izzy

I’m trying to turn into a river stone.
so far, it’s not going very well –
I move like liquid and air, I float
more like cloud than rock.

*

sarah

You slid down the rubble like a klutzy old kid
landed on your knees, bonded gravel with goosebumps
wiped your snot-runny nose on the back of your hand
and yelled ‘Bet you ten bucks I can do it again!’

*

izzy

I am 100% not the first person to look at walnuts and think they look like brains
and want to crush them specifically to be confused by their determination to splinter instead of squish
the thing is that walnuts look breakable, and they are, just not in the way you think

time is a weird thing and it is always moving so fast when I’m not looking
and soon enough we will all be dying
we will be croaking on death beds and scratching at the air

so why am I wasting my time thinking about your hands
and why I decided to love them even though I hated the look and feel of them
your hands that were heavy and rough and dirty
and not like birds at all
your hands that terrify me even now

*

sarah

Rolling over in the ferny marshland of my sleep
I finally kicked my dream from ‘Running but I feel really heavy’
into ‘Every step is a little further off the ground.’
There are trombones in my heartbeats, sulfur in my nose
The cats at dusk sound like orchestras tuning

*

izzy

a thousand white horses ran out from under your hair this morning
turning the pillows into a pulpy mess
narrowly missing my eye
bolting straight out the window, down the street and across the sand
to turn back into sea foam and graceful crests
you rolled over quietly and kissed the outside of my eye
and the sea roared up the street
and climbed back into bed with us

*

sarah

I can feel the sadness wobbling in you like a pyramid of jelly
It’s sitting there in the throwaway jokes that I heard once before
when the world toppled over and nobody stopped smoking for a week
I can feel it purring, cat-like in your chest
nuzzling up to your heart, whispering silvery nothings
about how unloved you are, you worthless piece of shit
And I have never quite discovered the right way to say
that I’d quite like to kiss you in a corner somewhere
before the sun comes up, stretching up on my toes
breathing in your big warm smell of smoke and of skin

*

izzy

I think about taking nude photographs for my own benefit
to see what my body looks like through a more abstracted gaze
through a slightly less personal lens than my own two eyes
if I close my eyes I think I can remember your body more truthfully than mine.

there is something disturbing about the fact that we will never see our true selves
that the mirror will always distort the reflection somehow
I have looked at my face in so many mirrors
and it will still always be a stranger

*

sarah

They finally carved out what you could never slice open deep enough
peeled back those spidery lines of white to find the simmering meat
took a grater to your leg (tore a few bits along the way – slivers for the dogs)
and sewed you back up like a Frankenstein doll
left you stroking the boiled, bubbled, burnt looking flesh
with promises of alchemy, horror into gold
Violence begets violence til the summertime comes
and the wounds just melt away

*