Month: December 2020

Empty Chair

Published on by Sarah Drury2 Comments

Written for my late husband, who passed away almost ten years ago.

As the warm,
comforting glow of
Yuletide shenanigans,
wraps itself around
my melted heart.
As the last candle on
the mantel,
sings a soliloquy and
melts into new
incarnations of its waxy self.
And the ten years since you
rendezvoused with
the light side,
I see your chair
all empty there.
Missing you.

That last Christmas.
Heaven knew
that the angel of time
was pausing
her inhibiting breath,
whilst you cherished your last.
We gasped those last months
in expanses of
winterscape lungs.
And I don’t know
but I’m sure the universe
painted our visions
titanium white,
what with the snow and
cerulean, stark winter sun skies.
I see the space in our bed.
The place where once was
mortal.
All empty there.
Missing you.

I knew you’d be here.
And you were.
Amidst the shreds of gaudy
and rips of tearing carnage.
Presents from a widow’s
best efforts.
Brave smiles, well-rehearsed
after ten years of
Xmas dinners for two
and only one big one
at the table.
Playing secret Santa
and making all the
responsibilities
look easy.
There should’ve been
Frolicking with crackers,
and snapping away
our feigned hilarity
as we tossed lame jokes
into joyous memories.
But turkey’s for two
now.
Your plate all empty there.
Missing you.

Sarah Drury 2020.

Kansas

Published on by Sarah Drury1 Comment

Inspired by The Wizard of Oz.

We’re not in Kansas anymore,
Dorothy.
That yellow brick road,
paved with childhood dreams
and nothing’s real,
it seems.
No place like home
is a metaphor
for tossing daydreams
on the floor
and moving on.
Always feeling you’ve
met the one,
and sacrificing hearts
on platters of gold.
Kisses going cheap
and desires burning
brash and bold.
Passion consuming
barren chasms
and all the times you told
me I was jealous.
Wasn’t my fault
your appetite
was overzealous.

But we’re not in Kansas anymore,
Dorothy.
And you can sing your songs
of bluebirds in the sky,
and I’ll cherish this moment
with no one asking why
I live in my dreams.
Fantasies proving high
upon my rosy specs.
But no one really checks
the spectrum of rainbows.
Hearts love in myriad shades of pink,
and where the black goes
I don’t know.

But it’s nice here.
Shedding happy tears
and taking in the view.
Trading in the past
for futures that I
always knew.
And we’re not in Kansas anymore,
Dorothy.
Not going back
with the naïve clickety clack
or your ruby red shoe.

Sarah Drury

Ice Maiden

Published on by Sarah Drury4 Comments

(Original art by Sarah Drury)

I’ve been here too long.
Sitting in this barren kingdom.
Breath exhaling, moist to crystalline,
and my lungs cascade.
Plumes of a pulmonary, lovesick swan.
Both yearning for a mate.
This colourless existence
bleaches our beauty.
The whiteness,
oh, the whiteness,
is killing me.

They say I have a frosty heart.
Icy, gliding frozen tears
like winter butter
across the surface of an artic lake.
And I taste like tender Eskimos
as I glaciate myself in igloos
and my door becomes a sheet of ice.

It’s been so long
since you held me in furnace arms,
my love.
I always dreamt of happy ever afters.
Never thought the crows of death would stalk me,
and I’m choking on black feathers.

I’ve tried, my love, I’ve tried.
Till my eyes were the glistening moon
and the sun dare not even
speak your name.
I’ve played the sorry widow.
Years floundering in the memory of us.
It was not just your death.
I died too.
The glacial landscape beckoned me.
Frozen teardrops my rendezvous,
and the ice-maiden took me
as her own.

Sarah Drury 2020

Heart of My Love

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Heart of my love

I had the pink-dipped, love-tipped
heart of my love.
It quivered tenderly in my silk-gloved palm.
Like an Autumn leaf, mercilessly crushed under stiletto heels.
A porcelain breath was too strong for its fragility.

It used to pulsate within my lover’s rib-throb chest.
But the signal was fading, and mortality was quickly cascading.
There is no iPhone charger for a hearse-hemmed heart.
Only hopes and dreams,
as I drag my faith from the sacred of my sacrilege.

The angels had seen Jesus and his name was John.
As he swallowed stars and dined on cheese, with the man in the moon.
I showed them the heart and the heavens lamented.
They’d made a seat by the lord, yet the lord bowed down
to wash his life-ragged feet.

So, I ripped out the songbird
from the cherry tree.
It cast its beady eye and sang elegies with a smashed glass beak.
With resentment glinting, it was glaring at my psyche.
It was crushed in my palm and coveting the sky.

It sang of a pure, unblemished love.
Where virgins adorned the sanguine story of our hearts.
So sacred as the days when mortals were Prophets.
A gold-leafed lament, I heard the songbird sing.
As I released it from my cruel, artic-ice grip,
and it melted into the watercolour sunrise.

I had the pink-dipped, love-tipped
heart of my love.
Resting in swathes of my gossamer emotions.
Never had anything so delicate graced my gypsy, tealeaf palms.
But my crystal ball was clouded,
like the blatant truth of my fairytale eyes.

The heart slipped carelessly from my grasp.
Lilting through fingertips and sailing through oceans of sorrow.
I picked it up wistfully, slipped it in my pocket.
Hoping to mend it with silk stitches,
embroider a tapestry with a skein of hope.

And give you the gift of life
and hush the scorning songbird and his wicked songs
bleating I was a widow, not a faith hungry wife.
But I emptied my ears and knelt in prayer,
and clipped my turbulent tongue.

I had the pink-dipped, love-tipped
heart of my love.
I caressed its tender, brutal wounds.
I burnished it with solid gold and told it soulful tales of old.
He whispered he didn’t need it
anymore.

Glass Jar

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GLASS JAR

Sometimes I wish that
hearts were like spiders,
and I could trap yours
in a pretty glass jar.
I would gaze all day,
contemplating reasons you should stay,
and we would sleep silently together,
under a duvet of opalescent stars.

Arachnids move so fast.
And I don’t want you to
move at all.
I am so tired of loving from a distance.
You are oblivious to the longing
in the rise and fall
of my half heart hope.
I want to gaze in awe.
As you weave your spun silk webs,
to grace the gardens of my metaphor.
Mine only.

I would covet your little glass house,
cup my loving hands around the
fragile glass.
Sense the lukewarm flesh and bones
of my unrequited, taboo lass.
No escaping my love,
in your little, crystal prison.
The fireflies would cry by the dark
of the night,
and the moon would whisper secrets,
when the trusting sun had risen,
and no-one would hear,
but the universe would listen.
And our hearts.

Sarah Drury