White Tuxedo

I dream of you in a white tuxedo. It is a wedding. It is not our wedding.

But the face that you affix to yourself when you look into me is the face

of the man viewing the woman. Hello this is love. Your square jaw. Your

soft, capable, all knowing mouth. Hello even your bluest and greenest

eyes. Everyone is wearing white. I look down at myself and I am lace over

pearlescent white water wings and I am shaking with adrenaline. We walk

holding hands and you’re a helium balloon I tug to earth with my

unexpected weight. Your hands slip over me. You in a white fitted shirt

with your head thrown back. We lie in bed together wrapped tightly in disbelief. 

Some of our best moments were sleeping. Some of our best moments were only

in our eyes. You tilt your head to turn to me and the whole world follows behind you.

Reading into Grief

There are tiles. We are sandpapered. We are scattered. Once the

chemicals dip the reaction is reduced. My face when it is all bones comes

without the nose you expect. You live through grief a life at a time. The

men are there. And their thereness is all around you. A fourteen year old

swears at you on the street but almost out of earshot and you’re moving

away and his frustration is like a little vapour that follows behind you. His

latent masculinity a corpse flower blooming. Are all men ridiculous. Are

all men destined to repeat all the things you wish they would not repeat.

The categories aren’t discreet but enough exposure lends you a familiar

feeling of contempt. Be a fifty year old woman with a ruddy face and

clothes that your fat aunts would have worn or be the woman in the bar

with the melting face and light cluster of feelings. But if you’re the

woman who asks for what she wants it will be like turning around in an

empty room to face yourself. And there you’ll be facing yourself and like

a window you are revealing what is outside. We take steam in through our

mouths and it burns down our throat and into our lungs. But we continue

breathing. Let me go drink the tiniest cup of coffee. Take your hands off

my body. Do not look at me. I am not here.

Emma Barnes

Emma Barnes is into poetry, powerlifting and pashing.