It's a feeling that I can never
put my finger on,
to seize its power with a name.
It's that slight rhythmic delay
in conversations on the phone,
the footfall of our voices
constantly just out of step.
Moments that are almost inconsequential,
but I keep picking at them
in my mind
like the loose skin of a hangnail.
Thumbing at the thoughts
in a way you tell yourself is harmless.
Just a bit more...
Only in an instant, it's all irrevocably undone.
It's that bitter stone of doubt in your chest
when there's a full stop instead of an "x".
You can't help circling back
to that seed planted in your mind
earlier than you can ever remember,
that it's you - fundamentally,
objectively, intrinsically.
Against your own better judgement,
it's so easy to sink into the ruminations
of inadequacy and psychological self-flagellation.
How many more times must you feel this way?
It's so familiar that you can almost detach.
That every time you feel that sparkle of
human connection, of being wanted for a moment,
it's already waiting for you.
You already know it's inevitable.

Lying, exposed,
I've made myself
A sacrificial lamb
On the altar of
The unmade bed.
Time and again
I offer myself
To a merciless, wrathful
God, a wolf, a serpent
A blasphemous act
Against my unclaimed heart.
These are no Gods
Towering over me,
Only vultures picking me
To scraps.

I see two paths,
two lives for myself -
with him I am cast into
an ocean of untamed feeling,
lost to reason,
and floating off into an unseeable future.
With the other, I am held fast,
held close by his love
and burrowed deep into the earth;
an old tree that twists faithfully
growing strong and aging gently
across the planes of a lifetime.
How am I to love -
who am I to be, to choose,
to sink into.
I feel the pull of his tumultuous waves
and the roots that simultaneously
bind me to the earthly warmth
of another kind of man.

I lay my hands over the rot
concealed within my belly
and imagine instead
I am ripe with a husband's love,
feeling for the beating warmth
of a life beginning inside
my desolate womb.
I await constantly
the trial of my womanly worth;
this man may be my judge.

©Isobel G.     15.02.2022

The way your acoustic fingers
drum over my skin;
I'm slick with your rhythm.
My heart beats a steady chord
in harmony with your sway,
our hips like reeds moving
swiftly with the wind
to the penultimate crescendo.

It's so easy to romanticize,
slipping on that cloak
of self-loathing;
Reminiscing on those failed dalliance days.
You make me think of what might be
If I could have been someone else,
making me lonely for a rewind
back to before my trajectory slid.

I'm just one of those
tortured people
who leaves their mind on
like a light.

How many people have I known;
taking them into me,
speaking that universal, ancient language
of intimate bodies.
All the beds I've slept in,
all the hands that have felt me move
as I dance the age old dance.