The Cut
I inked the inside of my heart that day on Rosie Ward where
the whole clean grid was a whitewashed board and everywhere ideas
were being born to women with soft arms and skin traceable
to Bethlehem. Trying to recite the words were leaking out of me and a ruby cracked a
blank page to indulge in a sea of itself where dreams bubbled lighter than those that killed them
and we lived in a little pink house.
And each little clot was an unspoken song and
each freckled speck was an un-rightened wrong and I am a masochist with a
taste for blood and I always love to waste myself.
And they said look at the mess you’ve made, your kidney’s on the floor, your liver’s on the table,
it’s walking out the door
you chalked a girl upon the ground and then now you’ve washed her all away
poor little thing so small and white, you’ll never get her back again.
And they are small like petals and then my lungs were coming out and then my heart
left through the cut that maybe we should all
seal up and then I saw him – glowing, bright as city choice, eyelashes
intricate as mine and almost blinking, and I saw
how fingertips could cling
like ivy – oak upon my skin
how tiny ears could hear the bell
as all the lessons ended well
but there is nothing left for that but
a play that came to nothing and
a poem left for writing that
can never ever be written
and a song that will never be sung and a life that will
never be christened, undone.
Poppy Kleiser is a poet based in the Cambridgeshire Fens. Fenland Poet Laureate for 2014, Poppy has performed and been published widely as well as editing Poems for Peace, an anthology of poets all over the country with a foreword by Benjamin Zephaniah.