Things I Want To Tell You

1) Reintroduction

*submitting*

Forgive me...I'm sorely out of practice.

2) Tea

I am
drinking green tea now,
cups and cups,
(reasons forthcoming).
And regular tea. B
makes it for me
when I go home -
his is better than mine,
he's had years more practice.
When away,
I drink from a cartoon cup
which M and M bought me
for my last birthday
(my first without you).
I sometimes
take a cup of camomile
before I go to sleep.
I find it makes
the nightmares stop.
It makes things less awkward
for me now
at interviews,
during office work,
when I'm no longer
that weird girl;
"no tea or
coffee for me!"
though I'm still refining
how I take it.
I could recall cups
drained by KC and me
when my hands almost shook,
my stomach
barely took it,
but maybe just
small sips for now.

Do you want
another coffee?

3. Sometimes Salmon

I'll tell you this
through story and the
you's not always you. Please
hear me. This is my only
way to speak:

Sometimes I am lying on my side
having put my book down because
it's too heavy, I don't feel like reading,
I need to stretch...insert your reason,
and I'm the Salmon of Knowledge again,
once so wise, now turning on the spit,
burning and popping, feeling my wisdom
which I hoarded so long
and won so hard in all
the tangled mess of underwater
and watching my children-eggs be eaten,
just waiting for some brat
to pop my blister. One so wise
can thrive on a perilous set.
I wish I could just
flick my tail, open my mouth maybe
as I wait for the pop
to tell me it's over
and my mind is gone
so I am gone. I'd flop,
flick, gasp, whatever
if this spit would just stop turning.
I don't even need freedom,
don't need to swim again,
but how can you take
what caused me so much pain
and what I sorely earned,
as you flake off my flesh?

4. Building Up

*submitting*

I think the first is my favourite so far. Especially

I would not want
for our first conversation in
thirteen months and some tattered weeks to reflect
anything more than some hot-chocolate-talk

and the cutting hair out of lethargy and frustration. Partly because I plan to do that with mine soon. And dye it blue. Sometimes the hair just has to go.

Two has a great concept, the tea vs coffee thing. I've tried to work that myself in a less than successfull Haiku. I think the form isn't working for you here anymore than mine worked for me but keep playing with this and don't lose the last two lines.

Three is a good analogy but I wonder if it's not a little too long? It feels like there's some repetition that could be cut out of it to make it more effective.

Four is my second favourite and almost a tie with the first. I love the tone of it and and the surprising turns that the words take, particularly

cynic, broken, I expected mass exodus,
not out of spite, you see, just out of life

Love those lines!

Thanks Kit.

5. Cassandra

I do not mean to be petty.
I wish I could have your grace,
but I must admit I am bitter.
Let me tell you
what has passed:

I did not choose my refuge. I
refuse to take the blame for
his own sun which scorched my feet,
and caused my loveless head to swim.
His cool temple was all I could see,
and still to reach it was a struggle.
Sleep and sun are close as kin -
on rock and marble
I felt safe.
I woke up to his brazen touch
and a deal:
my body
for words of the gods.
My mind filled and filled -
my flesh recoiled.
Flashes of me
rejected, wasted,
defiled,
I
had to say no.

He then saw fit
to tune my tongue.

I spoke just truth,
all called me Liar,
or worse, quite mad.


Never again
will I accept a gift;
call me rude,
petty
ungrateful,

I cannot now
place faith in speech.

6. Here

All my time here
has not been time for you
except in thoughts
I spin or suffer.

You cannot know
my cheery housemates
or my stiff window,
my castle view

or my comfy room.
You should
know them all by name,
be able to picture

every corner
of this new world...
without, I am disinclined
to recreate it.

And who deserves
sight more than you,
who all but handed me the key,
breeding all of the contentment

that can exist
above my grief?

7. Petals

*submitting*

Thanks to everyone who has been reading and liking these.

8. ) Easter

I have done this,
and, even if I hadn't,
how could I feel absence
when there is no outline here?

I
have written this before
with lamb and
eggs and love and loss
and now

I've eaten lamb again
but where
you have never been.

Books are
a pleasant refuge.
Friends
have no Easter here

and conversation
marks survival.

I can tick
one more day off.

9) Rewind

I obsess.
I run over and over
the same tired track in my
cobwebbed old mind and
imagine the conversation
where I would say
"Let me help you.
No,
this is not a request,
you won't
get rid of me
this is what I want
and I'm staying with you,
doing what you do
for you -
all else
can wait."
I imagine
digging my heels in,
you crying
or shouting,
me crying,
or shouting,
retreating
and taking
every proof of energy
you had,
every last chance to
show love,
out of my love
for you
because I knew better
and I have to decide
it was best to stay silent.

But it would help me
to hear this from you.

10. No

Breath caught
mess suffocating
and I've done my best,
God knows,
I've done my best
and I can't take any more
words like sweets round my mouth
can't steady my step
or ask the simple question like
want to eat with me,
when are you
heading back?
Can't even check my
spellings,too
fast no time and I'm
trying to race
through paralysis.

11. When I Can Be My New Sort Of Best

Sometimes I can know that I am best
when I make to do lists and fret
about all the work - academic and mundane -
that I have to do. When these things seem more
important than the loss that holds my hand I can
be free in stress and the same regular goals
and typical to do lists as my usual peers.

Tonight I completed my most mammoth work for
this time of the term, and I feel I have earned
an evening of rest, while too tired for it to pain me.
Planning my next adventures and attempting to
restrict self-compensation, I can listen to
the cars zipping past my door, see all
the soft country lights shining from my window,
and think that maybe I can be normal, boring, driven,
a bit of myself and a jigsaw of new self and

I know I'll sleep tonight, and dream of the baby
rabbits you sent me for when my work was done.

Bit behind, and going to be more behind because I'm going away for a few days...may well be the first year I don't finish...

12) Decisions I Can Not and Do Not Make

How can I make you
one solid statement,
give you only...
what?Ten words?
Ten words, to be yours
forever. How can I
choose the colour
you would have chosen
to blend in but be you?
How can I keep it
clean and clear
when I am not there
to keep it
clean and clear?
How can I
not be there to choose
in person,
to advise
through speech
rather than text?
(What? I shun
my favourite medium,
the words that are my
everything
the words I picked
up straight from you?)
This is not enough.
I need
a paragraph and palette
and maybe just a word of guidance.
I need to see with
my own eyes
what I will see
I hope and do not hope
or hope in my new mode of hope
with regularity
until I join.

13. Leaving
I've packed a bag and spun myself
a nice little mesh of technicoloured excitement
and well nurtured fear and
her twin apprehension.
I haven't slept enough
and will not do
because I already have too many things to do
as always, as always, because
I cannot do nothing.

I want to show you the pictures I will take
and tell you about my trip
and take your advice,
or at least hear it.
You could scold me and I'd hear it.
Scream and I'd hear it.
Spew hate and bile you could never have bred
and I would hear it and take it and cherish it because
my suitcase is full
of things you never saw
-suitcase new too, because
time is mine, and
I look like a scruff without you
if I don't pay attention.

I'm leaving tomorrow
when you will leave with me.

14) Phil Lynott and Me

*submitting*

15. Nail File/Hands

*submitting*

16. Nothing More (Watch Me)

Watch me as I venture out,
no jungle, explorer, no
cartologist, astrologist, astronomist,
palaeontologist -
searching for nothing in the wider scheme
because I know enough of the world's secrets
and what I fail to know
I fume at until I have used every point
of energy in my landscape,
less desert now, less marshland.
Watch me step with a little more certainty
but old apprehension,
or new, as of fourteen months.
Watch me approach and withdraw,
gear myself up, turn back, then
go try again, watch me listen
and learn and say
I am here, trying
to get what I want
and you will take nothing more from me.