you think, and think, and think.

you think the Catholic girls’ school maybe skewed your sense of intimacy
tender shoots of women tangled in each other’s hair and hands
and then confusion, watching them smirk over rumours or truths
that one of their own might dare to love another

you don’t even know any boys until you’re nearly sixteen
and you don’t really get it until long after that:
you just call them sisters and tell yourself
you could never want anything more from them.

by the time you realise you are already years into love
with the man who will give you your children
and by the time you are ready he is your home and your hearth
and mail arrives with both of your names

and even though you’re happy and full of forever together
you wonder quietly if you will live your whole life never knowing
the whole sum of everything you could love.

How I cornered myself into the entitlement myth or: I just want to kiss sweet people at parties but my head won’t let me (something in the coding is wrong wrong wrong)

something in the coding is wrong wrong wrong when I fear asking your kisses because
that’s all I can have –
when creeping in at my sides is the fear of offering too little
not asking too much
a girl cannot win, cannot win
and the draws and near misses pile high on the heap
the heaped hopes that you’ll reach but never do.

I have a code for you saying ‘X’,
my counteroffer neatly creased and ironed clean
[as if never or long last used, fancy that!]
I know how to say ‘how about Y instead’

and maybe it’s a foundless fear but here where I am younger than I like
I feel forever too little, outgrown my shoes but not my shawl

(will you hold me steady on my feet,
at hip one broadsweet hand and hair the other?
to lead the two-three waltz through my one, one, one?
I may not rise to trip in time but quick to learn the tune and tap along)

[something in the coding is wrong wrong wrong
when I offer you nothing in case my something is too small]

shaking in the bud

if I drink anymore I’ll burst and still this thirst,
this desert flesh of mine
nurses greedily at the water table,
sucks at the salt and sighs.

I can see you between the vulture’s arches
and I swear those things that look like thorns
are just whiskers on my catcus
… cactus.
I think I need to touch you to know where I am
and if I could fit
between you.

you come to me with those hands and I’m practically
begging you to clip me
to nip this shaking in the bud
to take a piece for your garden
to shift the weight of holding it myself
to show that I too am
succulent.

dark den dance

when you turn off the light I am suddenly soft
and where my tense, dense trunk stood tall
is only the shadow of the shy sapling that I am in the day.
and when we close the windows and draw the blinds
the trembling in my willowed spirit-level hands
is lost at long last to whiskey and grins.

I have twisted my usual twitches inside-out
to take two beautiful bodies as likeness, not lacking –
three mismatched pearls, moonstones at three a.m.
and it’s only barely the whiskey and I know it
bravery never born of booze but always always always
the sweetness of a shared shell and sea.