Here goes everything.
I haven’t shared creative writing on this blog before. Every time I share my writing somewhere new, or with someone new, it feels like a huge step, and a terrifying one at that. But more and more, I know it is a step that must be taken.
The truth of the matter is this: I feel most at one with myself and with the world when I am writing. I feel best seen and heard when I have the chance to share my writing with others.
What I am sharing here was and still is difficult writing. I can feel the strain of it whenever I read back through the collection: “On an overdue ending”. I return to the moment of beginning the first draft, when after months of struggling, I admitted to myself that I wasn’t coping in the aftermath of a challenging experience. I knew the only way out was through, and the only way through was to write it all out.
I was terrified of writing anything freeform, which is unusual for me. I usually love diving headfirst into a narrative and delving deep into all of the endless possibilities. But when tackling this subject matter, I felt like I needed a structured approach. I knew that would be paradoxically limiting (in terms of keeping to the conventions of the genre) and freeing (in making me feel safe enough to confront some very complicated feelings). I was inspired to write tanka, a poetic genre which I have become fascinated by.
The process of crafting poems in this form felt like a safe way to step through painful memories. The reflection made possible through writing in metaphor and illustrative imagery has been equally challenging, validating, and comforting. I have also been able to talk more openly about the experience by way of sharing this poetry with trusted loved ones. I realise that I haven’t spoken about it very openly here and that to refer to it as a “challenging experience” with “painful memories” is quite vague, but at least for now, I feel that the specifics are best kept between myself and my most trusted people.
To everyone who has read this collection and talked to me about it, whether in terms of craft or the experience itself: from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Your support means more than I can say (perhaps I will try to tackle those feelings via a future collection!)
In writing and sharing this collection, I am reminded of the way in which Jeanette Winterston described poetry: “It isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.” I was able to emerge from hiding through this writing and along the way I found myself.
My hope is that these pieces speak, ultimately, to the journey involved in healing and the chance of catharsis along the way.
Publication: ‘re-assembling’ was published in Issue 34 of Eucalypt.
Content warning: this collection explores the experience/realisation of a toxic relationship, as well as the process of exiting that relationship and working towards healing
tightrope
Invisible string
Threadbare and wasting away
Slight beneath my feet
When it breaks, I go tumbling
Into the funhouse below.
funhouse
Swooping stretching glass
Curved in every which way
Images twisted
You see me all mis-shapen
And, unflinchingly, you smile.
empty
An echoing sounds
As you beat the same old drum
Questions few and and frail
While your demands are many
All else you ask is empty.
enough
Dissatisfaction
Crackling like fire in your eyes
To forcibly craft
A twin who doesn’t quite match
And so is never enough.
scissors
Snipping at the seams
Unraveling bit by bit
Parts of myself gone
Before your sharp, unseeing eyes
You sneer at your creation.
breathlessness
Exhilaration
A bright, enlivening rush
Or so it once seemed
As soon as I pull away
I realise I cannot breathe.
tough
Glass under bare feet
In pieces shaped like daggers
You tell me to walk
As though I shouldn’t feel it
Tough love, you say, is needed.
secrecy
Under lock and key
A chest containing whole worlds
Don’t tell them, you said
As though I were Pandora
About to lift that cursed latch.
accusation
Knife pointed then plunged
Deep inside my aching chest
Staring me down, you warn:
“This isn’t you.”
It is, I say. Wounds and all.
forgetting
A road, long, winding
Darkening and diverging
Forgetting, you say
Will take a very long time
While I think I never will.
waiting
Flurrying, flummoxed
A descent of woodpeckers
Havoc in my chest
I watch my phone, hold my breath
Time unspools; you make me wait.
betrayal
I steal far away from you
Under a thick cloak
Towards true loved ones
Though you firmly forbade it
I tell them the complete truth.
horror
Eyes wide, faces rouged
Mouths slack then drawn far too tight
It isn’t okay
It isn’t right, they protest
She can’t say those things to you.
trying
Muscle bound to tear
Searing with every stretch
I reach and reach and
I simply cannot grasp it
This thing you call forgiveness.
pretending
Neon and rainbow
Lights strung up, entirely aglow
Back in the funhouse
I smile until my face hurts
At this vast colourlessness.
farewell
Chest unlocked at last
Flight of birds let free
I vanish without a trace
Without reason or farewell
I owe you no more of me.
re-assembling
an iridescent scatter
of shreds, scraps, frayed remnants
I sift through offcuts
Seeking discarded pieces
Needle and thread by my side.