This Will Not Last

It isn’t that dad doesn’t love you or your brother

said Mum, greasing up our ashy legs with Vaseline

Or that your auntie Amy’s a man stealing back-stabbing, cheating bitch

who can’t keep a man so she has to steal somebody else’s.

We just don’t see eye to eye on much, that’s all

and he wouldn’t stop eating cashew nuts in bed

It’s not that you mother and I hate each other

said Dad, pushing a crumpled ten pound note into my chinos pocket

…or that I forgot about your birthday

but I need time to think now. I’m moving in with Amy

and anyway, your mum cooks with too much salt.

It wasn’t so much an affair, you understand

said Auntie Amy, lacing up my brothers small Nike trainers

and picking out my knots with the wooden comb shaped like a fist

but a meeting of minds outside of our respective vows

And bodies, muttered mum, when I told her later.

Two faced tramp. What a joke.

Don’t tell anyone I said that.

Don’t tell anyone I said that.

It’s not as though your mums exactly an angel, either

said dad with blood red eyes

and a pulsing vein in his forehead

finishing the last of his whisky

and auntie Amy hissed, Easy Winston, you’ve had enough

and dad said, Don’t tell me what to do

not even my wife yet, and you think you know it all.

It not that your family are going to hell, necessarily

said grandma, boiling up the green banana, yam and dumpling

and grating the coconut onto the rice and peas

They must just accept Jesus Christ into their lives

and put away the drink and sin and all the lies.

Now go and wash your hands and set the table.

Don’t worry, child.

We’ll pray for them tonight.

Yrsa Daley Ward 2012

You knew you liked her when

she was talking about her life one day

and in the street the drunk women were fighting

and the young men were playing house music

and there were muslims praying amidst all this

and the taxis were honking their horns

all around her in a circle of chaos

so she went back inside in all her calm

and where the two of you are now, in a different town

and different time, there are dogs barking outside

and you love the way

her name feels in your mouth

She puts cinnamon on tomatoes

and white pepper on carrots

sprinkles mustard seeds on unlikely things

and takes wine and ice with breakfast

she doesn’t sleep at night

and dreams with her eyes open

so you are not afraid to tell her

that this place has never felt like home

There was a time when charcoal on

white walls made you nervous

a time when you didn’t pray so much

a time when you worried about what the men in the street had to say

a time when you weren’t yourself

they say you’re an abomination to God

how so? You speak to him more often now

then ever before and baby, you’re a child again ready to be taught

she sketches butterflies… big butterflies and jellyfish

smokes a broken white pipe

and you feel like an instrument

a favourite that she’s had for years

she makes your body sing like

do be de dah dah dah

…old songs you thought you’d forgotten

base notes on skin lines

and you pool pennies together

for dinner, most of the time

but you’re happy.

Yeah, you’re happy.

(c) Yrsa Daley-Ward 2012

In the early hours of this morning it was far too hot for anyone to sleep.

You told me I was strange and kissed me

sunk your teeth into my soft bottom lip

twice. So hard I thought you drew blood.

I keep getting the scary feeling that if you look at me for long enough you may see that I have a thousand fears

just like your mother who never really wanted you to leave

meanwhile mina I am catching up on the sleep that we missed

and waiting patiently to feel normal again

my thoughts about you are frightening but precise

I can see the house on the hill where we make our own vegetables out back

and drink warm wine out of jam jars

and sing songs in the kitchen until the sun comes up

wena you make me feel like myself

again. Myself before I knew any solid reasons to be afraid

Last night you give me the space to dream bigger than the single bed

and brighter than the morning

you laughed in your sleep and I cried in mine

and this afternoon we might be tired because the sun is fierce today

and too much happened between midnight and now

But bhabha you are terrifying and brilliant so

I am the kind of woman who is already teaching my body to miss yours

without craving.

I am the type of woman who is teaching my heart to miss yours without failing.

And I am quite sure that you will find this unnecessary

but I am already searching for a place to run to and hide when you say,

“Uthando lwami. I’m ready. Are you?”

You know that I would gladly drive with you to the other side of the world with only the clothes I am wearing

and the loose change  and empty peanut shells in my purse.

kodwa every time you leave the room I worry.

and think that perhaps I have imagined you.

or maybe you have imagined me.

The day was not the best, especially in my head. I was thinking calmly about stepping off the side of the mountain in the rain, arms outstretched, embracing this life, this empty space one last time and making it look like an accident. My eyes were blurry with salt and I hadn’t eaten in days but my mind was clearer than air on a blue-sky morning in the Black Country. I said no hard feelings bright, hard world but maybe, just maybe you are not for me. Maybe I’m stretched too thinly, pressed too deeply into you in a shape that I can’t keep without cramping and maybe just maybe your walls are too tight and your breath is too cold. Perhaps human nature is just too fickle to understand. And rainbows aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, so why hang around till the rain ends?

That was when I saw you. Eyes did meet, lightening did not flash but I thought to myself, who wears a reindeer jersey and red shorts… in May? And anyway you looked kind and the sun was peeping out a little, and the sky was still dark and it was still drizzling but everyone needs a little kindness. You have a smile that turns down at the corners and the gentle kind of eyes that my future children’s father needs to have.

You said, why do you look so sad? I said, I’m not really sad any more, rather exhausted from continual disappointment, rather lonely… I said, cant I skip this stage and if not, tell me the reason why? You said we are all passing through earth to learn and nothing good ever came from skipping class. You skipped school that afternoon – irony is rarely lost on me - and we sat on a hill in the car looking at where the beach met the sea and the rain hit them both and I - quite desperately, quite selfishly -kissed you hard and pleaded…drive into the sea with me, just once and its done. Instead you drove fast in the opposite direction to a blessed place of broken brick and stone and said ‘this used to be my childhood house’ and drove me further on further to a purple house safe up on the hillside and said, hey. One day this will be home.

It wasn’t perfect. It isn’t now. I still have days that I want to exit the system quicker then you can say, “don’t you dare give up now”, and you still have days where you cant even taste the sweetness in raw honey and neither one of us believes in pills. Days when I so want to kiss you but your mouth is sour and my thoughts are bitter and I’m just too angry, just  mad, just crazy with it all. But we are each others home sweet home, Love. The roof is screwed on too tight and the walls of our purple house can pinch a little but my God, they are always warm.

Yrsa Daley-Ward

Yrsa Daley-Ward by Smith Worldwide

They say that women are softer, gentler
treat each other better. Please.
As if we haven’t learned to lie without conscience
eroticise our rage and sex away our gut feelings.
When she told you that she hated her mother you got nervous but not for too long
Hate is just fucked up love bent backwards, flipped sideways, thrown on its front and screwed down some alley
And anyway…you can see it in the way she looks at you
Lustful and jealous lazy and careless all at the same time. She has a talent.
You know that if you let her she will do the kind of damage that parts of you scream out for late at night despite knowing better
sheets wet underneath you.
She will not take care of you and why should she?
What are any of us but hurt, missing children?

Myself, I have searched quite hard for my very dead parents
in women with my fathers strong stature and men with my mothers fine features
always unwittingly and never successfully
I like the sounds our bodies make when they fall in like.
I love the word love but only far from home.
safe well worn lines like ‘if it wasn’t for the timing’
or the fact that I have to leave because this isn’t my country, remember?
Or the fact that you’re involved. Let’s think about this for a minute.
Think of your partner. Think of the kids.
I like to burn hot, bright, fierce but never long.
Amicable breakups. Starting the process again.
In a new bed with a new future friend
and other such distractions from the much bigger problem
of the fractions of the whole of myself.

Hungry. Stomach screaming hungry, I worry about the conversation we haven’t had yet. You know, this one. I will order pudding after dinner and chew and swallow without tasting anything much. You… you will chain-smoke and drink three different beers and we will talk out how to make the best of things despite the year and it’s shitty weather. We are tired of dressing in layers just in case and leaving wet umbrellas in other people’s houses. Who can live like that? On the day, your voice will be too bright and cheerful, the way it always is when you hurt the most. We’re always trying to make everything okay. Fine. Well - and whatever shit we tell our friends instead of awful. Grieving. Barely breathing. Come, let us talk with our closed up throats, crushed hearts and wet eyes. Quickly, because when you get that metallic taste on your tongue and teeth it means trouble and when I get that light feeling in the space between the back of my eyes and my skull it means hell.

Yrsa Daley-Ward

bankston: dailybungalow: 

Grief on Flickr. Roycroft, 1915

Last night you gave me a healthy dose
of the poison that has been killing our mothers since way before
HIV, AIDS and Cancer.
Deceit. Lies. Humiliation. Abandonment. Lies for years. Lies for years.
With a heart that is penis and ego operated you came searching for mine in between my thighs and broke it under your weight. Nearly.
Last night I lost somebody I loved. It was the you who I thought you were.
My brother, I’ve come undone and I’ll tell you why.
If you cant be trusted, who can?

Yrsa Daley-Ward