To be read after https://hellopoetry.com/poem/4889159/it-broke/

It’s fixed, it’s fixed, the teapot clicked,
And poured with pride upon the tray.
The saucer grinned, the cup was pinned
With golden glue in fine array.
The sugar bowl, now feeling whole,
Did curtsy with a candied cheer.
The spoon held hands with pots and pans,
And whispered, “Peace is finally here.”

The clock chimed one, the mouse had fun,
With cheddar dreams and marmalade.
The cat purred loud, the dog stood proud,
In matching hats they’d tailor-made.
The table bowed, the cookbook vowed
To never leap again in haste.
The chair sat still, the broom with skill
Swept stories into tidy space.

The window gleamed, the curtains dreamed
Of ballrooms filled with swirling light.
The dust took flight, a grand goodnight,
And vanished in the morning bright.
The lamp stood tall, the shadows all
Agreed to dance in softer tones.
The rug held tight, the floor felt right,
With polished pride in every bone.

The doorbell chimed, the toaster rhymed
A sonnet sweet of jam and bread.
The fridge kept cool, the blender’s spool
Spun lullabies to rest your head.
The house exhaled, the hinges hailed
A harmony of gentle grace.
The walls embraced, the chimney laced
Its bricks with warmth and sweet embrace.

It’s fixed, it’s fixed, the teapot clicked,
In a world where mending sings.
And in the hush, the gentle rush
Of joy restored begins to ring.

(aka Axpinet, Diagemet, Glucient, Glucophage, Metabet)

Where glucose charts its peaks and slides,
Metformin steadies from inside.
Not flashy, not loud, no trumpet or drum,
Just quiet resolve in a bloodstream hum.

Axpinet whispers through morning routines,
Diagemet glides past pastry dreams.
Glucient steadies the body's sway,
While Glucophage clears the fog away.

Metabet, too, with its gentle might,
Turns glucose tides from storm to light.
No cure, no crown, no magic spell.
Just a partner where resilience dwells.

It doesn’t boast, it doesn’t bend,
But walks beside us like a friend.
In rituals of breath and bite,
It helps us dance with blood’s delight.

So here’s to the pill with many names,
That plays no tricks, but steadies games.
A quiet hero in the health parade.
Metformin, in all the forms it's made.

The day was long and greedily waited,
in near unspoken secret - like a thing
delightfully and enchantingly wicked.

We are reunited - simpatico - my love, lover and I.
We ravish each other and lavish each other
with flattery, endearments and entire pleasure.

We live sweet centuries in those tight hours.

Happiness changes the tenor of things.
Rains of feeling combine in torrents,
like the tinkling notes of a harp make symphony.

Our minutest nerves are instruments of joy.

Mornings start with exquisite excitement and
the dense reel and stagger of intoxication -
because we’re drunk with the fullness of life.

Leaves on trees called chestnut, linden and hazel, stir
gently in the breeze - those faint shoos and rustles, times
nature’s fractal design - blare, in effect, like terrific trumpets.

At night, as we walk together under cooling summer skies,
the stars in the far-flung firmaments, seem to huddle together
and whisper, like sisters, of life and the mysteries of earthy love.

We are the dust of those constellations - are we but spies?
.
.
Songs for this:
Thank You My Angel by Over the Rhine
Perfect Day by Povo
Goodbye Sunday by Everything But the Girl

Infidelity (noun) \ ˌin-fə-ˈdel-ət-ē \
Betrayal of a vow. Or whispered otherwise, the first time Coyote tasted the salt of my wrist, when lightning seemed to have waited to arrive. Grandmother would call it shadow-marriage, the reminder that paper rings and courthouse oaths cannot bind the spirit. It flowers soft and fragrant, sweet as mesquite after rain.

Myth (noun) \ ˈmith \
A traditional story, especially one natural or social phenomena. Or in another tongue, to be called Inanna while pulling my hair back, as if the goddess herself had crawled from shadow to breathe on his neck. I laugh because I’m no goddess- just a woman with cracked nails and unpaid bills. Still, myth enters flesh like fever, and we burn until the walls drip with story.

Body (noun) \ ˈbä-dē \
The physical vessel. Or in broken voice, the altar on which every promise is tested. My body knows what paper cannot: the way desire bruises, the way grief leaves its thumbprint. Flesh remembers long after the mind has lied itself clean.

Eros (noun) \ ˈer-ˌäs \
Passionate love. Or named differently, a hunger that follows, like a stray through desert parking lots, its tongue bright with need. Eros offers scraps, sometimes nothing, and still I remain, hollow with wanting, certain one day I will eat from his palm. He is no child, he comes like a jackal-god- wild, luminous, not easily bound.

Pulchritude (noun) \ ˈpəl-krə-ˌtüd \
Beauty. Or carried on another breath, the ache. I see him sketching a body not mine, tracing hips that could belong to any girl at the bus stop. I know beauty is a weapon sharpened against me. Still, in his eyes I find fragments- cheekbones my father gave me, hair dark as my mother’s shame- briefly holy, before the mirror cuts again.

Unravel (verb) \ ˌən-ˈra-vəl \
To come undone. Or in another telling, the way every thread between us shivers like a web in prairie wind- fragile, trembling, already near to breaking. Spider Grandmother whispers that love weaves and unweaves in the same breath. The art lies in knowing when to let the strands snap, and when to hold fast, even as your hands begin to bleed.

How can we learn to be together without losing ourselves?
How can we avoid burning up in the heat of assurances
And fading away in the cold of a rainy autumn?
How can we keep our feelings from freezing like glassy ice,
Finding ourselves eagerly waiting for the spring thaw?

We build ourselves piece by piece,
Gathering dried leaves.
No longer you, no longer me,
No longer even us —
Only these branches that want so much
To come alive in late spring,

Longing for the soft kisses of warm wind,
Without violent storms that leave behind
Torn promises of a peaceful future
And thunderous, harsh words that burn into ash
Shaping a bleeding groove from within.

There will be no sweet stability,
Only these pieces of lightly blue,
When, after a long, lonely night
We open our arms shyly, thinking yes —
Even if only for a minute,
Endlessly repeated.

They say the body weeps in salt
when the soul cannot speak.
And so it was
tears fell,
not just from eyes
but from every seam
that once held me together.

She had been the thread.
Forty years of quiet stitching,
laughter tucked into hems,
arguments patched with time,
a life quilted in shared breath.
Then came the rip.
Not sudden,
but final.
Joy, her name,
and the irony of it
cut deeper than the silence she left behind.

I did not cry at first. I tore.
The world split,
in calendars, in cupboards,
in the way the bed
no longer made sense.
Grief was not a visitor.
It was a blade.
And I, a fabric unravelling.

Tears came later.
Not as weakness,
but as water finding its way
through the fault lines.
They were not just drops.
They were declarations:

“I am broken.”

“I am still here.”

“I remember.”

Each tear a stitch,
not to mend the rip,
but to honour it.
To trace its edges
with trembling fingers
and say –
this is where love lived.
This is where it tore me open.
This is where healing begins.

I will take you to the slate.
Blaenau Ffestiniog,
Tanygrisiau,
Cwm Orthin lost and gone.
It lays all around, littered
sliding, sparkling with rain.

grey and ugly they say
but have they sat a while,
storage heaters and thrones,
they are, the slates
perfumed moss and earth.

we will wander up the rise
where mothers push the buggies,
and boys off road from Croesor
mud and slate chips, scattering
splattering.

we may pass the lake
where the sheep bathe
and we shall bathe too
pooled in water
slated, lilied, green

i shall walk you
to the fences, slate fences,
drawn with names
from the past, graffiti
men’s names, welsh names,
proud.

we shall sit by the chapel
listening for the voices
murmuring, singing
welsh voices,
and we will join in the song
with our hearts

let us visit the old homes,
scattered stone, and windows blind,
wind hunting hair to lift,
doors to rattle,
all gone, all gone
down to the valley,
and away.

time stands still
and i will watch you.
take photographs