I gathered the stones myself, stacked them before you like a temple offering, my skin the sacrifice as I bared it inch by inch and asked for a blessing you denied me until the pile was fragments and my flesh peppered with your approval.
The settee springs had burst through the cushion and what little stuffing there had been was gone. The remaining fabric sagged or clung to the rusted springs, much like the building around it, and the skeletons beyond it. Eddie gripped one of the springs near the base and tested it. He sneezed as the cloth attached crumbled to dust. The coil snapped free of its anchor, surprising him and opening a line of crimson across his other hand. He cursed and pressed the cut to his mouth. The taste made him gag, as if the pollution in the atmosphere had changed even his blood. He tore a strip from his sleeve and used his teeth to tighten a knot in the bandage. It would have to do, much like everything else he had done for the past six days. Desperation was a great provider of inspiration he had discovered, but he didn’t hold much hope that it would see him through. Asides from the settee there was no other furniture in the room he’d settled …
So I blamed you, because it was easy, sweeter on the tongue. Didn’t have the bite of admitting I could have been wrong. I’ve just been writing up three longish poems so I felt something short and sweet was in order tonight.
Almost indistinct, her watermark. Yet when I looked beneath your words I saw only her instead of you.
It’s been almost a month since I wrote a WeekendCoffeeShare post so I feel like I’m probably overdue an entry. My last post was January 13th, less than two weeks into a new year, and now we’re chasing towards the middle of February with the same chaotic speed that always comes with being busy. One of my goals for 2019 was to try and get some more poems and short stories published online and continue putting myself forward for writing competitions. So far this seems to be going relatively well. While I didn’t get anywhere in the Write Out Loud poetry competition that I entered in December, the two poetry submissions I made to The Drabble and Ink Sweat & Tears were both accepted and have now been published. ‘Until The Light Gets In’ went up in January and ‘Newborn‘ was published this morning. I’m now in the process of working on my next round of submissions for a few other sites and journals in the hopes that I can keep this momentum going. Aside for …
It reminded her of home. The sea mist rolling in onto the shingles. Of course, it wasn’t quite the same. Peat mist rises different. The earth sort of oozes tendrils that simmer and thicken on the low lands. Stretches of green that look beautiful and safe but turn to bog at the first hint of rain. It’s similar enough though. When the mist rolls in and she’s standing inside it, condensation on her cheeks, damp in her hair… she can pretend it’s England. Pretend she’s inland, back where she belongs. It never takes long for someone to wake her.
She makes babies clothes for the sleeping children. Started with her own, but just kept going… That’s why she walks the fence line. Knuckle bones pressed white against paper skin. Twisting wool loose. Gathering the lost.
I stopped believing in harbingers, the same way I try not to flinch when passing on the stairs, or hide the sidestep in my walk for cracks on the pavement. Superstition crawled inside my head before I was old enough to name it. Caught up between pie crusts my great-grandmother baked, hidden in the coils of her apple peels. Good Day Mr Magpie, are you well? How’s the family? We buried glass somewhere, years ago, when it broke like ice and my mother feared the things she’d been taught might just come true. Seven years bad luck unless it’s buried. Deeper now, deeper, hide the evidence and the thought. Sometimes it’s simpler not to see the shadows casts as signs. Yet I still count in threes, for these things always come in threes. Crossed knives, tempest in a teapot, do not stir and do not pour these quarrelsome ideas. The worst of it always comes unseen.
It’s Sunday already and so far this morning I’ve managed to procrastinate and avoid doing any sort of constructive work. To be fair there’s quite a bit that I could be getting on with. I have an exam on Thursday and another the following Tuesday, there’s a submission deadline for Barren Magazin. today that I wanted to have something written for, and I still have a number of poems that I wanted to go over and redraft. Instead of doing that though, I’ve decided to write this post and fetch myself another brew to see if I can kick my brain into some sort of functioning gear. This week life has gone back to its normal routines. This has meant that my evenings were a little busier than usual and I didn’t get the chance to post as much to my blog as I wanted to. This year I’m trying not to get myself down about that. I know it means that I don’t get the same rate of stats on the site but I’m …
You striped your shins raw and red spilling from an open window onto the porch roof outside. Hands flat against the bitumen you brought yourself upwards, tall, bearing gravel bitten palms. My hands will ache at the thought, of your smile through the lifted glass, half shadowed by the sunset. Second, I was more careful in the going, kept my skin as it should be, clean, whole, unharmed. I did not spill. Then we watched as clouds scudded east to west on slow, hidden winds. Your slips always taught me lessons. Like how to pick old wounds clean.
