I've forgotten what it feels like to walk on cobbles,
Forgotten the smell of life, vanilla from the bakery, coffee in the morning,
Warm air and leaves blowing. I've forgotten the sun, that the planets still turn, how other people say my name,
What it's like to hug a friend in passing.
Forgotten standing in a butterfly house in the summer and smiling, couples sleeping like lazy housecats on the grass in the park,
The lives of strangers. 18
and now soon to be 19, too young to have no memories of summer, on the verge of leaving myself behind forever.  I think that soon the world will forget me too.

We all went down to the river early one Saturday,
along the main road, cold hands in pockets,
walked through the park and stopped to hear the happy shouts of children playing on the swings.
I'd forgotten what it was like to play.

And into the river they all went, leaping and splashing like otters
in the cold November water; churning and frothing, sending dazzling light everywhere. I saw the black branches of the trees
shooting up every which way, impossibly high,
wise and old and solid, against the endless white of the sky.
I sat on the bank with the towels and stroked a little dog that walked by.

That night I looked a little longer at the leaves blowing on the quad;
the mist swirling on the grass and
lights blinking off and on in windows with the curtains open-
I saw life reflected there.

The wintering started on a dark December eve; slowly and silently,
it numbed me through the window panes.

I dove off into the wine dark sea.
As cold as death, as cold as resignation.

The sickle moon smiled placidly down as I melted into sea foam.

Do you remember that night when
the pines thrashed their poor limbs
in the dark,
And the moon slipped away unnoticed
as though it was a ghosting?
Spun from spider's silk, it darted shyly behind the comforting skirt of a cloud:
that was the first dream.
And do you remember
how I tightroped along the silver trail of foam where the lake lapped at the cold rock, imagined myself
a creature native and indued unto that element?
I've heard that Nymphs bleed a certain colour-
When I slipped and fell
my blood was the royalest blue,
                             I swear it.

this is the last golden moon that I will see, I should think
the only and the last           so I tiptoe down to Jericho

and watch them wash the artichoke hearts in brine

(I wonder if I could cure my own heart in that fashion)

and the man in the cloth cap gives me a coffee from the machine


I walk back in the weak light of that shadow hour,
When all is still and the doves are cooing in their nests
the moon winks down on me. Don't do it, sister


I am the only and the last    she says           for there is no moonlight in the sepulchre


and in my blue silk shawl, my pale veined hands            that moonstone ring like a fossilised tear

I can't leave myself yet. My mother

in her bed, sleeping soundly, and the river glittering through the bullrushes

this is not my only day, nor my last.

As I walk into the night,
as white as a milk cat,
as pure as a cauldron of snow,
I walk blindly.
Not knowing my own potentia.
But when they see me, spotless vellum, unpierced velum, a lamb,
They whisper snatches of carnal knowledge in my ear.
They make me Eve and Pandora,
But I am Ophelia,
and I am Proserpine:
I wear her pomegranate in my hair.

A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!

And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?

Such pure leaps and spirals ----
Surely they travel

The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift

Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.

Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,

And the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.

The comets
Have such a space to cross,

Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off ----

Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling

Through the black amnesias of heaven.
Why am I given

These lamps, these planets
Falling like blessings, like flakes

Six sided, white
On my eyes, my lips, my hair

Touching and melting.
Nowhere.