take your shoes off by the door.
waltz into the winter of 2019, the days putrid but cold, the scent of grief and something dormant, come home to the lullaby, soothing film-rock you to sleep on the soaked grey armchair that's always been yours. we live in this house together but we are no longer familiar. you have lost me. I spend each day crying. I don't hardly recognise this girl. and neither do you
the many things.
i think we all felt the most that winter. and it wasn't enough to cry into the canapés at the wake (I think I'd finished by then)
and of course it was a separate occasion. to already be hurting by your own hand, and then another, a woman who didn't mean it, but maybe I should have just said goodbye by her bedside instead of selfishly leaving her to live in my mind, a mind too full
what I mean is,,,i should have been just a girl wondering about July, sitting down by the river, talking to boys
oh gosh and I was doing it at fifteen
stupid loving boys for the wrong reasons
thinking I could rule if I wanted,
but blank faced each morning at 8:30am, a horror face. laughing with nothing. a deep searing sadness.
getting around
home for tea
and the girls and the girls
to keep going back for more, each time you were hurt? (I was scared to lose the only girls i knew I could have) to say something and not really mean it. (the face, the skin, such a problem, too long) to cry and cry. (red, red, red it was ) to be something angry. (mother and father picking us up from school crying) maybe you are mean. (sitting in front of the tv every day after school) maybe you deserve it. (a written letter to yourself from last year, a sad one)
but maybe you were just fifteen and holding onto something and anything you could before it got too late, and it was a couple of things that made you turn bad, and maybe this rotten thing inside your head and heart is loose change for the soul, the way I felt at fifteen, the way I felt at fifteen at her funeral and in my room late at night, school at 8am the next morning, the way I felt as we sat afterwards at the white linen tables hands in our laps, as it happened I had a hollowed chest and heavy eyes by then, you all joined me.
but I never got to say goodbye
YOU ARE READING
jolie memphis
PoetrySuzanne led me over to the gap, that pale opaque liquid seeping into my skin-honey, I realised. she leaned in close, voice warm and soft, the scent of aniseed on her breath. you can be anyone you want, she whispered. I closed my eyes. who are yo...
