perhaps this is how a heart unravels;
          like a pearl embedded within a ball of string
while you slowly unravel each layer
          until the inside of your heart is undone
only to be remade again—
          ***** laundry, they used to call it;
when something you once loved became shameful,
          like the very first time the colour red became a crime
no longer a colour of love and passion
          but a reminder of the way roses can bite
and how from then on every memory and moment was
          clouded by that anger, that desire
to remake something completely-
          yet it’s all reminiscent of the time
I faced everything, peeled pushed dug everything up
          all the ugly roots the capillaries
until my heart was revealed, like a scarred jewel
          waiting to be understood;
an old woman once told me that when
          bad things occur it means that something
brilliant will soon accompany it;
          that just like that, the moon can unwind itself
until it shows both the dark and
          the light at once—
for just like the heart
           it’s remade itself time
after time
           after time.

Oh, Ophelia,
sweet cherub
face, bathed
in moonlight,
doe eyes filled
                with woe:

You are a figure
of my affliction,
falling softly at
midnight, a
delicate dis-
position, fragile
                as soft snow,

a garden you
invite me to,
opulent trees of
treason, you
are the siren’s
call at dusk,
pulling me away
from the

                garden
                of
                eden.

Spell your name,

I want to see each letter,

as they brush against the paper

a spell cast in ink,

you’ve enchanted me so

that I savour even that magic.

I: WITCHLIGHT


That vividness—
     witch light in pearl eyes;
     I long to raise my ear to you
     for you gleam like a shell,
     your hollowness holding
     a delicate song, billowing
     out like a spell of sand.