After You're Gone - first published in Under the Radar Magazine

AFTER YOU’RE GONE

Your shirt hanging out to dry gesticulates

in the wind, waving its empty arms like wings.

Inside I’ve laid out olives oatcakes hummus

things I love that you will not eat, no cheese

no bread, no meat. Instead of our voices

there is only the hush of my feet on wooden

floorboards, a book to read, a cup of tea

the birds flapping in the tree above your shirt

now dancing loosely in the breeze.

I still haven’t hung the curtains

all those barbed hooks too daunting to approach.

Soon bats will come like tiny ghosts flying

in the face of early night so fast I’ll think I see right

through them to the dark, the stars.

The Bruising Stones - from 'How Do the Parakeets Stay Green?'

Published in my collection ‘How Do the Parakeets Stay Green?’ Indigo Dreams Publishing Limited

THE BRUISING STONES

Then I was a fish, sliding

my marbled body over 

the bruising stones

blue limbed pale and 

misted as Scottish mornings.

 

Later we sat a circle, fire

smoked our salmon skin

an adventure away from walls

rules, all things that

bewildered us.

Hot chocolate comfort wrapped 

in my numb fingers, thick and

semi-sweet as darkness. 

Your faces lit fire-glow 

between shadows.

 

You have scattered since

like feathered dandelion tops

migrating birds, those flocks

of geese we used to watch 

leaving each year.

 

I am living as a human now

fully grown, carving 

my life in stone buildings

searching for the ways

the words to stay in touch

with us when we were fishes.