On a bench in the garden
The birds trace
a silver line around
my existential dread
And the past returns
kaleidoscopically:
fragments of chaos
revolving inside my head
My paperweight heart
counts each one and
pins them down
like a diary note
On a bench in the garden
I wished the sun
could melt trauma
like it melt the snow
The past decays
upon the present
like a pressed flower; fragile
and suffocating
inside yellowed edges
Petals for words
papered a sodden trail
in my throat and I’d take note:
emptying them out
one
by
one
from the deathbed
of my mouth
The shape of me:
indented and constrained
between the lines
now writes itself (and rights itself)
on the margins of truth
Catherine Lucy Rowland 