izzy

I’m just trying to keep it real
at the same time as holding this feeling
that I haven’t got words for
I thought of a metaphor about feeling like
there was one of those giant glass bottles they have in seaman’s bars,
glass centimetres thick
and green and hollow and huge,
like I have one of those inside my chest,
the neck of the bottle resting in the base of my throat.
what does it mean to have a giant beautiful glass bottle inside of you?
crushing all the air in your lungs
and kind of heavy but catching all the light
and still with the scent of brine and booze in it
what does that even mean

*

sarah

such fearsome promises i have made to you, my father
who announced that you would tolerate no coffin in death
but wished to be wrapped in a plastic bag, tossed off a cliff
and who one night, whiskyed like a sponge cake,
took my shoulders and made me swear
that if dementia took you, i would hold a pillow over your face
and see you softly into the dark
‘promise you’ll kill me’, you whispered, and i shook.
you, my bear of a father, with arrows a-quiver
my twinkle-eyed captain, my deadly pun-slinger
apologising wetly for the tears tracking your cheeks
holding your breath to stop from sobbing
so full up with love and sorrow that to speak was to burst
i will not conceive of you made small
i will not concede to inevitable time
i will not imagine your loss, lest i cause it
but i will keep my oaths, unto the end

*