Someone says ‘look how dark it is, how black’
to a sky mottled by streetlights
almost navy blue with the singing
of bulbs whistling away shadows,
their footprints of fake dawn
greying the corners of this bedroom
so the only true night is behind lids
of clamped tight eyes
wishing I could say ‘looking how dark it is,
look how black and thick this night sits
now the hours have turned to quiet.
Each man’s home is his castle,
so I made mine a fortress,
my sitting room a keep,
and a battlement of books
to stand watch for invaders
wielding words like realistic,
while I was carving hope
into a portcullis,
certain these walls could hold.
How even when we whispered it
there was someone shushing
our small mouths
with calloused fingers.
Pressing the words back inside
as if they were Ouranos
horror struck but what we birthed
in those terrible, unspeakable words.
Filling our bellies
with ideas we were not allowed
to give life to.
Until we burst from the ineffable
and held it screaming
before their faces.
Made them look
at what we’d made.
Stung between garden fences
twilight coaxed you outside,
to the square of wilding lawn
uncut from summer’s end,
the coils of wood smoke
streaked with petrol
rising above an evening glow
of light behind closed panes
as one by one they too
flickered out.
Image by Giani Pralea from Pixabay
Slipping I slipped deeper
on every word you spoke,
caught up in the letters
like giants and their fingers
pinioned and pyloned
at the edges of my reason,
they made a fence
around my certainty.
Territorial of territory
you deemed dangerous
you became guard dog
reversed.
All teeth and snarl
when I made to leave.
Or maybe that was me
biting the hand
at my collar…
Carol J Forrester 
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