Lucky Lift
Four in a lift. Doors stuck.
Relative strangers. Worked on the same floor. I just about recognised them.
"Just my luck" cursed one.
Asked what was wrong. He wanted to get home.
Two said honestly, she was glad to get a break.
Three pulled up a pack of cards, asked us for a game. We played uno and ate my left over m and m's until maintenance came. We exchanged numbers as we left.
"Rotten luck." said maintenance man, letting us out. ,
"Oh, it wasn't that bad," I said, with a smile. And went home to my empty flat.
my grandpapa & grannys house got sold, too.
Dear Plexi,
My grandparents house sold not that long ago. Last Sunday we were all there, picking it to pieces, taking sofas and paintings off the walls and piling them into vans. leaving only the bare bones.
I felt in my bones the way your poem, 'Grandpa & Grandma’s house sold today' never once mentions the house. It made me think of how, on Sunday, when we gutted each room, it wasn't sad. Because the house was already soulless, already gone, and the sadness is not in the loss of the house, but the loss of everything it contained. The memories of the loss. I ramble, I fear, but your poem stirred up so many feelings.
My grandparents too, were Christian. Are Christian. I don't know how the tenses work when they are meant to still exist in some form up there. I hope that everything they believed is true. I hope both of our grandparents' are up there, somewhere, together, maybe.
It is so wonderful, though the positive words taste wrong in this context, that you were there when they passed. I was not there. My granny passed in her sleep, quietly I suppose, because grandpapa didn't stir. The nurse told him in the morning that he'd been dozing next to a corpse. I'm glad she went peacefully, though in truth she'd gone long before then, succumbing to dementia, forgetting our names.
Grandpapa died of a heart attack. It was quick, a shock. Three days before he'd sat with me and my brother in the garden, drinking tea. He still walked to get the newspaper every morning. He would've been 90 this year. I'm glad he went quickly, but I was angry at the time. He was meant to see me graduate, maybe make it to my eldest brothers wedding, in a wheelchair, in a decade.
Your poem made me remember all this, so fresh again. Your poem is so beautifully, heart wrenchingly written. I would say I'm sorry for your loss but that seems wrong. You gained so much from having them in your life. Maybe not for as long as we would have liked. But to grieve is to love, and be loved. I won't say sorry about that to you, or me.
Your grandparents would be so proud of you. In a way I hope, if they are up there, they can't remember you because if they do they must miss you so, so much. But then again I know they would disagree with me and proclaim that the pain would be worth it to remember how loved they were, and how they loved.
I'll stop myself now, I do go on.
Sending you much love, Plexi.
From,
Rose.
in the water meadow
Someone took my body from me sometime last october
When the water meadow first lived up to its name
They lay me in the parody puddles
Floated me cordless off like a doomed toy boat
I hope they put faded flowers in my faded hair
And closed my tired eyes -
In february I walk the circuit
Searching for my self beneath the aching, writhing shadows
And the crocuses that arch their heads
Gulping frantic purple breaths
And the daffodils that learn to dance off beat
To the buffeting baneful broken breeze -
Someone took my body from me sometime last october
I hope that it is waterlogged and bursting with life
Snowdrops creeping out my eyes
Hair flirting with the sunken tendrils of grass and daisy heads
Skin learning the patterns of the water
Face angled towards the grey winter sky -
Sometime soon
When the water meadow is drunken up
Gulped into memory by the rivers and the trees
I think I’ll find my body
Dancing with the bees
She’ll be learning how to walk again
Down by the creek
Playing hopscotch in the shadows
Sitting in a tree
Her skin will be moss green, snowdrops in her eyes
Her feet will have sprouted roots
And she’ll be staring at the blue spring
sky.
Someone took my body from me sometime last october
When the water meadow first lived up to its name
They lay me in the parody puddles
Floated me off like a doomed toy boat
I hope they covered me in flowers
I walk the circuit
Searching for my self
Beneath the shadows and the tendrils
And the crocuses that arch their heads
Gulping frantic purple breaths
And the daffodils that learn to dance off beat
To the buffeting baneful broken breeze
(i dont have a therapist)
if i had a therapist i would tell them i didnt exist
and backtrack quickly of course, confirming that logically, fundamentally, i was aware of my existence
i would try to explain however
how non existent this existence felt
how sometimes i feel if i think too much i would go insane and so i
scroll on instagram for hours to fill the silence
i would tell them that im scared my friends would leave but more than that
im scared that im not that scared by the prospect
that is to say
id say
im scared that the only feeling i seem to feel is
empty dread
and i would tell them i feel empty
but not in the way i felt when i was so depressed i
couldnt get out of bed
instead
i would try to explain how ive stopped writing my diary
or writing poetry
and when i scroll through pictures on my phone it is like scrolling through someones life
i swear there was a time i felt alive
id say
but i truly cannot say what that felt like
i think i will keep fading
to nothing
without a care
and everyone i claim to love
even as i forget the feeling
will realise i am nothing
but a puppet with no puppeteer.
i lie, still
i lie still and pretend my body is my own
there is rain in my mouth and eyes it is(i am)
parasitical parasocial
it finds its way into the cavity where they
say my heart would be and when
i swear i feel it beat they say that is the rain
that seeps and seeps it is(i am)
unfeeling unyielding
sulphuric suffocating
i lie, still, and pretend my body is my own
the waves do not know me
perhaps they cry for me
drunk friends or mothers
i never felt a need to cry myself so
i lie still and pretend my body is my own
the rain tumbles through my veins
cleans dirt off my face
baptismal cathedral
of water and words
it is(i am)
my home.
Eyes so wide
LED lights force your face deep into the mirror cracks
Your eyes are so so wide you think you’ll fall
Down down into a pit
Have you always been this fat?
Your skin is sluggish yellow in the bright bright night
And the shadows look like scars gouged by a poison knife
The mirror stares back with so much bad luck
And you feel yourself falling down down into that familiar fate
You are not enough and you
Deserve to fall
Your eyes are so so wide and you are so so flawed
But child, the mirror is cracked, and you are not
The reflection is flawed the reflection is warped
Beauty pours out of those wide wide eyes
And your skin is the colour of an early morning sky
So fly up up into it’s arms
Your soul is as deep as the depths of your eyes and both are full of such bright light
You will always be enough and you
Deserve to fly
Your eyes are so wide and you are beautifully flawed
Midnight maths and philosophy
I do polynomial long division at 11pm. And I get the right answers again and again. Because I know the steps, I know the code, I know what invisible highlighter lines join each number and I know whether to multiply or divide. I just don’t know
Why.
I stare at the steps I’ve done the lines of n and try to work out... I’m dividing this to give me this so I’m subtracting these to... I don’t know. I cannot make these random steps line up in my head. Why. Why. Why.
I realise I am living life like a school child who shouldn’t be taking a level maths trying to prove herself at 11pm. That is to say. I live life like I do maths. I know the steps and I say the right things write the right numbers... But really I’m a sub par child trying to be an adult, trying to feel like a child, trying to prove to the world and to herself that ‘I got the right answer so I’m Okay’.
But it seems prolific that instead of laying down my pen besides my maths book and sleeping, I am writing speculative philosophy about equations and life.