paperrose

[paperrose]

Headache (3)

I decided that I’d better go home, better to cry in my bed than here, on top of a hill where I wouldn’t be surprised if my tears froze and fell into my lap like hail. I clicked my torch so that a yellow light pooled in a circle onto the ground in front of me, and stood up from the bench. I was afraid that the blood in my legs had congealed, that I would snap them clean off my torso if I moved. I thought that I would look back and see two pink, frozen legs stood in the darkness, lit up by that dreadful moon, and my satin skirt would flutter in the wind like a butterfly wing. Then I decided that I didn’t care, I didn’t mind being legless, and walked down the hill and through the trees and back home, unlocking the door and traipsing up the stairs and falling into bed, fully clothed, legs still firmly attached to my torso, my voice spluttering and my body shattering into a million fragments of ice that refused to ever melt.  

[paperrose]

Headache (2)

I knew he wasn’t coming. I knew because the place on the bench where he usually sat looked different to me, distorted by the moonlight, deflated somehow. The patch of grass where he kicked his heels had disappeared, replaced by a pool of mud, wedged against the concrete. I knew because there were no stars in the sky, only a sliver of moon whose light was nothing but pathetic scraps of silver threads tangled through the darkness.

[paperrose]

Headache (1)

My legs were freezing up, beginning to tingle and burn, sparking a phantom fire that licked my flesh as my body tried to heat itself back up. I knew I should have worn the trousers, with their thick, starched material that reminded me of cardboard. I knew I should have worn the snow boots. But I chose to hang on to summer by my brittle fingertips, with winter’s early darkness obscuring my vision and the bite of the wind knocking me to the ground like a fist, pounding me down again and again, my satin skirt crushing like disappointment, looking so helplessly optimistic around my stiff legs, my sandals wrapped like dead fish around my feet. I imagined that they had dead eyes that peered up at me, beckoning me into their endlessness, teasing me with their glassy stare because they knew, I knew, that I would never be as empty as them, even in death. This made my eyes cloud over like a headache and hot tears to trickle down my cheeks; if I couldn’t have summer then I wanted emptiness.

[paperrose]

Eternity

Dancing on a gossamer blade of growing

Grass with feet coated in my sticky red heart that melts

In the heat of summer, eternity.

Electricity in green-blue eyes, falling

All over again into those white teeth, banging cheeks

As pink as rose, eternity.

Tongue the taste of turmeric tea, rising

And sleeping in clouds amongst blue that dreams

Of lavender symphonies, eternity.

Butterfly lips that chatter like words drifting

In the whisper of the sea, tingling from salt and sand and

Dark red, eternity.

I strain to hear applause, hands that could catch me now.

Catch me now, tuck me into the shadow of your sundial

As the light trips over cans of golden paint,

Soaked, dripping, drowning but not quite,

The whisper of the sea still there, somewhere.

White teeth yellow, suns inside me burning me,

Catch me now, I’m begging, eternity.

[paperrose]

A blue not electric

A blue not electric, softer than that.

Not crackling with static, but with air

The colour of summer, the taste of salt

Unaware as I lie down on the grass

The rushing, euphoric fault of earth

Swallows me in one breath,

Our breeze, that soft electric blue

The kiss of water, sand in the mouth

Of our baby daughter, laughter

The shape of sun.

I dress myself in that blue,

Not black, you wouldn’t have wanted that.

[paperrose]

Time is a red silk scarf

Rings are false promises of eternity

Or infinity. Perfection doesn’t last, fast

Fading circle of life, light, an eclipse of the sun

That holds still for a second, bathed in the darkness

Of a sunless day, you stay

afraid of breaking, afraid of fraying

The ticking of time, that red silk scarf

That you lost to the wind when his roof

Was down and the air ripped it off you

Straight off you. And your hair felt wet

It was so dry. And his smile was a clock

That swallowed you whole

And his eyes were shells that curled

In the center, flexing infinity

That wasn’t there.

[paperrose]

Cobweb

I want to be wind that blows through wafer slim pages

Of magazines, a gentle quill feather that you’ll adore

Until your brain rots into soil, nurtured by dewy

Worms and broken snails, below spiders that spin

Their endless limbs, their seductive faces smiling

As they build the gossamer prison that I’m trapped in.

[paperrose]

“This is time, naked time, it comes slowly into existence, it keeps you waiting, and when it comes you are disgusted because you realise that it’s been there already for a long time.” - Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea page 50

[paperrose]

To myself

Darkness bleeds into the heart of the nation

Like blue-black ink into a paper star.

Light shall scatter like snow across the land

And I will dance to the music of the moon.

This planet does not confine me,

I am more, I am great, I am greater

Than the limits of this Earth.

The glimmer of my eye will be a hand in the dark

Flickering like the flame of a candle

That will guide the drifters home.

[paperrose]

Lily Pad

 I’m just so tired, trying to dance on this

Fragile thread, trying not to rip the paper 

that I sleep on, eat on, write on, trying

To remember how amazing it feels to laugh

With someone, not when I’m alone or transmitted,

Not subtracted by space but immediate 

And intimate, intimate as touch, 

Intimate as a frog is to a lily, padding 

It’s sticky feet, reaching, stabilising, 

How amazing it must feel, feeling that connection 

Lingering and tingling like a laugh tingles the air, your spine.