how swift, how far the smoke has carried from the barren fields into my own desert garden. eyes sting, not just from the trapping heat but of the melodies once sung by poppies and daisies and orchards in bloom. a mother’s song forgotten, swallowed by smokey greed. but heat swung its cold, hard fist, with smoky embers haunting what once was ours. taken by death, my mother nature.

reflection swallowing the water

i keep my coffin gloves in my hands

to furnish my flesh before it buries

wrinkles as mountains tarnish the land

in the shape of skeletal souls

i whisper to God,

the stones, the moon, the grass

my whispers swallow the frozen air

over the carcass stream.

scraping stables emerge from the dying mist

welcoming gravestones as a mother does a cub

all death feeds God, so why,

do you take?

for the mist closes in and my hands grow old and tired

i am the sea as it entrails me

wash my sins, oh God

bury me in my bruised stream

take me, take me

my funeral gloves and rain enduring shoes

i cannot stand with my hands bloody, unclean

infront of a glorified stone: “gone too soon”.

When the cow died, it died in silence. Its weary head collapsed like lead, succumbing to the poison of death. Day in and day out, the eyes belonging to no soul stared into the slit between wooden planked walls. A new dimension for the cow – having only seen hay and the shed and barrels of food and the occasional person in different shades of day. Perhaps in his dying moments, he saw my quaint house in the heath meters away. Maybe the far-away shapes meant something to his diminishing mind.

Before Rosie, neither of my parents nor I noticed the cows demise, Toto did. His eyes carried home a sense of urgency, along with a few lingering flies, holding onto his fur like leaches. Toto’s head lay on my lap with the same lead-like animation as I’d imagined the cow carried. With a few barks, Toto inspired me to uncover the cow’s death.

The barn belonged to the family next door: the Parsons. Their house was bigger than mine. A sinister voice inside of me said that it was a shame the cow died facing my house as theirs was much more pleasant to the eye. They had a porch, a grand window at the front, and a rose bush that was always flourishing and so vivid that I once cut a rose off secretly so I wouldn’t have to venture outside to see the stunning shades. I knew it was wrong, and I had no idea of what the mother inside would do if she found out I was stealing. From that secret visit, I remember seeing a grand piano in the front room, varnished so perfectly with keys so shiny they almost looked wet. I imagined all of the beautiful songs that could be played on there and I wondered if I could play the songs Aunty Jo says she can play when I see her at Christmas. I was certain one of the Parson sisters could play. With the way they carry themselves, there was no doubt they could orchestrate songs so delicately that the notes dance in the air.

love crowns you as it shall crucify you. i am your wave as your current. crashing into the rocks and wavering into the sand, intertwining with both and leaving my fingerprint like a sought-for disease. i am left within the air of a bitter departure. you don’t want me there. i will linger and annoy you. you need me there. i am left on the house key as sweat beads, a manifestation of a human’s anticipation for a new abode. and i am fulfilled.

i’ve grown, i’ve ended in tears, i’ve held up the head of many. i’m laced, i’m thrown. regarded, disregarded. i’m needed.

i met death once. i was fraying where lace used to flow - my life’s rope was weathered. i knew death existed. it lurked in murky corners and listened quietly. but in that moment, i knew it stepped out into the light.

my eyes where golden beads of honey melting under the july dusk. i had seen, heard, known the wonders of my word and it was time for my body to return to the earth. i had watched the sun rise and set more times than i can count - i knew it was time to watch the moon instead. cobblestones walked their paths beneath my eyes as i closed them in acceptance. the incessant ticking of my grandfather clock faded until i was met with the bitter taste of silence. and i swear i met with it - deaths fingertips.

death danced between the draping curtains to meet with me. muffled stillness echoed in the room, and i swear, i could hear its tap shoes dance the rhythm to a song i learnt long ago. nodding my head and humming the rhythm distracted me from the maternal position death held me in. death swayed me from left to right in its tender arms. humming a lullaby.

“dance with me, child.”

You follow the blood’s steady path down a winding road. A path to find the unforgiving knife, silver and bare, and the fist that grasps it.

The knuckles are bare and white, like the skin around it has been stretched so tight to fit the bones of a man with no blood. A mortal figure with no heart.

go ahead – take your knife and dig me out. use the knife you know well, it’s bloodstained handles will guide you beneath your skin where my echo lives. i whispered my name and you breathed it in. sucked it. enveloped it. and all i saw was “trust”.

breathe me out, slowly, return fractures of myself to the rightful owner.

i want you to dig beneath your callous skin and cold blood. force your way between bones if needs be. your hands will be steady and unwavering. how?

your knife will recognise my name carved into your body, your soul. you owe me a debt – repay me by forgetting my name.

forget the corners of my smile and the way my hair floats in the wind. disregard the memories of the creases in my palms. you mustn’t remember my words or the way they sound when i’m angry. for i’m claiming it back: the life you stole from me.

girlhood is a loosely woven string that drags behind us like soft targets. a melancholy reminder of who we are as a collective: universally divided. that red string yearns and yearns for a place called home, yet continues to be slaughtered silently.

girlhood is a stage of life that everyone is just supposed to know.

maybe everybody else were given a pre-emptive survival pack, filled with extortionately priced tampons, a shocking taste in boys, and a lifelong desire to cut the string while also treasure it and accept it.

girlhood is a blessing and a curse - your loosely woven red string embellished into a delicate bow named: “you’re a woman now”.

we carry that bow around with us to sleepovers, graduation, and the first time your mother looks at you with eyes slightly harder than years before. she sees your age and newfound wisdom bleed from your skin. in response, the soft quality of her gaze diminishes. she looks into eyes she could almost recognise as her own and teaches you about taxes, how to shave your legs properly, and to never go on walks alone at night. because if you do, the bow falls apart into a maimed mess. the string begins to fray, and it’s your job to fix it.

her hardened eyes and truthful words are the closest you will get to a survival pack. her words may seem definitive and absolute yet nothing can prepare a girl for anything that will make the bow fall and the string fray.

when you love your string of girlhood, it can be very beautiful. universally, we possess a nature that heals at the instant and soothes like a lullaby. humanity has come from its own long red string of mothers, sisters and daughters that cling together despite fraying edges. what a wonderful reminder that we are all descended from women alike who, in all truthfulness, feel like they’re wandering their red string around in life with no logical guidelines. no structured map or diagram. just the unbreakable legacy of red strings trailing from hopeful mother to hopeful daughter.

I remember the Saturday rain and how I lay with his arm wrapped around me like an anchor, to distract us from how we were drowning in the mess we made. The familiar patterns of rain would trail down my bedroom window and the familiar words “I love you” lingered on the walls. With each word, the frills of “I love you” embellished the room like a tablecloth, making each dent and scratch pretty again. Of course, I replied with “I love you too”. Each word fell out of my mouth effortlessly, as though they were the rain droplets on the window pane, following the same pattern despite the storm that thundered on, behind the glass - shielded.

I remember the golden haze from his hazel eyes under the bedroom light. There was a kind of ache that lived between each valley of brown. Between each insurmountable shade. I see it now as I drift off to sleep. I remember thinking: I know everything about you. Every scar, freckle, tickle-ish spot. But we were only fifteen, and didn’t even know ourselves. How would we know each other if we don’t understand ourselves?

Under the sticky hot summer heat, we were wrapped in bedsheets, breathing in linen and warmth. Drowsy rainy days transcended into rays of sun. Sticky ice cream on fingers. Open windows, no curtains. Just the whisper of “I love you” and my heart stitched itself together again. Because for him, it didn’t matter how many punctures that maimed my once untouched heart. Hearing, seeing, feeling the three sacred words escape acted as a medicine.

Say it again, I pinky promise, I’ll believe you every time.