Jennycliff: Poem

I went to my first home today, it’s too far to walk 

and my mother would never take me, 

she said it made her cry. 

I think I wanted to cry

about something like that.

I have had something in me for a while now

Something big

I have been wanting, maybe needing, to write a poem

Something big.

About what?

I'm not sure yet,

Maybe about how it felt to see my first window come into view

And to learn why my mother cries 

when she sees it,

That place where life was normal

nuclear 

Before I learned I could make myself strange.

The flowers in the courtyard were the same

Slender pink petals brushed purple at the tips and with 

Dense balls of seeds packed into the middle so tight they sparkled.

I didn’t mention them out loud

For fear of sounding like a poet

Or my words removing their sweet smell of commonplace, the air around them 

thick with companionable disregard.

I wanted them not to become muses,

the girl that looked at them to remain unpoetic.

I am upset I have put them into words

They should have stayed untouched.

Life keeps changing beneath my feet

Plans scratched out before they can be properly penned.

Somehow I still believe the world will keep falling down 

in front of me so that I may keep walking-

Sometimes I think I am so full of hope it hurts.

I’m not sure what for

Anymore

Except for you

The way the air feels by the sea

And the way it feels to breathe you both.

I threw my eyes across the marina and 

watched them skip like stones

Wondered how sitting here forever

Even being nothing

But a privileged spectator of this watery deliverer

And of you, dark and wet from the shower head

Could be failure.

But then I drink too much 

and it’s all so lovely that I start to remember how much things can hurt.

The light has moved to that part of the sky where you find yourself 

walking around with a head that has got used to the dark

And all of a sudden

(with the light 

And the heat

And the ringing from the way you all laughed earlier still reverberating)

It's hazy.

I remember that my father is sat at home

Curtains drawn

About his skull

And I think, I should see him

Why am I calling

From across the same city?

And I think of how much I have to do,

How much I do not know,

The way I spoke to my mother when I was six

And still the light stays- 

And I wonder if it will ever not forgive me.

Limitless life!

Why do you taunt me?

Sprawled on my bed, naked and glistening

Telling me Not Yet,

Sending me back and forth between evermore places you will make me love and leave

Making me rue familiarity and love for the way 

they haul loss and the way it feels to yearn with them.

My skin has started to freckle again

It always burns just before and

I tell myself each year that I will see it coming.

But this year

As with every year before

It tapped me on the shoulder, unprepared on the grass,

so lightly that I did not realise I was burned 

until I lay spinning and sun drunk in his arms.

I think I might be scared of not burning

Because I have never seen my unfreckled face in the sun.

This feels too big 

To be something I can finish-

Full stop

And sign my name-

It cannot keep going forever

And the sun is going down

And I have almost remembered what it is like to miss you.

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Edited by Hania Ahmed