"Tell me; if a tree fell in the forest, with nobody around, and its fall to the ground didn't make a sound - would you panic in fear that you didn't exist or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?"
Adam, Portsmouth, UK
When I was little
I hid
my heart under my bed
and on Sundays I buried my dreams
in the sandbox and talked to the whistle
of the wind. In school, I’d write poems
onto paper airplanes. I threw them as far and wide
as I could because I was too nervous
to talk them into this world
- but they were sank into paper balls
by words such as ‘attention’ and ‘sir’.
By the time I’d grown up I’d dusted off
my heart that I’d hidden so long,
pulled it from the claws of monsters that hid
under my bed,
found the ‘X’ that marked the spot in the sandbox
and went chasing my breath
that I had lost in the wind.
On days when the world doesn’t have a friendly face,
look up
to that man in the moon,
smiling, and shining,
always smiling
and living up to his name.
The day I let you go
was the day I started yoga
but I couldn’t stretch anything well
except the truth.
The next day
I listened to the radio’s static
for 14 minutes and 32 seconds
because I thought I might hear your voice.
When I forgot the colour in your eyes
I bought every shade of blue paint from the shop.
You’ve been gone such a long,
long, long time.
They keep me up at night -
ghosts
that have shadows.
Monsters exist inside of us,
mine smelt of smoke
(and cinnamon)
it was a dancer,
a big swimmer - a real positive thinker.
I think you are the reason
that I cannot sleep.
Sometimes, words
can heal
wounds deeper than oceans
and mysterious as a lover’s heart.
If you find yourself lost -
speak to yourself
and maybe the words
will answer for themselves.
My love for you
was something like playing a card game
with cards I couldn’t see.
I’m never sure when to fold, or how
badly i’m losing. All I know for sure
is that when it comes to your turn
I hope you’re ‘all in’
because something tells me
I’ve got nothing to lose.
You know it is love,
when you spend the time,
lying in the dark,
trying to breath
in and out
at the same time as him.
God, oh God
how easy it was to get tangled
up in love.
I was screaming
for some peace and quiet
but all I could hear was the drumming
of my heartbeat against yours.
God,
oh God… I cannot sleep
because of you.
It is almost 5am
and I find myself awake,
drowsy, and thinking
of you.
How I wish I could pluck you
from my dreams like the daisy in the field.
Find your name in these poems
like treasure hunts in Autumn.
It is hard, all this thinking
when I remember you are a ghost,
long gone,
like the airplane I saw glide by yesterday,
overhead,
full of dreaming people.
You are sitting on the tip
of my tongue. Between the words,
at the end of my sentence - before the full stop.
When you wrote me as a footnote,
in the margin, I corrected your grammar,
but you said that love (poems)
couldn’t always make sense.
Sometimes, I used to press flowers
between your poem-ed pages -
there is something so fragile
and delicate about love on paper
that suited being adjacent
to those small, pressed skeletons
that I’d look at when you were long gone.
I remember the last time
we spoke
how you said that you would break
my heart
so that you could grow roses
in the cracks.
I knew you loved me
the day I felt you tie a daisy-chain
around my voice-box
so that you could hang
off every word.
She said - “It’s always summer time
in my mind. It’s rainy roads
and muddy hoods, midnight moonlight,
fragile and thin, pale skin and echoes
that could guide you home.
Moths in lanterns - floating
to the sky, a rose with thorns
and the whisper of a prayer.
Remember how these words
and poems can seem to say
nothing at all
and yet - they are my every feeling
that I’ve ever felt for you.”
He said -
“If you were a Dandelion
I’d blow you away.”
And he did every night.
There were times when my heart
felt like snowflakes; fragile, delicate and falling
in love. And all it would take was your voice
loud and clear on a cold winters day
to cause that avalanche in me.
I became a thief in the night the first time I saw him
because I kept stealing glances.
I became an artist after our first argument
because I made ice-sculptures
in his cold-shoulder.
I became a poet the day he kissed me
because he is something worth writing about.
She whispered tattered prayers
to the winter’s wind
and hoped they’d be carried far away.
She filled her darkness with feelings,
feelings and ghosts of the past and present
but never a future -
she was always saying “I can’t stop
remembering the day you were going…
going…”
The day you were gone she melted.
In the dry Autumn breezes she wrote love poems
in a language she had not yet learnt
to speak.
“My heart is like a pressed flower
how beautiful
that you took the time to save me
between inked words of love
and to look at my faded petals
whenever you get lonely in the winter.”
Sometimes, I feel fine
or nothing. There was once a box
that I kept under my bed, wooden
and antique. I loved it and kept it secret
although I always felt it was too important
to be used.
One night - I started putting my dreams
into that box.
Years later - when heartbreak came to visit
he buried that box
far away
and told me to leave my bed
and go search for my dreams.
Last night, I slept
next to you
and dreamt
of sandcastles on the moon
and paper-lanterns.
I was always told not to wear my heart
on my sleeve
but it looks so much better
in your hands.
