Hallways ever lonely in my mind
The duality
Of whispering voices
Screaming inside

Walls of empty picture frames,
Move like mirrors chasing a lost reflection.
Fading memories melt away like oil paintings in the desert.
Fickle, or free. I remember when,
Remembering was the furthest feeling found flowering inside of me.

Sword-crossed lovers,
And now a dagger in my heart.
Empty castle now stands full,
With all the rubble from its broken parts.

Flash of a camera goes off and I rush into the shadows, because the picture will look all wrong if I am in it.
Conversations circle my head aimlessly, all connected by a single thread that has slipped from my grasp.
A game of cards that I watch from the sidelines.
Memories are made in front of me and I cannot have a slice of them—they are not mine.
I was there, but they are not mine.
Because you smile when I wave
and I laugh at jokes that I don’t fully understand
and we complain, compliment, communicate,
but you are a stranger to me.
I am a stranger to you.
You, polished jade stone in vicious waters,
yet the waves yield to you
and your iridescence
and all of your beautiful stone companions. I am a pebble who gets caught
in the tide, too desolate to swim back to shore, too afraid to join you in the deep.
I cannot stop fighting the current.
There is no hope for me if I do,
for I will sink, settle on the sandy floor with my back arched and my hands shaking
and join my fellow forsaken, solidified into a gritty brick of aching bones and broken spirits.
I will no longer be your burden. I will be something you do not bother to look at twice.
You will float above me with nothing to haunt you.
But even as I am fighting the current all my life
I am still dissolving
bit by bit.
As though I am destined to fade away no matter how hard I try to stay.

1.
I’m heading to the sea
in a slot not big enough to fit a holiday
so I’ll day
trip

I think I’m packed:
a mind still rattled by life and lockdowns?
check
a palpable desire for vistas unknown?
check
a rucksack of memories, of sand, of wafer cones,
of wasps, of crystalline, sweet wrapper lights on mad, unsafe beach rides, on windbreaks, on digging, on seaweed and brown British waves?
check

Let’s start this engine, then

2.
Should’ve gone before we left
the irony’s not lost on me
even though I’m now the boss of me
I’ve still had to stop in local circles
cos someone needs a ***

I’ll blame the coffee

3.
Frightening fast the local roads fade
the five and ten mile loops of life
are gone
and the roots we commute and commune on
rest bone rigid, obscured

Passing Crowland
impossibly flat plains
thoughts turn to darkness
and misunderstood witches lost here
until the smirk of Cowbit assuages

Only the Welland, alongside
still talks of home
til even she changes
speaks in wider verbs
tidal verbs of ebb and flow
showing thick mud beneath

These long, straight roads are deceptive
leaving meanders to river and mind
while hiding accidents in plain sight

4.
The road sentence ended
and after chewing a space to park
shoes changed to something wholly uncool
but fitting me well
first steps on the unsure grammar of sand
reminding that syntax here takes much more effort

a dune cleft gives a known view
I’ve never seen before
and then I’m through

sky and horizon blast me

for frozen moments I’m lost,
these common seas I shrug off in my head
smirk at
as nothing against turquoise
or rock raged waves
still bring tears
against my smile

I listen at the language in the shallows,
the rush and hustle,
and feel a glimmer of foreignness as I can’t make out the message
but I get the gist

5.
To honour holidays of old
I sat a spell in Wolla Bank car park
though inauthentically the rain didn’t fall

I was forced to imagine the windscreen steamed
and had no fish paste on white
as I’d paid full price to eat at a cafe
unheard of back in the day

I did read the car park info sign
about the clay pits around
where historical sea defences were mined
and that did the job of taking my mind back

and the closing thought of petrified trees
beneath the waves til very low tide
did its best to haunt

6.
Heading home
wistful I suppose,
though I’m not sure where I got all the wist

the sea is a keeper of memories
a chewer and cogitator
so when they return to the shore
and are spoken again
what you thought you knew back then
may have changed
deepened, softened
and hopefully your youthful idiocy
is allowed to be forgotten

if you came for the ride
thanks, as ever, for joining me x

There's a moat of sand
it's a bulwark for a prosperous kingdom
beyond the Rio Grande

treacherous trajectory
through an ocean of heat
on the way to their rectory.

There's a moat of sand
turning refuge into risk
dividing two brands

predators look to make one suffer
an ATV piranha's snack attack
tases pregnant mothers.

There's a moat of sand
on the journey from hell to heaven
where the blessed meet the ******

gnawed to the bone
by roaming coyotes
while searching for home.

There's a moat of sand
guarding providence
the bountiful land

just when you think it can't get any hotter
you see a shrine for the dead with a sign
saying they didn't bring enough water.

There's a moat of sand
that's unforgiving and cruel
so it's used by man.

I visited you today,
felt you crunch against my toes,
smelt you from a mile away,
heard you in your throes.

You covered me in wet kisses,
as I languished in your swell,
you promised me an ocean,
one you knew so well.

I took you in my mouth,
let you spill down my chin,
and as I walked away, I smiled,
knowing I could still taste you on my skin.

I discerned a face in the sand. It peered at me the way a child may peer at ants. I knew that face, had traced over the wrinkles marring the forehead, rubbed a finger on the mole below the eye, thought it was grime, realised it was not, and poked at the nose that was half an inch too long. It was a face of a woman, the eccentric lady who frequented my dreams, always walking with clicking heels, ivory robes dragging sludge, who dug pits with her purple fingernails. Are you look for this, I asked, handing over her face. She stood, corpse-like, and said, this lonely and bright thing, it beckons me, but this is not my face. This is yours.