"So Lovely was the Lonliness" - Antony Hegarty

I swallowed stones
to fill the ache in my belly.
One caught in my throat,
weighed down words
so that they gathered in the dark canal of my pulse.
Others were ground to dust
and with each heartbeat
ran wild, surged within me.
As a spider web, as antique lace,
delicate cells
replaced with stone and ash.
I felt myself become brittle
and finally broken.
My eyes, blank as granite.
I heard marble crack as I opened my hands,
white-cold skin seeking yours.

The Scent of Ozone

I could not help it. I could not keep myself from it, I did not know then it was not wise. I opened the door, stepped out and into the storm. There was only the wild wind lifting my hair, the scent of ozone and the whipping water. If you had a voice, if you said something, it was lost in the chaos of that downpour. I did not know that to stand alone there was to invite something more, to tempt the gods too far. I thought then, that I was brave. Instead, I tasted steel and all was white and I was lost.

No happy ending.

I feel as if I'm wasted and I've wasted every day.

I Invent the World

I fold my arm again, smoothing the soft green blanket over my chest. The past comes whispering out at me, and with a snapping blink of wide-open eyes, I will it away. I have a world of almost-sleep, I build it every night as I turn and turn in bed. I go to it now. It once was the dream of a dream, much less than a world. Now, I spend many hours outlining every golden leaf, painting the scent of loamy earth in the air, imbuing even the lichen with a strange green surging life. One part of me screams for sleep; the other goes on, dressing flesh on ideas, spitting out a sun-lit shaft of golden hair. Characters here die and go unmourned, until the next night, when I reinvent the world again.

I dreamt of loving something used

I dreamt of loving something worn
a sodden cardboard sign
dissolving in the winter weather
I dreamt of loving something used.
I dreamt of loving Athos
of his eyes blazing bright with drink.
I laid my hand on his fevered cheek and
He whispered a name

It wasn't mine.

Unravel

Will every part of me unravel? Seams unroll and drop, trailing into puddles behind me. Will my hair start to fall out, in damp hanks into shaking hands?

I'd give whatever throbs within me for a single taste of your skin; if every time I opened my mouth to speak your name, I'd have been satisfied if a memory of my childhood escaped.

While sleeping, I grasp for your naked foot, your flush cheek, your outstretched hand.

When waking, instead of reaching, I turn away. Turn towards a distant hill, a brightly burning star, the horizon, each equally unreachable.

I search through stacks of yellowing pages and crumbling books for my most secret name, now long forgotten.

Thomas Wolfe Might Have Been Wrong

You can go home again.

"I've shed selves since then, like a snake sheds skin" she said, her eyes whipping past me. I nod and agree but say only "I allowed it to happen, I made the choice, and live with it even now."

"What?" The question a Rubik's cube.

The answer is out of me before I can close my mouth, it has slipped past, and unfurls like flag. "I have always always loved him."

In the perfect world, I'd have fallen to the ground, my eyes rolling back, the shivering seizure taking the truth of it from me. She'd have been struck deaf by god, if he'd been kind. I should have let out a scream that went on till I coughed blood, I'd have torn my hair and thrown myself on the pyre of the past.

Instead

the miles keep flying by, the forest is not the skeletons of char after a fire, the sky blazes blue instead and I close my eyes and cover them with my hands.

There is a creeping joy in knowing, and now I do know. "I could never tell him no" I whisper. "I have looked for him always, and defined and redefined love by what he had to offer, though it was so much less than love."

She is silent, then a small burst of laughter, like a child.

"Now what?"

Waiting

Where have I felt happiness?
I don't even know now what to seek, where to find it.

Joy slithers in

It's true - joy and fear all at once. So many changes in the works - a plan to travel beyond the distant horizons into dreams I've not yet dared to weave, a plan to sit in silence and pain for a number of days (dazed and mute, what will I think up?), and more even.

I watched a movie in which a delicate child, two months premature, died for lack of medical equipment. How can I not be moved to inflict some change of my own onto the world?

For TNB

I warn you, now wonder what his hands hurry to hide
I warn you now, beware the faulty fruit this love should bring
Eyes certain, will certainly stray
What warning would you have?
Build what you can from those fickle fibers
those half-laughed lines
I swear, give it time
and you'll choke with the lie

I bear you nothing but witness.
A heart as dark and sickly sweet
you'll find is filled with nothing
but raspberry jam.