Modern, female poetry about adulthood and the masks we wear
I thought of that cup
The one I bought from Ikea, all greenly gold and new
The one I drank my morning brew in
The one that saw coffee swish within its China skeleton
Like a dinghy at water park.
My lips fat and swallowing, teeth chinking against the sides
It took us months to get through that giant bag of Costco coffee
The beans floated to the top, never ending
And everyday I’d start my morning with that pastel green cup
Finger my iPad
And wriggle my way into consciousness.
Today was the first time I spoke to you
in four long years.
She foisted her phone into my beating hands
like a pusher pushing pills at a party
and I swallowed all my awkwardness
until it perched on my stomach’s seabed
and breathed a gobsmacked “hello” to my estranged father.
Flitting between fond memories
(all six of them)
and chucklesome banter
(that isn’t so chucklesome)
I laugh and I giggle and I smile and she pipes in beside me
content to be our relationship’s catalyst.
You’re away, frittering about in some far-flung country
where business is rife and you’re free from the stench of failure
failure at being a dad, a husband and a friend.
You tell me you’ll be back soon
like a perpetual Schwarzenegger, the phrase has been on a loop
in my head for the best part of a decade
so you shouldn’t expect a homecoming party anytime soon
because soon is a very long time
for such a short word.
I knew it was going to hurt.
Like a severed limb, cut off, bleeding
it was always going to have an unsavoury feeling.
The amputation was set in motion back in January
when I told you I didn’t love you
anymore
and we ran circles around our words
had muffled conversations in burger bars
and pressed our palms together in desperate solidarity
and then we waited.
The operation commenced in the month of May
when we went our separate ways
left with bloody stumps, the both of us
our bandages were cherry-red and ached
we knew it would take time to heal.
What I didn’t bargain for was the loss of two limbs
– one for you and one for the country we’d lived in
that sun-dappled, banana breeding ground closer to Africa than Europe
which I would moan about and rant about to reluctant relatives
who told me “just come home”
and now I miss that platano-infested wasteland
of orange-gold hills clad in the sun’s rays
ugly, Arizona-esque but comforting all the same.
We left our flat and burned our bridges
and ripped out our relationship’s stitches
left your handy, hopeful car
tucked away behind a few bushes by the airport
and made a dash for it, a dash towards the unknown.
These bloody stumps may never heal
because I loved you and our life
and now I’ve broken the seal.
Talking to my pillow. 