for poem14

 

Transcription

 

One plus one is two point three

(come back)

we kissed like fast elastic, climbing through vineyards onto tops of rock prisons above wide rivers, re-enacting a yesterday that was mummified in that desert that will tackle you down.  I unleashed my love on the blacksmith, he pulled and I pulled away. (I’ll never forget that day, on the flat-bone stone when rain fell out of the sun) that was perfection, the only moment I’ll ever need to remember. maybe I’ll loop it for the last flash of my life.

you, though,

were once

closer to me than drying paint, more distant than the eternal game. So far, that all I do is wait. So close, you almost dropped my name. Now I’m as human as a soft-boiled egg, a peeler crab, a drop of rain, falling towards the next collapse, evaporate, return again. A slowly-spinning plate, I tell you from the silt of my lake, the lining of my gut – let us be us, be brave.

But return?

I can’t –  I never left. You can’t – you never came.

 

 

cas pic

Caroline Stockford writes poetry and short plays and works for the International Press Institute advocating for freedom of the press in Turkey. She is from Barmouth in north Wales and translates Turkish poetry into English and Welsh. @Cevirimiz