Imagining myself as a bitter, old woman
Here I am
as old as
you said I would grow
altogether alone
drinking tea curled up with
a gossip of stars and
the milky thaw of the moon –
the thrum of the air still thrums in me
as the flowers fold in their shelves
and as the last fly of pollen turns in my nose
I drift away in eggshells
you will notice
I am not as I once was
I won’t bore you with the details
among other things
the broken bow of my frown
was too unwanted to fit me again,
so I took it outside and set it down
in the low branch of an aspen –
now the chaffinch lays its button eggs
along its narrow cleft
look
I’ve started lifting with the clouds
the sun chasing at my feet, and
as I’ve let go of lonely parts
like autumn trees let go of leaves
the earth rolls over in winter treacle
you may have heard
I raise oranges from the soil now, and
the summer blood of my polka-dot parade
is the heat and dance that flowers and melts
into my cut of morning marmalade
and when the season is over
and each freckled blossom falls home
I tell the stars about their dance
gathered
altogether alone.
Gurpreet Bharya is a poet and copywriter and lives in Berkshire. Her writing often references the natural world and has been published in Visual Verse. She is currently working on her first collection of poetry on the theme of divorce.