Bare
I can’t bear the way she looks at you.
The hold of her petalled lips, curled into a plea-
-ease me tonight, pout. And her horn-ed
trimmed eyes, all plucked slices of honey this,
excreting crème patisserie. Icing, sweet violet tip –
flicks of that, decorative corners on words, the nail
indents smudge still darkening my palms, in fury. Fuck,
I’d breathe for you. But you can’t hear, not this sigh,
so tailored, the way the heart breaks shrill on my bended
knee and chokes my words. All I do is watch you,
steeped in the banality of the unremarkable, shave, blink.
Except to me, you have become this beacon of my
everyday. All you do is clutter the surfaces as I
wipe them clean, smiling to the tilt of my yes,
the graze of your hand against kettle and cup,
full to bursting, as if to touch your heaven with my soul,
in exchange, I’d hope for more in another lifetime, but
you will forget me, I know, slowly, gently over time,
we are not in one another’s worlds so etched, besides,
the winds blow as surely as this hope evaporates,
and sip my coffee through the steam and yearn for
all the times you’d think of me, the times she looks at you.
Anna Mace has contributed to the limited edition bookart project, Revolve:R where her poetry has been turned into short films. Last year she had published poetry in Translation Games, Kemptation Magazine, Arkbound, Curating the Contemporary, Streetcake Magazine and Inconnu zine and most recently her poetry was featured in the No Bindings zine and podcast. Her manuscript was shortlisted for The Melita Hume Poetry Prize 2015 with Eyewear Publishing, London, UK. She lives in Bristol.