My eyes have been wandering, fatigued with familiarity and flirting with my next go round. I’ve never sickened myself of a name but I’m catching myself yawn at these faults I’m too lazy to fix, too frugal to go down that way, so bored of talking to you about.

And I wake up to another day. I didn’t think we could spend any more time together, that there must be a cap off. A tick on a list to say you’ve done your bit, like a friend who knows all your best stories and you’re now past your prime, a friend that knows you so well they process your feelings for you and tell you it back in simple words you might understand. A best friend like that, cut and dry, pressure off from a point. But we’ve been sat here for months now and all the walls keep growing yellower and yellower with the stain of our conversation and I’ve never noticed the wallpaper before. Did you put it up? 

I’m getting terrible visions of marriage. Is this what five weeks after I do feels like? A kind of breathless exhaustion every time you think about it too much, catch eyes on already bad days and hold eyelashes to spiral down into the fearful definition of forever. No outs here. Just me and you, me, with only death as a door and divorce out of the question without burning all the nerves away. It’s a lot. 

But you know I liked our drinks in the honeymoon phase, dressing up to sit together in a different room as a treat, when you let me not feel silly wearing heels in the kitchen and we concocted sweet poisons, shaking jam into gin with an ever-encouraging inner monologue that sounded like us laughing together.

Then there’s always a splinter and it can never be enough for long enough. Wake up and say hello, testing out tones and prepared for minor, squeezing my eyes together as tight as I can like a reset button that does nothing but click. I’ve started waiting for this side of you at the door of our attic and you hide the keys behind your back again, jingle as I do my series of activities where you demand more from me to get less of you, interrupting as I tell you again I’m trying.

This is that conversation; sat at the table with nothing to promise but effort. 

We have the talk daily, reaffirming with changing conviction, as the room glows fluorescent and I squeeze the promise from my squashed lungs.

(no.1)
You rewrite history in some small way,
look at yourself in the mirror and practice
the face you would’ve made
if you’d been the on begging me to stay.
Sing what you’d say
and leave me dead within words,
change voice and hide lips
swap cracked shredded hands to softness
on strings in sun, sang
sickly as sadness sours
in the heat
We both live as though I never went there,
you try not to see it,
as your lips chew the image of me on the bed
draped, down and drearily dreaming
of the lover you remain, harmonising
No no no
sing words I did not say
I do not speak that way
and nor do you.

(no.2)
Keeping me there
plane, flood, dying over and over
living in verse 3 of Hallelujah
fading quieter and quieter
till the chorus becomes a repeated question
worship to beg to one sided howl
from the confessional I had to build around us.
Those songs sit heavy now but none more so that this one
my love written down in a funeral lament
sing my death to the lonely hearts
looking for touch in the heat
there.

(no.3)
I see you there
you walk backwards, drunk, stumbling
smile with teeth memory steals,
trip your tongue over So Long Marianne,
while I continue to go my way
and you continue to go yours
against the law the poem made,
almost tattooed five times
gripped till fingers bled
whispered like buoys, far now.
Parallel lines still distant and simple now
as you deflect to another sweet little song,
starting over with fresh hair to become metaphorical
and I’ll be leaning away forever,
a reluctant slow tearing
morning flag to morning flag
to a clandestine melody, now heard.

Sunday morning;
I put my small hand into a jar and pick out a task,
my soft skin touches dark wood,
warm carpet, and everything smell of my mother
and her refusal of help in the kitchen.
We sit at the table, we all have room for pudding,
we gather again in the evening.

Sunday morning;
I make an effort, wrote a list ahead of time
so I cannot ignore the care I need.
Early dawning, no tears in the morning,
feelings cold as ice cream, but still as sweet;
walk to the gardens, eat fruit,
paint nails, face-mask, sleep.
There’s always someone around you,
pointing out soft blues that are natural and true,
everything is calmer now.

Sunday morning;
I don’t set an alarm, assured I will always wake first,
always in time to roll over,
close my eyes again so we can pretend to open them in sync.
10am, 11am, stay still, still soft,
oh to be in love on a Sunday,
oh to walk hand in hand with no deadline,
oh to feel just the same on Monday.

Sunday girl on a Sunday morning,
my mother, my lover, 
me.
Loved, cared for and comforted,
learning to feel everything like I feel on Sunday,
learning to expect no less than Sunday morning, dinner table, evening talks love.

The Past Us is a poem about the realisation that your love has changed. It’s a poem about looking back at a relationship and realising it’s become so misshapen over time, it hardly looks like love at all anymore, it doesn’t really even look like companionship.

This poem was written in late October and it feels just like late October, to me at least. It feels like hazey evenings when it becomes annoying how dark it gets so early. It feels like the intense bout of disassociation and confusion I felt during my first months at uni, and the questions about how my new location would alter my relationships and feelings. It’s always been a deeply personal piece to me with very specific settings and conversations in my head, but maybe that’s why it’s ended up being the piece I always go back to, and a piece that my peers regularly reference and compliment (thanks guys).

We all know the tug of a dying love hanging on like a limb that’s gone numb after you sat on it for too long. The period just before the conversation when both parties are aware of the small changes in movement; turning your back, pulling away hands, seizing at opportunities to leave their company even if just briefly to get a drink, when before you always wanted them there, holding your hand and hugging in the kitchen. This poem is a brainstorm for that conversation, a mind-map drawing lines between the people you were and are.

The ideas of making a film was brought to the table in Easter, at a time when I was having this conversation again. I’ve always wanted to make a film, I love films so so much but over time I’ve accepted that I know nothing about how the hell you make a film. So a table full of people who know exactly how to make a short film, and know fancy terms for lenses and shots, and appreciated my work enough to want to visualise it, it was dreamy.

And the end product is The Past Us, it’s exactly what the poem is and all it represents (including some very specific details from it’s context). It’s grey, it’s late October, it’s the lingering thought of a love you had to accept had left long ago, packed up and moved out of everywhere but your head. But mostly it’s just beautiful and far more eloquent that my words could ever hope to be.

I can’t say thank you enough to ever quite touch on how much of a privilege this is, and how cool it makes me feel that a group of people wanted to merge their art with mine. So thank you again to Penny Eastbury, Samara Sajid and S. J Zhu. Thank you thank you thank you.

I feel v cool to have my very own and very first poetry film, am I an artistic and edgy creative yet??? Can I be famous now???

This is The Past Us, part 1 of a Chrysalism film series. This is winter.

My eyes open like the raising of a silk curtain,
onto a view of blue and white and sky and air.
It's cold enough to wake you,
grey enough so everything else only glows more.
The wind whistling, whispering in the soft tone of
my mother,
the reflection, from the window to my face, is
the look of a lover: visible and felt.

I roll over and over through the Mondays and the Tuesdays,
I hold hands with my time, learning the sound of it's footsteps.
Over and over and over,
learning to feel everything as I feel a blanket,
an arm, a hand, a warm cup.
Learning to feel everything as I feel on Sunday,