Some of you may know I'm a writer, and following my short story The Conch being published I had the courage to join an English and creative writing course at Uni! Thought I'd share some of my work here :) Excuse the formatting- in Microsoft word it was in neat verses!
I leave through the back door; that yellow room
Suffocates with loved ones who cling too close,
Ask questions that claw closer still, though they
Know nothing, do not even guess at it-
The brisk air brings my own scent back to me:
Sweat, semen, the animal-hutch stink of
Boy, musty and thick as smoke upon me;
I cannot smell the rain-damp earth or the
Bitterness of pines over my body.
I think first of going down to the shed
That was playroom, shelter, a witch’s house
When we were young, but it knows me so well
That its confines, crammed with childhood clutter,
Would bristle with accusation; even
The spiders whose webs have rotted on
The windowsills would withdraw from me, and
The fibres of the ancient carpet would
Needle the damp flesh of my inner thighs.
Barefoot, I cross the paving stones that cut
Through the cool grass, stub my toes on plastic
Figures strewn, forgotten on the lawn, chafe
My soles on rough ground worn bald and naked;
I recall it lustrous green and verdant
But the years have made it sparse, or perhaps
It was always so, and in memory
Bloomed, for the garden seems small, insipid,
And darker than it ever was at night.
I remember a hillock high enough
To roll down and lie upon with the sky
Gaping impossibly over me, my
Aunt’s terraced house teetering, its windows
Flaring in the sun, and the firs behind
The neighbours’ fence whispered mysteries to
Me as I made fairy tales from the clouds;
There is nothing left now but flat, black dirt
Raised only an inch up above the rest.
But there is nowhere else I can sit and
Consider the brevity of time, so
Palpable in that space that even my
Younger self saw faces like snapshots, heard
Birdsong strain brittle and fragile as they
Flocked to roost, winged shadows of nostalgia
For a past that I half-dreamed, for I can
Never know if there ever was laughter
Or only a lull between bursts of pain.
It’s too late to watch the sun set, to hear
The voices of other children going
Home as we were left, me and my brother,
As we would always be left together,
As close as the garden once was to me,
Though both have changed: one known too well, and one
Blissfully estranged, as harsh as distant
Family, nearer to indifference than
His intrusive love, and sweeter for it.
