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3d · 37
first kiss
my first kiss was in a best friends bed in the dark. I must have been 13. It was so sweet and I can’t remember I forgot about it until now.

The first time I had *** was probably not long after. We used to mess around a lot and I’m not sure what you’d call it. But it happened at some point in the hazy stages of a first relationship, in a cloud of love. That was the year I received four books for my birthday, all of which I still own, one of which has come all the way to Spain with me.

My first breakup happened when I was 17, I think. There had been on and off. I like to think we still really loved each other, I don’t quite remember. The love persisted, but we faltered a little. Still saw each other and it still hurt.

We seemed to heal the hurt as we turned 18. It was then that different kinds of pain emerged in both of our lives, pain that had been bubbling for quite some time. And it hurt and we watched each other hurt, and hurt all the more because of it.

We seemed to find ourselves in separate places but the love remained, in a different, homely sort of way. We lost some family, and shared in our grief. There was always new exciting stories to tell. The patchworks of our lives expanded, always with a little room on the sides for one another to stitch in new stories from faraway places when we came home.

I just sent you a postcard. It will, no doubt, arrive from across the sea in a couple of days, smelling of seasalt and olive oil and suncream. Tucked into a pigeonhole where, when looking for a book from the library or a package from mum, you might stumble across it. I hope you smile when you read it like I smiled when writing it, the sun on my back, a city stretched out like a map under my feet.

I’m sorry that for a split second, I forgot that kiss, and had to come back to writing to remember it. My brain is funny like that. It forgets the important milestones, but carefully folds the corner of each page, tucking away the happy feelings more than the dates and times. I was always the sentimental one, you would say. The one who remembered every important day. I suppose this is my way of telling you I’m not, and I don’t. But also my way of saying that in loving you, in taking part of you with me everywhere, in having you nestled into the crevices of the person I become every day, I realised that was never the important thing.
The important thing is remembering how you feel, being proud of who you are.

Im proud of you. I’m proud of me. We’ve come so far, moved so far, and yet still hold each other dear. Those are the sorts of things a person could never forget.
Jan 13 · 81
289 miles
butterfly Jan 13
there's 289 miles between me and my dad
and a phone call connecting us.

the thread of conversation stretches from the office kitchen,
through the cobbled city streets and
over the channel,
down the motorways, the carriageways
until it reaches smaller towns,
bare winter trees,
a small lake with ducks floating and birds chirping.

he's crying.
he never cries.
he never calls, not in the middle of the day.
his voice wavers in time with my shaking hands and the trembling surface of the coffee in my mug.

i'm an hour ahead but time feels frozen.
those 289 miles are melting away with every garbled sentence he utters.
the man who used to hold me on his shoulders is probably
crumpled over the kitchen table, coffee growing cold.
mine's cold now too.

he's 289 miles away from me.
i'm years away from him.
we're holding tight to a string of grief,
two ends of a tin can phone,
crying together.
and i am still his baby.
and i still have him.

his dad was 331 miles away.
now he's in the sky.
intangible.

i can hear the birds chirping.
i can hear the lake rippling.
i can hear his heart breaking.
he was someone's baby once.
the miles between us mean nothing.

he cries for his dad
and i cry for him,
cradling the phone like a newborn.
Nov 2024 · 93
grief
butterfly Nov 2024
what is grief anyway?

it’s seeing the snow on the rooftops of Paris and wanting to call to tell you.
wishing you could feel the chill of the air on your cheeks,
hold the flakes in your palms and watch them melt.

you came and left as fast as falling snow.
the world stayed still, stagnant, as you slipped behind the curtains and stopped the clocks.
the cogs murmured.
that intricate system you built,
ticking time,
love growing,
gardens planted,
hands getting bigger,
hair growing longer.
how didn’t I see
your skin wrinkling,
your eyes fading.

the engineer silently smiles as he looks at a childhood he crafted.
not for himself.
for the children who called him papa.
who held his face with tiny starfish hands and sat on his shoulders.

That’s what grief is.
it’s wishing I could give you something in return to make you smile.
it’s realising how much you did for us
too late to be able to thank you for it.
for my papa
Nov 2024 · 123
Hillside
butterfly Nov 2024
skirts billowing in the cool wind,
the view of the town behind our backs.
her red nails clutching my rings,
desperately trying to find something tangible to hold onto.
pencilled in eyebrows in a permanent furrow.

we're planting him like a seed.
taking an object of permanence from the hearth at home,
from his slippers and his housecoat
and his comfortable bed
and lying him to rest on the hill.

she's standing by his side weeping.
it's like dragging an infant from its mother.
all she wants is to take him home,
dirt encrusted red nails
placing cold feet in warm slippers.

pulling a heart from its owner.

she's holding on harder than before,
pretending that my hands are his.

the grass blows like wispy tufts of his hair
and suddenly he is everywhere
and she is being ushered to the car
arms enclosed around her
white nails, pink nails, blue nails,
a manicured shawl of all the love we can give
to protect her from the pain of goodbyes.

skirts billowing in the wind,
turning back toward the town,
re-entering a world which he no longer inhabits.
a poem about my grandad's funeral, and my grandma's response to grief. it was a very strange, very cathartic day.

— The End —