By Rhiannon Haseltine
the wildflowers sulking in your windowsill vase
are missing the moors,
at least, that’s what they whisper.
with their drooping stems
and curling lilac petals
with this pervasive scent of gloom,
and of wishes somehow, birthday candles
snuffed out, and a faint don’t do this
don’t do this to me. 3am and my legs in the dark
glowing like pallor mortis.
my naked feet stepping over the grout
grey between the kitchen tiles,
my footsteps soft
like the sound of drowning
of mud landing heavy
on a wet wool blanket.
i scrawl scraps of my secrets
on scraps of old paper, free them through the window
not like bugs but like homing pigeons.
did you know i’ve been stealing again?
heavy iron padlocks
and keys from hardware stores,
and i will keep them til they rust.
my soul unravels in riddles.
notes in your pockets. the way i can’t step
on the pink lathraea flowers
woven in the hallway carpet.
and how i stopped sleeping
because that’s when this limbo flows molten
and these spiralling horns
have finally burst through my skull
and despite all the wreckage
and the rubble
and the towers of smoke and flame
i know you are nowhere
and i know
and i’ll never be able to forget
that’s it’s all my fault again
(that i did this. i did this. i did this.)
but every morning you’re somehow still there
in the soft streaming sunlight,
kissing the spots on my scalp
where my pedicles should be.
right beside me
and so real
i just wonder what it would take
for me to believe it.