Three Poems by Abigail George

 

Night has taken you away from me for the last time

 

I think of you

standing in the

doorway that night

I am thinking of

the night that you left

The night that you

forgot to say goodbye

to me  

I am left thinking

of our first kiss and

how I trembled as

I suppose 

every woman trembles

in her first love’s arms

Now you are gone

Now you have vanished

into the distance

and ether somewhere

Good and kind

for someone else

Someone else’s reason

but not for me

No, not for me.

 

Once your soul

belonged to me

It doesn’t anymore

Arms

Branches

Warmth slowly

Returning to me

And so, I cling to your memory

The miracle that I once found

in your mouth

You are hard to find now

I grieve for you

For what was once

beautiful

and filled with grace

truth, purpose, feeling

For what was once eternal

and belonged

to me.

Forgiven, but not forgotten, it doesn’t matter you see

 

I am bitter

and whiskey in a glass

This bitterness

is a hard pebble

in my mouth

It’s difficult to swallow

too psychological

the light hurts my eyes

too much truth, you see

I find I am on a train

while eating the sun

dripping its peach juice

in-between my fingers

A stranger is doing

My makeup

I feel like Paris, a silent mountain

a work of art in-progress

a Cambodian alien

I think I hear your voice

I haven’t heard your voice

in years

I turn my head

But it’s someone else

A future-husband perhaps

A shape of a man

I keep losing birthday cakes

In peaceful rivers

In potholes

In grey hair

In ghost-clouds

In my dark brown eyes

Inside my parents marriage

While I keep coming

Up for air

I squeeze blood

Out of stones

In a refugee camp

And wash soiled garments

In the sea

The aroma of death

The rubbish and decay

I need to get it off my hands

It can’t come off my skin, you see.

Finding years in summer days

 

You are years Israel. I discover you everywhere

and while my mother waters the garden, I think

of Charles Bukowski as if his words were drowning

in my throat like an ice-cold beer. I think of my

illness, how I want it to disappear. I pretend to be

tough but I’m not. There’s so much light in this

room. It’s hurting my eyes. My heart is broken

but my soul is free. I ask my father, why wasn’t I

loved but he has no answers for me. Only tears

in his eyes that he thinks I can’t see. At forty-five,

I am still writing poetry, drowning in the fog-

 

drenched doorways of yesterday, caught between

the past and memory, vertigo tugging at the

tenderness of my heartstrings. I am still writing

to you and there is still something so pure about

your hair as it falls across your shoulders. You no

longer exist for me. Isn’t that interesting, I ask the

shadows, moonstruck. I need adventure, a young

teacher tells me who has fallen in love with me.

I need friends. I am too much on my own he tells

me. I tell him that I prefer this way of life. I prefer

seeing the eyes of my unborn children in the eyes

of my brother’s children, a son and a daughter.

Today I can understand that young man. That he

doesn’t think it is much of a life. I pick up a

 

magazine. The words hurt my eyes. The pages

hurt my eyes. The sun hurts my eyes. A refugee

camp falls out of the magazine and then a man

who I knew once in a former life, then azaleas.

You taught me that men need to be loved. They have

no need, want or desire for cold women who feel

like winter in their arms. The interview feels like

butter. It tastes like roast chicken but when it

appears in the newspaper it has a beating heart.

It has sinew and limb. I don’t recognise the woman

in the picture. The wound that you left blooms every

 

spring. It’s an aloe. It has its own ocean and

textbook knowledge. It is psychological in nature.

Its blood is wise. I pick up shells. I collect their

songs. I’m a monk in jazz-climate, in a hellish terrain.

I ask for silence. The mountains have ears and a

kind of feminine energy. I’m not safe yet. I’m not

safe yet. I look to the shore for help but it isn’t visible.

Please eat this pain, Paradise, give me this knowledge.

That love lasts. It lasts forever. It tastes like sugar,

has the bitter sweetness and  energy of a wise

blood tough as nails rough childhood, and like a

child’s bright laugh it has its own science, don’t

you understand? You see, I know that my mother

does but God didn’t make me that kind of woman.

by Abigail George