Through Bitter Eyes
Maple branches etch
An ink blue moon.
The sky opens it’s banners like lips,
Azure tapestries furled back into stratus clouds.
Petals lost to wind
Will blanket the ground.
Dew on rust
Will run like dried blood.
Sunflower doll heads bob.
Eternal weavers work their
Silver looms,
A fragile menace
Spooling a ghost bridge.
My bitter eyes are marbles
Stolen from orphans.
© Natalie Crick
The Witness
My presence
Fell upon them
Like the first snow of Winter.
A perfect regret.
They will slit each other open
Just to find me.
Tasting the sweet heat
Of blood.
They found me in the room of
Freshly dead.
All still warm and pale,
The breaths of the others were
Fluttering in a cage,
Witness to the wreckage.
The whisper of
Blossoms falling into darkness,
Purple as witchcraft,
Disturbs.
I fear your murmurings in daylight hours,
A thundercloud blackening the valley.
I am still
An open wound.
You need only to look.
Just look.
© Natalie Crick
Untitled
Autumn orchards are hysterical;
A scarlet alarm,
Where his hands scattered you like seed.
We shed our footprints with the thaw.
Now boned trees erupt
Through frost skins.
Clouds pile up like sullen beasts.
Our neighbours, locked in yellow houses,
Have a shrouded illness:
Blood and stone.
The night,
Evocative of dead leaves,
Seethes in torment,
Touched by a breeze
Without moisture or comfort.
Your arms form ribs around me.
They keep me.
© Natalie Crick
Graveyard in November
It is early November.
Rafters and stained glass glow
In candlelight and
The eulogy crackles from the pulpit
Like frost over oak leaves.
Each snow flurry marks another
Melted year. Gone and forgotten.
The ghost trees hover.
I watch their sucked-out leaves
Rotting with moss and mildew.
Dried, dead.
The gleaming grave
Stands like a door
Without handle or hinge,
It’s only pathway through the soil.
One touch turns me to stone.
© Natalie Crick
Embrace
You always hated the cold.
Each snowflake that falls
Has a particular
Morality to impart.
The tongues of night pass over
The leaves fallen into
Dampness, rot,
Swallowing the dead air.
Streetlamps flash over the blackness
As candles do, burning inside a body.
One slice of moon is buried in cloud
Like an eye, our bodies warm with sweat.
Your lips glowed like fireflies.
How I craved the ecstasy of your kiss,
Tasting salt on your neck,
The sticky taste it left sour in my mouth.
I can’t see your face anymore.
We embrace like wild animals,
Pine trees stretching through the night,
Tall as monsters.
© Natalie Crick
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