Jessica McCamley

Do you think it's light or dark?

When the pressing nothingness descends

and we don't even get to think.

Will it be white or black?

The veil that smothers and chokes

all that made us ourselves,

all that we knew ever was.

-

Is it heavenly or full of lies?

A reminder of the fat feed served

without warning

down our precious immortal throats,

still kissed by buttercups in playgrounds

after they promised us feathers

and a meeting with God.

-

I like to think it keeps going,

that a woman meets me

like a girl in a nightclub bathroom,

she promises me its all ok.

But there's a voice in my head

who reminds me of blackness

and smothered, screaming dark.

-

He is a man.

He beats her down and reminds her

that she is wearing makeup.

He does it without violence,

he just smothers her,

with a million unmet desires,

and the man she sold her life to.

They come like strings of wailings;

of sickening, mourning loss.

This one here looks happy but

it tastes lonely when she talks.

The tired eyes console me,

I'm disturbed by the empty chair.

So, I lay them a place at dinner,

and pretend they are not there.

--

At once, there comes a moment,

like a river overflown,

when they pour from me to marshland,

while I fight to keep them my own.

But they spill with all the languid spite

of oil corrupting sea,

as the rainwash takes the parts of me

I never got to meet.

--

So I sit, alone, with tepid sobs

thick with desperate grief,

at people I will never know

people I will never be.

And I curse something foul at them,

for the truth they all withheld:

that your twenties are just a process

You give me gifts like music.

Not supermarket plants

that look like

they might die.

You want to give me

chances,

experiences,

life.

--

So, you send me songs

with words like dripping honey

thick and heavy with

I love yous

cushioned by copper-sweet guitar

and men with deep voices.

You make lists of things

you want me to try

because my living,

it excites you.

--

You buy me chocolate

because you know

the normal stuff makes my throat itch

and you never want to

make my eyes water

or steal my breath.

In return, I give you

my delight.

Which is, for once, enough.

--

Your gifts don't sit

stacked atop notes of

apology

you send me

for your

absence.

No.

They become part of me

as memories or tastes

and they lay within my bones

stacked atop the constant warmth

Under a pink milk sky,

and barrelling pressure of time

tick tick ticking

itself away,

I sit with that warm-stomached feeling

of beautiful music

and somewhere to be.

--

Scenes click past

in the shuttered manner of

an old film.

People in yellow-lit buildings

sat around wooden tables,

and I wonder if they know

that they're beautiful.

--

Because they are.

The creamy light of dusk

falls on them all,

coats them thickly

in something like magic,

heavy and wonderful,

like time.

--

The fields and lakes

and sheep and clouds

all drenched in evening,

the colours and feelings all swirl

mindlessly, sensuously,

into one.

--

I feel very suddenly the weight of it all,

the rich indulgent beauty

of life

all at once refreshing and sickly

pounding at my chest,

let in

and that milky light

Sad girl. Lonely.

In your big, grey coat.

No longer cursed by that

youthful arrogance

that made you think

everyone was watching you.

You know, now, that they're only

looking past you, in the window,

and searching for themselves.

--

You don't feel quite human.

You think it's the inherent alienation

of hyper-consumerism under Capitalism,

but wonder if it's because

he said 'goodbye' like a greeting

and forgets how to love you

sometimes.

You decide you're hard to read,

looking at the crook of your arm

where flowers could be.

--

You grip to things

like feminism

and self-loathing

so that when they tell you who you are

it feels more like control.

So the blood seeping out

from teeth-marks in your tongue

taste like a choice

taste like blame.

--

You have an idea of yourself as

...'better'...

While the Sun boils the ocean

because we forgot to stop poisoning the air.

But you can do your Philosophy degree

and waste your time

wondering if it's truly wasted

if there isn't any left.

--

You reach Haymarket and

somewhere before Monument

you catch yourself in the window,

past the man in the hat

purple? or was it blue?

As you search the dissociative darkness

you think your hair looks nice

I have a new favourite breakfast, now.

It's not the savoury toast

you used to make me,

that garlic-salt simplicity

I would beg you for.

It's syrupy-sweet.

Grilled peaches and cinnamon spice,

and I make it myself.

-

You didn't want me to learn your recipe,

just in case

I did it better,

because then I would know

that I didn't need you.

And then, maybe, I would see that you

weren't worth the heartache.

You were right.

-

Now I don't have to listen to your stories,

how that toast was born from a gap year,

from privilege, and money,

as you looked on my empty plate, with a pitiful look

that explains

that you are wiser and more interesting

than me.

This one was born from a joke

between friends,

on an idle, rainy day.

-

I can bathe my breakfast in syrup,

make it sweet for mysef.

Take my time, pour over the stove

and listen only to that scrape

of knife against toast,

knowing I'm a better boyfriend

to me

than you ever were.

-

And, day by day, I will watch

as I drop leaves and grow

blossoms

that you never touched.

Then, when Summer comes,

I'll pluck peaches from my

free-standing branches

and make toast,

The Sun is rising over Glasgow,

another bright, cold day,

and I wake up to a full feeling

and an empty side of the bed.

-

I thought that missing you

would be suffering,

a nauseating emptiness,

some growling starvation of the soul.

-

But it is a fullness,

the having of a nothingness

which reminds you of the everything

that fills from far away that purring void.

-

I think it is because you have loved me

into my dreams,

cheering from a strangely stagnant distance

so it echoes in that space we both share.

-

It is not a desperation,

like a fear that you will return to

a different lock, or a stranger

wearing your slippers. No.

-

Missing you is a homesickness,

a bittersweet knowing

that there is a place to return,

I admit to looking with derision

on that most human of tendencies

to continue believing

when all evidence points us

to doubt,

to denial.

-

Yet — like a child,

who sees fairies in the wind

or reindeer in the sky on

snowy nights —

I see you, in a year,

with me still.

-

I have no reason to believe,

what, with your ephemeral silence,

and the mud-caked footprints

on my carpet

telling of that age-old ending

as my eyes follow them, sadly,

out the door.

-

Still, I search

for fairy-dust,

or an indication in your tone,

that might give me an excuse

to keep lying to myself,

that magic exists,

I am an island

embraced by sea

flooded

with an aloneness

never lonely but

sometimes

bleak.

-

People,

their ships,

pass me by

stopping only long enough

taking

pleasure in warm sand.

-

But they do take.

Always leaving and never

leaving

anything behind,

but heavy bootprints,

washed away by that

salt-water sea,

Sweet ghosts snake through the air

heavy with silence.

Cut through by the lingering smell of

damp concrete, from the rain.

-

I breathe a breath laced with discontent,

a something unsaid —

perhaps, unsayable. And I position my

almosts between sips of tea.

-

You pick up your cup, then put it down

again. Without drinking.

Dust-flecked and shimmering in sunlight

that crawls now from a yawning sky.

-

I watch you leave on a faint breeze

from the open window.

And my last reclining sigh scatters your

Your hand is on my leg

it’s affectionate

it isn’t like you.

I lean in to test

how you’re feeling

and you pull me closer.

-

In the kitchen you

kiss me

a picture of domesticity

comfortable

safe

and it isn’t like you.

-

Something has shifted

something has dropped

a thick heavy boot

and it crushes me

flat.

-

You love me without

restraint

and you take in every

curve, sweet-soft and

dented

by years of your

leather-bound touch.

-

Then, with supple fingers

and a voice trained for crisis

you shatter me.

And I realise

that the last time

was the last time

and you were

strange

because you were

finished

and I was

Upon a riverbank, a willow tree stands, moping

over the water. Sun-drenched leaves lighting

freckled cheeks.

-

Against coffee-milk sand, a vast northern sea laps

lazy with power. His salt-kiss soaking through

golden hair.

-

Across land and sea, two spirits, unabashed by

the open-palmed cruelty of fate,

play in life.

-

Two decades, a train, and two hearts shattering in tune

come to pass. Spirits, in blue-eyed recognition,

collapse into bliss.

-

Dolorous bells sound on their lives, or their play,

with soft certainty. But they hold no fear

for dying light.

-

A willow tree will always grow on the shore of

Whitley Bay. The north waves, gently, crashing

Maybe it's the stars.

I like to think it is.

Then,

maybe,

it isn't me

that's causing your

indifference.

-

I like to think

something about

the placement of Venus

between two koi fish

is the reason

you have only ever

called me beautiful

once.

-

I know that

when morning comes

and the only star

is a Gemini sun

casting shadows

beneath my eyes,

that despite the comforting lies

that arrange themselves in

the night sky,

it is not because of

stars

that you do not love me,

I cannot promise you reprieve,

as much as I want to fight,

my helpless fists hit

empty air

before the demons in your mind.

-

I cannot pretend to see the world

through blackened

bulging eyes,

or defeat those apparitions

that plague your sleepless nights.

-

I can promise you sanctuary,

in my arms, however weak,

ever charmed against judgement,

these flesh and bone walls,

your sacred space to just be.

-

I can try to see the places

another body

might keep you stable,

and I will love you, like a promise,

I have loved through chaos.

When each heartbeat echoes

with the scratches and screams of

a broken soul,

tearing itself in two

in an effort to be

something

that looks like enough.

-

I have loved in silence.

When the lump in your throat

tastes like longing

heavy

thick

and it plucks you apart to

bone-flesh

without heed to your tears,

as they flood your glass box.

-

But loving you is like

a sigh,

warm sun after a winter

you thought might never end.

When barren branches bear fruit

for the first time

and you eat until you're full,

with the knowledge

that you will never go hungry again.

-

I love with open palm

not the digging of nails into flesh,

the blood pouring out is

poetry

across air sweetened with loosed

breath

let out in comfort

in pleasure,

in safety.

Because you know that you will breathe

again

and the air will be just as crisp

Ideas of vague notions sometimes haunt me.

They come back as whispers

or ghosts

and they keep me awake when I

shouldn't be sleeping anyway.

This is to say,

you do not plague me as you once did.

I do not stare into blankness expecting

that you will say something

sweet

as you once did.

Memories that never were,

nevermaybes I courted but never

met,

slide down the walls of my mind.

Fading in and out of focus

as the light flashes and

I try to hold on

like a dream

or a movie

that I never quite saw.

The ifs, the couldshouldwoulds

of a friendship I played with

that set ablaze

when one of us

struck a match too close to our

skin.

What were we both looking for anyway?

Since we scortched the hairs on our arms

trying to find it.

I miss you.

The you that you were

in your head full of films

and the you that I held

in my mind.

Unmade memories

When we first fell in love,

you bought me a plant

from the supermarket

that you didn't think would live

that long.

You bought it,

just to make me smile.

I gave that plant

all the love of an earthly mother.

I poured my soul into

jagged, spade-shaped leaves.

You always used to say that

you thought it would die,

but I kept it alive

and you loved that.

I grew three new plants

from cuttings.

So the plant that was,

for you,

destined only to die

sees her will to live flourish

in her own roots

and across the windowsill

in a pot I bought

after you left me

thinking I would die.

Now, it's Spring.

She flowered for the first time

in years.

I see her when I wake up

and look out the window

at a world kissed by blossom

and a day blessed by

your absence.

The plant you bought

because you thought it would die

makes me smile because

she outlived you