I buried a bird at sunset
To teach its elder’s some respect
As bundles of familiar feathers swooped
singing scornful songs of incomplete youth
I knew where they’d been at time of death.


I denied the cat the flightless fallen body
Siblings guarding silently as I tore up flower beds
With a piece of broken tile and old weeds left in a pile
Solemn is the hand that carves the final nest.


I buried them with nothing more than three sprigs of lavender,
& fluffy baby feathers splattered with dirt
I wished only empty bellied, good-hearted scavengers
Would carry them to a better nurturing earth.


Tucked into blankets of leaves and mud
I wondered what god they feared, if any
Tying twisted twigs together with reeds & blood
a wonky cross to tell the worms they’re ready.


Loud is the crying fowl that pushed the flightless
Like pitted berries bulging through drooling chins
A clumsy stork is unburdened by lightness,
like the absence of young wings in the wind.


I hope when I am weak in breath & bone
With no children nor chirping to mourn my vessel empty
Someone might lay me down with three sprigs of lavender & a stone

And wonder what god I feared, if any.

Am I supposed to feel like sunrise,
Or smell of freshly cut grass?
Am I supposed smile with my teeth
like white doves in unlocked cages?
Is this supposed to give me hope
Like a baby’s first breath?
And emptying the vacuum?

All I feel is ugly and desperate  
Like a mushroom
sprouting from cow ****
Or the fitted sheet
I never put on my bed

I fear if I go back to the beginning

I won’t ever be  
Homemade Apple crumble
Lipstick stained skin
Or my favourite Jane Austen book
Not ever again

Fruitless, malnourished
I rot within myself
I give you every seed, every petal
I wish I had known
You’d grow bored of gardening
You drown
I dry up
Until we both cry over soiled roots
Desperate hands scraping,
Squeezing fallen leaves
Until they’re limp with indifference

I grow out my fingernails,
Into featureless feminine talons
In a vain prolonged pursuit of
Tearing, shredding, divorcing
Their mundane endeavour for life
Mocking me with their empty perseverance

I terminate their audacity with entrapment
Between tarnished tile teeth
Every ribbon departed
Easing my plump pulsing contempt

Oh, sweet relief,
I disfigure their arrogant survival
Ragged pieces of something neither flesh or bone
Catching upon smooth skin and loose threads
Just as I am.

I fear I am an oyster

stuck to the underside of a rock's bloated belly
festering or ripening, I'm scarce to know

Alien is the dirt between my fingernails
fathomless to me is the air upon my plastic skin
this water upon my lips feels like such synthetic whispers
what ecstasy I find in empty flavoured gin

I saw a predator in the bathroom mirror
or perhaps it was just confident prey