There was still tinsel around the picture frames,
all smiles and glitter staring back at you
in that echoing space
when the meals are finished
and the bottles drunk
yet the end is not quite upon us.
So we wait
and pretend
that this will be the year that we do something different.
I’m still getting used to this lion in my mouth.
But sometimes
the notion of seen and not heard
still aches in my chest,
despite the waterfall of words I seem to spout
whenever my lips part.
When you’re trying to stay silent,
some times it helps if you cover up the abscene
with something meaningless
and hollow,
like empty poetry.
Laughter is also good.
If you can laugh about it,
it can’t of been so bad.
But time can chip away at you if you let it.
Too much silence
can eat the soul of you completely.
Not matter how small
the seed.
If we just don’t mention it,
ignore it and carry on,
then it’s not that big of a deal
so why make a fuss.
Women always make a fuss.
At night I feel silly,
walking with my car keys turned
to the sharp edge of a key-chain,
cold and hard against my palm
Alone is when I think about the school corridor,
his face split in two with that sneer
as I tried edging past him,
never close enough to touch
but clear and looming
this way was no longer mine to go.
In the light of my own hallway
I drop keys, and bag, and shoes,
and every memory of him,
the other lurking moments too.
We don’t speak about those here,
we don’t like to make a fuss,
those are the things for silent, empty rooms,
and notepads destined to gather dust.
I think if I was to write a collection of poetry then it would be called Words For Silent, Empty Rooms and I’d fill it with poems like Office Bitch and Legs Eleven.
I’ve kept all the pieces of you that I could find.
Stored them safely,
wrapped away
in a box somewhere hidden and warm,
until I can remember how the puzzle goes
and slot you back into yourself,
a little more fragile perhaps
but whole again.
He called her The Office Bitch,
to her face.
Drops the comment like a hot coal
before she climbs into a taxi home
and I turn my car keys over in my hand,
heels sharp on the concrete,
the elastic in my shoulders twisting tighter
as the words sink in.
I can’t help but repeat it,
turn the words over in my mouth
the needles of the teeth still there,
as I wonder if he’d of said the same
were she a man.
Would she have had to swallow it,
if she were a man.
Because at worst he would have been
a
bastard.
Not The Office One.
I wanted to add another stanza to this but nothing seemed to work so I’m going to sleep on it any maybe come back to this piece another day. In the meantime I’m relatively happy with how it works at the moment. I’d love to hear your feedback though.
In the calm of an empty room
I found Pride behind the mirror glass,
and coaxed it into daylight.
I fanned flames from ash
with a slip of red silk,
slashed open white to the skin,
bared like orange pith,
small defense against an outside world.
Like water,
Pride slipped from me at a doorway
and in the mirror
was only sin the colour of shame.
Grey again in the ruins of an inferno,
I told myself
no one was looking at me anyway.
Carol J Forrester 
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