The world under the paving slabs may seem a world away but on my way to church, I saw a half completed excavation and I imagined the unearthing of some past settlement, maybe the discovery of a long buried society holding centuries of secrets of living with more dependence on the earth and less addiction to man crafted pleasures which would die the day we lost power.

I blinked and found myself shovel in hand, ankle deep in dirt and feverishly sinking the curved blade into the yellow and black clay, desperate to find a remnant of simpler times when a living was within most men's grasp at the cost of blisters and back strain, when digging was manual labour and a honest days work was done with at the end of the day and the unfinished work was left for the morning and not taken anywhere near home, where there was something near a worklife balance and neighbours were family and family were neighbours for better or for worse and, more often than not, worse, where budgets were tightened and a new hole was punched into your belt, with your hand me downs held to be your right not your punishment and if you didn't finish your plate you must be ailing or maybe angling for a day off school, where you queued for warm milk or for the tuck shop at playtime if you had thruppence to share with your sister before you ran a game of bulldog or kiss chase depending on your anxiety level, quick before the bell and queue again to sit in your allocated place based on your end of year exam result which always resulted in relegation to the back row bad influencer and never next to the girl who's cheek you had just missed, but you see her face reflected in the TV that got wheeled in for BBC Schools while the old guy dared you to show any suggestion of individual thought and secretly hoped you gave him cause to wield his size 14 plimsoll.

So I turn the edge of the shovel and refill the hole, I re intur what was good and buried, I intern the past where it belongs, returning to ground level where my spirit bubble bobbles for a moment while I find my balance knowing this is where I am what I've become - with my past giving me foundation not non-negotiable identification, and a reason to build not to burrow.

And so I turn round the corner into tomorrow to find what's next, acknowledging my debts and grateful for all that made me me - no regrets.

This song is written on my heart.
Each note hangs in the air before turning to smoke
and we inhale it here in your little bed,
breathe it in as we have most nights since you were born.

Not so long ago
I was someone else
Who was not your mother.
You don’t know her,
the Me who spent months of her young life poring over the sheet music.
I still have it, teenage pencil scratch covering the entire first movement.
“Sticky top notes” and “written when he was going deaf!” and rows of chord forms,
glyphs,
a cipher.

(Did you know:
Beethoven was dead when Ludwig Rellstab compared the famous first movement of his Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor to moonlight shining on a lake?
The sonata previously entitled “Quasi una fantasia.” Almost a fantasy.
The sonata written in blood from a broken body and a broken heart.
Poor dead Beethoven. Our art is truly not our own).

It strikes me odd
that a song such as this one
has become what it has become.
Radiance in despair, I suppose,
is universal in its bright raw frankness.
We stare. It stares back.

Tonight, blessedly,
that chasm of grief alive still and forever in the delicate weaving vines of plaintive melody stemming darkly from it
is far from your door.
Your breaths are slow and even now.
The song closes,
as it always does,
trying and failing to claw out of the darkness.

But you don’t know that.

Tonight it’s just a beautiful song.
And I am no one else
but your mother.

I no longer see
The purpose of your role
When you betrayed us,
And others altogether
As if we’re lowly like
Maggots in the eyes
Of common men.

You’re no Guardian
O’ mine, whence the
Moment you laid
Upon that Hand o’ yours
That bludgeoned this
Childlike glee, wakening
A great sense in me that
You have the face of Janus,
But you do not embody
All beginnings;

It was all but nought,
Making a fool out of me
As if I’m an imbecile
To canonize yourself
As a Patron Saint of Fairy Tales
In which a venerable testament
To those dogmatic scoundrels
That borne the blood o’ *******
Which flows in their veins…

So you, are no Paragon, but a Fool-Saint
And speak no Tongues of Fire;
But full of air and a thorny tongue
That snaps like a whip
Hence, a brute, an imp
That is an uptight ****,
A Guardian to the so-and-so’s.

Chasing boys away

is like chasing flies away:


they will come right back.

For a girl to be sensitive, is a girl to be noticed
To be held back out of class to not disturb the others
A girl to be sensitive, under the tables in early grades
Crying and screaming for a sister who raised her
To be avoided from the teachers, to be avoided like the plague
To be avoided by the people, and friends that left when it took so long to make
A girl to be sensitive is one who is made to cry
To not know what it's like to be free, what it's like to fly
A girl to be sensitive has the fate of being broken
for she doesn't understand boundaries and times right to be spoken
A girl who was locked out of her mother's room
Face pressed to the crack only to ask for permission and for food
To see her mother's face only in the morning before dusk
when the babysitter came to take her place
And to see her mother's face in the drive to the gym
the place to be set again behind a wall, dividing them again
A girl who is sensitive, learns through many mistakes
but not known for learning, her stuff taken away
She'll never learn, it's not in her nature
but it's her social life that was shaped by crying and hurting
and for her to be called dramatic and immature
A girl to be sensitive is one of trial and error
To not tell a teacher when one is trying to be fairer
To not tell somebody when one is afraid of the big wide world
and to not tell somebody when her smile begins to fail
And when she awakens and realizes that what she does is a mistake
She wonders what it'll take to fly, fly far away
A girl to be sensitive is for her tears to be silenced
and told to stop being a baby, and to just be quiet
A girl who learns to forget because it hurts more to remember
and a girl to be known for someone who is never
not lying, not trying, and not being enough
always smiling not knowing that it was just strong to get through the tough
times that she believes isn't
She learns that a chance she doesn't take is to miss it
A girl to be sensitive is a girl to be unheard
because it becomes unimportant when it's her words her tears slur
To be noticed by only by her work, her assignments
always trying to be better, always trying not to not fail it
But even then this path is a blind one,
and told that she needs to work on it, she needs to get it done
A girl to be sensitive is one who is burned
one left behind in bathrooms until one's cries are quiet
or worse in a closet without light and a blanket by the wall
to shut up, to go to sleep to pass the time without a clock
A girl to be sensitive is one to be unwanted
And everyone wants to be wanted and desired
to be missed and to be held
but she learns that that's too desperate and she can't risk the love
so push them away, and lock those feelings in her own closet in her own mind,
herself shunned just like in real life
A girl to be sensitive is one doomed to be alone
to be in a grave in a forest, one marked by a stone
One dug by her fingers until her fingers become ****** and stiff
And for her to lie exhausted, to lie there
unmissed.

I often feel as though
My childhood scarred me-
Marred me, knocked me down,
Emblazoned insecurity in scarlet
Upon my fore brow;
“Damaged.” “Unworthy.” “Trash.”

Not meant to succeed.
She does not belong.
Hidden behind a mask of perfection
Desperate to cover angry letters,
Scrawled in crimson, tender, raw.

I know he's gone
passed through the window
we left open for him
when I visit now
the house is colder
for the loss of a
time traveller
who took the soul
out of this place
for me to move on
not mourn
the loss of my childhood
start living for tomorrow
not stuck in yesterday