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Memorial to a Marriage

Hand to hand,

Toe to toe,
Nose to nose, close… You exhale I breathe in.
It’s the morning, before the papers,
There’s sleep in your eyes,
Dreamy half-whispered words
Surf along the sunrise.
We are golden
in this embrace,
formed out of grace, and patience.
We love,
Which every law in every land
Says we do not deserve.
There’s a defiance in the warmth,
A roar in the whispers
Edges to the tummy rolls
and curves of thighs
and the heft.
The permanence of stone or bronze challenges –
“Test our mettle”
If you won’t make space,
we’ll make a monument to ourselves

E.C.

In response to Patricia Cronin’s sculpture, Memorial to a Marriage. 

 

Skye High

The sun burns the back of my neck, but the sky looms sea blue and I take the hint. Grains of sand increasingly cake the cracks in my feet, and I hanker after the water.

It’s been a long day and it’s only noon. We set out early, and slowly marched North. The Highland mists sank murky to greet us, before clearing a path as we crossed the bridge to the Isle. Inwardly eager to get digging, outwardly tired, faces slumped against the minibus windows. Our view of vast lushness, the reward for all the rain, plays pretend. I’m promised tropical seas, that if I “didn’t know any better would have me convinced I were at the equator”. Or so I’ve been told.

Left, right, left, right, one after the other, steady and rhythmical, and ready for a rest. A cool saltiness crackles in the air, and the crest of the sand bank beckons.

When I read about the island as a child, I asked, much to my parents’ amusement, “What are the Brothers pointing to?” “No”, replied Mum, patiently, “the point belongs to the brother.” Leaving me to wonder what point the brother made or owned, at Rubha nam Brathairean.

The pool of water soaks and covers my toes, reaching a few inches deep. It doesn’t carry the coolness all around me quite yet, but it will.

It starts to rain, as soon as we dock. I fetch my mac out of my backpack. It sticks to my skin all plastic and yellow. The tide may turn yet though, the breeze is brisk, and shaded clouds move fast above me, as if they’re late for something too.

The tide has turned, it’s coming in, those few inches now chase my knees.

It’s not quite the quicksand of childhood scares, but still it’s unexpected when my booted foot sinks. The tide is only just receding, and the land it leaves behind is sopping. There’s a leak in my boot, too. The sea, rinsing and washing clean each day’s detritus, has its own secrets. Jagged rocks on the tidal platform shine black and glint, tricking my eye. Over there, by the edge, there’s what looks like a wide circle, with smaller dots around and ahead of it. Like carefully laid out settings for stones. Or, toes. And it’s not alone.

 

Eat Your Words

A new story inspired by this postsecret postcard. The message reads: “Whenever I finish a good book I eat the last page”.

Writing PostSecret

bookBy Eleanor Capaldi

It started as a test – if you could eat it, you were accepted, approved, like a pending loan application.

Small, crumpled and fairly flat, the scrunched up bit of paper sat in between my thumb and forefinger. The tips of my nails making a chipped polish frame. Stray indecipherable text rippled round it. Rotating my index finger, it lay there like a seed for an expectant bird. I scrunched my eyes up too, as if it were on a slide under a microscope and I was angling for a revelation. I popped my head forward and took it, fishing it up tongue first.

The anti-climax in the room was palpable. The entertainment to be had was in the goading, in seeing the concertinaed lips of nervous first years.

That first bite came from a stray corner of a magazine page, slightly glossy. One thing led to…

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Two Poems

Trapped
Hemmed in
If I could just
Take the deepest breath
And burst the stretch of my skin.
Too full of life,
But there is no buckle
Only my toes poking out of my shoes
Picking up dirt and rain from the puddles
Squeezed onto the ground earlier that day.
If I’m not careful, I’ll start to sniffle.

Loving, pure instinct
Does what it does
Unclipped, unfixed, lives.
Rainbow cape
=/≠ (delete applicable)
shroud of shame.
Playing catch up
From the start,
The finishing line is the same
But our field is full of plot holes.

EMC

Picture: Creative Commons

New Poem: Cloud Bound

The hills puff up kettle steam,

the loch is one big mug of tea.

My train rattles round

making noises like

a spoon tapping

along the banks,

clink clink.

 

The denser weather

closing in,

someone’s pulling the drawstrings.

Tissue paper torn and laid together,

waves where the sticky tape

doesn’t hold;

A flimsy fan in the face of a mere breeze .

Pressure funnels

air up

we head into a tunnel of mountain cloud,

darker now,

resembling a smoker’s exhaled breath

on a cold day.

 

EMC

Loch Lomond, Gustave Doré

Thaw

 

Icy polish drips
From frozen finger tips
Blushing rooftops reappear
Cheeky circles in the clear
At first
New old surfaces
Unexpected colour burst

Stepping out from hiding
Under the shelter of the white
A seamless camouflage unrelenting
United snow and sky
It’s like the artist took their brush
And smudged all of the lines

Hollow howl runs empty
Nothing left to carry
The bluster of waning winter
Dusting round the corner

EC

Photo used under creative commons license 

 

Sand and Snow

“Today it snowed on the beach. Weighty hefts of white fell, politely asking the sand to make way for their arrival. It was a sunshine kind of sand, golden from a distance, but when you got up close, when you scooped the grains out of your pocket, and shook them from your shoes, different colours started to appear.

The frozen air saw the flakes gather for warmth before they would soon melt back into the earth. Their unique patterns lay hidden to outside eyes, reflected only by a twinkling.

Under thickly splashed lines, grit and shell and seabed by turns fragmented and whole, buffed and shimmering, met the finest points of infinite stars fallen from the skies.”

EMC

Photo author’s own