A poem comprised of ‘one true sentence’s, after Ernest Hemingway.
Dedicated to my dad today on the 8th anniversary of his death.
x
The moment he died, Mother began digging
through the detritus of her backpack; I was on the floor,
bawling, Brother was punching the locker & then Mother
was shoving her cracked Cath Kidston pocket mirror
under our dad’s nostrils to make sure he was dead,
to confirm, as if we didn’t already know. Death is wasted
on the dead; I’d relish it more than them, do a better job.
Today’s affirmation (say it x10): I love my future
corpse. The only person more exhausted than me
is the sun. The disgraced psychiatrist told me that
I love at an untherapeutic level. Why don’t you
understand that me throwing myself off
the roof of Wood Green Shopping City is also me
running down to ground level to catch myself?
Read that again, properly. To have my poetry read
by so many strangers is akin to that ultra-specific rush
of embarrassment when you’re buying milk in Tesco
& your card is declined, the flush of panic even though you know
you’re not skint; we must be Very British whenever this happens, loudly
& awkwardly inform the queue that we definitely DO HAVE money.
The scariest thing I ever wrote while psychotic was ‘I AM STILL HERE’
in handwriting that wasn’t mine, scrawled huge across two pages in blue biro;
I did not, & still do not, know who ‘I’ is. It was funny when we broke up
& everybody congratulated me; I have stored thirty-three
variations of ‘YAYYY congrats queen!!!’ in my cheeks
like a feral squirrel; this cheerleading will sustain me
through the winter when loneliness sets out to murder
my future corpse, make it Present. My arms are wet, leaking
from lacerations of godliness. I am trying to outrun a plague-swarm
of beloveds & stalkers. I frown upon the sexual tension stewing
between my unrealised dreams. I am beyond tired
of all this mind-full-ness, of my unforgettability, of my anxiety
disorder being more ambitious than me, of HLR always
saying she will buy the flowers herself, of Beepy Dee, tired of being
‘painfully attuned’ to everything. This morning I howled at the moon
& she howled right back at me. All of this is confidential
by the way. He hit me & it felt like a hit. I never write in blue ink.
You make me want to take up smoking again. Please know that
if you don’t accept simultaneous submissions, you will receive
my worst poems. No breakdown is complete without cutting
bangs with a razor. Dad, when I light up a stick of nag champa,
it means I need you. I have heard that the Pacific is sick
with longing to touch me. I write for all the girlies
who subsist on a diet of Americanos & spite. I can’t
believe you actually died. There are unscreamt screams
rushing beneath my skin. The final line of every poem
I’ve ever written is always the same: Don’t you dare
fucking leave me.
Originally published by Hobart, along with two other new poems poems. Read here.
HLR 