The Farmers wife

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I should not have been a farmers wife.

I spend my days, imagining

A different life.

I carry the land like a festering sore

When the ewes abandon lambs

They come begging to my door

I feel nothing, no empathy

Not motherly

A churl of stomach,

I retch and shake my head

Bloody little lambs, better off dead

I see why their mothers crept away

I bottle feed but I do not play

Unmoved by their plight,

Unmoved.

I am unmoved, by his plight.

Glued to this table

Tied to this kitchen,

Bound to this house.

Unmoving.

With my hands warm around my mug

It isn’t my fault, I am not to blame

He dies slowly with the light

I dream, I live a little

I sit here as darkness falls

I will not miss these four walls

There s been an accident

He’s lying out

In the mud

In the yard,

In the dark

Now, now its dark.

He is lying in the mud, in the dark.

Its been hours

I could hear him screaming as I drove in

It was daylight, maybe late afternoon

I parked the car at the front.

I crept to the door,

Turned the key in the lock,

Crept inside.

I have not looked out

I boiled the kettle, made a drink and sat to wait.

He screamed, and screamed and screamed.

I just…day dreamed.

I expect the tractor overturned.

Does he not know how many times I would have liked to lay down in the mud and scream

I guess its different when you are lying pinned under a tractor

But still there are many times when I would have jumped at the chance

to scream and yell and writhe in the endless bloody mud,

that is farm life, endless and bloody and mud.

Do you think if I’d done that he’d have rescued me,

Come out of the barn to see what the fuss was about.

Unmoved.

Do you think anyone was ever coming to rescue me

He won’t survive the night, not in this cold

I’ll hide in here til morning light,

then go out and look for the missing sign of life.

I should not have been a farmers wife.

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Yesterday

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

He calls from far away
To find out if I’m Ok

Ok?

We left ok behind some time ago
Have you seen the numbers here

His voice just fades away

He talks about the weather
His getting worse, mine getting better

He is just a noise in the background now

He’s read bout viral load
And treatment, maybe cure

No one mentions vaccines anymore

There is just the stunned silence of reality

Immune systems, vitamins

Have you been working out?
Hope you’re well, All good here
Meaningless words,
All tinged with fear

I breathe in, I breathe out

I breathe in, I breathe out

Breathing is in itself,

An act of joy,

Of hope

There are things I want to say

A long lost explanation
About why I went away

I have lived out in the world

I am not sorry for it

It was a choice I made

There is silence on the line

Then he talks of the economy
I try and pretend I care

I look at my nails,

Twiddle my fingers in my hair

I no longer lie awake at night
And think of him
The night is full of horrors
I know that I can’t share
He wants to know if I’m ok
I can’t think of the words to say
The pain of thousands dead
Will never go away

The pain it is unbearable

Intangible

Yet palpable

We are all scarred forever

We will wear it like a mark

For all eternity

They will talk of us in whispers

Stare when we come in the room

I know he’ll call again
And it will still be all too soon
Because we are worlds away
Yet I haven’t got the words to say

Something moved me on

And us, me, we,

That was yesterday

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Relative darkness

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

In times of darkness
They always tell you there is light
But in the darkness

You can’t see the switch

Do you think there is someone else there
At the end of the tunnel
Who’s going to switch it on

For you

That’s not a real expectation
Instead the darkness becomes gloom
Your eyes adjust, the world becomes

Clearer, less murky

In the gloom
You realise you don’t need the switch
You can walk on in the semi darkness

Because you’re human

And you can adapt
And then one day
The gloom is just

Normal

Its not gloom anymore
Its kind of like living in the light again
There was no

Miracle

No point at which
The switch went on
And if you see the light again, its so

Bright

Its so glaring and so overstated
And you don’t want it
And you feel

Uncomfortable

You can see the faces of the ones you love
In the gloom
And it is all perfectly

Good

And there is no going back
And the gloom is just normal
And we are all, all of us

Ok

Because what you thought was darkness
Was not an absence of light
But a light that was

Different

To what you were expecting
But you got through
And the platitudes and positivity

Useless tropes

In a world that shone

Differently

To the light we have now

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The Door

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

No one goes out
No one comes in
I look at the door
No one is coming to the door
It is rendered useless now

Purposeless

I worry about the door

I look at it each morning
I wonder if it knows
Doors are not sentient
I whisper that
Quietly to myself

The door is unmoved

Literally

It has not moved to open in days
I have started saying hello to it
To wonder if the whole thing
Is some kind of,
Some kind of front door conspiracy

The front doors of the world just wanted

Rest

I am starting a door appreciation society
Because it can’t hurt
Because maybe it’s the cause
Because it might help us at all
Because I want to do my bit

I have been in this house inside

Too long

Yet the door is there
It remains resolute
It neither opens nor closes
It just remains shut
Like a shut thing

Tall and proud and

Shut

I touch the handle
Some mornings I kiss the glass
Some mornings I rage against its
Steadfastness
The door remains unmoved

It does not express any emotion

Shut

Meanwhile our house has a regime
Of post-it notes
Of rules we neither agreed
Nor can be bothered adhering to
At the end we will tear them all down

But not the door, we will leave

The door

The door is not a post-it note
I speak out loud to the door now
In the darkness and in the light
‘I promise we will use you again’
There will be an end.

The door remains

Motionless

All those deliveries
The days I carelessly flung it open
I fiddled with the keys in the lock
I opened it just a crack
Leaned against it to chat

I miss those days

Door

I stare at it, shut
I wonder if I shouldn’t get the axe
And bash it down
Even though I have a key
And we don’t own an axe

It is not the fault of the door, the door is

Blameless

I need to make my peace with the door
I sit before it and speak
Words of soothing and calm
I do not blame the door
It is keeping us safe

It is then I spy the shoes

The shoes

I turn my attention to the shoes
All of them in a row,
Sitting there unused.

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Just People

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I look at my to-do list

And its just people

A list of names.

I have not been on the train for two weeks
I did not go to the supermarket this morning
Right now, the washing seems beyond me

I stare at the list

Its just people

A list of names, to contact

I stayed up half the night
On a video call
We talked about a Zumba class
I will not leave my house for Zumba

The to-do list

It’s right there beside me

Its just peoples names

Each one a twinkle of light in the darkness
Will any of those twinkles go out
I am having coffee without cake
I have given up cake
It makes me feel like I am in control

Its like my list is living, breathing

Beside me

I look at it again

My weekend to do list
The ordinary one that I do every weekend
I have not cleaned her school shoes
Although I went to school with her
Everyday this week
I did a meeting in my dressing gown
But the extraordinary thing is still the list

The list, the to-do list

Its people

Its just people

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Love is just a feeling

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I have brought a box of chaos
And left it at your door
You might have thought you’d had enough
But I know you wanted more

If there is a holy grail
I have never seen it
And all those words I said
You know I didn’t mean it

When I played the song
I said it was just for you
But it’s the same song
I played for all the others too

There are dark, dark corners
In the glorious estate of the mind
Thoughts lurk beneath the surface
That no one else can find

Waves on a beach
Pebbles on shore
Lots of lovely ideas
Lots of wild metaphor

But hidden in the silent moment
In places dark and deep
There is evil in our memory
I watch you while you sleep

Will it be you or will it be me
Its always been a gamble
When thoughts reach our finger tips
Never forget we are animal

And so we walk a line
A tender loving stretch
As if tomorrow was our yesterday
And we were not a sketch

A vague outlined idea
Of what our lives should be
A house, a car, a dog,
Two kids and you and me

Wretched, wicked and worn
I toss it into the flame
The world will say I loved you
Because there is no other name

But love is just a feeling
It exists inside your head
It does not exist without you
It goes where you are led

So when you hear that song
Words you thought you’d never say
Remember love is a feeling
And like all feelings, it can go away.

Everyday

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

The same woman is in the coffee shop

Everyday

I am in the coffee shop

Everyday

Our lives intersect
but we never meet
We are in a permanent state of never meeting
She looks at me, I look at her
Life plays out around us

Everyday

Take that couple
Who are not a couple
He is talking at her
I note the wedding band
His not hers
She talks work
He talks innuendo

Sometimes its the same words just different voices

Everyday

He is dispensing advice
Like an advice dispenser
About egos
I think he knows about egos
He leans forward, leans back

Which looks best

He is wearing a brown jumper
That never looks good
He blends in with the coffee
She is not getting the vibe
He is being nonchalant
Judging his chances

He takes a misstep

Notices someone else
But she saw
She wasn’t here for that anyway
The world keeps turning

Another one of us comes in

There are 3 of us now,
Another middle aged woman
Clutching a coffee
Sitting alone

Observing life

It is no longer a cool place
The vibe is dying
Literally
It is full of women who dye their hair
And not because they want to
Pale skin and garish lipsticks
They cling to a the ship of youth

But it’s sailed.

He looks around now
Realises his error
He should have taken her
Somewhere the sisterhood
Wasn’t manifest

This place is too lowbrow
The whole thing has cost him £6
For no return
He scowls into his coffee

The coffee does not react

We sit there like guardians
She talks on as if nothing has happened

Nothing has happened

Our coffees have gotten colder
He asks if she knows what he means
She is not a mind reader
I have heard the whole thing
Its not hard to know what he means
She deliberately avoids knowing what he means

Over average luke warm coffee

Six pounds, 35 minutes he won’t get back

The woman who is here everyday
We make eye contact
We have seen this before
We see this all the time

We see this

Everyday.

I Drew Myself

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

I remember when

I became

Definite lines

Before then I was a half sketch,
With holes and gaps
Things could easily seep out
And they did.

Horrible residual bits of me left on the floor

I was a blur
I appeared at parties as a set of double lines
Nothing held me in
And people saw through me

And around me

I was small floral patterns on a pale background
A little bloom, a potted plant on a brick structure
The sunflower seed
The one that germinated in the shade

The spindly stunted one

Spreading spiky leaves
Out in the semi darkness
Clasping at drips of water
That were absorbed into mortar

But somehow between the dance tracks
And the last track

I formed

And maybe some of it was you.

But I drew the lines.
Real and definite and clear.
I dredged them out of alcohol sodden carpet,
And blood stained sheets,

As fingers clasped at my neck

I made my lines hold firm.
I took a bruise or two
I stole a brick from that wall
And replaced that flimsy stem

I shed those useless leaves

I stole every brick,
Every strip of wall paper
And my brightness shone out
above the wall

Clear, definite and real

And you

The sight of you,
the smell of you
Became a blur
Off in the distance

A faraway spot on a fading horizon

I can barely see it

even if I bring my hand to shade my eyes

A strange sooty spot

on the heel of the shoe that is my life

I clean you off.

I am definite and real.

Lines coloured in, and you?

You, I have forgotten,

Left behind on the doormat of life

Words that count

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

She counts the letters in the sentence
Nine, ten, 13 equals 32
2 times 16, 4 times 8,
3 times 10 plus two
With the brackets in the right place
 
It gives her time to think of an answer
She doesn’t have
Calms her mind
She doesn’t have-
13, 6 times 2 plus one
With the brackets in the right place
 
What to say- nine
Her mind runs blank
Blank, five
Except for the numbers
There’s nothing
But the words she might say
 
I was ‘in the library’, twelve
I was ‘at the shops’ –ten
‘At the cinema’ –eleven
10 times 2 plus one
With the brackets in the right place
 
There is no escape –fifteen
One of her favourite numbers
Fifteen- seven
Confession –ten
He is standing there frowning
 
Frowning -eight
Of all the days, why today
Her period is late
What should she say
She stares at the ground
The words aren’t there –eighteen
Not as much fun as fifteen
 
What is the difference between 15 and 18
Between six and five,
One three
A moment, a mistake
Somewhere inside a tiny heartbeat
Heartbeat-nine
3 times 3
No brackets this time
 
I’m pregnant she says-eleven!
With the apostrophe
She says it in her head or out loud
She isn’t sure
11 -a prime
His mouth falls open
But nothing comes out
I was at the ‘family planning clinic’- twenty
 
She smiles, goes upstairs
No words come to him
He doesn’t know what to say
Silence.
A countless silence
 
She can’t stay here
Its words that count

 

The persistence of Cupid

Posted on by tuesdaylatte

Strangers eyes
Catch
On a passing train
They don’t see each other again

He zigs
She zags
They miss each other
By half a bag

She is early
He is late
Their paths never cross
There is no fate

She sits in her office
He eats at his desk
Even in the lift
They’ve never met

She swipes left
He swipes past
Even with a phone
They don’t have a chance

In a world of isolation
Cupid has it tough
Slings his arrows where he can
But its rarely enough

He sits on the steps
He will not admit defeat
He will find an answer
A way for them to meet

He strokes his bow and arrow
He thinks its meant to be
A way for one and one
For them to be a ‘we’

Time passes
She is hit by a bus
Comatose for days
She does not wake up

He finds it hard to sleep
Takes a lot of pills
He does the same
Never left a will

Somewhere Cupid smiles

In a strange twist of irony
The hidden hand of fate
They are buried side by side
It is never too late