Poetry & Prose by Carol J Forrester
Despite the hosing,
stems still cling to their cobwebs.
Strands draped between limbs,
threads quivering in a threat to untangle.
Roses grow thirsty again in a moment,
stripped out of their petals
heat caught up on their thorns.
A lessening, in want of more.
All corridors run back to you,
though they say loss gets less
the longer you let it sit.
And you’ve been sitting here,
in this hollow you left for a while now
Just a slither of yourself
with no new words to say
that might explain this empty.
And barricades don’t keep
the door from banging open,
every time a storm
or gentle breeze blows in.
It only takes a name,
or a memory,
to raise your shade.
So I given up airing out this room
with all your secrets.
Leave another hole in the wall
the same shape as my fist,
pretend I haven’t
when the moments leaves.
Re-watch you walk in
sit down
pick up your drink.
Re-watch you pick up your drink.
They hire him to take up gravestones
in old cemetery grounds.
Pay him by the hour,
to tease out lichen lost names,
note them,
in neat, thin rows of records
only his eyes will read,
and murmur each syllable
into the fresh split of dark soil
before the groundsman comes
with his sack of grass seed,
already whistling
to no one at all.
The fridge stinks again,
the thing lolling at the back,
sweating, sickly sweet,
cling film wrapped and taunting
as if to say ‘this is just your desert
for peeling me down
till we both cried shameless,
and you held a knife like a question.’
Why do that to yourself?
Play around with perfection,
even if it was only skin deep,
and the smoothness of these curves
turned your stomach at night,
when dusk settles its hands
either side of your hips,
presses into the grooves
where his tools worked you
into beauty.
Mounted you his sculpture
for all men to see.
Do you not appreciate how
his love made you
into a woman worth seeing?
