Sam Alexandra Rose

Author: writersamr

  • when I die I want to be a tree

    Listen to this poem on my Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/writersam/when-i-die-i-want-to-be-a-tree

    I have been thinking about death a lot –
    picking out my plot instead of turning away
    and I have decided that I want you to hollow
    out a tree trunk and place me inside. Don’t
    chop it down, leave it growing and upright. Keep
    the top open so that crows can make nests
    in my hair. It is always a mess anyway. Leave me
    there with my arms splayed like branches
    so the local kids tell each other terrible stories
    about the dead scarecrow woman who lives
    in the woods. I wouldn’t want my stories to stop
    after I have lost the power to tell them myself.
    Could you also make sure I am wearing a welcoming
    smile, not a grimace, as even though my face will be
    hidden within my standing grave, I still want to be the
    light relief. And we mustn’t call it a grave. I was never
    that serious, more of a hedonist with tendencies
    towards deceitfulness and an unreasonable amount
    of laughter which I also think must continue. So with
    that in mind, could you record the sound of my
    snorts, my giggles, my guffaws and sometimes
    play them in the forest, in the dark? Set up your old
    boom box among the rocks and put it on repeat. I just
    want to lark about and as the afterlife is still uncertain
    I need my body to do the work. Just set this up
    for me and we can both enjoy the looks of terror
    on people’s faces as they rush by. Maybe when you die
    you can be a tree here, too. I have been thinking
    about life a lot – losing the plot instead of turning
    away and I have decided that I want you to turn me
    into a wildlife reserve, maybe take a knife to my
    stomach where squirrels can burrow when it gets cold
    and insects can borrow my eye sockets to use as their home
    and the stories about the dead scarecrow woman
    who lives in the woods will never stop being told.

  • Just a dream

    I was sitting in my living with my boyfriend and our mutual friend, and the postman came to the back door near where we were sat and put some post through the letterbox and it was a hospital letter for me. But it had some stuff written on the envelope so I didn’t need to open it to know it was bad news. It had a couple of things written by different people on it and it said I had thirteen small brain tumours but the doctor I had was very good and it was probably going to be okay. I didn’t open the envelope to see what the letter inside said they were going to do about it. My boyfriend was wandering around the flat doing something else and my friend was sat next to me – I was sat on the sofa feeling that I couldn’t go on and I might as well just end it now because that would be easier and I was crying and sort of screaming quietly, making some sort of inhuman noises and that’s how I woke up this morning.

    But it was just a dream.

  • Brain Blade

    New poem! Read it below or listen to the audio version on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/writersam/brain-blade

    the word is too big for my mouth
    so it stays shut and won’t let anything out
    and instead all the thoughts crowd my skull
    like passengers being dropped  into a small
    room from an escalator
    squashed together and asphyxiating.
    meanwhile my brain is playing with a blade
    fingering the edges, wondering
    what it would be like
    to press, to gently slice,
    to ignore all advice,
    to plot its demise,
    else the body will get there first.
    is it better to surrender the country
    before the invasion gets too much?
    is it better to stop trying, to spend
    energy on living brightly and blindly,
    than to expend all resources on surviving?
    my brain considers this as it tosses
    the knife between its hands,
    waiting to stop caring about
    whether it grasps the handle in its fingers
    or catches it by the blade mid-air,
    a perfect curve of blood forming
    across its fleshy palm
    but never quite getting to that place
    of complacency. We are none of us safe,
    thinks the brain, though minutes ago
    it was laughing manically. The brain thinks:
    first it comes for the body, and one day
    it will come for me.

  • it’s happening again

    I wasn’t going to write about this but here is a super short summary of what has been going on with me this week, which I will type up really quickly, share on Twitter, and then never look at again for all eternity.

    (more…)

  • the knife

    there is a minute, literally sixty seconds
    or less
    when the knife you’re using at dinner
    looks inviting
    sharper than a butter knife, not quite
    a steak knife
    enough to elicit something red that just
    for a minute
    feels like a solution, despite you never
    taking it seriously
    before, despite your wrist’s resistance,
    your arm
    thinks maybe, your skin thinks maybe,
    somewhere
    in the back of your mind a tiny voice
    says maybe,
    but you keep cutting up your chicken,
    finish eating,
    take your plate into the kitchen, put
    the cutlery
    in the dishwasher, let the thought
    slip away
    as quietly and unnoticeably as it came.

    (I never have, and I won’t. It was just a minute. Please don’t worry.)

  • note to self

    Note to self, and other selves who try to put their own feelings on shelves hidden behind a curtain, where they’re certain it won’t occur to other people to look.

  • 4,000 miles

    4,000 miles away from my own doormat, after a long day of co-ordinating the salt in my nails with the sand in my teeth, I whisper “please, no letters” into my American pillow, as if there were anything it could possibly do to stop the consultant, to stop the admin clerk, to stop the sorting office staff, to stop the postman, to stop time.

  • Florida feeling

    The other day I tweeted about trying to be mindful while I am on holiday. I’m in my favourite place in the world, Orlando, Florida, and I know that when I get home my two week holiday is going to feel like a distant memory. When I have gotten home after a holiday in the past, I have felt unhappy to not still be here, and wondered if I appreciated it while I was here. Did I stop and look around enough? Did I take stock of where I was? Did I stop racing around and think about where I was, look at the trees, get up early and enjoy the quiet, listen to all the sounds – the crickets, the park music? Did I smell all the smells – the food, the weirdly sweet smell of the air, the clean smell of the hotel room? Did I appreciate the hot weather, then coming in to the air conditioning? Did I use my time off work to my full advantage?

    (more…)

  • When a prologue is both a pep talk and a dedication letter to the dead

  • Messages from Floridian birds

    I spend the first morning eavesdropping on the birds, carefully noting each inflection, every declaration. They trust me to handle this information with complete accuracy:

    too, too
    too… too too
    whi whi whi whi whi whi
    too too too too too
    hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-
    hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-gasp-hoo-
    hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo
    thp-thp-thp-thp-thp-thp

    The meaning of this compilation of sounds is top secret.

    A lone duck goes about its important business in shallowing waters. It appears there has been a drought here, but it is the place that makes me feel the most full, in many ways. Welcome home. There are only good things here.