Tag / childhood

by Carol J Forrester

In Search Of The View

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.

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by Carol J Forrester

Ripples

The ripples are gone when I look,

searching the water for a slip of silver

twisting back on itself

leaping skyward in panic

or ecstasy perhaps.

I think about you and I,

or at least the phantom of us

that clings to my lungs on slow days,

crawls onto my shoulders

to press my face down, down, down,

down where I deserve to be

when my own body twisted back on itself,

my mouth searching for a way

to swallow the words I’d spoken,

to return them to the saftey of unspoken

rather than the spotlight

of my glowing red cheeks

as I fumbled to dress myself

in what I thought was maturity.

I can feel nails along my spine,

when I think of how much

I wanted to be loved.

by Carol J Forrester

Rust

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I have never liked the way rust feels against the skin.

Shards of old paint curling and collapsing

beneath the press of tiny, grubby fingers

as the latch on the gate fights to remain shut,

last weeks rain, too much for something so old

to face without a little protest.

The tiny flakes that stay behind,

stuck into the sweat and the mud,

too small and sharp to brush off all together

no matter how many times hands are scrubbed

against dirt stained jeans with patches at the knees

or run across the grain of old fence posts

that dot the garden paths and always lead

back home.

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