I love you more
(You'd always reply)

Eventually
You began to say it first.
To start
With a declaration
That you loved me most
Already.
There was never any room
For me to love you
More
Or less
Than you wanted.
Usually
I didn't mind it.
Because I did love you.

Eventually
We fought
For a day
Two days
And then
Seven days
Of silence.

And I realized
I could go on living
Without you
And I heard
In the beautiful silence
Just how much
I had been listening
To you before.

(too much.)

I should have longed for you
And I did
But only
When I was lonely
Low
When I questioned myself

When we spoke again
You told me
With tears in your eyes
And a shake in your voice
That you wanted to part ways.

You cried
On the screen

I cried
Off the screen

Afterwards
When you could not
Change your mind
Out of guilt
And blame me for it
Later.

The miles stretched between us
Like a rubber band
In the hands of someone
I didn't trust anymore

I will never forget it.

There is something so final

About wishing all the best
To a best friend
You will likely never see again.

In the end
It wasn't a question of loving most.
I would have taken a bullet
If it meant you didn't have to.
In the end
I did.

let the race
go on and
be won and
be lost
inevitable
fast
without me


I will be
playing
on the side
of the road
with the daisies
and the crickets
and the wild-growing
fennel
​

a fleeting whoosh
to the rushing
passerby
and they a whoosh
to me

​
as clouds
hang humid
and yearn to
speckle their
summer mist
a-top puffs of
breeze and
rosy cheeks
and
saplings

​
I will be
spending my
sunshine day
with face
upturned and
hair a-mess
and
eyes not
looking where
they're going


© 2017 Adelaide Heathfield

An object in motion
Will remain in motion
And today I am glad
Because even hurtling
Through space and time
At dizzying speeds
Through blinding oceans
Of stars and rings of planets
And meteors and comets
(I always seem to dodge
Last second)
Even then
I know that
If I keep
Moving
Forward
I will not
buckle,
        crumble,
                 collapse.

I am fascinated by the fire
I could sit and watch its dance
Sit and listen
To the snap-crackle song of it
For hours

Something in it calls to me
In the dark places of my heart
Maybe that is why I stay
So far away

Because if I let it
It will take hold of my hand
Crawl its fingers up my arm
And lodge its heat in my soul

Like the sliver of ice
And the poisoned kiss
That made Kai forget
His love
His home
His name
I may forget
That I am not fire too

If I let it
It will set me ablaze
And I will not stop
Until coals and ashes
Stain my feet
And the whole world burns
Around me

breathing the turquoise like lavender,
and sipping the blue summer.
bitter cold clouds glide and morph lava lather,
floating whispers cut by sweet pineapple sunshine.

soon, a moment, now
rhythms ripple the sky like skipping stones
we jump the music like puddles
splashing in the frequencies.

cobalt bass rumbles the earth hungry,
pumps the air with springing spirals
pushing and pulling the senses,
reverberating through cells.

heavy mud humming, stomping
echoes through our atoms dizzy;
balancing tuned body to innate electricity
the fizz of circulating lemonade energy.

we jump the music like puddles
splashing in the frequencies.

strawberry melodies spilling ribbons,
dolphin leaps of the spaces inbetween beats,
lines of colours overlapping,
colliding, mixing, merging, blending
in with the forest.

washing over souls the life fire sparkles
like a clear water cleansing harmonies,
sound waves crashing against inertia.
phosphorescent glow of re-charged love
for the world, for being, animation

flowing through burnt smoky ashes
of sapphire charcoal skies;
dimmed radiation of chlorophyll emerald days.
the smell of salt, dry bark, fluffy carbon mists,
trembling lights softening the eyes'
grip on outlines, loosening lies.

watching the cycles of patterns
tumbling colours through a mill rotating,
and the silence of listening
when the music comes to an end.

Cloudy today
The weatherman would say
Of me
Of my mind
Clouded haze
Foggy thoughts
Like wading through the humid day
When
It’s supposed to rain
From all accounts
But the clouds
Are huffy
And say
They’ll take the 12%
Chance of a light breeze from the nothwest
Chance of seeing someone you like
Chance of meatballs
For dinner
(for eight hundred, Alex)

It might clear up tomorrow
He’d continue,
Scratching an itch on his neck
Smiling for the cameras
Because there are people watching
Always watching
And they rely
On the weatherman
To predict
To announce
To call

With accuracy

It might
He says again, looking less certain
With every word
It might

It might be sunny, with bright
Wisps of white
Glossing across the cerulean sky
Wouldn’t that be nice?
And a warm
Breeze
And
Who knows?
Really
After all
There must be showers
Before the roses bloom
After all
He repeats
Looking to the left
Stage right
Where the rain
Is not planning to fall
Not yet
Not today
Not yet

And the whole
The whole of it
Whole comedic
Scene is trapped
In limbo
(like the space
Before a bathroom
Where there is no bathroom
Sink
Mirror
Too sheltered to loiter
Too exposed to cry
Which serves no purpose
In the grand scheme)
In my mind

But that’s all there is sometimes
Cloud
Haze
Fog
With the promise
Of sunshine
Tomorrow

(Or just
tomorrow)

The grass is dead
Frozen solid
It is hard and brittle like shale
Cracking beneath my feet
Lumps and dips and valleys
petrified under me
I am alive
But even my breath turns granite grey
Heavy in the marble air
And I think
Maybe
The whole world
By unanimous decision
Is stone today
And I overslept
Rushing
Missed the memo
Cosmic sticky note
etched in the corner of my eye
A Reminder
That Today
We are Collectively Asleep
But the Words bubble up inside of me
big words
With the space of galaxies between them
Like continents
Each word
is
An island
I'm tapped into the spring of the universe
Drawing from the wealth
of our million words unsaid
Stone?
Stone is dead
I hear
I see
I breathe
I feel
I am
too much to be stone
So on I walk
The only living thing in a mausoleum
With a burning heart
To stave off the welcoming void