What if silence felt like stretching

‘What if silence felt like stretching’ is a lockdown poem about interconnectedness, first workshopped with the Covent Garden stanza group.

2021

What if silence felt like stretching
and sun lasted longer so mornings felt
warmer and holding hands didn’t still feel
a bit wrong. And what if eyes looked to smile
and people really did lean on each other, so
feet fell to stepping two by two by two.

What if street-singing caught on and
humming was shared, so Wild Horses
made its way from Kensal Rise (on the 452)
to a letterbox in Streatham (at 17:11)
when the last postman finished his shift —

or love happened in cafés and benches
weren’t built from sadness so sitting and
being was just the thing. Maybe

moments would turn to days of the week
of a life which bent around impossible corners,
long lines stretching beyond the purple of a far
gone horizon spotted by a man and his dog
as the sun set on Dover’s White Horses —

or skipping by road sides and talking on trains
and really watching leaves fall from yesterday’s rain
would happen while eating a sandwich. Maybe

looking round the bus on a Tuesday you’d see
the exact same smile on a whole different person,
two years and two days since it first appeared
as a girl in Green Park listened to a podcast
on Iggy Pop talking ‘meta-critical shit’.

A shell of mother ocean

‘A shell of mother ocean’ is a poem about the delicate connection between shells, femininity and motherhood — and their link to mother nature. First workshopped with the South Kensington stanza group.

2021

A shell of mother ocean
a hardened knuckle
or a baby’s fist
clenched on a ridge of white sands

a sunlit bead hung
loose on a pale woman’s chest
brushing the dip of her clavicle

a single note
in an empty bar
or the tail end of a swallow
watching carefully for dawn

a few days yet
it would be swept from its ridge
by one retreating wave

spreading its fingers
like gentle rays across a bed
its half-shells
split

palms to the sky
bawling out to sea

Tilting Nights

‘Tilting Nights’ was first published in The ISIS magazine here.

2019

Sometimes she would stand,
hands folded,
resting her gaze by the window.
She would wait until lights fell flat
for laughter on the streets
for bodies following faces
as words trail slowing feet.
She watched the tiny worlds between floating
hands as fingers parted ways
and how sometimes rain grazed
on moonlight, feeding
the glowing dawn.
But most nights she would sit,
face creased,
knotting her fists in silence.
She would comb the walls for colours,
watching thoughts flake and fall.

Rain

‘Rain’ was first published in The ISIS magazine here.

2018

Rain

She stepped on his foot at the crucial moment
while trying to force his favourite smile.
He did the same to be funny, but glanced
in a way that displaced the goodbye.

Their gazes played on the grey of the kerb
as a passerby hummed Let it Be.
Her eyes watched his as he looked for the rain
to blur what he’d started to see.

For a few minutes after, she rooted her feet
watching the rain on her laces. The roots
spread, so she snipped off the ends
and planted the pain in her pocket.

Over the road the girl in blue
was soaked with vicarious feeling.
The dangling frays of her bottomless
jeans dissolved as she lit up from seeing.

She lowered her gaze, recovered her face;
pretended third-wheeling was fine.
While observing the boy meander his
way, her bus for home left on time.

(a) conversation

‘(a) conversation’ was first published in The ISIS magazine here.

2018

(a) conversation

I laughed and laughed through a mouthful of beads,
teeth crunching plaster
tongue folding plastic
to powdery wisps of lettered strings.

Inside his eyes stood a tiny fist
wristless
swinging and knocking in reach —

“The night isn’t always shouting and crowded.”

Our brains rolled swollen
in slowing rivers of pebbled thought.
We looked on as thought chased word

and ums formed a pattern
of wincing jars, lining the pavement
boldly shining

I stood there waiting, awkward and upright

So in the end he returned my disappointing smile
and I walked back through splintered glass
scattering moonlight across grey.

He turned at the noise —
a jar
escaped
rolling towards the smile of the headlights

Leaving ours

‘Leaving ours’ is a poem about endings; leaving the shared mundane behind after the end of a relationship.

2024

He cobwebbed her feet into flippers,
laughed at the spray in their wake.
She waded the room, water rising,
their bathroom door swelling to break.

Knocking creams from crusted shelves —
a tearing like ripping off skin —
nothing was his so he reached for her mist:
a bottle called ‘SUPPLEMENT AIR’.

Sweeping the room she looked road-ward,
droplets thickened her knot of resolve.
To the sound of her exit he emptied the bottle;
placed its spray-top head first down his throat.

No one heard him choking, he was always alone.
Street-side a siren blared for someone else.
She’d swung the door to, the neighbour was out,
and the latch of their door had no catch.