Writer, researcher, music lover, cancer survivor with CMMRD ("double" Lynch syndrome)
Send me snail mail
Because I’m far too impatient.
Give me something worth waiting for,
I crave the excitement.
Send me snail mail,
I’m on the edge of my seat.
I’m waiting to be picked up
Or crushed beneath your feet.
Send me snail mail,
Any day now will do.
Tell me I’m worth the postage
And your best handwriting, too.
Send me snail mail,
I’m waiting by the door
For something to break the monotony,
A letter worth waiting for.
Life has turned you into a jumper
and not the knitted kind
but the kind of jumper
who jumps at the chance to pick up a knife
or miscount your dosage
and if I had known life was going to turn out this way
I would have told you never to grow up
but what good is a time machine now?
I drove past the Marie Curie
Field
of Hope
today
and almost every daffodil
was
dead.
Almost.
Sometimes it’s okay
to write a poem and then
throw it away.
You don’t need to keep what kills you.
what if we were never in a tunnel
and the light was just a lie we were told
to make us keep walking?
what if that burst of morning
was something they were holding
just out of our reach?
what if they watched as you ran
on that treadmill, as you
racked your brain for a lost memory
when you fought their grasp
when you held your head
when you were just trying
to remember
the softness of a neck
Your bare ring finger
is the most provocative thing
I have ever seen, matched only by
the nape of your neck.
how does it feel
to be so very afraid
that every dark cloud
will summon a monsoon?
how does the weatherman feel
when he sees the hurricane coming
but can do nothing about it?
how does it feel to know
that every leaden sky
could bring news just as heavy?
how will it feel when the
first raindrop rolls down the
side of your face like perspiration?
how will it feel to suddenly be
in the eye of the storm?
I wish I didn’t know.
I don’t think I can do it.
I don’t think I can be the hero,
the writer who overcomes
everything to share her wisdom
and support with other individuals.
I can only be the writer who
attempts therapy through
self-indulgent poetry and writes
articles only through a drunken haze,
thoughts ablaze
with all the ways I’ve failed.
Add this to the list, this barely
started wander into the abyss of
self-help, so difficult I can’t even
help myself. I gave it my
best shot but my best shot was
still such a long way off.
Strolling through the cemetery,
we’re not buying, we’re just
window shopping, casually planning
which stone to carve our vitriol into.
I like the simplicity of white marble
but you prefer the gothic styles, black
and grey swirls reflecting how death
really is – the nothing offered to
everyone involved. So much nothing.
You consider an obelisk, something that
exudes a sense of grandeur you
never quite achieved in life. All
these years we lethargically aspired to
what we thought we should be, but we
never really tried at all – we just idly watched
as our ideal selves hovered vaguely in the
distance. I like to think I aimed for something
but I never had much hand-eye co-ordination.
We kneel in the soil and you scratch
our names into the dirt with a stick.
Illuminated by the moon, this is
the closest we’ll come to death today.
I barely found the words to say
only to find they weren’t worth saying
(They were just the right words,
said to the wrong person)
I can still feel the
bruises behind my eyes
© 2024 Sam Alexandra Rose
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