Liberté

It was not you who had to surrender all
The two-bed day-dream by a Southern shore
Lined with a diversity of horizons
Bearing only flags of blue: liberty on labels
coloured Us and Them.

Egalité

It is not you who refuses to Tri on
Sleeves coloured Ourselves and Alone
Flanked either side of gowns in bridal white:
for the march down the Island
to a pre-arranged fight

Fraternité

It was not I who quietly jettisoned all
The silent signs. Finger-tips no longer touching fringe
Across to either shoulder then down to
Heart of sacred red: To join with me
In bringing her up as a flag set free

Seventeen years since your retirement –
one for every foot of your occupation of my girlhood
which was not to scale, for at seventeen I discovered you are
as unassailable as the stool my three-foot self could never climb,
however steadily positioned against the drawing board
with a drop so sheer for the plummet of your moods
that frequently rolled like pencils over blue-prints
of right-angled doorways and vague outlines of windows,
like a sketchy outlay of the foundations of your being
that insisted on revealing where the septic tank should be.
As if we did not know where the sewage was located,
while numerous Storage Units were strewn arbitrarily
across both floors of your semi-detached self
without any clues as to what should be kept in them,
though we later suspected.
And now that your own foundations are beginning to sink
and you are no longer to scale as you once were then,
(less defiant two-story than abandoned bungalow)
I still tip-toe slowly across the t-square of your mood
negotiating it like a pirate’s plank knowing it will
inevitably lead to a 90 degree turn
Onto which I mount and slide unsteadily
as it narrows and shortens,
while your tongue sharpens the lead of my feelings,
paring them down until there is a storage unit’s worth of shavings
to shore up with a wooden ruler.
One rule for you
and a different rule for everyone else.

Post-coital feminism

“I don’t believe in an intersectionalist God”, he teased
with sheets coiled about his knees
As she padded towards the bathroom.
Her deliberate poise intersecting with her shame
at the moon-landing terrain of her thighs.
“Get a life, would ya”, she retorted over her shoulder
Towards him lying prostrate in submission
to her naked point of view.
His deliberate pose already obsolete
given the rainbow of pillow-creases along his face
And the victorious underwear discarded with indifference
Along the hedges of the bed like fast-food wrappers
Whipped up by the wind from passing car windows
on those perspired dates of summer.
Rolling over on his back, he waited to be stroked
By her star-grabbing handed exuberance at the
urgency of it all. But first she had to undress
At least five other women.
Crossed-legged on the bed she hung her left brow
on a hook high upon her forehead
And gazed intently at them as her fingers jabbed
Up and down their torsos one by one until
She felt sure they were

hashtag –
Undone

Sorry*, Not Sorry

To my second child
I was too elsewhere to conceive
To my first who will not
always think him or her
inconceivable
To the piano for leaving
whatever potential was left untuned
To my head for failing
to lower the volume
on my heart
To the miracle of mortgage
For not co-oporation with it
To my occupation
of little sense of direction
To my lack of loyalty
to loyalty cards, which
to my credit
card, is past its expiration
To the pension
not given planning permission
from the authority local to my logic

*Terms and Conditions apply:

To the rapidfiredvoiced offer
(of which only 16% percent variable was audible)
for my interest-free indifference
To my ovaries for re-directing thousands
away from one eternal hope
To the linear life
for over-taking it on the inside lane
along the A-drift
To my heart for
occasionally forcing it to concede victory
in an arm-wrestle
with my head

Finally, to The Non-Conformittee:
A letter of resignation from one
No longer fugitive or fleeing