the heart laid bare

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VERBAL PORTRAIT OF A CAT OWNER
Unanswered
Bedtime
the one time
prisoner
iris
adore
delicate
Untitled 10
never him
lockdown
procrastinating
advice to the imaginary man of my hypothetical dreams
the tenth month
purple hearts
vigil
a glossary of terms
a week forever ago
The sixteenth
the curse
Under seige
Beyond the blues
Introspect
Balloon
push
a strange distance
SWIMMING ALWAYS DOWNWARD
A ONCE-FAMILIAR LANDSCAPE
No Apology
the thunder
tinder
critical shortage
the sky we thought we knew
CIRCA SOLEM
almanac
baby
dearest orlando
FIVE MONTHS
A LETTER TO THE UNDESERVING
cactus heart
would we
the fall of giants
paradise lost
Dad
after you've gone
time
a smile from the eyes
trepidation
why so cold
fix this
swallow me
untitled 8
insular
cry alone
robin
quicksand
laces
D.I.S.C.
stripped
waving goodbye
your open eyes
enemy within
mortal
untitled 4
sleepless
OUTSIDER
untitled 9
come dream with me
in the face of adversity
one word
the dark of the night
untouchable
one and one makes two
you burn me
see me
this shaken core
my lover
helen
my room
his words
foolish
rita
chalk drawings
the longest night
stupid skeleton
CLOTHES MAKETH
FIRST LASTS
STELLAR
TODAY
I WATCHED A MAN DIE TODAY
THREE WEEKS
this slippery slope
untitled 5
Arrows
First Kiss
The Talk Of Love
Nicotine
Blackout

a week forever ago

It's been three years today, Dad.
‘A week forever ago’ was how I described it.
Part of me still doesn't entirely believe it, somehow.
Three years, and I still catch myself reaching for my phone to ask you a question or share a joke.
Three years, and you have missed so much.
And we miss you.

It still seems like yesterday, and there are still bad days.
Days when it hurts to breathe,
When I close my eyes and feel like I'm back in that moment when everything turned to ashes.
… How are you supposed to rebuild from something like that? You can’t.
You either cower in the ruins of what your life used to be,
Finger-painting your face with it until you and it are indistinguishable from one another;
Or you gather the ashes into a little pile and bring them with you.
You leave your scorched and barren ground behind and find a new place,
And build anew.
With the mortar you mix the ashes, so that even the solid walls of your new world hold the comforting echoes of the old.

I sometimes get angry at you for missing so much,
Even though I know it’s not your fault.
And I get angry at myself for not doing all the things I know you’d have been proudest of me for while you were still here to see them.
I sometimes cry at strange things,
And sometimes I will walk a long way out of my way to avoid the cologne section in David Jones,
Where the scent of your hands in the morning lingers like an aromatic ghost.
I keep the picture of us on my wall,
And I still talk to you over the first coffee of the day.
And it helps, just a little,
To know that the movement of my lips and the warmth of my breath
Will in turn move and change atoms in the air,
Making tiny ripples, that make larger ripples,
That will spread and dissipate right across the universe,
All the way to the collection of atoms that you used to be.

 


© mjc 27 October 2018

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Biography

Daughter, sister, aunt, godmother, friend; self-confessed hermit, confirmed cat person, sporadic baker, irreformable yarncrafter, voracious reader; occasional wit, voluble shower vocalist, frequent sacrifice on the altar of brain-to-mouth filter fails, unrepentant purveyor of puns and dad jokes, writer and poet.

I have always lived by the theory that no matter what you do for a living - if you are compelled to write, if you wake up in the night to scrawl the contents of your dreams on a notebook beside the bed, if no event in your life seems complete without you recording it, if you are drawn to comment upon the world - then you are a writer.

These are my words.