First Love

"...This was a child's love, and yet I clench my eyes
till the pictures return, unfocused at first, then
almost clear, an old film played at a slow speed.
All day I will glimpse it, in windows of changing sky,
in mirrors, my lover's eyes, wherever you are.

And later a star, long dead, here, seems precisely
the size of a tear. Tonight, a love-letter out of a dream
stammers itself in my heart. Such faithfulness.
You smile in my head on the last evening. Unseen
flowers suddenly pierce and sweeten the air."

from "First Love" by Carol Ann Duffy

Again I feel I've said too much, too little, and nothing at all.
It all blurs as tears fall.

First love that all these years later flows back from the past to flood the present.

The sweetest, sharpest thing I have ever known...

What I wanted to tell you

"They stared at each other under the ancient sky with the soft rain and full wet earth. More than anything Ephram wanted to talk to her and tell her things he'd kept locked in the storehouse of his soul. He wanted to talk to her about the way Rupert Shankle's melons split on the vine and how honeysuckle blossoms tasted like sunlight. He wanted to tell her that he had seen a part of the night sky in her eyes and that he knew it because it lived in him as well. He wanted to tell her about the knot corded about his heart and how he needed her to loose the binding."

from "Ruby" by Cynthia Bond

Letters

I will always send you letters,
folding and refolding in a million different ways,
trying to make a snowflake that won't melt in your hand.
Maybe one breezeless day I will word the question right
and your answer will find a way back against the current.

The Art of Paper-Folding

Once upon a time there was a girl shut away in a big old house in the middle of nowhere. For its many rooms and sprawling grounds it was a stifling place. She was never without company but felt lonely and empty in a way she couldn't explain. Until one day a letter came that changed everything.

Released from the envelope it unfolded itself into a boy who laughed at her surprise. "It appears we're to be friends," he said, "but appearances can be deceiving so I thought maybe you should see for yourself!" They became the best of friends after that and were together often as he showed her how to fold to fit into an envelope too and send herself wherever she wanted to go.

Many, many years passed with them folding and unfolding themselves along well-worn creases and familiar lines until the passage of time granted them other more magical ways to be together. But for all their ease, she missed her name in his hand. The art of paper-folding never lost its charm for her and one day soon she will cross an ocean and hope their paperless selves know which way to bend.

(Dear S, for thirty years of friendship - thank you x)

Letter to my Muse

"The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal."
William James

You are nothing like how I imagined my Muse. I thought I'd squashed her flat when I picked this place up off the dry cracked prairie and set it down here. I thought I saw the pointed toes of her silver slippers sticking out from under the planks. Instead I find you standing on the front porch looking very much like an accountant in a crisp blue shirt and polished shoes.
You have followed me here and I'm glad. The place was lonely without you. I didn't realise what was missing until you showed up. I'm even more glad that you are not a cranky witch with a broomstick to poke me in the ribs with. Measure and correctness is much more my thing. Seven words is all it takes, right?

Inside My Head

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

   from "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath

A blink of an eye and the scene changes.
I leave one world behind and enter another.
I tried living in the Real
but I have fairytale running through my veins.
So here I am starting again in a place that feels like home.
Deeper in the woods, far from the madding crowd.

Summer's End

Dear S

It's the last weekend of Summer here - the boys have gone to trap it in their sails and I'm stitching it into the hem of a Winter skirt.

Do you remember our first Summer's end?
I remember the letter you pushed beneath my door, how it slipped through the silence and began that Summer's song. I hear it playing and I think of you as the sun slides low and shadows lengthen.

 "May I?" you asked holding out your hand for mine. They were the only two words I ever needed and the ones I held on to as the days fell like dominoes.

They're falling again now - I graduate tomorrow and the day after that... I guess your own dominoes are falling too.

When you need a hand to hold,

Always x