Averil's Messages
to her Family

Morning my lovely family,

I am being shaken by the roots here and discovering that I have a huge fight on my hands. I am always terrified, but it also feels so amazing and do-able.

I know that you all love me and I just wanted to let you know how every little thing you each do for me is giving me what I need to keep going and keep fighting hard.

I'm doing this a lot for you, but more and more for myself and I wanted to let you know that I can feel myself healing and growing closer to you because of that.

I love you all and I hope that something in each of your days today makes you feel the same childhood wonder that blows me away every single day here.

I love you all and miss you a lot.

Have a great day Harts - because we're a pretty amazing family aren't we? x

A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as they moved off. "Because", he said, "I can't stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer."

"Her Body Bleeds Beauty,
Mine Wasted Time"

Published in "Underworld", a UEA anthology.

For this, I’ll risk injustice
I’ll take the seven days you gave
And whisper obscenities until they turn round
And longing, look for you.
Well then I will judge that changing tide
And taste its painful shore,
As you cull the better of men and manufacture their ideas.

‘Am I yours and yours alone?’
As she strips the blood stained sheets
From under his bulk and shuns the one who shows the Justice Figure.
You take the eyes from out of my heart and then try to tell me it’s not real.
For it’s been six months and countless corners
per favore di portare il mio respiro

I tread for the broken, you for the damaged
And those papers will surely bleed because her scent,
It drips oceans.
Look up, scream, ‘where do I sign?’.
I’ll rip at the hands to turn back and show before
And then let me see the Sweetpeas you gave.
Tell me you didn’t understand the meaning.
Tell these twenty-four years you didn’t understand the meaning.

He made us from your bones and dust.
And dust is left as the bones are stripped and polished and claimed.
I owe you nothing but the dimples in their cheeks and the loss of my womb.
And still your tender was calculated.
Now go on, calculate this.
I’ll ask for one final thing, vows pushed aside.
Simply scrape me from that litigation and bake until golden.

My body was bred, breath, eyes straight ahead.
Be kind, la separazione è dolore così dolce,
Look up, scream, ‘kiss mumma’ goodbye’.
Look up, scream,
Per favore
Goodbye

Simplicity

Written for a poetry competition in 2010.

Words too layered to even feel their pulse and thick indignation tickling your tongue and toes and allowing you to ignore the salty air curdling with my anticipation, inside your Golf. We were inside your Golf and the sun was burning through the glass and we were the ants, those ants that children kill and I knew we were doomed even if you didn’t.  And that first time we clutched, that rush, that burning of my lips, I screamed, I scream. Draped in your arms, dark as the innards of the whale we were swallowed into. You made me be Jonah without a say, so you could play Icarus. Oh then this wax dripping down my back and pooling in my bones belongs to you.

I asked you, I kept asking you, but you lost all the words from your gullet even though my intentions were Clear. That’s almost a contradiction but you don’t understand Dianetics and spiritually, I’ve always been lost. You made it hard and that night when you dug your teeth into my heart, your jaw in my lap, I did all the talking and you let me digress. Dressed in your pride , EpiPen already dug into my thigh, you gave me allergies and I danced around  that needle, the pin, the point, not wanting to lose you. I needed a compass to locate your chest and I was lost or you were hiding but we were in your Golf, your heart, my home and the sun slapped sharply on every cell I owned.

Untitled

Written while at Addenbrooke's S3 ward:

They sell me the fact that I am somebody's sun,
Well then I'm burning up and this ozone hole is my fault
This low zone, the gap in your sphere, here, is my fault.

If I am somebody's sun then don't get too close,
My dear I will scorch your senses, with a touch, my love,
Will melt your tired eyes, keep you warm, draw you in,
give you life lines
Who's to say that It's all lies.

As I am somebody's sun, then I'll tell you when your day is done,
I'll take back my light, hush child, don't fight,
I'll make your cells multiply at a rapid rate. Hurry darling,
two thousand and twelve won't come late.

And when I became somebody's sun,
I told Eos to live under my thumb, hide in my nail,
yes she may yearn for men,
But I'll wed envious Selene, wolf howl and hide
her sister in a Badger's den.

If I am somebody's sun, the tourists to my Earth,
well, they can only run
For shadows they always haunt, and that parched skin,
those cracked skulls,
Somalia, Nepal I'll make even your children's ghosts gaunt. 

Make me be somebody's sun and I'll shake the demon
from out of your nose,
Windows close, bless your soul and wipe sweat from
your pores as your breasts and forehead grow
Face always towards the sky, palms down
as if then your first born won't die.

City Sublime

Written for a book on Paris.

Sighed as the sun slips out of sight. 
I should try to salvage this night
But the city’s stripped me of strength tonight. 
Shakespeare’s words sooth me.
Hold on for a fortnight.

I was lent laughter and light 
And she loved me, laid me down, lost me, by that light. 
Shakespeare’s words lift me.
Hold on for ten lion nights.

Foreign faces taught me to fight,
For flustered young hearts, first loves, feel right.
Flood my veins and
Shakespeare’s words I’ll read
For five fired nights.

Grip me God, god I was never right,
My gait, my guise, this city’s golden light.
Guide with tongue and gentle goodnights.
Shakespeare don’t leave me, 
Only two more ghostly nights. 

Cradled and cultured, cuts seal with her might.
A city can cure.
Caffeine craves and Cranes taking flight.
Ciel, and I won’t cry with Shakespeare tonight.

Good Morning

Written for a poetry competition at College.

Every morning I wake
To a stained glass window
Pressed tight
Against my face
And the colours bleed
From the pains
And wrap around single cells of skin, of sin.
Christ
Imprints just above my navel
And I'm saint like
But God it’s brief.
Always broken.

The silence blinds,
Until I find my eyes, the fastest course, try to grasp at Abraham's graceful line. 
Give up my tangled
Tortured
Tear-stained way of life.

But before I can,
Each pane lifts,
Only bled colours left to dutifully drip.
Pooling in my cataract sky
Inky remnants
Then I am Mary and it is my turn now to die.
The light is fleeting, somewhere  my flock bleating
Jesus's face fades
And all I am left with is this tarnished, fruitless, bitch of a day.