My class sits,
silent,
each poring over another crucial essay,
desperate to gather one extra mark,
one extra point;
desperate to prove
they are worthy,
as if their whole life
(all sixteen years of it)
is and will always be
defined
by the score allocated to them
come December.
I hold myself to my chair,
bite my lip to hold the words in-
It doesn’t matter!
It doesn’t matter!
It doesn’t matter!
Can you hear the magpie warbling his greeting to the sun?
Do you see how the light slips through the reddening leaves
like a stained-glass window?
Can you feel the blue autumn sky stretching above you,
a promise of days untouched,
a promise of possibility?
The world will turn,
the sun will rise,
your life will unfold before you
in spite of yourself.
So write your essay,
make it as beautiful as is in your power to do,
but then
go outside,
clear your lungs of your lingering doubts,
and breathe in the day.

Your words
nestle themselves like seedlings
in the corners of my hasty mind;
tiny, growing slivers of love
reaching skyward
seeking out the sunshine
of each new morning.
Your words,
slender tendrils
entwining my heart
creeping around my lungs,
down my arms
to the tips of my fingers,
so all I touch is dusted
with the pollen
of your wisdom,
and my breath
is oxygenated
by you.

Come hell or high water,
come rain, hail or shine,
come mutinous pirates with cutlasses, daggers and swords,
come zombie apocalypse,
come deadly disease
that sweeps the world, leaving us wounded and weeping and sore,
come mutant uprising,
come alien attack,
come invading hordes of orcs, come impending death,
come vampires and ghouls,
come rabid wolf packs,
I will love you, and love you, and love you, ‘til the last of my breath.

Hello Winter;
don’t think I don’t see you there,
loitering,
waiting for the final leaves to fall in Autumn’s farewell.
You creep your mist over our garden at night,
fogging our windows and stopping our breath in our throats.

I know you are arriving, Winter,
as the heavy clouds darken and the honey days shorten,
the light leaving us in favour of balmier destinations,
and night, your loyal accomplice, lingering ever longer.

Hello winter,
I am trying to greet you like a friend,
to invite you in for steaming soup and crusty bread,
to curl up with you under a blanket to watch a movie,
but you make it so hard to be welcoming
when you curl your icy fingers around my ankles
and turn my lips blue
with your kiss.

Each time I recall
your fingertips on my hips
I am slain anew.

The stress of the afternoon slinks away
with each breath passing from your lungs to mine.
The fading amber light, the drift and sway
of your shirts stretched along the washing line.

My student said today
with the morbid drama that only fifteen year olds speak fluently,
“It feels like death is upon me every single morning now;
It feels like waking is death itself.”
When I told her
she should write that down,
that it sounded like a poem,
she scoffed self-consciously
and said,
“Miss,
I can’t write.”

The white mist spills along the valley
like milk across a tabletop,
steadily covering all surfaces,
dripping into each valley.
Each blade of grass,
snap frozen;
ice sculptures of themselves,
as the pale blue sky yawns overhead,
coaxing the day into motion.

The challenge
was to write all
the words I’d like to
say
(but never would).
Cleansing,
cathartic,
a purging
of spent emotion from the soul.
Trouble was,
the words found themselves tangled
in the keyboard,
in the pen,
in my throat.
Perhaps there are some things
not yet ready
to be said,
some truths
not yet willing
to be
heard.

We dream, you and I;
a record store of our own,
outstanding coffee.
The comfiest couches, and
old friends, and new, to fill them.

When you find yourself stumbling
over heartaches and troubles,
look to the obstacles you planted for others,
how they have grown twisted and gnarled around your feet.

When your head is filled
with voices of doubts and insecurities,
hear the echoes of whispers you have spread
with others’ names attached to their wings.

When your dreams are strangled and tortured,
and you wake in the night cloaked in sweat and fear,
remember the comfort you witheld from loved ones,
the cold you clothed them in and made them wear.

Know that all you have sown
has been planted in the reflection of a mirror.
All the while it was your own destiny you cultivated,
your own future you drafted-

You shall surely reap
your rewards.

The leaves outside our window
sleek and glinting
in the lazy glow of the street lamps.
Cars slide past us,
as the rain dissolves the road
into mist,
swallowed by night’s shadows
in the distance.

Still air, still house, a hint of light,
a stretch, a yawn, the warmth of skin.
In filters day, out tiptoes night;
let dreaming end, and now begin
these waking hours clear and bright,
this brand new day to usher in.
What simpler joy could ever be
than me for you, and you for me?

Love will make a better you.
You are not your broken heart.
You are not your wounded pride.
You are not your timid, teenage self.
You are not the names that have been hurled at you.
You are not who they would have you believe you are.
You are bigger.
You are more.
You are sunshine.

Are you ready?

A thousand goodbyes
to be said in a lifetime;
some with their claws tangled deep in your heart
tearing wounds that no number of passing days will heal,
others like a lungful of air
to one on the brink of drowning,
sweet and rich and hungrily swallowed.
A thousand goodbyes,
waves washing over
mistakes made
and wishes unfulfilled.
A thousand goodbyes
to wash us up
on the shores
of new
hellos.