Do you remember when your voice held my name
not at ransom but aloft,
and it lulled me to sleep to hear those syllables
cocooned in comfort.

You blew back into your hometown this week
trying to hang the language of your new life in the doorways
I've repainted
on the furniture I've shifted
and in the corners of my mind
now reserved for little plants bravely growing in watery sunlight,

they're replacing your absence,
and the taste of your name on my tongue.

Sphynx-like they move,
lions in the dark,
where they watch her
through hungy coals set in gaunt faces,
licking their chops for her bones.

But she is a lion tamer,
with no more bones to spare the unfed worries yowling in her peripheral,
and a tinder spark now lives where the dark once crept
to keep their hunger at bay.

Take your time they said,
to learn but
don't take your time to work.

I'll take back my time I think,
and take time to explore the earth.

Do you feel the pull away?
The crashing tides receding,
to run as tender rivulets along the beach
as if to say an inter-tidal goodbye to the shores

Back to the ocean
the water will run  my love,
a reminder of the times
the sea intermixed with sureness and the stones
only your shorelines could offer
a pelagic mind adrift.

What is it like
to wear feelings like garments,
so boldly projecting the colours
in your mind
with no fear of respite

to wear your heart on your sleeves
like cotton,
instead of a millstone round your neck.

My new lover is an old ghost,
who picked apart armour
left bereft by rust and rain,
to sit inside my ribcage
once more throwing pebbles at my heart

I did not welcome them
to my table
or to my bed
but this ghost holds me close inside my bones,
and each morning,
I entertain a phantom
that clamours to be fed.

here, look-
you're tripping over
your feet and lost love
to show me,

so hastily taped and mended,
by your eagerness and earnest words,
the fragile parts of me
it took so long to build for you.

it was all for you,
the tiny castles
I spun from glass and love,
monuments to small braveries,
a tribute to your residence in my bones

tripping over my feet
to show you
I was strong
and that I loved you