Significant, 2024
I find it a challenge to write something that feels significant
As you uncomplicated my life with your love.
When we are apart I read
All the little notes you left me in the glove compartment
As I waited for your shifts at Sainsbury’s to end.
Instead I will write about
How close we are to winning the pub quiz
If we could only memorise more flags and US state capitals.
Scared, 2024
The day the deaf man mouthed
You Have A Lovely Little Face,
Big hands explaining,
I cried on the bus.
Fingertips on chin I
Thanked him and
He had no teeth or umbrella for
A wet October rush hour.
I thought no one could phase
My commuter’s sternness after
12 years of training.
Then I cried because I cried. When are you
Allowed to be scared?
She is safe, 2023
She said goodbye to girlhood and spent the next one thousand one hundred and twenty odd days entirely covered.
Only hands and lower arms and face can be observed by the others
She must not attract and she must be small
She must be smaller and less broad shouldered and more feminine and more defined waisted
She must achieve these standards but continue to hide this from the others
She must wear her father’s navy wool jumper every week
These rules were the result of one of the worst days. The words that changed every mirror and photograph and then not even the kindest text messages could rescue her.
--
Everyday when I wake up to her now I hug her and hold her in my arms and treat her as if she was my best friend. She does not need to follow those rules anymore. She is liberated and she is safe.
I taught him how to love me, 2023
But in you I trust: I am open, I am bare.
This I will ask of you.
I will provide you with the script to put me at ease,
I will show you the heights I can rise to,
I will guide your hand with mine to take me there.
I offer you the key.