Pink camellias

Written by Eleanore Arnold-Moore

breathe in a Robert Browning soliloquy, reminding me this is all I wanted. Not pinch me “am I dreaming?” but release me, “let me stay in the dream.” This is the dream. Isn’t this the dream? The reverie where gilded mouthfuls let me breathe the lives of thousands, shameless in my greenery, quench my loneliness but not my lake of lethargy. I laboured through those ‘pearly’ gates and found them standing free, Ladon’s blood lapping at my feet, but now, sometimes I miss his em-ber-ing.

I entered Elysian Fields of half-known faces and never enough sleep to forge new dreams, and forgot the garden would need tending. Another paradise lost to fatigue. My hand-me-down Eden not quite fitting as the serpent’s hisses start to sound sweet. Even the Hesperides made to leave, Atlas’ expectations impossible to meet. Will I ever pause to be?

But longing flowers in the old quad, it stops the dreams from slithering out of reach.

Content

Warning: References to drugs and alcohol