Creaking boughs shiver to stillness Birch
Breath
You suck in the scent
Bridged
I lie
safe in your arms
resting in your lap
An unconscious gesture Your thumb gently strokes soothes smoothes out the knots
Burns float
Obscure(the)words
Face down
Motionless fading to a milky streak
They circle
drawing dragging it out Tracks followed to no resolve
Keep moving Spinning Turning Dragged for several metres and abandoned
Soft crunching of whispering feet
There are times I forget you ever existed
until the weight of you leans back in
Rolling Lapping at the concrete On your back
sand
bark
caught in the weave
pressed into the flesh
A single leaf clings to your calf Suckling
under the lights your skin turns
Pale and pallid except for where the red seeps out
You wait and watch and walk away
the tyres lick
Sand arcs from your toe
scooped up and displaced
Streamers wave
from hands in empty motion
Leftover mourning
limp and light
They hang faded They fray
ragged edges bearing the tug and wet slap loose ends searching out their new surroundings
Your chest rises
they fall like snow
to settle softly on the ground
You seem much older then when we last met I used to watch you play Primary colours
their vibrancy diluted by vague memory But the shrieks of glee ring through
Bounce off metal rails and crescendo into feedback loops Screams of joy as you fly past running for hours in endless circles You turn over
the smile melted from your face
the ink starts to itch You’ve already left
A thorn snags a dried crease
resisting the moment
Set upon a stage
set upon They circle you converging close coming closer Jeering Which were you trying to break? Maybe neither? Maybe none? ‘It was broken when I found it’
There are no new words
just the same one repeated You snatch a stick from off the ground Wait for it you close your eyes in expectation
Hiding
Soft sand
Smear stains Far away
Hair flips like paper
Leaves
I mistook the shape of your body Silver limbs climb cut short
elastic cutting into the meat of your thigh
Which one of us are you protecting? Maybe neither? Maybe none? ‘What difference does it make now?’
we find you balancing in the rafters
pressed against the skylight
worrying at the cracks they branch off feeling for the sky Glass shards Held in place by a silhouette Turned to Winter
A punctured lens A miniature version bobbing in the glass Bent and twisted
rotating in your own wake
You meet the waves They froth and foam about your waist
Teeth Gritted into a grin
spill new from the packet ripped open
Residue
clawing
You’ve done this before scratching binding They take the shape of your body
Tipping into an exchange A forest of fallen limbs Entwined and then with twisted neck Focussing on a tilt Before it lands to smother you in heavy comfort
snapped back
cocked to one side
they find you walking in extended circles Treading ashes already sown You can’t or won’t tell us where you’ve been Not here or anywhere at all No way of mapping the presence of your senses The tense slips I slide into you And there you stop
not willing to engage
Your shell curves in front of me hanging empty on the hook You’ve already replaced yourself Shed us like skin ‘You wouldn’t understand’ She opens her hand and closes it again I listen to the gaps
picture the tongue rolling inside its cage
‘How could I?’ Instead I stand looking up at the leaves as they float down Fallen pollen golden
a slight sheen
They sweep you into a petri dish ‘You’ve covered some distance’ Or so they tell us But you’ve been here the whole time From the next room I hear you bumping along the ground
the same shade as the shadows
Gently unravelling in the breeze She waits and watches them depart With another empty wave She waits And climbs back into herself
All routes return as roots They lean until they snap The raw end cradles your chin Bites at your throat Murmur slow creak gently feel for where it hurts
tend the wound wound round
Sweat sweet with exposed sap heavy in my nostrils I can taste you
Stakes are driven into the ground the maypole raised up Partly disintegrating Blue paint scratched and flaking
strains on the leash
unleashes a bark
She skips to draw the lacing tighter Over Under Over Under Turned against
You bend the light in
part hinged buckling with a groan
The parts of you that I can see crunch into one another Bits of you have fallen off How much can you gather? Can you carry? Can you hold?
Swaddled and repackaged Flailing limbs eased into restraints ‘You’re making a scene’ She draws you back out gently
contrite
Rebirthed with precise incision You rasp against her brittle insides Your cry barely rustling the paper bag
A line of tiny boats
the fading sun glints off their bows A flame is cast adrift to consume the border bites and tears but it’s still there
Half of you is left on the bank €1000 for half enough petrol Her expression replenishes the tide ‘You left the tags on’ She watches you toy nervously at them 'No returns’ Her heart sinks ‘Just… because’
Shadows mirror Wrappings wind Like the gashes that twist up your leg Until they meet a horizontal cut A limb abbreviated
Another ghost its shroud sops up the deluge
A little sigh brushes against the floor
Meander Helen Davison, September 2020