Izzy curated a body of five original poems for ‘An Evening with the St Helen’s Laureate’. This event showcased the work of Izzy as St Helen’s Laureate, as well as students and staff.
I like to think of you by the sea.
The thin hairs dotted about your peach belly which rises sun-like above the snugness of sage-green cloth. A thumbprint of white that sits upon your rosy thigh, not yet lathered in – an act of care against the beating heat. Alive, sunbeams ensnare the white sand – childish shrieks of burnt toes bound to ensue. You place your sunglasses over my ear to shield blue from the sun’s sticky amber that drapes the throat in a smiling yellow. This new orange tinge softens the blinding glow of F. Scott’s wing-like pages, letting the words shine through. A collage of letters shifting with every crisp peel of paper; they merge together further in the scattered droplets of a child’s fiendish salt-sodden splash. You chastise the giggling rascals for the unwelcome disruption, but my smile welcomes sigh and gaze drifts calmly back to the collage of characters. Your honey-due eye indulged in the lives of pages, your gentle thumb traces my cheek absent-mindedly as you perceive their hearts.
***
Contentment. That is how I feel.
I reflect on the memory, so pure yet so temporary: they are often like this,
They trickle through my desperate fingertips as if grains of sand.
And still, the contentment remains.
It hides in an unthinking smile, the grains found
In striped shirt pockets or suncream lids,
Or sparkling in the thumb’s unique spirals.
I believe love is found in places like these,
fleeting as imprints into shore.
Lost in stolen moments yet living
Memorised as childhood stories.
The sparkling sands of you flow through my bloodstream, caught in eye, shoulder, back, ear.
I know that if my heart were dusted for fingerprints,
It would be scribbled with the endless spirals of you
Bittersweet
“I don’t want to lose you,” you’d say, a half-smile waning between your cheeks. We’d swap fleeting words like parting lovers. We’d share a hesitant laugh as we’d admit our stupidity: Of course we’ll see each other, “Nothing will change”.
Where I am now is new, unknown. I carve the curve of each new corner into the crevices of my mind, eroding into it a routine. I tug apart the life I used to lead and use each strand to wind together a new everyday.
Someone once told me a new beginning is exciting; I feel that now, the words echo in my head as I relearn once absent-minded steps.
But if a new page has been turned, why can I see the outline of words previously read? Characters seep through the pages; when caught in a ray of light they become clear, more pronounced. A stained-glass window.
Somehow you entwined yourself into my new ordinary. You punctuate my days despite your absence. I often watch as a wisp of your hair whips round the corner, attached to a figure that doesn’t share your face. I see your smile when spotting a collage of words that once burst us into tumbles of laughter; I forget the story that explains why, I don’t feel the need to remember.
With each day, I sink further into the comfort of my new ordinary. Your whispers that once punctuated my days now diminish in volume – they are almost inaudible. Laughs melt into small half-smiles.
Yet, no matter how little the voice gets, it will crescendo to a shout every so often. It will remind me that no matter the change, I will never lose you.
Lost in the ramblings of 2 am love
My lovely, let Saturday comb through our hair;
Its motherly fingers detangle nighttime curls.
Let us exchange secrets
drown them in childish smiles
make them float as wishes in a well.
For in this laughter is a pleasant land.
Ouroboros
Destruction.
The clock has struck 10 – the hours of deceit have passed. It is time for the black beetles to crawl from my throat in their masses. As usual, their movement disturbs me (though that is unsurprising) they have been lining my throat in their living stillness since yesterday’s hands rested on 10. I no longer pretend, I cannot, as the shining darkness of their shuffling shells in the mirror tell me that I am not enough. They line eye, mouth, thigh, they screech in their deafening synchrony songs of inadequacy.
A red glow lights my swarmed cheek from the boxed television screen. There, again she dances, a model, perfection lining her smile – I am sure she has no beetles. No, she has butterflies. Oh, tantalising angel, you mock me with your beauty; it is the kind which draws love like eyes to eclipse. It seems forbidden, unfair; she is fullness and I am embarrassingly empty in comparison. I am shell only. And, with this realisation, so begins my nightly process of engorgement. In order to breed butterflies, I must possess myself, like spider I must eat to go on. “Crocodile tears,” I tell myself as teeth touches flesh.
Rebirth.
The spindled hand of the clock glides to the half hour mark. The beetles have had their fill, they are satisfied. They scuttle across tongue and find rest in the depths of the stomach. Deceit takes hold once more with a satisfied grin.
Grandmother
There it lies, an aged body,
Shrivelled from years of battering words
Made weary from the false comfort of hooked smiles.
Drapes of skin sag under arm like overripe plums;
Earth tugging its worn folds down in a playful child’s snatching grasp
Attempting to reclaim the life flesh so fervently protects.
She is there, though her body is as apples browning into dirt.
Stubbornly, she stands
Determined support from fragile strands
Of bones, ligaments, muscle – all light as air.
Her tea-stained teeth curve into a smile.
Eyes meet
And I see the years of stories etched in greens and yellows into iris, splashes of ink.
My own face shines back from smile-tinged pupil – a confirmation of existence,
A confirmation of love.
She reaches out with eyes forced to see,
Choosing to look
And I am beautiful in that honey brown.
Two mirages intertwined, smiling in acknowledgement:
We are here. We exist.
We reach out in an invisible embrace, our gazes connect,
Those wrinkled laughter lines watermarks of happiness
For what are we if not hopeful voices confined to rotting vessels?
