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3.2k · Mar 2015
Testimony of a Pianist
Kirsty Mar 2015
A child, she sits at the piano,
exploring with modest fingers,
the anxious keys.
One day she'll play in church
but for now she'll play in the sea
and stick her tongue out in the rain.

A child watches the modest rain
kiss the window beside her piano.
An anxious sea
stirs in her fingers.
She falls asleep in church
and plays in the wrong key.

"Practice makes perfect, precision is key."
A child walks home in the rain,
and passes the church.
Her teacher has an old piano
that leaves dust on her fingers.
She washes them in the sea.

A girl is drowning in the sea
bare; like a single ivory key
He plays her with his fingers.
She loves him like the rain.
Her mother sold her piano,
when she stopped singing in church.

"I feel like an empty church;
a haunted sea;
a dusty piano
with no keys."
she says softly, to the rain
when he lets go of her fingers.

Reaching out these fingers
in an abandoned church,
the echoing rain
washes the roof in a sea
of chiming keys,
from an old piano.

A girl dips her fingers into the sea,
singing church hymns, out of key.
God plays the rain like a piano.
2.0k · Feb 2015
COPENHAGEN
Kirsty Feb 2015
youcouldhearourflesh                                 rip
                                                                ­                apart.

(as though it had ever beentogether
as though we were ever
                                                            ­             more
than car crashes
than house fires.

I held onto your address, you know
when you held on to my hand;
when you held up the traffic;
when you                                                        left
 ­                                                                 ­                  me
and drank
                                                           ­     
                                                           ­               Copenhagen
through a paper straw.


The whetted splendour of it all:
I wonder if the drowned ever
noticed
how the sun kisses                                     The Sea?
                                                            ­                                
down
                           ­                                  
                              ­                      we
                                        ­                                                  
sank.

Did your feet touch the bottom or
did you                                                              ­ swim
to the sound of -

to the sound of br ea k ing vi oli  n s ?
I snapped each string
like I was                                         pulling teeth.


Your address  folded into
                                                         wav­es,
your house burned to
                                                         dust,


the kind god                     keepssafe -
“one last
                                                        keep sake”
in his pockets.



If I tightened my hands,
doyouthinkicouldchokeonthis
                              ­                                      cable?
Wouldthatstop                              time or
your voice or
my voice;                                       the voicemails;
the answer machine that
no one                                            ever
                                                                ­  answered?


My blueeyed boy was born in              goodbyes
he sleeps in seas                        
                                    ­                            irrevocable:
and The Tide washes him home to me
                                                              ­  every day.)

it sounded like                             fingers
tangled in                                             phone wire
and br ok e nv io l in  s.
1.4k · Sep 2015
Shhh
Kirsty Sep 2015
Why are we so quiet?
I will tattoo that question onto the tip of my tongue in the hope that it will smudge onto yours.
Why  -  are we  -  so quiet    ?

"Shhh,"
he tells me in a 3am bus stop
"Loud ain't sittin' right in my ribs."

He's got this idea in his head that god can't save his soul
that god is just a concept
that god can only be found in the crease of a bible spine but

OH,  MY GOD
I LOVE THAT BOY.

It's like when you lean on a piece of wet newspaper and the text imprints on your skin except,
there are no words -
just memories
and they are inked on the inside of my veins like

remember the other week when you were sleeping in my bed and the sun peeked through my curtains and made your eyes flutter?

That's the front page headline.
That's why I believe in absolute perfection
that's how I know beauty isn't just a concept
because I found god in the crease of your spine that morning.

I want every Sunday to feel that holy.

You are a cathedral pointing your spire to the sky saying
"KIRSTY, WHAT CONSTELLATION IS THAT?"
and my eyes search for
ursamajorursaminororionsiriussagittariuspisces-
I CAN'T FIND ANY OF THEM.
How can I align the stars when I have drawn more beautiful alignments
between the freckles on your skin
?

I kept telling you to be quiet until I pulled up your shirt and read the first page of your ribs:

IN THE BEGINNING,
GOD CREATED NOISE.
Kirsty Jun 2015
YOU NEVER WANTED TO BE A GARDENER
I can feel the weeds poking
through the mulch in my stomach.
stop plucking them out-
they just grow back louder.
yknow, for a gardener,
you spent a lot of time
in mortuaries.
I just didn't realise I had one
in my chest                                  
I didnt realise you'd notice        
didnt realise you'd try to pull
the weeds out of that too,
and plant daisies in the beds
instead.
Did you know daisies are weeds?
yknow, for a gardener,
you were never very good.
But I still let you into my house
to water my arteries.
every single time we kissed
I left with a mouth full of flowers;
you left with a mouth full of mud.
It's not your fault you couldn't
keep up with the gardening.
you tried everything to get rid
of those *******.
Didn't your mother ever tell you
not to kiss a girl who tastes like
weedkiller?
They tell me you gave up gardening -
But I know you still keep a daisy
pressed in your bible.
6am sleepless night poetry and you're on the tip of my tongue.
1.2k · Jan 2016
the seas of your eyes
Kirsty Jan 2016
If I take a
                 d
                   i
                    p
in the seas
of your
eyes
whatever will happen
if I
     s
      i
      n
       k
         ?

will I tumble head
first
to a watery demise
in a submerged smoke
of oceanic ink

or what happens if I
s e e p
through the cracks in our
flaws - sorry
*floors
?
will my reckless f
                             a
                            l
                             l
be cut
short

or will I
           sink
&        sink
&        sink
some more;

drifting through sub-marine thought?
970 · Feb 2015
birthmarks
Kirsty Feb 2015
we were born with death written on our arms.
you
wear it like a tattoo;
i wear it like a barcode that
god
stuck on the ******.
cashier yells
                         “NEXT PLEASE”
& you try to get laser treatment.

smoking in graveyards the clouds sang.
we
fell in slow pieces.
nobody will recognise the tune.
god
has left us a sign,
sign reads:
                  GONE FISHIN’
i hold you crying in his hallway.






you started wearing death on your sleeve.
i
need a new skin;
you need to get a better shirt.
god
is not a dressmaker
but instead
                       a lover -
unbuttoning the words on my headstone.
818 · Oct 2016
interchangeable.
Kirsty Oct 2016
oh, you are the seasons;
shifting beauty
in a single
scene.
you are a heartbeat
whose rhythm holds
the north sea
in pulsing hands.
you move in clock ticks and
wave crash,
and everything else.
let me move through your in-betweens.

oh, you contain star fields
my love,
with such delicate
incandescence.
bury me in your
baby glow and
trembling voice
while we kiss to
the midnight saxophone song -
I hear no music
only muffled silence
on record players.
we are old movies with no words.

and oh, you are the leaves
of autumn, dear.
so breathtaking yet
slight.
let me make my bed
in your arms
full of flowers and little birds
or the old books
you've never read.
we will make love until
heaven fizzles out;
beginning again every day
in seasons.
For my love
Kirsty May 2015
You are so summer.
You are baskets of wild flowers
and dew drops on grass leaves.
The scent of peppermint carried steady
on a soft wind -             that's  you.
Stranded in the palm of your hand:
a glass shipwreck -  I am stuck
like tired eyes on candleflames.
You are so late nights; early mornings,
pastel shades of rising skies.
Paint me lilacs and baby blues.
Picture me in the pink of spring
under satin dresses; silk songbirds
singing breezes, sewing seeds.
Wrap me up in cold arms while
I wrap you in the warmth of dusk.
You make the sunset blush
every time you step out of your car.
I watch you wipe the dust off the horizon
in a single brushstroke,
I am in love with  the view.
My veins are filled with sunshine
that spills from the stereo.

You can't take me home
if I make a bed in your fingerprints.
481 · Jul 2017
altid.
Kirsty Jul 2017
My old-time heartache
lives in
long-ago train stations
lives in
the rafters; fluttering
like an injured dove.

Isn't it kinder to just break
its neck.

— The End —