumble in my guilt on my knees, raw from repentance and retribution who is to beg for forgiveness now? and i will apologise to my mother for carrying her burdens in my womb it was her first time too, on earth longing for something she’d never known please tell me i did it right, that i made you proud please tell me i lived how you wanted me to give birth to me again and i’ll try harder would it heal you to see me leave, or would it hurt because you never did will i see your face one day in the mirror and touch it to feel your skin and i will ask you if you could not love...

my love

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