Criminal Expectation

Her very soul bled from indifference.

It dripped, over-saturated with expectation

And pooled around her,

Creeping ever closer to suffocation.

Everyone’s heard the tales of the tired children by now.

Books spill examples out

And parents complain loudly about the leakage.

Where once heart and passion beat

There is now an emptiness.

She could fill it with tears,

She could fill it with blood,

 

She could fill it with hours of unslept sleep,

She could cram it with numbers and letters

Weigh the options up and decide.

 

You are a child of numbers and letters now.

They weigh you,

Find you wanting,

And drown you until you are indifferent.

This is the worst crime of all

I sentence you,

Guilty.

 

Dust Covers

I am surrounded by a museum of me.

Much dust, spiralling cobwebs, vacant expressions,

A life is a gift we are free to spend as we see fit

It is but one, a singular existence,

Unique in its living- a fingerprint, a tree ring, a petal.

Mine sits gathering dead skin cells and dirt,

Hidden among the diaries of my years,

Pages and pages I’ve written of nothing,

Words stretching towards what I cannot reach- fingers eager.

But we sleep away such existences for fear of living them

Are we to be antiques in ageing rooms,

Or dust upon the shelves of what we’ve lived, clinging to that?

I hunger for something more

To fill this hollow, rumbling blackness

Need I see the future to have the courage to live it?

The spiders spin their rain-catching nets around me,

I should say to my many-eyed companions

That here it does not rain.

It is barren at present…for future…

 

Here there are no other living things,

We are but relics- missing, lost, asleep, dead…

For rain you must be outside the museum

For that you must leave the dust

Perhaps I’ll open the door.

WORDS: Eve Delaney