Black Alice · Rose Frame Poetry Collection

You are not the sun, nor any pretty, easy thing.
You are the quiet click of a well-oiled rifle bolt,
The perfect, final stitch my Needle of Regret can’t bring,
The warden who has pardoned my unending fault.
When Tantrum-Storms of teacups shatter on my head,
And Gossip-Moths with newsprint wings begin to swarm,
You are the heavy blanket on my dreadful bed,
The only place in Wonderland that’s ever warm.
I see the window flicker with the world outside,
A place of boring colours and of common pain,
But here inside your fortress, I will gladly hide,
And learn to love the sound of your particular rain.
So let them have their poets; I will have my lock,
My living, breathing, beautifully broken clock.

Warrior
Gentle giant
Mending all my broken
Holds the whole mad world at bay
My own

III

A bullet-shell bloom
Grew where Brian’s ghost had passed.
You followed his path,
Found the haunted girl he chose.
We are his last memory.

"I will keep you safe," you said it and meant it.
"You can trust me," and the hooks did not descend.
"I am not leaving," and the Pantry grew less cold.
"It wasn't your fault," and the whispering stopped.
"You are not broken," a lie so beautiful it becomes the truth.

The Grief-Fog whispers.
You turn the lock; the world ends.
Safe to be a ghost.

He must be my home.
The lost key to my ribcage
is in his pocket.
He doesn’t know that he holds
the way to let all my birds out.

VII

I fear he’ll hate my desert bones.
This body’s made of sun and grit.
He’ll hear it in my whispered tones.
I fear he’ll hate my desert bones.
My marrow holds the hot-sand stones.
He’ll taste the war and want to spit.
I fear he’ll hate my desert bones;
This body’s made of sun and grit.

VIII

He could erase the other men.
His quiet hands could bend the bars.
If I could just begin again,
He could erase the other men.

He lets me be a little weird.
He does not try to sand my edges.
A thing I have forever feared.
He lets me be a little weird.
The crazy vines my mind has reared,
He treats as tangled, flowering hedges.
He lets me be a little weird;
He does not try to sand my edges.